I dunno. People that are going to slack off are going to slack off other ways. Reading the paper, talking a walk to the cafeteria, whatever.
I'd be willing to bet that almost everyone in your organization completely stops all work during those "few 15min time windows" though, because people want to stay connected to their lives outside of work.
I do personal Internet all the time during the day; 3 minutes here, 5 minutes there, and I don't feel like I'm wasting time at all. I think it makes me more productive by slicing up the day a little bit.
Do you seriously believe that they would have to re-write "large parts" of Windows XP to make it work?
DX10, besides a few sound and input functions, is largly a graphics library. If OpenGL can provide the same functionality as DX10 with a simple driver, what does that tell you?
It tells you that A) DX10 is a few DLL's that check to see if Vista is running, or B) They artificially added hooks into Vista-only kernel API's (and probably undocumented ones) so that you can't run it on Windows XP. Either way, they could release it for Windows XP and they're dicks for not doing so.
I can see maybe DX11 down the road not supporting XP, in a few years. But DX10 is the big thing, all the GPU's are starting to support it now, and unlike all the other DX versions, they made a judgement to get people to buy Vista this time around, because maybe they didn't think the OS would have enough merit on it's own, who knows. But they did it consciously.
It's software. You can ALWAYS make it work. I hate all this "you can't back-port it" bullshit. It's their API on their OS that they wrote. They can do whatever the heck they want to do.
It's not like DX10 uses a new expansion bus that only works with 64-bit operating systems or something. It's just an API, and the cards are already plugged into the PCIe slots.
I agree with you to a point but it's not just high school boys with bass boxes that seem to not care about quality sound reproduction.
Personally I think that a lot of it comes with the MP3 issue. When Napster was first out, and then all the clones, and then ones like AudioGalaxy... Most of it was compressed into 128kbit crap or worse. So there was a trade-off: Superior sounding CD's with 15 songs or 15,000 songs of sub-quality but free? People put up with the compression artifacts because it was free. Now, I'd venture that people don't even notice it anymore, or they look past it.
For me, I could never look past it. I download music sometimes but I never hold on to anything less then 256Kbit, and even then, you're going to lose a lot of the little subtleties on some types of music (but let's face it, a lot of music out there wasn't recoded with great equipment, and so it won't benefit from great playback gear.)
No, first of all for you: I'm not trying to solve the world's problems on Slashdot, so why would I be suggesting any solutions to fix it. I was presenting an option to you, because you apparently hate the US so much, but could take advantage of your rights and leave if you want to.
You say you don't hate us, but you sure don't make a case for that.
And, you're putting words in my mouth. I believe my point was that I believe western culture is better then Muslim culture. I didn't say anything about anywhere else in the world, nor did I say I implicitly HATE muslims. I think our society is superior to theirs, because we have individual freedoms and are not oppressed by a religion that is so easily manipulated.
So, get on with it then. Solve the worlds' problems in a Slashdot post. Let's hear it.
It's easy to read recent headlines and say it's all because of our terrible greed and selfishness all day long. It's called spin.
Never said we were perfect, and you keep going on like I did. I believe we have a better society with more personal freedoms and human rights. Problems? Yup. Perfect? Nope. Better? You bet.
If you hate your own country so much, you're free to leave.
It's funny because let's take, I dunno, a medium sized high school of 1,000 students. Put together all the possible sports teams; hockey, swim, football, tennis, basketball, baseball. They can only put so many kids on each team. So you're left with maybe 850 students that either don't want to or couldn't make the team. Meanwhile, we're spending half the school budgets on sports. It's incredible.
In the meantime, music classes, art classes, computer classes, shop classes.. all being cut back to nothingness.
Sports are all well and good, sure, but what percentage of students, across the entire country, make a career out of sports in High School? Then tell me what percentage of students would make a career out of shop or computer classes?
I don't agree that "international" (whatever you think that is) students are necessarily any better. I'd like to see some evidence of that.
Wow, you seem arrogant to me. You've rattled off your skill sets and proclaimed that you're an "engineer" about six times. (Sorry, but if being a C++ programmer makes you an engineer, then I guess just about anyone these days qualifies as one.)
