"unicron writes in to tell us he's found a site with over 100,000 free, hi-rez pr0n pics, and it's all completely free! You can even download them all as one big-assed compressed file!"
This would be known as the Slashdot effect.
"slagdogg writes in to tell us he's found a site with over 100,000 free, hi-rez pr0n pics of Natalie Portman, and it's all completely free! You can even download them all as one big-assed compressed file!"
Shhhh! My parents think you need a high-end PC for studying computer science (hah!) and duly support me buying one, you're costing me real money here!;)
Hehe, that's only partially true.
Take the MS developer for example:
Visual Studio.NET requires several GB of hard drive space required for full installation, quite a beast while running.
How about the Java developer: JBuilder (like most other Java IDEs) is built entirely in Java! This thing needs at least a 1 Ghz processor to run without serious delay.
Even if you're a Linux developer -- XEmacs is pretty hefty, and when running a web server, 4 instances of Galeon on 6 virtual desktops, a mail client, 28 consoles... it gets nasty in a hurry...
There is a mountain of evidence to support evolution. I could care less about any of it. Why? Because SOMETHING HAD TO EVOLVE! At some point, something came from nothing, and forgive me for not giving a damn about what happened after that. How this 'something' got here is well beyond my understanding, and as far as I'm concerned it will never be understood or backed by scientific evidence. I believe that something was created, perhaps that makes me a creationist. Maybe this created thing evolved, but that seems pretty insignificant to me.
I couldn't agree more -- Resin is fantastic (faster than Apache for static files in my tests). I use it exclusively for all of my servlet application deployments. altavista.com is running it, which is a pretty strong endorsement.
Actually, his first mistake was not disabling the 'Personal Protection' feature... this would have solved his problem just as well as using another product.
When this feature is enabled, each track that is copied to your computer is a licensed file that cannot be played on any other computer unless you backup and restore your licenses on the other computer.
Even if you forget to disable the feature, there is still a way to transfer the licenses. It's not as if they are forcing it on anyone. Seems pretty fair to me...
Is this deal good for the students of UW? THAT is the only question that matters.
In this case it comes down to a choice between higher tuition rates or using MS technologies. Personally, I'd rather have lower tuition... I went to a school in the Redmond area where Microsoft had invested a lot of money -- the tuition was reasonable (it was a community college) and we always had pretty new computers (due mostly to Microsoft contributions)... the fact that I was learning how to program in VB didn't really matter that much, I was just learning the basics. I think Microsoft's contributions to the school I went to definitely made my learning experience better.
I remember the day my friend told me he got a Power Glove -- we were at school, and I had to wait all day to go to his house and try it out. Obviously, the first game we tried to play with it was Mike Tyson's Punch Out. We probably played it for 2 hours, and got beat by Glass Joe 75% of the time... we ended up trying a few other games with it, the only one we had any success with was Super Mario Brothers. This thing was truly horrible for playing video games... btw, 'The Wizard' was a total scam!
I can see the thinking here, but since it only monitors the driving from the perspective of the car, it misses some important things... like why they are happening. For example, most erratic or irresponsible driving amongst teens is due to them talking to their friends in the car, trying to use a cell phone, drinking, fiddling with the radio, etc.
For example, even with this device installed I could be driving down the street (at the speed limit) talking on my cell phone, smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer through a straw, having sex with my girlfriend and tailgating the car in front of me... and I'd still look like a perfect driver according to this device. So much for accountability:)
An amusing tidbit from the News.com (http://news.com.com/2100-1040-935595.html) coverage:
"The programming language, called Cg, was developed in collaboration with Microsoft and is similar to the software giant's series of C languages for writing Windows code, said Chris Seitz, Nvidia's manager of development tools."
I didn't know that Kerrigan, Ritchie and Stroustrup were all Microsoft employees. Embrace and extend is one thing -- but embrace, extend, and then pretend that you owned it in the first place? Impressive!
It's Par for the Course
on
Disconnecting
·
· Score: 1
I have played this same silly game with various service providers, with the worst by far being Earthlink and MSN.
I have written the Better Business Bureau to express my frustration in both cases, and clearly I'm not the only one. Earthlink has an 'unsatisfactory' record with the BBB.
Note the statistics:
Credit or Billing Issues: 410
Outcome of all complaints -
Resolved: 225; Delayed Resolution: 1; Company made every reasonable effort to Resolve: 47; company did not respond: 137
My cancellation process with Earthlink involved a series of steps almost identical to those you've described.
MSN's BBB record might be better, but their service isn't. I recently switched from DSL to cable, and after spending over an hour on the phone (on three different service lines) I finally talked to someone capable of axing my account. Like most, he demanded a reason, but fortunately didn't push the issue.
At this point, he gave me some silly story about needing to wait for his 'system to come up' before he could cancel the account. Blip! On hold. I thought this sounded suspicious, so I recorded the time he put me on hold. Just as I expected, exactly 5 minutes later he was back. It's as if they put their callers through a mandatory delay period just to see if they can get them to hang up in frustration. If only they were so lucky.
