I'm glad for all the innovation and improvements -- but how well-received will it be with the browser makers? Just saying that with all these wonderful standards we have, they're only good if everyone follows them. You know, like standards.
I understand it takes a lot of effort to comply and some software makers may not be properly motivated to do so. We can only hope that a renewed(?) browser war may add some pressure.
How are the browsers doing on the current standards anyway (HTML, CSS, etc.)? Right. I thought so.
How many chairs must an angry ape throw before you call him a man? Yes, 'n how many sales must his vista sell out of their glorious marketing hand? Yes, 'n how many times must their CTO fly before XP is forever banned? The answer, my friend, is blowin' more hot wind, the answer is blowin' more hot wind.
Somewhere in the ice caves (or whatever they're called, I forget) the bastard necromancer wearing his best armor and a shield with 6 diamonds meets up with this huge group of yetis with the one in the middle sporting healing, lightning and multiple shot. Blood Golem hits yeti, yeti lets out lightning, golem dies (taking out 50% of necromancer's life with him), lightning glob hits necromancer...dead. Necromancer resurrects, has to run into the cave in his underwear to collect all his loot...Blood Golem hits yeti...lather rinse repeat until Necromancer has hit his base XP level, zero gold, and Yeti continues to heal itself.
Necromancer finally makes it back to his previous corpse and loot, tries to cast a spell, finds out that the equipment didn't go into the right slots -- his favorite bone wand is on the floor while the crappy wand he stashed in the horadric cube (to sell at the local swap-meet) is now equipped. He wonders aloud if Harry Potter ever had days like these. Blood Golem hits yeti...
Scrapping together as much gold as he had left, he goes back to a previous act to pick up a decent amazon hireling (he never could stand those barbarians anyway)...takes everyone back to the ice cave. Necromancer doesn't summon blood golem this time, tries the stealthy approach. Yeti waits 15 feet from the old corpse. Necromancer creeps slowly...then in a mad dash runs to retrieve the corpse. As he retreats for cover, amazon hireling shoots Yeti with arrows. Yeti lets out lightning globs...Necromancer dies again.
Deckard Cain has witty remark about death at the camp. Necromancer considers dragging the old man along as cannon fodder...throws Cain at the yeti. Yeti kills Cain. Necromancer casts Corpse Explosion on Cain's body...kills Yeti, takes his clothes back. Yeti drops greaves with 50% lightning resistance.
I feel compelled to chime in -- I'm an Ubuntu user who had hopped around from Red Hat to Fedora then to Mandrake, finally settling in with Ubuntu starting with Hoary or Breezy, I think. Simplistically, yes, all they do is repackage someone else's work, but as far as I'm concerned, they've put together something better than the other distros I've tried.
The argument about whether Linux is ready for the desktop has been going on for quite a few years now. I'm about as tired as the next Linux Fanboy about hearing that next year will be the year of Linux. Hasn't happened yet. If it did, it would be a gradual shift, not an overnight "whoa!" type of thing.
For me, Linux has been ready even before Ubuntu made things easier. Then again, I didn't mind doing the extra work of running through config files and doing BASH basics. I'm not a Linux/unix expert by any means, but I don't mind a little adventure or two. (Not daring enough to try Gentoo)
What Ubuntu did was make things a LOT simpler. For multimedia stuff, I still turn to an ubuntu guide (last time I tried automatix, I don't think it worked properly...but a while ago). Otherwise, it's synaptic for a few other things and I'm set to go. I try to write down all the extra apps I install so I don't forget next time I have to do a clean install/upgrade.
Now to the whole business side of things -- Ubuntu is one of the free ones. Yes, they offer paid support, but this doesn't seem like the same business model as what MS uses. I'm not really sure what money Canonical will be milking by releasing version after version. The software will always have improvements, and in that sense, won't ever be absolutely "done" -- it isn't like making macaroni and cheese, dude.