Trade skills won't just help you "paint your house" or "redo your kitchen." You make it sound as if you don't go to college, you'll be painting or laboring. It's not true.
I think college is a big money maker and I feel that the entire system needs to be scrapped. Of course, being big business it's just not going to happen. See, you could have learned C++ at a vocational school, just as much as someone being a top auto-body expert could learn his trade at one.
I don't consider a desk job any more prestigious then being an auto-mechanic, and there's a good deal of satisfaction and money available in both fields.
"You statement seems akin to saying "I hate Christians because they burn alive people whom they suspect as witches.""
No, because that hasn't happened in 200 years, whereas muslims are still chopping off hands for stealing and cutting out tongues for lying.
Fundamentalist Islam is a big problem, and I realize that not all muslims are fundamentalist. But ask any true muslim about the plane crashes on 9/11 and they'll say "So what."
Re:Assertion... Falsified!
on
Manhattan 1984
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· Score: 1
Yea, good example. They've have fourteen heads of state since independence in the late 70's, with "at least" four military coups. They're laws are loosely followed, and religious laws take precedence in all matters of Family.
Sure, it's one of the "better" muslim societies. But don't get caught outside without a face mask if you're a woman.
"You're making an entirely fallacious connection by saying that the religion is the primary source of their societies."
Isn't it? Name a primarily muslim-run government that doesn't use religion to control and oppress it's people? Name a society where the muslims are the majority and religion doesn't play a MAJOR part in every day life?
"We have more freedoms due to our form of government - which explicitly separated out the Church."
Indeed. Muslims have never, and perhaps will never, do that. Muslim leaders would lose control.
"We have gone all over the world taking what we want to make ourselves richer;"
Ohh horseshit. Cite some examples, or get the fuck out. I don't recall a time when the US just went and "took" anything. What do you think we are, a bunch of gold thieves? You seem to think that success is the measurement of failure, and that's really backward thinking.
"Islamic morality is actually quite appealing, if you look at it - but it has little to do with the 'fundamentalist' values we see spoken about on TV."
Or books, or online, or from people's mouthes.. or the Qur'an. KILL THE INFIDELS. Cute.
"It is certainly more appealing than a society who can't get their voting straight, "
Yes let's value and entire society on a few voting issues..
"who let convicted criminals of national-scope crimes get away without a sentence,"
That's our justice system at work. Name a muslim country where you can get a fair trial when you're already convicted in the court of public opinion? We have a court system in place, judged by our peers, so that mob mentality doesn't win over rational thought.
"who pollute their environment and the environments of others with nary a care. "
If you think we're alone in this one, well, you should check out places like India.
"I don't think you can point to Western morality as our saving grace."
Never said we were perfect, but if our major flaws are outlined in your post, then hell yea, we're BETTER.
Most applications do run just fine on Vista. Obviously, if you run ones that do not, you'd need to take special considerations. For you, if you've just been involved in a major migration to Windows XP, it's understandable that you wouldn't want to get into another one. Wait a couple years.
But for someone that's going to initiate a project now, for migrating from old Windows 2000 and older workstations, then Vista deserves a little more then a couple installs on a workstation for the decision to be made.
I see lots of people saying "Vista isn't ready" but I don't see a lot of reasons why, except for the fact that it's a popular notion, or that there's some idea that most software won't run on it. In a corporate environment, Vista offers a lot more features and controls that System Admins like, and ultimately make the experience better for the user. Forget Aero or the Eyecandy; there's new features and options that make sense in there.
Again, I'm no Microsoft fan, but I hate ignorance in IT.
I've got to say here that I agree with your sentiments about Islam and Muslims. While I have nothing against these people personally, I don't like their religion and the societies it creates. It IS oppressive.
I think that "Western" civilization is better. Sure, not perfect, with room for improvement. Still, it's better. We have more freedoms, we have more wealth, and we have a better morality. Most people in Western culture believe in freedom and equality, and want the citizens of our society to also believe in these values.
Agreed; just because it's a "religion" doesn't mean we should be forced to accept it whole heartedly.
