I know one "journalist" in the resources industry who just blatantly and shamelessly copies and pastes entire articles from companies' websites - even the images. He gets paid good money for it, too.
The concept of paying $0.25 for 160B of data which is built into the cellular service overhead and costs them absolutely nothing to maintain is absurd.
On the face of it, that might be true, except that SMS is universally accepted (I think) by all mobile phones, whereas internet access is affected by the limitations of the recipient's device (even where GPRS is available under the terms of his or her contract). We can buy spiffy mobile devices if we want, but we can't force anyone else to do likewise. So at least for the time being, we're stuck with what might be described as the lowest common denominator.
so was it really overhyped and overinflated at the time as such?
Given that it's largely driven by vapour, it possibly was and is. I have no figures to back this up (anyone?) but I suspect a large part of Google's value is driven by IP more than by tangible assets.
This saga has been dragged out so long, I won't be sorry to hear the last of SCO.
The sad thing is that once upon a time, they provided a Unix variant (Xenix), which (for all of its earlier association with Microsoft) in the days when other x86 *nix options were non-existent, was actually useful for those of us who had the thankless task of getting distributed computing systems running on what was essentially consumer hardware.
The trouble is, I'm not sure the metamorphoses into UnixWare and SCO UNIX represented any real change in the codebase (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this), and if they had seen fit to put more resources into actual development, SCO might have retained an active market share even in the face of Linux.
Instead, they pissed their product against the wall, leaving the courts to argue over the stains.
This is just as bad as McDonalds employees spitting in your food. That's exactly the way you should feel. I don't understand how people can be so easilly manipulated to accept these things.
Don't you think you're over-reacting a bit? McDonald's fake food is probably no worse for having been spat in, and nobody is forcing you to use any Microsoft products at all. There are alternatives. Just use them.
Have you ever gone to any Linux forum and seen a beginners question answered anything less snarky than "RTFM"?
Yes. Many times. In fact, I have only seen the "RTFM" response on BSD forums.
Maybe it depends on the forum you pick, or maybe it depends on how you ask. I and many others have been through the learning curve, and have found that although a google search is ample to meet trivial requirement, few experienced users are that cranky about answering "newbie" questions.
I know more people that have stuck with pot than have stuck with Linux.
Well, 25 years ago, I used to buy grass in supermarket carrier-bags. I can't be bothered with it any more. I have, however, run Linux sice ~1995, and still do.
Perhaps the simplest way of working it might be to look up Linux counter and add a fudge-factor to account for those distros (i.e. most of them) which don't actively encourage users to register.
As to what factor to use: I have no idea. In any case, there is only one distro that I personally know of (Slackware) that actively promotes this counter, so it's anyone's guess how many actual users there really are.
Yes, I do. A major gripe of academics and students has been that there was no good bibliographic software available for Linux, and that Endnote does not interact with OpenOffice, while many major scientific journals are happy with submissions made in OpenOffice formats.
Zotero fills that gap on both counts, and works perfectly well with OpenOffice. I'm not interested in starting a flamewar here, since any mention of OOo on/. typically sparks a deluge of posts to the effect that it is worthless by comparison to MSOffice, but the simple truth is that the open-source option is more than adequate for just about any purpose if one is prepared to take the trouble to learn how to use it.
I am a long-time Linux (and much more recently OS X) user, and if I am presented with a piece of software that requires Windows to run it, I usually prefer to just do without.
Fortunately in my discipline (biotech) developers are beginning to realise there are alternatives - for instance, Geneious is a stupendously fine example. It's definitely not free, but it is available on multiple platforms, which is a big step away from where we were a couple of years ago.
Compare this with Endnote which is rapidly losing ground to Zotero because the developers refuse to cooperate with the *nix world.
Not that it's particularly relevant, but a range of Australian universities mostly. Incidentally, Harvard MBA degrees are usually not recognised here as having a value >= toilet tissue.
What I was addressing is the kind of mindset that MBA courses foster, and I can't say I have any answers as to what to do about it.
bc whn u txt u typ lik ths so ther isnt any ned fr mor thn 160 chars. I'm a teen, I know best.
OK. When I was a teenager, I knew everything too. All teens do, it comes with the territory.
When you grow up, you might realise that it takes an unconscionably long time to parse that kind of gobbledegook. You have predictive text on most phones. If you use it intelligently (or ignore it if you have quick fingers), you can write your message in English and still get your idea across in 160 characters.
Perhaps a way around this might be to use your carrier's web2sms interface, if it has one. Or alternatively, I think I heard that there's a Skype client for Blackberry now. That might be another convenient way to send SMSs. Whatever works...
Because the majority of US cellphone users still can't access internet on their phones...
I won't comment on the US, but it doesn't take a huge technological leap to be able to access the internet at least by means of GPRS, which is plenty good enough for general email.