Linux (especially Ubuntu) is ready for my desktop. Most other people, on the other hand, won't "switch" without being given a compelling reason to do so. That's unfortunate.
Now I'm not sure which is more depressing -- the dude who gets spawncamped or the fact that I just went 1337speak for a few lines. If you need me, I'll be sulking in the corner with Marvin. If I can FIND the corner. I'm SO depressed.
Didn't Ximian do some sort of connector that let the Evolution mail client deal with MS Exchange servers? I haven't followed how that has propagated onto other e-mail clients yet. If I remember correctly, Ximian didn't release the code, but when Novell acquired them, the code was opened up.
From the perspective of the MS-Novell pact and this latest action, I'm wondering how the ol' Ximian Connector will fare in this whole debacle. After all, it was marketed as one more reason not to get an MS OS since some were holding onto their Windows version just to get access to MS Exchange.
With Novell supposedly getting "inside information" from MS, they couldn't risk doing the Hula anymore.
"Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without." -- Merv
Choice is only good for those who CARE to have a choice. Unfortunately, most people don't really want choice -- it takes too much time, thought, and effort to weigh choices. Most people would rather have someone else decide for them. This much is true in the software industry. They'll usually use what is given to them (by OEMs, usually, or if they're lucky, well-informed friends).
After a while, choice blends into competition, and that's usually a good thing. Everyone else tries to emulate virtues/features of the most popular products. Those that don't tend to go by the wayside.
In the end, choice is good...even though only a few people really take the time to choose.
Different focus. I always try to explain the concept to people as the difference between e.coli and the common cold. If your purpose is harming a few hosts, then you go e.coli. If you want to spread to as many hosts as possible, you stay relatively harmless so the host has a chance to pass it along.
The Internet has helped viruses/worms along as well, since they can now travel through time zones in a matter of seconds. In the old days, they generally had to be transmitted through floppies. Rates of infection are counted in days, if that.
Viruses SHOULD be considered as threats. Unfortunately, as PC popularity increases and Internet connectivity rises, more people tend to take their machine's security for granted. Back then, there weren't a lot of Joe Sixpacks to worry about. Now, every other Joe Sixpack with a machine goes click-happy, damn the consequences.
The way Sony is acting, it really comes down to fanning some sort of "digital divide." It's not about affordable gaming, it's about status -- as the PS3 will serve as the nerd's bling the way iPods used to be before they went a bit more economical.
Let's recap, shall we? High price point, Wii-mote ripoff added in, features I can't use without upgrading my TV, entertaining the thoughts of micropayments for Gran Turismo, press blunders, delays...oh and the Sony rootkit that made them scummier than usual.
The way things are going, the only place you'll find a PS3 is when you're watching MTV Cribs.
Can't confirm it, but didn't he buy stock in either Take Two or Rockstar (I forget which) so that he can say he's a stockholder and show up at company meetings?
Maybe he's just going SCO-like and pumping stock while getting 'free' publicity out of the whole deal. Who knows. Sounds like a good conspiracay theory though, no? Unfortunately, I don't think he's that smart.
How many of these do we get nowadays? I've read enough bits about many companies "supporting" linux in one form or another. Dell, HP, Real, even Microsoft has a Linux lab. Yahoo loves the Linux, Google loves the Linux, IBM loves the Linux, SCO owns the Linux.
So where is Linux in all of this? Sure, some of the companies mentioned above have actually shown their support for Linux. Some others seem not to go much further than lip service. Dell comes to mind -- couldn't hunt down a preinstalled Linux box easily. (Not sure if that has changed since I last tried that).
I guess Linux is like that weird looking new kid in school (no offense to Linus) whom everyone just didn't know what to do with so everyone stayed away from him. Hell, some of 'em probably made fun of him and bullied him, too. Then it turns out he's pretty cool and everyone all of a sudden wants to be his friend.
Wait, have we gone so far into materialism that this becomes a wake-up call -- holy crap, my copy of Halo 2 doesn't matter in the long run!