On your last point - I do care about being tracked and I do value privacy. I actually read privacy statements on things I sign, and I don't sign things that I don't agree with. I don't buy into the "if you're not hiding anything, then you shouldn't care" thinking.
Vista is plenty ready for use. It's your employer that apparently isn't ready for it.
Just because you don't know what's different in Vista, what changes you need to make, etc, doesn't mean it's the operating systems' fault.
If you spent 4 hours with it, you'd say "This is actually better for our corporate systems. Let's move to Vista instead."
I don't love Microsoft of Windows any more then the next guy, but c'mon, Vista isn't as major of a change as people make it out to be. Maybe they changed all this crap under the hood? Who cares. Most of that doesn't affect anything. It's not like switching from Windows 2000 to Linux or something.
I guess in a way, it's showing that alternative fuels can do good things, but it just seems to be about making alternative fuels too difficult to use.
Someone reading this might thing "Wow, looks like there's a LONG way to go because Hydrogen Fuel Cells can be useful on a consumer vehicle. Oh well, I'll just buy an Explorer."
If they actually cared about alternative fuels or electric vehicles, they'd be making ones that are practical and could be mass produced.
Do you think that little device would be able to be a router for a 20Mbit cable modem? 266Mhz is kinda slow - but even if it could, could it handle three OpenVPN encrypted tunnels? Maybe. I don't know (the maximum traffic via the OpenVPN would be around 2Mbit.) Do you have any experience with that thing?
Then again, my little Linksys WRT54g handles it OKAY (although it tends to bog down a bit over the VPN) and it's a little 200Mhz broadcom CPU.
Unless you want to use VMware or WINE, but on these things, that's not too likely.
I just wish I could find a small embedded device using *any* architecture that wasn't very expensive, so I could install a decent linux distribution and use it as a small router and personal web server. Fortunately, those Linksys/WRT-based machines can get you pretty close.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno. People that are going to slack off are going to slack off other ways. Reading the paper, talking a walk to the cafeteria, whatever.
I'd be willing to bet that almost everyone in your organization completely stops all work during those "few 15min time windows" though, because people want to stay connected to their lives outside of work.
I do personal Internet all the time during the day; 3 minutes here, 5 minutes there, and I don't feel like I'm wasting time at all. I think it makes me more productive by slicing up the day a little bit.
I guess, but I think that it's because of the GPL that we're even talking about open source software in 2007.
Do you seriously believe that they would have to re-write "large parts" of Windows XP to make it work?
DX10, besides a few sound and input functions, is largly a graphics library. If OpenGL can provide the same functionality as DX10 with a simple driver, what does that tell you?
It tells you that A) DX10 is a few DLL's that check to see if Vista is running, or B) They artificially added hooks into Vista-only kernel API's (and probably undocumented ones) so that you can't run it on Windows XP. Either way, they could release it for Windows XP and they're dicks for not doing so.
I can see maybe DX11 down the road not supporting XP, in a few years. But DX10 is the big thing, all the GPU's are starting to support it now, and unlike all the other DX versions, they made a judgement to get people to buy Vista this time around, because maybe they didn't think the OS would have enough merit on it's own, who knows. But they did it consciously.
It's software. You can ALWAYS make it work. I hate all this "you can't back-port it" bullshit. It's their API on their OS that they wrote. They can do whatever the heck they want to do.
It's not like DX10 uses a new expansion bus that only works with 64-bit operating systems or something. It's just an API, and the cards are already plugged into the PCIe slots.
"except binaries."
Yea, but unfortunately that can lock you out of your card until you get the replacement, which can sometimes take weeks with some companies.
It still better then being charged for things you don't want to be charged for, though.
... StafForce. *shiver*
StarForce is the reason I never purchased TrackMania, even though it's a kickass game.
I agree with you to a point but it's not just high school boys with bass boxes that seem to not care about quality sound reproduction.
Personally I think that a lot of it comes with the MP3 issue. When Napster was first out, and then all the clones, and then ones like AudioGalaxy... Most of it was compressed into 128kbit crap or worse. So there was a trade-off: Superior sounding CD's with 15 songs or 15,000 songs of sub-quality but free? People put up with the compression artifacts because it was free. Now, I'd venture that people don't even notice it anymore, or they look past it.