So our service representative *finally* kills the account, and gives me a tracking number on top of it. "Great", I think. That's out of the way. But that was not the case. I guess some switch never got flipped because I have continued to be billed for service, 3 months after this call. I've called twice to attempt a resolution, but in both cases (after waiting on the line, of course) they gave some ridiculous excuse about their systems being down. I mean, yes this is Microsoft, but even Windows-based machines can do better than 1% uptime when I call. I guess they are running a fully exposed Windows 3.1 network in their cancellation department.
I have yet to come across a major service provider that gives even the slightest crap what their customers think.
I've gone through a similar struggle, trying to find a documentation format that is more flexible and less frustrating than Word. My motivation for the change was that I was unproductive working with Word, mostly because there was too much time spent trying to make the tool work the way I wanted it to. Also, seemingly simple tasks like trying to create a table of contents were much too burdensome.
I started with HTML. I figured that HTML would be a nice choice, because it's relatively standard and I could use a more sensible editor. I wrote a document of two in HTML, but in the end I found myself to be just as unproductive in HTML. I spent too much time worrying about formatting this and that, and it felt like quite a mess when I was finished.
I looked into the alternatives, and I kept finding the word DocBook coming up. The FreeBSD and LDP teams were using it, and so I felt it was worth a look. It seemed a bit intimidating at first, until I realized that a simple 'apt-get install sgmltools' was all I needed to get started. There are plenty of sample DocBook documents lying around on any 'NIX box, or on the web. So I started by just editing the samples.
I haven't looked back -- it's so productive to write documentation in DocBook. Instead of wondering "How should I format this product name... should I use bold? Italics?" you just wrap the product name in a 'productname' tag. All the output is handled with a few simple commands.
Another nice feature of using DocBook is when combined with CVS. The text based format is great for performing diffs, and it also lends itself well to concurrent documentation writing. It's great when two separate developers can each take a section in the same file, again boosting productivity. Finally, there is a great IDE for DocBook -- emacs with PSGML mode... it eases a lot of the tedious tasks such as entering end tags, and handles formatting and indentation wonderfully.
I encourage you to take the time to learn DocBook, it's very simple to get started, and has made my documentation writing a much easier process.
Slashdot Mirror
"unicron writes in to tell us he's found a site with over 100,000 free, hi-rez pr0n pics, and it's all completely free! You can even download them all as one big-assed compressed file!"
This would be known as the Slashdot effect.
"slagdogg writes in to tell us he's found a site with over 100,000 free, hi-rez pr0n pics of Natalie Portman, and it's all completely free! You can even download them all as one big-assed compressed file!"
THIS would be an Internetquake!
Shhhh! My parents think you need a high-end PC for studying computer science (hah!) and duly support me buying one, you're costing me real money here! ;)
.NET requires several GB of hard drive space required for full installation, quite a beast while running.
... it gets nasty in a hurry ...
Hehe, that's only partially true.
Take the MS developer for example: Visual Studio
How about the Java developer: JBuilder (like most other Java IDEs) is built entirely in Java! This thing needs at least a 1 Ghz processor to run without serious delay.
Even if you're a Linux developer -- XEmacs is pretty hefty, and when running a web server, 4 instances of Galeon on 6 virtual desktops, a mail client, 28 consoles
Two words ... Office Space.
There is a mountain of evidence to support evolution. I could care less about any of it. Why? Because SOMETHING HAD TO EVOLVE! At some point, something came from nothing, and forgive me for not giving a damn about what happened after that. How this 'something' got here is well beyond my understanding, and as far as I'm concerned it will never be understood or backed by scientific evidence. I believe that something was created, perhaps that makes me a creationist. Maybe this created thing evolved, but that seems pretty insignificant to me.
I couldn't agree more -- Resin is fantastic (faster than Apache for static files in my tests). I use it exclusively for all of my servlet application deployments. altavista.com is running it, which is a pretty strong endorsement.
Actually, his first mistake was not disabling the 'Personal Protection' feature ... this would have solved his problem just as well as using another product.
From the MS web site:
...
When this feature is enabled, each track that is copied to your computer is a licensed file that cannot be played on any other computer unless you backup and restore your licenses on the other computer.
Even if you forget to disable the feature, there is still a way to transfer the licenses. It's not as if they are forcing it on anyone. Seems pretty fair to me
Is this deal good for the students of UW? THAT is the only question that matters.
... I went to a school in the Redmond area where Microsoft had invested a lot of money -- the tuition was reasonable (it was a community college) and we always had pretty new computers (due mostly to Microsoft contributions) ... the fact that I was learning how to program in VB didn't really matter that much, I was just learning the basics. I think Microsoft's contributions to the school I went to definitely made my learning experience better.