Sure, I guess we all need that reminder one way or another and great disasters have a way of giving us that reality check...but Katrina linking us to reality through ownership of Video Games? How frickin shallow are we?
Just to get it over with, here are a few things to remember:
Material posessions don't mean jack in the long run.
Your SAT score doesn't mean jack in the long run either.
Your high score in Tetris, your Super Mario Brothers speed run, and your 100pct completion rating for San Andreas...all insignificant....but if you vote for CowboyNeal in the slashdot polls -- that, my friend, can lead to the cure for cancer. Keep that in mind next time you click on the other options.
Really, when it comes down to it, stuff doesn't matter much at all.
I've got to say I'm with you on this one. The speed runs they occasionally show on Cinematech are pretty cool, but we definitely need more of that.
Developers invented spectator mode for a reason...and it's not to make that bastard of a show "Arena." Show me great deathmatches. Televise all the tricks the ubergods use to pwn everyone. Hell, show me the hardware they run on and the tweaks they do to get top performance out of their machines. THAT would be cool.
The idea of following an MMO did sound kinda cool, too...but in a different way. I'm thinking Red vs. Blue/Bob and Steve type machinima. Imagine a weekly show of a "Crocodile Hunter" type of character running through an MMORPG world stalking creatures, explaining their traits, behaviors, hit points, attacks...in a comedic sense, of course. Heck, I'd attempt it if I had the time and talent.:)
Lastly -- I want videos of someone playing nethack. Get ESR to do it. That'll get the real geeks watching.
Debian, Gentoo, Red Hat, Slackware...all of which package nmap, which was featured in Matrix: Reloaded with Keanu Reeves.
(this part courtesy of oracleofbacon.org) Keanu Reeves was in Speed (1994/I) with Beau Starr Beau Starr was in Where the Truth Lies (2005) with Kevin Bacon.
So there you have it. All those original distros have at most a Bacon number of 3.
Ooooh, I like the idea -- let's expand it a little:
The SlashGun could be a bit like a BFG or redeemer for the UT fans. Maybe it could be a clone gun that shoots clones (dupes) of destructible objects. The CBN gun would have to be a six-shooter that does BB Gun damage.
The concept: You are CmdrTaco, leader of the slashdot editing squad. You must navigate your way from cyberspace, past the spellcheck, and out into the real world where you must clear your name from the list of 10 people that don't matter in tech. Along the way, you'll have to make choices that define your character's skill levels. Vi vs. Emacs, KDE vs. Gnome. You'll join up with the Firefox dev team in the browser battle, and later on you realize you've become part of a much bigger encounter -- the OS Wars.
For aiming assistance (cheating), you can download a SlashBot.
What, you'd rather be playing a FPS version of MS. Pacman?
You're a bit on the special side, I guess. Most people in passing wouldn't really care to get your name right. Giving them a novelty pronunciation would probably get them to remember you more than you spending a few extra minutes correcting them, pronouncing things with accents they aren't accustumed to, and in the end you'll come to a "How Come" compromise anyway.
My last name gets butchered enough times that I don't really mind anymore. With him, I'm guessing his purpose and his message are so much more important than his name that it doesn't matter if they get his name absolutely right as long as they get what he's about correctly.
Lastly, it'll be tough to correct people on their pronunciation over plaintext communication. I'm sure he'd get a soundbyte if it worried him so much.
There seems to be a bit of an issue with "older" ATI cards. I think mine's a 9xxx Radeon type, I forget exactly what. The fglrx drivers give out errors when running anything 3D accelerated (including OpenOffice!?) It throws a bunch of API errors. Nothing frozen like you report, though.
From what has been posted online, ATI knew these issues weeks ahead of them releasing the new drivers and still released them as is. Damned closed-source drivers, I tell ya.