For me, I could never look past it. I download music sometimes but I never hold on to anything less then 256Kbit, and even then, you're going to lose a lot of the little subtleties on some types of music (but let's face it, a lot of music out there wasn't recoded with great equipment, and so it won't benefit from great playback gear.)
Wait, so the company develops a technology, then promotes it? DAMN THEM!
No, first of all for you: I'm not trying to solve the world's problems on Slashdot, so why would I be suggesting any solutions to fix it. I was presenting an option to you, because you apparently hate the US so much, but could take advantage of your rights and leave if you want to.
You say you don't hate us, but you sure don't make a case for that.
And, you're putting words in my mouth. I believe my point was that I believe western culture is better then Muslim culture. I didn't say anything about anywhere else in the world, nor did I say I implicitly HATE muslims. I think our society is superior to theirs, because we have individual freedoms and are not oppressed by a religion that is so easily manipulated.
So, get on with it then. Solve the worlds' problems in a Slashdot post. Let's hear it.
It's easy to read recent headlines and say it's all because of our terrible greed and selfishness all day long. It's called spin.
Never said we were perfect, and you keep going on like I did. I believe we have a better society with more personal freedoms and human rights. Problems? Yup. Perfect? Nope. Better? You bet.
If you hate your own country so much, you're free to leave.
Indeed. Far too much focus on Sports.
It's funny because let's take, I dunno, a medium sized high school of 1,000 students. Put together all the possible sports teams; hockey, swim, football, tennis, basketball, baseball. They can only put so many kids on each team. So you're left with maybe 850 students that either don't want to or couldn't make the team. Meanwhile, we're spending half the school budgets on sports. It's incredible.
In the meantime, music classes, art classes, computer classes, shop classes.. all being cut back to nothingness.
Sports are all well and good, sure, but what percentage of students, across the entire country, make a career out of sports in High School? Then tell me what percentage of students would make a career out of shop or computer classes?
I don't agree that "international" (whatever you think that is) students are necessarily any better. I'd like to see some evidence of that.
Wow, you seem arrogant to me. You've rattled off your skill sets and proclaimed that you're an "engineer" about six times. (Sorry, but if being a C++ programmer makes you an engineer, then I guess just about anyone these days qualifies as one.)
Trade skills won't just help you "paint your house" or "redo your kitchen." You make it sound as if you don't go to college, you'll be painting or laboring. It's not true.
I think college is a big money maker and I feel that the entire system needs to be scrapped. Of course, being big business it's just not going to happen. See, you could have learned C++ at a vocational school, just as much as someone being a top auto-body expert could learn his trade at one.
I don't consider a desk job any more prestigious then being an auto-mechanic, and there's a good deal of satisfaction and money available in both fields.
"You statement seems akin to saying "I hate Christians because they burn alive people whom they suspect as witches.""
No, because that hasn't happened in 200 years, whereas muslims are still chopping off hands for stealing and cutting out tongues for lying.
Fundamentalist Islam is a big problem, and I realize that not all muslims are fundamentalist. But ask any true muslim about the plane crashes on 9/11 and they'll say "So what."
Yea, good example. They've have fourteen heads of state since independence in the late 70's, with "at least" four military coups. They're laws are loosely followed, and religious laws take precedence in all matters of Family.
Sure, it's one of the "better" muslim societies. But don't get caught outside without a face mask if you're a woman.
"You're making an entirely fallacious connection by saying that the religion is the primary source of their societies."
Isn't it? Name a primarily muslim-run government that doesn't use religion to control and oppress it's people? Name a society where the muslims are the majority and religion doesn't play a MAJOR part in every day life?
"We have more freedoms due to our form of government - which explicitly separated out the Church."
Indeed. Muslims have never, and perhaps will never, do that. Muslim leaders would lose control.
"We have gone all over the world taking what we want to make ourselves richer;"
Ohh horseshit. Cite some examples, or get the fuck out. I don't recall a time when the US just went and "took" anything. What do you think we are, a bunch of gold thieves? You seem to think that success is the measurement of failure, and that's really backward thinking.