Trouble is, unless you have a comparatively expensive and bulky mobile device, it tends to be incredibly cumbersome to access email or anything else on the internet. The majority of normal phones tend to require overmuch prodding of buttons and squinting at undersized screens.
However, unless you have a lot to say (in which case you might as well just make a phone call), 160 characters isn't actually a bad limit for instant messages. It is usually sufficient to get a reasonably complex point across so long as one isn't unduly prolix.
You might want to make two posts next time. Character count with space = 208.
Don't start me. I know any number of supposedly intelligent people who are apparently incapable of reading a simple email containing a series of questions or points.
They will respond to the first question, but anything after that is consigned to/dev/null. I occasionally get cranky about it and send off a series of single-sentence emails, with the query in the sentence line.
I don't know whether it's my circle of acquaintances, but the worst offenders seem to be MBAs. (Maybe it really does mean Master of Bugger-All). Or maybe it's just the Simpsonisation of society that gives it the attention span of a flea.
Suppose I am a publisher. Suppose I take a job from the mafia...
If I were a publisher by the name of Elsevier, I would be very, very careful what journals I accept to publish. Elsevier is a very high profile outfit, publishing most of the reputable journals in my discipline (biotech) and many others. Backing up a shonky outfit like this was ill-considered, and whoever's idea it was deserves to be fired.
The sad thing is, that resistance from car designers is based on consumer demand. In other words, for car buyers, safety takes backseat to "oh, shiny" too.
Hmmm. Not sure about that. I see so many cars with labels on them proclaiming that they have air-bags here, there and everywhere. My impression is that they are trying to tell us that the driver has an air-bag instead of a brain.
[rant]...Like those morons with those stupid fucking St. Christophers or rosaries that we see hanging from rear-vision mirrors... I often wish I could apply a cluebat to the driver to tell him/her to learn to drive properly rather than relying on divine providence. [/rant. Sorry about that...]
Slashdot Mirror
I know one "journalist" in the resources industry who just blatantly and shamelessly copies and pastes entire articles from companies' websites - even the images. He gets paid good money for it, too.
Fair enough, I stand corrected.
The concept of paying $0.25 for 160B of data which is built into the cellular service overhead and costs them absolutely nothing to maintain is absurd.
On the face of it, that might be true, except that SMS is universally accepted (I think) by all mobile phones, whereas internet access is affected by the limitations of the recipient's device (even where GPRS is available under the terms of his or her contract). We can buy spiffy mobile devices if we want, but we can't force anyone else to do likewise. So at least for the time being, we're stuck with what might be described as the lowest common denominator.
I have to agree, "Twitter" has entered the mainstream big time, along with "iPod" & "Google" etc to mean generic things.
The word "twitter" had a generic meaning centuries ago. That doesn't mean the website has any value or even a future.
so was it really overhyped and overinflated at the time as such?
Given that it's largely driven by vapour, it possibly was and is. I have no figures to back this up (anyone?) but I suspect a large part of Google's value is driven by IP more than by tangible assets.
And, can Twitter decline an offer that is nearly three times their estimated worth?
Last time I looked, 3 * 0 = 0.
This saga has been dragged out so long, I won't be sorry to hear the last of SCO.
The sad thing is that once upon a time, they provided a Unix variant (Xenix), which (for all of its earlier association with Microsoft) in the days when other x86 *nix options were non-existent, was actually useful for those of us who had the thankless task of getting distributed computing systems running on what was essentially consumer hardware.
The trouble is, I'm not sure the metamorphoses into UnixWare and SCO UNIX represented any real change in the codebase (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this), and if they had seen fit to put more resources into actual development, SCO might have retained an active market share even in the face of Linux.
Instead, they pissed their product against the wall, leaving the courts to argue over the stains.
This is just as bad as McDonalds employees spitting in your food. That's exactly the way you should feel. I don't understand how people can be so easilly manipulated to accept these things.
Don't you think you're over-reacting a bit? McDonald's fake food is probably no worse for having been spat in, and nobody is forcing you to use any Microsoft products at all. There are alternatives. Just use them.
Have you ever gone to any Linux forum and seen a beginners question answered anything less snarky than "RTFM"?
Yes. Many times. In fact, I have only seen the "RTFM" response on BSD forums.
Maybe it depends on the forum you pick, or maybe it depends on how you ask. I and many others have been through the learning curve, and have found that although a google search is ample to meet trivial requirement, few experienced users are that cranky about answering "newbie" questions.
I know more people that have stuck with pot than have stuck with Linux.
Well, 25 years ago, I used to buy grass in supermarket carrier-bags. I can't be bothered with it any more. I have, however, run Linux sice ~1995, and still do.
Perhaps the simplest way of working it might be to look up Linux counter and add a fudge-factor to account for those distros (i.e. most of them) which don't actively encourage users to register.
As to what factor to use: I have no idea. In any case, there is only one distro that I personally know of (Slackware) that actively promotes this counter, so it's anyone's guess how many actual users there really are.