I bit the bullet and basically did a dist-upgrade on the last RC, and while for the most part everything seems to have come out ok (had to redo restricted formats, etc), the 3D acceleration was bork. Someone online had suggested replacing libGL.so.1.2 (IIRC) with an older version. Sure, it got rid of the error messages, but still left the machine with software rendering. Not good if you're an Enemy Territory addict.
So on that machine, I had to boot back to Windows to get my ET fix. So I'm with you on this one...what about ATI card support?
I've got Breezy on a laptop, Hoary on an older machine (got ISAPNP sound working, don't want to touch it unless it's bork), and now the RC Dapper with borken 3D acceleration on another machine. I love the Ubuntu...but please oh please can I have my 3D acceleration back with Dapper?:)
By Intelligent streaming, they mean it'll take over your machine and feed you adware AFTER getting the run-around on how to download the free version and signing away your firstborn, that is.
Am I bitter? Yeah. Real was fairly innovative in the day and though Media Player had its part in shrinking the marketshare, it wasn't like Real didn't get pushy and lamer after a while. How's that OSS deal they had (was it helixcode?) going nowadays anyway?
In other news, I wouldn't be surprised if the patent actually pertains to a streaming download occasionally interrupted by the word "Buffering" followed by 3 ellipses.
Wait, we have laws against shooting marketeers? Now you tell me! Seriously, though, a lot of things are based on growing market share. I guess it's the inherent greed in the system.
You've got a demographic...but wait, if you just alter a few things, then you'd get more people (and money). As you described, things get altered and altered until finally you've pissed off every demographic you had -- they identified with your product, and as you've altered it so much, they are alienated by it. Afterwards, all you're left with is the OMG PONIES!!! crowd.:)
It's the same all over. A company can't just be profitable...they have to show growth from quarter to quarter. So they cut corners on product quality, outsource the workforce, and pretty much do whatever they can to see their numbers go up. Their employees suffer, and the consumers suffer. Since the rich execs don't really feel any financial strain until it's all but over, they don't realize it until it's too late.
Then again, I'm just some clueless bystander in this game.
I'm sure it's been visited before -- here's a list of names we're used to...but would seem strange without some sort of common usage or marketing force behind them:
Windows NT, ME, XP, Vista, Xbox OSX...Jaguar, Panther Apache, IIS iPod, Nano MS Excel, Powerpoint Yahoo, Google
Ubuntu -- Humanity to others. Now as far as the naming conventions of hoary hedgehog, breezy badger, dapper drake, and now edgy eft...get over it. There are lots of fscked up names for projects and sure, it'd be better if they had more appropriate names, but they're still as useful. It's a matter of pulling enough of a marketing spin on things, that's all.
I like and use ubuntu (well kubuntu, really). I don't care about the naming conventions. If nothing else, it's a conversation starter. "Yeah, at home I run dapper drake" -- "dapper drake, what's that?" "oh, it's a version of a linux distro called Ubuntu...you know how Windows has all these version numbers and strange names? Ubuntu's folks decided to use animals in theirs. Kinda like Apple and their big cats."
To each his own, bro...and as long as the Ubuntu folks come up with good stuff and package it in that wonderfully user-friendly manner, I'm all for it. Now if they call the next version "fscked-up falcon" I may reconsider. Nah, I'll probably still use it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad for all the innovation and improvements -- but how well-received will it be with the browser makers? Just saying that with all these wonderful standards we have, they're only good if everyone follows them. You know, like standards.
I understand it takes a lot of effort to comply and some software makers may not be properly motivated to do so. We can only hope that a renewed(?) browser war may add some pressure.
How are the browsers doing on the current standards anyway (HTML, CSS, etc.)? Right. I thought so.
As opposed to Ballmer's song:
How many chairs must an angry ape throw
before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n how many sales must his vista sell
out of their glorious marketing hand?
Yes, 'n how many times must their CTO fly
before XP is forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' more hot wind,
the answer is blowin' more hot wind.
