in general, since most distros have you set up a separate swap partition. What kills windows in low diskspace environments it it's running out of swap space. I've run with my root partition with ~50 mb free for ages.
just keep running winzip over and over again until it's only 700mb. It helps if it's done over a network. Just ftp into 127.0.0.1 and start zipping the files. Try it, it works.
Yeah, I know, installing Linux (and compiling a kernel) just to get around Macrovision is ridiculous, but if you're used to doing it it's nice that you can. I'm not a hacker by any stretch, but it's pretty easy to do this (especially if you're using your distro's kernel sources. You just make the change, do make bzImage and copy it over the old kernel). But yeah, it does suck. Cheap internal DVD players effectively solved the problem for me (I don't use VHS anymore, these days the only thing hooked up is a PS2 for games). And yeah, they probably should be required to at least mention Macrovision, since I'm sure lots of people buy tuners to capture old VHS.
and a decent TV-Tuner (the ATI standalone tuners are great). Not trolling, but I've never had headaches from newer ATI cards (older cards with the bugs worked out seem fine, I've got a friend with a stock of Radeon 9200s that work great). Their hardware rocks, but their software sucks, bad. I'm just too lazy to fitz with drivers/firmware and whatnot until it all decides to work for the sake of $50 dollars saved and/or 10% performance (at the lower end, I've always been too cheap to buy the highend).
the thought of a large black market in human body parts harvested from (once) live humans scares me a heck of a lot more than a half-man half-sheep hybrid.
Besides, I for one welcome our new man-sheep overlords.
let's say employee X seends an email saying how much he hates minority group A, or how Secretary B should really be dating him if she wants to get ahead. Lawsuit city. Now, the resonable thing to do is sue the person who committed the crime. The profitable thing to do is sue the corporation, who then has to go out of it's way to prove they were doing something to prevent this kind of behavior.
Moreover, with all the top heavy companies these days, all those managers have to find something to do with their time. You can only implement so many inane policies before the well runs dry.
but their still Microsoft's fault. Let me explain. Microsoft spends and enourmous amount of time and money deal with other manufacturers buggy hardware and code. If you've ever wondered what the hell Microsoft does with all those coders, that's it. They're writing workarounds for cheap and lazy venders. As it turns out, this works out just fine for Microsoft. The Dells and the Compaqs of the world love 'em because their software'll run on stuff that'd make a linux or bsd puke it's guts out.
You'll ask, how is Microsoft to blame? The answer's simple: they make it possible for venders to ship crap. Instead of forcing the vender to accually **gasp** fix things, they hack around it. That's all well and good for joe average, who doesn't really want or need a computer. But if you're like me, just knowing that your computer crashes every now and then bugs the hell out of you. I went through 3 cheap mobos before I got something stable (thank God for nvidia).
Now, you're tech savy (your lack of spyware proves it). You probably cherry picked your hardware (or at least bought a good quality Dell or IBM). When you upgrade, you don't buy the no name special. Plus, you don't install software for the hell of it or just for something to do with your $1000 dollar paper weight. So you never see the instablity and general crappiness of Windows. If you used your computer the way Microsoft intended, you'd see a lot more of those bugs.
it's a sign that you're not paying enough. If you really need them, your client needs them, and they'll have to pay. In the end the money will come out of some rich bastards pocket (your boss). We've got plenty of resources in this country, both people and goods. What we don't have is a second world economy where the poor are played against each other to enthrone a few lucky capital kings. But attitudes like yours will get us there.
What disgusts me about your company is this: You complain about not getting engineers you want, but you aren't willing to pay them what they're worth. It takes years to get the skills you want and constant effort to maintain them. Typical to HR, all you think about is the 40/week the tech puts in, not the other 40/week he's spending keeping his skills up to day. You people have road too far too long on the good graces of 'geeks' who haven't considered that extra job 'work'. People who thought it was fun designing a network topology. Now, there's so much competition for labor that there's not enough uber geeks doing it for love, and you're having to pay up for the expertise you want. To be honest, your companies standards are probably artificially high to create exactly the situation that makes it possible to let more cheap foreign labor in. This isn't some nutball conspiracy either. It's a known fact that during the 90's reports were forged to justify the rapidly increasing the H-1B Visa program.
Put another way, why should you expect to pay less for someone who maintains your most critical IT infrastructure, then for someone maintaining your most critical legal structure? Or Accounting Systems? If you can find competent Lawyers and Accountants, what makes you think you can't find competent Engineers?
Sorry to be so blunt, but that's the reality of it.
Just saying that slavory wasn't a good econimic model for an Industrialized society. The problem with slavery isn't that the labor isn't cheap, it's that you tie up your capital in slaves, and that makes it tough when it's time to build a new factory that makes the new widgets. With poorly paid laborers, you can hire 'em and fire 'em whenever needed, and keep your capital free for expansion. Slavery's great in the long run, but short run it's hard to get the money together to build a factor and man it with slaves.
I can't imagine the average imigrant working thinking that far ahead anyhow (try getting even a well educated American today to do something about outsourcing and compare them to an Irish dirt farmer from the 1800's). Unless the idea was being drummed into their heads by weathly Northernors for their own purposes, which I could see happening, but it's a moot point. Slavery just doesn't make sense in a dynamic economy. Slaves are too expensive, and too easily replaced with machine labor. Hell, think of how many slaves a cotton gin replaced.
because it was economically impractical. The South had all it's capital tied up in slaves, which they were encouraged to treat at least as well as a horse. The North was busy utilizing a steady influx of imigrant labor they could treat far worse (not that I'm saying slaves were better off. That might be true only in select cases and in the short run, but they could never improve their situation without violent social upheaval). In any case, freedom gave the North had more free capital to spare for the Industrial Revolution.
that Sony's trading in, and not 'items' in the traditional sense. That +10 Axe you just bought? It's software, and Sony's no more bound to guarantee it's value than Microsoft is bound to gaurantee Excel won't eat your work. Most states allow for minimal or no damages caused by defective or faulty software, so the most you'll get out of Sony for losing that $500 dollar sword is $5 bucks (except in Nebraska, of course).