Yes, I do. A major gripe of academics and students has been that there was no good bibliographic software available for Linux, and that Endnote does not interact with OpenOffice, while many major scientific journals are happy with submissions made in OpenOffice formats.
/. typically sparks a deluge of posts to the effect that it is worthless by comparison to MSOffice, but the simple truth is that the open-source option is more than adequate for just about any purpose if one is prepared to take the trouble to learn how to use it.
Zotero fills that gap on both counts, and works perfectly well with OpenOffice. I'm not interested in starting a flamewar here, since any mention of OOo on
The cost is beside the point.
I am a long-time Linux (and much more recently OS X) user, and if I am presented with a piece of software that requires Windows to run it, I usually prefer to just do without.
Fortunately in my discipline (biotech) developers are beginning to realise there are alternatives - for instance, Geneious is a stupendously fine example. It's definitely not free, but it is available on multiple platforms, which is a big step away from where we were a couple of years ago.
Compare this with Endnote which is rapidly losing ground to Zotero because the developers refuse to cooperate with the *nix world.
Conclusion - Microsoft can't win. At least with the fussy pricks on Slashdot.
Correct. This fussy prick won't buy ANY Microsoft OS. After all, there are alternatives.
There needs to be a 'SMS mode' for Slashdot where you can set replies to your comment to be a maximum of 160 characters.
I think there already is. It's called Twitter - where (L)users can drop 140 characters of excreta at a time into an uncaring void...
Harvard has a bad rep for its MBA degrees. That doesn't AFAIK apply to its "real" degrees.
(I'll probably attract flames for that quoted word, so let's just say that's my prejudice and leave it at that.)
MBAs from what schools?
Not that it's particularly relevant, but a range of Australian universities mostly. Incidentally, Harvard MBA degrees are usually not recognised here as having a value >= toilet tissue.
What I was addressing is the kind of mindset that MBA courses foster, and I can't say I have any answers as to what to do about it.
bc whn u txt u typ lik ths so ther isnt any ned fr mor thn 160 chars. I'm a teen, I know best.
OK. When I was a teenager, I knew everything too. All teens do, it comes with the territory.
When you grow up, you might realise that it takes an unconscionably long time to parse that kind of gobbledegook. You have predictive text on most phones. If you use it intelligently (or ignore it if you have quick fingers), you can write your message in English and still get your idea across in 160 characters.
Perhaps a way around this might be to use your carrier's web2sms interface, if it has one. Or alternatively, I think I heard that there's a Skype client for Blackberry now. That might be another convenient way to send SMSs. Whatever works...
Well, how do they work it then? Don't Japanese or Chinese phones have the same 12+ buttons that us anglophones have? I'm not arguing, just curious.
Because the majority of US cellphone users still can't access internet on their phones...
I won't comment on the US, but it doesn't take a huge technological leap to be able to access the internet at least by means of GPRS, which is plenty good enough for general email.
Trouble is, unless you have a comparatively expensive and bulky mobile device, it tends to be incredibly cumbersome to access email or anything else on the internet. The majority of normal phones tend to require overmuch prodding of buttons and squinting at undersized screens.
However, unless you have a lot to say (in which case you might as well just make a phone call), 160 characters isn't actually a bad limit for instant messages. It is usually sufficient to get a reasonably complex point across so long as one isn't unduly prolix.
You might want to make two posts next time. Character count with space = 208.
/dev/null. I occasionally get cranky about it and send off a series of single-sentence emails, with the query in the sentence line.
Don't start me. I know any number of supposedly intelligent people who are apparently incapable of reading a simple email containing a series of questions or points.
They will respond to the first question, but anything after that is consigned to
I don't know whether it's my circle of acquaintances, but the worst offenders seem to be MBAs. (Maybe it really does mean Master of Bugger-All). Or maybe it's just the Simpsonisation of society that gives it the attention span of a flea.
Suppose I am a publisher. Suppose I take a job from the mafia...
If I were a publisher by the name of Elsevier, I would be very, very careful what journals I accept to publish. Elsevier is a very high profile outfit, publishing most of the reputable journals in my discipline (biotech) and many others. Backing up a shonky outfit like this was ill-considered, and whoever's idea it was deserves to be fired.
I assure you that my contributions will be missed.
Then why are you posting anonymously?
The sad thing is, that resistance from car designers is based on consumer demand. In other words, for car buyers, safety takes backseat to "oh, shiny" too.
...Like those morons with those stupid fucking St. Christophers or rosaries that we see hanging from rear-vision mirrors... I often wish I could apply a cluebat to the driver to tell him/her to learn to drive properly rather than relying on divine providence. [/rant. Sorry about that...]
Hmmm. Not sure about that. I see so many cars with labels on them proclaiming that they have air-bags here, there and everywhere. My impression is that they are trying to tell us that the driver has an air-bag instead of a brain.
[rant]