Basic Plotline:
Somewhere in the ice caves (or whatever they're called, I forget) the bastard necromancer wearing his best armor and a shield with 6 diamonds meets up with this huge group of yetis with the one in the middle sporting healing, lightning and multiple shot. Blood Golem hits yeti, yeti lets out lightning, golem dies (taking out 50% of necromancer's life with him), lightning glob hits necromancer...dead. Necromancer resurrects, has to run into the cave in his underwear to collect all his loot...Blood Golem hits yeti...lather rinse repeat until Necromancer has hit his base XP level, zero gold, and Yeti continues to heal itself.
Necromancer finally makes it back to his previous corpse and loot, tries to cast a spell, finds out that the equipment didn't go into the right slots -- his favorite bone wand is on the floor while the crappy wand he stashed in the horadric cube (to sell at the local swap-meet) is now equipped. He wonders aloud if Harry Potter ever had days like these. Blood Golem hits yeti...
Scrapping together as much gold as he had left, he goes back to a previous act to pick up a decent amazon hireling (he never could stand those barbarians anyway)...takes everyone back to the ice cave. Necromancer doesn't summon blood golem this time, tries the stealthy approach. Yeti waits 15 feet from the old corpse. Necromancer creeps slowly...then in a mad dash runs to retrieve the corpse. As he retreats for cover, amazon hireling shoots Yeti with arrows. Yeti lets out lightning globs...Necromancer dies again.
Deckard Cain has witty remark about death at the camp. Necromancer considers dragging the old man along as cannon fodder...throws Cain at the yeti. Yeti kills Cain. Necromancer casts Corpse Explosion on Cain's body...kills Yeti, takes his clothes back. Yeti drops greaves with 50% lightning resistance.
I feel compelled to chime in -- I'm an Ubuntu user who had hopped around from Red Hat to Fedora then to Mandrake, finally settling in with Ubuntu starting with Hoary or Breezy, I think. Simplistically, yes, all they do is repackage someone else's work, but as far as I'm concerned, they've put together something better than the other distros I've tried.
The argument about whether Linux is ready for the desktop has been going on for quite a few years now. I'm about as tired as the next Linux Fanboy about hearing that next year will be the year of Linux. Hasn't happened yet. If it did, it would be a gradual shift, not an overnight "whoa!" type of thing.
For me, Linux has been ready even before Ubuntu made things easier. Then again, I didn't mind doing the extra work of running through config files and doing BASH basics. I'm not a Linux/unix expert by any means, but I don't mind a little adventure or two. (Not daring enough to try Gentoo)
What Ubuntu did was make things a LOT simpler. For multimedia stuff, I still turn to an ubuntu guide (last time I tried automatix, I don't think it worked properly...but a while ago). Otherwise, it's synaptic for a few other things and I'm set to go. I try to write down all the extra apps I install so I don't forget next time I have to do a clean install/upgrade.
Now to the whole business side of things -- Ubuntu is one of the free ones. Yes, they offer paid support, but this doesn't seem like the same business model as what MS uses. I'm not really sure what money Canonical will be milking by releasing version after version. The software will always have improvements, and in that sense, won't ever be absolutely "done" -- it isn't like making macaroni and cheese, dude.
Linux (especially Ubuntu) is ready for my desktop. Most other people, on the other hand, won't "switch" without being given a compelling reason to do so. That's unfortunate.
d34r pwn3d d00d,
j00 h4v3 n0 r16h7 2 1iv3 n3m0r3 c0z u 5ux0rz. P1z b3 r37urn1n6 2 ur 5p4wn p01n7 s0 1 c4n fr4g ur 5ry 455 s0m3 m0r3. lol, 1uz3r th0u6h7 h3 w4s 1337! pwn3d!
Now I'm not sure which is more depressing -- the dude who gets spawncamped or the fact that I just went 1337speak for a few lines. If you need me, I'll be sulking in the corner with Marvin. If I can FIND the corner. I'm SO depressed.
oooh ooh, and when you swipe it at a card reader, it goes
asdf2349qu0sadifjafsld@3290### buffering...