"Islamic morality is actually quite appealing, if you look at it - but it has little to do with the 'fundamentalist' values we see spoken about on TV."
Or books, or online, or from people's mouthes.. or the Qur'an. KILL THE INFIDELS. Cute.
"It is certainly more appealing than a society who can't get their voting straight, "
Yes let's value and entire society on a few voting issues..
"who let convicted criminals of national-scope crimes get away without a sentence,"
That's our justice system at work. Name a muslim country where you can get a fair trial when you're already convicted in the court of public opinion? We have a court system in place, judged by our peers, so that mob mentality doesn't win over rational thought.
"who pollute their environment and the environments of others with nary a care. "
If you think we're alone in this one, well, you should check out places like India.
"I don't think you can point to Western morality as our saving grace."
Never said we were perfect, but if our major flaws are outlined in your post, then hell yea, we're BETTER.
Most applications do run just fine on Vista. Obviously, if you run ones that do not, you'd need to take special considerations. For you, if you've just been involved in a major migration to Windows XP, it's understandable that you wouldn't want to get into another one. Wait a couple years.
But for someone that's going to initiate a project now, for migrating from old Windows 2000 and older workstations, then Vista deserves a little more then a couple installs on a workstation for the decision to be made.
I see lots of people saying "Vista isn't ready" but I don't see a lot of reasons why, except for the fact that it's a popular notion, or that there's some idea that most software won't run on it. In a corporate environment, Vista offers a lot more features and controls that System Admins like, and ultimately make the experience better for the user. Forget Aero or the Eyecandy; there's new features and options that make sense in there.
Again, I'm no Microsoft fan, but I hate ignorance in IT.
In what way?
We finally really did it.
I've got to say here that I agree with your sentiments about Islam and Muslims. While I have nothing against these people personally, I don't like their religion and the societies it creates. It IS oppressive.
I think that "Western" civilization is better. Sure, not perfect, with room for improvement. Still, it's better. We have more freedoms, we have more wealth, and we have a better morality. Most people in Western culture believe in freedom and equality, and want the citizens of our society to also believe in these values.
Agreed; just because it's a "religion" doesn't mean we should be forced to accept it whole heartedly.
On your last point - I do care about being tracked and I do value privacy. I actually read privacy statements on things I sign, and I don't sign things that I don't agree with. I don't buy into the "if you're not hiding anything, then you shouldn't care" thinking.
Vista is plenty ready for use. It's your employer that apparently isn't ready for it.
Just because you don't know what's different in Vista, what changes you need to make, etc, doesn't mean it's the operating systems' fault.
If you spent 4 hours with it, you'd say "This is actually better for our corporate systems. Let's move to Vista instead."
I don't love Microsoft of Windows any more then the next guy, but c'mon, Vista isn't as major of a change as people make it out to be. Maybe they changed all this crap under the hood? Who cares. Most of that doesn't affect anything. It's not like switching from Windows 2000 to Linux or something.
Well, if they make a remake of Thundercats, I just hope they put some thought into who will play Cheetara =)
I guess in a way, it's showing that alternative fuels can do good things, but it just seems to be about making alternative fuels too difficult to use.
Someone reading this might thing "Wow, looks like there's a LONG way to go because Hydrogen Fuel Cells can be useful on a consumer vehicle. Oh well, I'll just buy an Explorer."
If they actually cared about alternative fuels or electric vehicles, they'd be making ones that are practical and could be mass produced.
Do you think that little device would be able to be a router for a 20Mbit cable modem? 266Mhz is kinda slow - but even if it could, could it handle three OpenVPN encrypted tunnels? Maybe. I don't know (the maximum traffic via the OpenVPN would be around 2Mbit.) Do you have any experience with that thing?
Then again, my little Linksys WRT54g handles it OKAY (although it tends to bog down a bit over the VPN) and it's a little 200Mhz broadcom CPU.
Unless you want to use VMware or WINE, but on these things, that's not too likely.
I just wish I could find a small embedded device using *any* architecture that wasn't very expensive, so I could install a decent linux distribution and use it as a small router and personal web server. Fortunately, those Linksys/WRT-based machines can get you pretty close.