It seems rather ridiculous to put features such as email into the BIOS. Of course this is just a marketing ploy to spark interest in their DRM BIOS, but actually they do have a point: Who needs all the features of a full-powered, multitasking multimedia operating system to do such mundane things as quickly checking for email?
A better, and actually quite sensible, solution, would be to have a number of highly specialized mini-operating systems on your computer: One that runs in text mode and boots in a few seconds, for checking email, or remotely logging into another machine; one that boots even qicker, for taking notes at a meeting; another one for watching DVDs (I believe Linux is making inroads here already...); a third one with the capability of browsing simple web sites (no Java, Flash, etc.)
Of course what I called different operating systems will probably just be one and the same operating system, with different services enabled. All that's needed is actually the possibility to start the OS in different configurations, and the ability to shut down all but the most essential services (which shouldn't be many).
Supposedly there's a horde of paying Slashdot readers who get to see the article early in order to "proofread" it, in order to prevent these sorts of mishaps...
Maybe there's some inherent flaw in the Slashdot business model of having the proofreaders pay for being able to proofread...;-)
I used to have this problem on my system with KDE 3.1.4. It had to do with the fact that I used a SMP-kernel on a pentium 4 with hyperthreading. Supposedly the SMP kernels are considered development versions (at least with SuSE), and have a lot of quirks. Anyways, when I switched to a single-processor kernel, the lag completely disappeared, and the konsole was as fast as ever.
Don't know if it has anything to do with your problem, but who knows...
In the sixties, People said the same things about a manned mission to the moon. Did putting a man on the moon change humanity? Nope. Did the scientific knowledge we gained from putting a man on the moon justify the effort? Hardly. The whole purpose was to boost the American Ego.
History repeats itself. Just exchange the word 'Moon' for 'Mars', and everything will turn out the same: tons of money, patriotic populist rhethorics, a big media spectacle, and marginally relevant scientific results.
who would have thought that a pair of wooden twigs would have caught on here in the U.S. mining colonies in 1800s (where they were invented by immigrants seeking to differentiate their new and tasty cuisine) to the point where they've actually spread across Asia and now account for 3% of our lumber exports!
Where the heck did you get that idea? Chopsticks were invented about 5000 years ago in China. And it's quite certain they started out as a pair of twigs back then.
I guess you must be completely right then. Anyways, let me bother you a little bit more with my distorted world view.
Amazingly enough from a safety standpoint, this was probably the best decision made by the U. S. Congress in a long time.
First of all, in order to store nuclear weapons safely, no detonation tests whatsoever are needed. Control mechanisms have to be maintained and replaced, but those may just as well be tested in a dry run.
Secondly, it is true that nuclear warheads deteriorate over time. This doesn't mean they become more dangerous to have lying around, though. It simply means that they are not 100%-guaranteed to detonate anymore. Well, all of the nuclear weapons in the U.S.'s arsenal are of strategic nature, their sole purpose is to serve as a deterrent (or at least I hope this is the case). Now, is an arsenal of strategic nuclear missiles less effective just because 10% of them might not detonate? The result, annihilation of the other country, is pretty much the same.
There are no practical reasons for conducting nuclear tests, except if the U.S. really were to go ahead and build mini-nukes. But this, in my humble opinion, would only open another Pandora's box...
The above points, by the way, are roughly what I heard at a session about nuclear arms control at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society in Austin this year. Pretty much all the experts there agreed on this.
This is so very, very true. Building bigger and better bombs will hardly make the world safer in the long run. I don't know how other people feel about this, but when the senate failed to ratify the nuclear test ban treaty in 1999, I lost a lot of my faith in the United States in just one day.
Not only on moral grounds, but also on practical grounds, I believe this was the stupidest decision ever made in American politics: The data already collected in past test would have been sufficient to keep America's nuclear arms edge for the better of a century. And banning nuclear tests altogether would secure this edge indefinitely.
How much moral weight does the U.S. have, if they demand that other countries stop their nuclear weapons program now? None. It's simply the voice of the powerful.
Careful, careful! The lawsuit does not say that Microsoft's violation consists in not including Realplayer in Windows. It says that PC makers were restricted (by Microsoft's action) from including programs like RealPlayer, if they wanted to.
It doesn't matter whether RealPlayer is crap, spyware, or what. If Microsoft used their monopoly position to strongarm PC manufacturers into not installing the product on their PCs, then this is indeed a violation of antitrust laws, and Microsoft should be prosecuted!
Why are trains and buses unpopular for long-distance travel? Because it takes a damn long time to get to your destination! What is the solution? A faster train! Hence, Maglev!
With all the airport security one has to go through these days, I could imagine many people would prefer to take a high-speed maglev train between, say, LA and SF, if it existed.
The above comment has been blatantly copied from this page, without appropriate reference. Please mod this shameless, plagiarizing karma whore into oblivion.
I wouldn't be so sure. If I recall correctly, when Lindows came out, Robertson was heavily criticized here on Slashdot for his choice of the "Lindows" name. The predominant sentiment here on Slashdot was that Robertson wants to attract popularity to his OS by baiting Microsoft into a trademark infringement lawsuit.