Didn't Ximian do some sort of connector that let the Evolution mail client deal with MS Exchange servers? I haven't followed how that has propagated onto other e-mail clients yet. If I remember correctly, Ximian didn't release the code, but when Novell acquired them, the code was opened up.
From the perspective of the MS-Novell pact and this latest action, I'm wondering how the ol' Ximian Connector will fare in this whole debacle. After all, it was marketed as one more reason not to get an MS OS since some were holding onto their Windows version just to get access to MS Exchange.
With Novell supposedly getting "inside information" from MS, they couldn't risk doing the Hula anymore.
"Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without." -- Merv
Choice is only good for those who CARE to have a choice. Unfortunately, most people don't really want choice -- it takes too much time, thought, and effort to weigh choices. Most people would rather have someone else decide for them. This much is true in the software industry. They'll usually use what is given to them (by OEMs, usually, or if they're lucky, well-informed friends).
After a while, choice blends into competition, and that's usually a good thing. Everyone else tries to emulate virtues/features of the most popular products. Those that don't tend to go by the wayside.
In the end, choice is good...even though only a few people really take the time to choose.
Nobody has posted about how long the beagle has been SOL!
1) Can you make it do Batman?
2) Bet it would be better than 90% of the music out there today
3) Isn't that how Trent came up with The Downward Spiral?
4) Between the techno music and the fan noises coming out of the power supply, CPU, and GPU, you'd think I'm attending a rave near the airport.
5) I'd be scared if my machine played Chopin's Funeral March on its own.
6) I'd know we're in trouble when I get a call on my cell from one of the servers and the ringtone plays Bad Religion's "Los Angeles Is Burning"
7) Hook it up to a webserver and slashdot it so we'll get new music tracks for PyDance!
Liu kang ripe vedder width thee boys re-cog nation soft where ink clue dead width Vista!!!
Different focus. I always try to explain the concept to people as the difference between e.coli and the common cold. If your purpose is harming a few hosts, then you go e.coli. If you want to spread to as many hosts as possible, you stay relatively harmless so the host has a chance to pass it along.
The Internet has helped viruses/worms along as well, since they can now travel through time zones in a matter of seconds. In the old days, they generally had to be transmitted through floppies. Rates of infection are counted in days, if that.
Viruses SHOULD be considered as threats. Unfortunately, as PC popularity increases and Internet connectivity rises, more people tend to take their machine's security for granted. Back then, there weren't a lot of Joe Sixpacks to worry about. Now, every other Joe Sixpack with a machine goes click-happy, damn the consequences.
The way Sony is acting, it really comes down to fanning some sort of "digital divide." It's not about affordable gaming, it's about status -- as the PS3 will serve as the nerd's bling the way iPods used to be before they went a bit more economical.
Let's recap, shall we? High price point, Wii-mote ripoff added in, features I can't use without upgrading my TV, entertaining the thoughts of micropayments for Gran Turismo, press blunders, delays...oh and the Sony rootkit that made them scummier than usual.
The way things are going, the only place you'll find a PS3 is when you're watching MTV Cribs.
Can't confirm it, but didn't he buy stock in either Take Two or Rockstar (I forget which) so that he can say he's a stockholder and show up at company meetings?
Maybe he's just going SCO-like and pumping stock while getting 'free' publicity out of the whole deal. Who knows. Sounds like a good conspiracay theory though, no? Unfortunately, I don't think he's that smart.
How many of these do we get nowadays? I've read enough bits about many companies "supporting" linux in one form or another. Dell, HP, Real, even Microsoft has a Linux lab. Yahoo loves the Linux, Google loves the Linux, IBM loves the Linux, SCO owns the Linux.
So where is Linux in all of this? Sure, some of the companies mentioned above have actually shown their support for Linux. Some others seem not to go much further than lip service. Dell comes to mind -- couldn't hunt down a preinstalled Linux box easily. (Not sure if that has changed since I last tried that).