In this case it comes down to a choice between higher tuition rates or using MS technologies. Personally, I'd rather have lower tuition
I remember the day my friend told me he got a Power Glove -- we were at school, and I had to wait all day to go to his house and try it out. Obviously, the first game we tried to play with it was Mike Tyson's Punch Out. We probably played it for 2 hours, and got beat by Glass Joe 75% of the time ... we ended up trying a few other games with it, the only one we had any success with was Super Mario Brothers. This thing was truly horrible for playing video games ... btw, 'The Wizard' was a total scam!
I'm curious -- in this age of the DMCA, could BYTE magazine publish such an article?
Actually, Ford's biggest competition is Firestone's legal team.
I can see the thinking here, but since it only monitors the driving from the perspective of the car, it misses some important things ... like why they are happening. For example, most erratic or irresponsible driving amongst teens is due to them talking to their friends in the car, trying to use a cell phone, drinking, fiddling with the radio, etc.
... and I'd still look like a perfect driver according to this device. So much for accountability :)
For example, even with this device installed I could be driving down the street (at the speed limit) talking on my cell phone, smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer through a straw, having sex with my girlfriend and tailgating the car in front of me
During the Q&A session of the webcast:
Perens: I've been reading questions off of slashdot, most of which have been positive.
Glaser: Are you sure you have the right URL?
An amusing tidbit from the News.com (http://news.com.com/2100-1040-935595.html) coverage:
"The programming language, called Cg, was developed in collaboration with Microsoft and is similar to the software giant's series of C languages for writing Windows code, said Chris Seitz, Nvidia's manager of development tools."
I didn't know that Kerrigan, Ritchie and Stroustrup were all Microsoft employees. Embrace and extend is one thing -- but embrace, extend, and then pretend that you owned it in the first place? Impressive!
I have played this same silly game with various service providers, with the worst by far being Earthlink and MSN.
I have written the Better Business Bureau to express my frustration in both cases, and clearly I'm not the only one. Earthlink has an 'unsatisfactory' record with the BBB.
Note the statistics:
Credit or Billing Issues: 410 Outcome of all complaints - Resolved: 225; Delayed Resolution: 1; Company made every reasonable effort to Resolve: 47; company did not respond: 137
My cancellation process with Earthlink involved a series of steps almost identical to those you've described.
MSN's BBB record might be better, but their service isn't. I recently switched from DSL to cable, and after spending over an hour on the phone (on three different service lines) I finally talked to someone capable of axing my account. Like most, he demanded a reason, but fortunately didn't push the issue.
At this point, he gave me some silly story about needing to wait for his 'system to come up' before he could cancel the account. Blip! On hold. I thought this sounded suspicious, so I recorded the time he put me on hold. Just as I expected, exactly 5 minutes later he was back. It's as if they put their callers through a mandatory delay period just to see if they can get them to hang up in frustration. If only they were so lucky.
So our service representative *finally* kills the account, and gives me a tracking number on top of it. "Great", I think. That's out of the way. But that was not the case. I guess some switch never got flipped because I have continued to be billed for service, 3 months after this call. I've called twice to attempt a resolution, but in both cases (after waiting on the line, of course) they gave some ridiculous excuse about their systems being down. I mean, yes this is Microsoft, but even Windows-based machines can do better than 1% uptime when I call. I guess they are running a fully exposed Windows 3.1 network in their cancellation department.
I have yet to come across a major service provider that gives even the slightest crap what their customers think.
-Derek
I've gone through a similar struggle, trying to find a documentation format that is more flexible and less frustrating than Word. My motivation for the change was that I was unproductive working with Word, mostly because there was too much time spent trying to make the tool work the way I wanted it to. Also, seemingly simple tasks like trying to create a table of contents were much too burdensome.
I started with HTML. I figured that HTML would be a nice choice, because it's relatively standard and I could use a more sensible editor. I wrote a document of two in HTML, but in the end I found myself to be just as unproductive in HTML. I spent too much time worrying about formatting this and that, and it felt like quite a mess when I was finished.
I looked into the alternatives, and I kept finding the word DocBook coming up. The FreeBSD and LDP teams were using it, and so I felt it was worth a look. It seemed a bit intimidating at first, until I realized that a simple 'apt-get install sgmltools' was all I needed to get started. There are plenty of sample DocBook documents lying around on any 'NIX box, or on the web. So I started by just editing the samples.
I haven't looked back -- it's so productive to write documentation in DocBook. Instead of wondering "How should I format this product name ... should I use bold? Italics?" you just wrap the product name in a 'productname' tag. All the output is handled with a few simple commands.
Another nice feature of using DocBook is when combined with CVS. The text based format is great for performing diffs, and it also lends itself well to concurrent documentation writing. It's great when two separate developers can each take a section in the same file, again boosting productivity. Finally, there is a great IDE for DocBook -- emacs with PSGML mode ... it eases a lot of the tedious tasks such as entering end tags, and handles formatting and indentation wonderfully.
I encourage you to take the time to learn DocBook, it's very simple to get started, and has made my documentation writing a much easier process.
Good luck!