On a side note, just as everywhere in the world there are both liberal and conservative forces in European countries. And it's not the first time that the conservative forces win (see e.g. the European version of the DMCA)
Others include price, estimated at $30 billion to $60 billion
Hey, that sounds dirt cheap, when you compare it to the cost of recent "geopolitical events". Let's just skip one of the wars on Dubya's list, and off to Mars we go!
I don't get it... those bootlegged copies taped by someone in the theater must be of such miserable quality that I would still want to see the "real" movie, if it's a good one. So just how much profit does the MPIAA think it's losing due to this bootlegging?
I mean, the only way such bootleg copies could save me a lot of money is if all of Hollywood's movies were so crappy that, after watching the bootleg, I would decide they are not worth spending money on! So how...
I mean seriously, if you're carrying a recorder into a theater, you've obviously going to pirate this movie.
Nonsense. What about the tourist who wants to catch a flick after walking around all day filming the city? While I have no problem seeing the real offenders punished, this is another example of criminalizing what might be perfectly ordinary behavior. The legislative system is going way overboard with stupid laws like this. I would call it harassment of the citizen!
'cause you might have to wait for a very long time. Tunneling events happen very rarely; in fact tunneling probabilities are exponentially small. But tunneling events do NOT cost energy!
Wait a minute... why am I replying to an anonymous coward???
Well, I put together a nice machine for myself with a 2.4GHz Pentium this summer. Now, every time I browse through the ads that clog my mailbox, I feel so.. well, out of date! I used to be a sociable geek, but now I don't dare to talk about computer hardware anymore, because I fear the topic of CPUs might come up. If people ask me about my processor speed, I usually just mumble something under my breath. If I had only gone with the 2.8GHz model...
I think it's time to get that 3.2GHz processor and regain my confidence!
Testet games were from the following categories: War, war, war, scifi war, war, war, historical war, modern war, street racing, war, scifi war, and war...
Seriously, though, why are we, as a civilization so obsessed with war and violence? Aren't we teaching our kids the wrong things if we let them play games like this? I am always a bit freaked out when I realize how prevalent war and violence is in this country's kids' rooms. Maybe a country has to have a war on its own turf once in a while, lest it forgets how cruel the reality of war really is...
Are we going to hear something like the following:
"If you need to cross a busy street with cars going in both directions, go to a spot where the cars' wavefunctions form a standing wave. Then you can cross safely at the nodes, since the probability of any car being there will be very low."
Is this an issue of Efficiency vs. Marketing then? In the early days of the web, before its all-out commercialization, web designers were probably striving to present content in the most efficient way possible. In fact, since the term "web designer" wasn't born yet at that time, web pages were probably designed by computer scientists, who were trained for efficiency. Maybe, from this point of view, the "3-clicks rule" was, and still is, a very good design guideline.
With the commercialization, however, marketing took over. And marketing's goal is not efficiency, but profit. And from the perspective of making profit it might not always be best to allow the visitor to get to the information he/she wants as quick as possible. Distract him, lure him into examining other things the company offers, get a hold of his wallet.
Maybe this "paradigm shift" is not due to new insights, but rather to a shift in goals?
When has Microsoft ever been held financially responsible for the damage its product caused?
Liability of the software maker is certainly a double-edged sword (think of Open Source contributors...). But don't you think if Microsoft were forced to pay some multi-billion dollar amounts for the damages caused by Blaster & Co., they would really start taking the whole security issue a bit more seriously?
profiteering:
To make excessive profits on goods in short supply.
I don't think that this concept applies here. First of all, computer games are not an essential good. Some people might disagree here, but life continues even if you're not able to afford to get the latest game. Second, just take a look at the shelves in a game store, and you'll immediately see that there's no short supply of computer games.
The main reason why game prices are this high is that (in the U.S. and Western Europe) there are enough people willing to pay this amount of money. In China there aren't, therefore the prices are lower.
Do you really think that, if no pirated copies were available, many Chinese people would go and spend what might amount to half their monthly income on a video game?
Slashdot Mirror
A better, and actually quite sensible, solution, would be to have a number of highly specialized mini-operating systems on your computer: One that runs in text mode and boots in a few seconds, for checking email, or remotely logging into another machine; one that boots even qicker, for taking notes at a meeting; another one for watching DVDs (I believe Linux is making inroads here already...); a third one with the capability of browsing simple web sites (no Java, Flash, etc.) Of course what I called different operating systems will probably just be one and the same operating system, with different services enabled. All that's needed is actually the possibility to start the OS in different configurations, and the ability to shut down all but the most essential services (which shouldn't be many).
Maybe there's some inherent flaw in the Slashdot business model of having the proofreaders pay for being able to proofread... ;-)
In other words, GIMP is the EMACS of the graphics world!
Don't know if it has anything to do with your problem, but who knows...
History repeats itself. Just exchange the word 'Moon' for 'Mars', and everything will turn out the same: tons of money, patriotic populist rhethorics, a big media spectacle, and marginally relevant scientific results.
Where the heck did you get that idea? Chopsticks were invented about 5000 years ago in China. And it's quite certain they started out as a pair of twigs back then.