I guess Linux is like that weird looking new kid in school (no offense to Linus) whom everyone just didn't know what to do with so everyone stayed away from him. Hell, some of 'em probably made fun of him and bullied him, too. Then it turns out he's pretty cool and everyone all of a sudden wants to be his friend.
Wait, have we gone so far into materialism that this becomes a wake-up call -- holy crap, my copy of Halo 2 doesn't matter in the long run!
...but if you vote for CowboyNeal in the slashdot polls -- that, my friend, can lead to the cure for cancer. Keep that in mind next time you click on the other options.
Sure, I guess we all need that reminder one way or another and great disasters have a way of giving us that reality check...but Katrina linking us to reality through ownership of Video Games? How frickin shallow are we?
Just to get it over with, here are a few things to remember:
Material posessions don't mean jack in the long run.
Your SAT score doesn't mean jack in the long run either.
Your high score in Tetris, your Super Mario Brothers speed run, and your 100pct completion rating for San Andreas...all insignificant.
Really, when it comes down to it, stuff doesn't matter much at all.
I've got to say I'm with you on this one. The speed runs they occasionally show on Cinematech are pretty cool, but we definitely need more of that.
:)
Developers invented spectator mode for a reason...and it's not to make that bastard of a show "Arena." Show me great deathmatches. Televise all the tricks the ubergods use to pwn everyone. Hell, show me the hardware they run on and the tweaks they do to get top performance out of their machines. THAT would be cool.
The idea of following an MMO did sound kinda cool, too...but in a different way. I'm thinking Red vs. Blue/Bob and Steve type machinima. Imagine a weekly show of a "Crocodile Hunter" type of character running through an MMORPG world stalking creatures, explaining their traits, behaviors, hit points, attacks...in a comedic sense, of course. Heck, I'd attempt it if I had the time and talent.
Lastly -- I want videos of someone playing nethack. Get ESR to do it. That'll get the real geeks watching.
Debian, Gentoo, Red Hat, Slackware...all of which package nmap, which was featured in Matrix: Reloaded with Keanu Reeves.
(this part courtesy of oracleofbacon.org)
Keanu Reeves was in Speed (1994/I) with Beau Starr
Beau Starr was in Where the Truth Lies (2005) with Kevin Bacon.
So there you have it. All those original distros have at most a Bacon number of 3.
Ooooh, I like the idea -- let's expand it a little:
The SlashGun could be a bit like a BFG or redeemer for the UT fans. Maybe it could be a clone gun that shoots clones (dupes) of destructible objects. The CBN gun would have to be a six-shooter that does BB Gun damage.
The concept: You are CmdrTaco, leader of the slashdot editing squad. You must navigate your way from cyberspace, past the spellcheck, and out into the real world where you must clear your name from the list of 10 people that don't matter in tech. Along the way, you'll have to make choices that define your character's skill levels. Vi vs. Emacs, KDE vs. Gnome. You'll join up with the Firefox dev team in the browser battle, and later on you realize you've become part of a much bigger encounter -- the OS Wars.
For aiming assistance (cheating), you can download a SlashBot.
What, you'd rather be playing a FPS version of MS. Pacman?
You're a bit on the special side, I guess. Most people in passing wouldn't really care to get your name right. Giving them a novelty pronunciation would probably get them to remember you more than you spending a few extra minutes correcting them, pronouncing things with accents they aren't accustumed to, and in the end you'll come to a "How Come" compromise anyway.
My last name gets butchered enough times that I don't really mind anymore. With him, I'm guessing his purpose and his message are so much more important than his name that it doesn't matter if they get his name absolutely right as long as they get what he's about correctly.
Lastly, it'll be tough to correct people on their pronunciation over plaintext communication. I'm sure he'd get a soundbyte if it worried him so much.