I guess you must be completely right then. Anyways, let me bother you a little bit more with my distorted world view.
Amazingly enough from a safety standpoint, this was probably the best decision made by the U. S. Congress in a long time.
First of all, in order to store nuclear weapons safely, no detonation tests whatsoever are needed. Control mechanisms have to be maintained and replaced, but those may just as well be tested in a dry run.
Secondly, it is true that nuclear warheads deteriorate over time. This doesn't mean they become more dangerous to have lying around, though. It simply means that they are not 100%-guaranteed to detonate anymore. Well, all of the nuclear weapons in the U.S.'s arsenal are of strategic nature, their sole purpose is to serve as a deterrent (or at least I hope this is the case). Now, is an arsenal of strategic nuclear missiles less effective just because 10% of them might not detonate? The result, annihilation of the other country, is pretty much the same.
There are no practical reasons for conducting nuclear tests, except if the U.S. really were to go ahead and build mini-nukes. But this, in my humble opinion, would only open another Pandora's box...
The above points, by the way, are roughly what I heard at a session about nuclear arms control at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society in Austin this year. Pretty much all the experts there agreed on this.
Not only on moral grounds, but also on practical grounds, I believe this was the stupidest decision ever made in American politics: The data already collected in past test would have been sufficient to keep America's nuclear arms edge for the better of a century. And banning nuclear tests altogether would secure this edge indefinitely.
How much moral weight does the U.S. have, if they demand that other countries stop their nuclear weapons program now? None. It's simply the voice of the powerful.
It doesn't matter whether RealPlayer is crap, spyware, or what. If Microsoft used their monopoly position to strongarm PC manufacturers into not installing the product on their PCs, then this is indeed a violation of antitrust laws, and Microsoft should be prosecuted!
Dude, what about Minesweeper?
A commitment to efficient public infrastructure and to an efficient public transportation system, as opposed to a worshipping of cars.
With all the airport security one has to go through these days, I could imagine many people would prefer to take a high-speed maglev train between, say, LA and SF, if it existed.
The above comment has been blatantly copied from this page, without appropriate reference. Please mod this shameless, plagiarizing karma whore into oblivion.
On a side note, just as everywhere in the world there are both liberal and conservative forces in European countries. And it's not the first time that the conservative forces win (see e.g. the European version of the DMCA)
Hey, that sounds dirt cheap, when you compare it to the cost of recent "geopolitical events". Let's just skip one of the wars on Dubya's list, and off to Mars we go!
I mean, the only way such bootleg copies could save me a lot of money is if all of Hollywood's movies were so crappy that, after watching the bootleg, I would decide they are not worth spending money on! So how...
Wait...
I get it now. Never mind.
Nonsense. What about the tourist who wants to catch a flick after walking around all day filming the city? While I have no problem seeing the real offenders punished, this is another example of criminalizing what might be perfectly ordinary behavior. The legislative system is going way overboard with stupid laws like this. I would call it harassment of the citizen!
Wait a minute... why am I replying to an anonymous coward???
I think it's time to get that 3.2GHz processor and regain my confidence!
Seriously, though, why are we, as a civilization so obsessed with war and violence? Aren't we teaching our kids the wrong things if we let them play games like this? I am always a bit freaked out when I realize how prevalent war and violence is in this country's kids' rooms. Maybe a country has to have a war on its own turf once in a while, lest it forgets how cruel the reality of war really is...
Schoell (DO) quantum mechanics for pedestrians
Are we going to hear something like the following:
"If you need to cross a busy street with cars going in both directions, go to a spot where the cars' wavefunctions form a standing wave. Then you can cross safely at the nodes, since the probability of any car being there will be very low."
That's not a flaw. Responding to criticism is a good thing. And responding in a constructive, dispassionate way would make it a virtue.
The fact that you don't agree with the author doesn't make him a troll.
Disclaimer: I don't agree with him either.
With the commercialization, however, marketing took over. And marketing's goal is not efficiency, but profit. And from the perspective of making profit it might not always be best to allow the visitor to get to the information he/she wants as quick as possible. Distract him, lure him into examining other things the company offers, get a hold of his wallet.
Maybe this "paradigm shift" is not due to new insights, but rather to a shift in goals?
*Chortles* Right...
When has Microsoft ever been held financially responsible for the damage its product caused?
Liability of the software maker is certainly a double-edged sword (think of Open Source contributors...). But don't you think if Microsoft were forced to pay some multi-billion dollar amounts for the damages caused by Blaster & Co., they would really start taking the whole security issue a bit more seriously?
profiteering: To make excessive profits on goods in short supply.
I don't think that this concept applies here. First of all, computer games are not an essential good. Some people might disagree here, but life continues even if you're not able to afford to get the latest game. Second, just take a look at the shelves in a game store, and you'll immediately see that there's no short supply of computer games.
The main reason why game prices are this high is that (in the U.S. and Western Europe) there are enough people willing to pay this amount of money. In China there aren't, therefore the prices are lower.
Do you really think that, if no pirated copies were available, many Chinese people would go and spend what might amount to half their monthly income on a video game?