Overheats faster than a speeding bullet
Able to leap tall BSODs in a single bound
Superman's cape IS Alien-ware
Spyware will be marketed as value-added kryptonite
The Clark Kent version is marketed by e-machines
I heard Steve Jobs is launching a new line of iZods
No, your mom's basement is NOT your fortress of solitude
There seems to be a bit of an issue with "older" ATI cards. I think mine's a 9xxx Radeon type, I forget exactly what. The fglrx drivers give out errors when running anything 3D accelerated (including OpenOffice!?) It throws a bunch of API errors. Nothing frozen like you report, though.
:)
From what has been posted online, ATI knew these issues weeks ahead of them releasing the new drivers and still released them as is. Damned closed-source drivers, I tell ya.
I bit the bullet and basically did a dist-upgrade on the last RC, and while for the most part everything seems to have come out ok (had to redo restricted formats, etc), the 3D acceleration was bork. Someone online had suggested replacing libGL.so.1.2 (IIRC) with an older version. Sure, it got rid of the error messages, but still left the machine with software rendering. Not good if you're an Enemy Territory addict.
So on that machine, I had to boot back to Windows to get my ET fix. So I'm with you on this one...what about ATI card support?
I've got Breezy on a laptop, Hoary on an older machine (got ISAPNP sound working, don't want to touch it unless it's bork), and now the RC Dapper with borken 3D acceleration on another machine. I love the Ubuntu...but please oh please can I have my 3D acceleration back with Dapper?
By Intelligent streaming, they mean it'll take over your machine and feed you adware AFTER getting the run-around on how to download the free version and signing away your firstborn, that is.
Am I bitter? Yeah. Real was fairly innovative in the day and though Media Player had its part in shrinking the marketshare, it wasn't like Real didn't get pushy and lamer after a while. How's that OSS deal they had (was it helixcode?) going nowadays anyway?
In other news, I wouldn't be surprised if the patent actually pertains to a streaming download occasionally interrupted by the word "Buffering" followed by 3 ellipses.
Wait, we have laws against shooting marketeers? Now you tell me! Seriously, though, a lot of things are based on growing market share. I guess it's the inherent greed in the system.
:)
You've got a demographic...but wait, if you just alter a few things, then you'd get more people (and money). As you described, things get altered and altered until finally you've pissed off every demographic you had -- they identified with your product, and as you've altered it so much, they are alienated by it. Afterwards, all you're left with is the OMG PONIES!!! crowd.
It's the same all over. A company can't just be profitable...they have to show growth from quarter to quarter. So they cut corners on product quality, outsource the workforce, and pretty much do whatever they can to see their numbers go up. Their employees suffer, and the consumers suffer. Since the rich execs don't really feel any financial strain until it's all but over, they don't realize it until it's too late.
Then again, I'm just some clueless bystander in this game.
I'm sure it's been visited before -- here's a list of names we're used to...but would seem strange without some sort of common usage or marketing force behind them:
Windows NT, ME, XP, Vista, Xbox
OSX...Jaguar, Panther
Apache, IIS
iPod, Nano
MS Excel, Powerpoint
Yahoo, Google
Ubuntu -- Humanity to others. Now as far as the naming conventions of hoary hedgehog, breezy badger, dapper drake, and now edgy eft...get over it. There are lots of fscked up names for projects and sure, it'd be better if they had more appropriate names, but they're still as useful. It's a matter of pulling enough of a marketing spin on things, that's all.
I like and use ubuntu (well kubuntu, really). I don't care about the naming conventions. If nothing else, it's a conversation starter. "Yeah, at home I run dapper drake" -- "dapper drake, what's that?" "oh, it's a version of a linux distro called Ubuntu...you know how Windows has all these version numbers and strange names? Ubuntu's folks decided to use animals in theirs. Kinda like Apple and their big cats."
To each his own, bro...and as long as the Ubuntu folks come up with good stuff and package it in that wonderfully user-friendly manner, I'm all for it. Now if they call the next version "fscked-up falcon" I may reconsider. Nah, I'll probably still use it.