Put another way, can you sue Microsoft because Word XP won't read your Word 5.0 documents? It's the same for Sony. You can't sue just because your sword's worth half what is was in EQ 1.0.
And before you jump up and say the law should be changed, don't forget what would happen to your favorite open source project is there was as much accountablity for software as there is for real products.
and the realization that games could be that well written. And without further ado, here's the three stages of playing Torment:
Stage 1: The aformentioned realization, and a desire to write my own Planescape stories.
Stage 2: The realization that I suck as a writer, and can't come close to Torment.
Stage 3: The final realization that the game more or less bombed, and that they'll probably never be a game with that much effort put into writing again.
It's the kind of game I wish I'd never played so I could go back and play it again.
and for the opposite, overcharging. I've got friends who travel and the airline will use tracking cookies in combination with other sites (like travel sites) to guess what people are willing to pay and offer different (often higher) rates.
Example: I know you've been hitting a lot of sites about Hawaii and a few about China, so I know you're more likely to want to go to Hawaii and I adjust my rates accordingly.
I am right now, and it's hard. I don't mean like, "I really want a cheeseburger" hard, I mean like, how the hell do I avoid trans-fats (i.e. Hydrogenated Oils)? How the heck do I afford 5 servings of fresh vegetables/day if I don't have the time to prepare bulk and I can't afford the premade stuff. Americans aren't fat for just any old reason. We really are getting the stuff cramed down are throats. Junk food's not just cheaper, it's more profitable. Food made with Hydrogenated Oils costs a fraction to make than with butter or traditional oils, and lasts up to 18 times longer on the shelf.
I'm an out of work computer tech, and my budgets gone to hell. I can eat fast food for $20/week. No matter how I run the numbers, I can't eat truely healthy for less than $100/week. This assumes I cook everything myself. Remember, eating healthier isn't just more expensive per meal, it means eating more and more often. 2 Big Macs'll get you through the day, if only digesting the fat calories. That doesn't work with fish and vegetables.
I'm not saying we're blameless. Part of the problem is all the fat asses out there eat the junk. Economies of scale and what not. But once again take hydrogenated oils. What do you suppose are the odds, given the enormous profitability they represent, of Americans getting clued in on just how bad they are for you?
Anyway, yeah, we're a bunch of fat bastards. But it's not as easy to stop being a fat bastard in America as you think.
That's why the UI is getting button-bloat. When you see wmp 6.x, it's so minimalistic it could be anything. When you see wmp 10, there's no doubt you're looking at wmp 10 from Microsoft. Branding is far more important that usability.
Moderate Religious Fundamentalists like you aren't the problem, and aren't what we're discussing here. Just because there are moderates doesn't make the vocal minority any less destructive. ex.: the vast majority of FCC complaints are from a few groups. I'll stop bitching about your extremists when you actually do something about them.
On a side note, it'd kinda hard to be a moderate Fundamentalist. There's tons of evidence against your beliefs, and only your faith to support them. Circumstances like that create a kind of all-or-nothing atmosphere.
Slashdot Mirror
posting on /. during working hours :).
in general, since most distros have you set up a separate swap partition. What kills windows in low diskspace environments it it's running out of swap space. I've run with my root partition with ~50 mb free for ages.
just keep running winzip over and over again until it's only 700mb. It helps if it's done over a network. Just ftp into 127.0.0.1 and start zipping the files. Try it, it works.
...fix 1 million flaws?
http://septor.name/colby/bttv.html
Yeah, I know, installing Linux (and compiling a kernel) just to get around Macrovision is ridiculous, but if you're used to doing it it's nice that you can. I'm not a hacker by any stretch, but it's pretty easy to do this (especially if you're using your distro's kernel sources. You just make the change, do make bzImage and copy it over the old kernel). But yeah, it does suck. Cheap internal DVD players effectively solved the problem for me (I don't use VHS anymore, these days the only thing hooked up is a PS2 for games). And yeah, they probably should be required to at least mention Macrovision, since I'm sure lots of people buy tuners to capture old VHS.
and a decent TV-Tuner (the ATI standalone tuners are great). Not trolling, but I've never had headaches from newer ATI cards (older cards with the bugs worked out seem fine, I've got a friend with a stock of Radeon 9200s that work great). Their hardware rocks, but their software sucks, bad. I'm just too lazy to fitz with drivers/firmware and whatnot until it all decides to work for the sake of $50 dollars saved and/or 10% performance (at the lower end, I've always been too cheap to buy the highend).
..to me. I think that was the point.
the thought of a large black market in human body parts harvested from (once) live humans scares me a heck of a lot more than a half-man half-sheep hybrid.
Besides, I for one welcome our new man-sheep overlords.
let's say employee X seends an email saying how much he hates minority group A, or how Secretary B should really be dating him if she wants to get ahead. Lawsuit city. Now, the resonable thing to do is sue the person who committed the crime. The profitable thing to do is sue the corporation, who then has to go out of it's way to prove they were doing something to prevent this kind of behavior.
Moreover, with all the top heavy companies these days, all those managers have to find something to do with their time. You can only implement so many inane policies before the well runs dry.
but their still Microsoft's fault. Let me explain. Microsoft spends and enourmous amount of time and money deal with other manufacturers buggy hardware and code. If you've ever wondered what the hell Microsoft does with all those coders, that's it. They're writing workarounds for cheap and lazy venders. As it turns out, this works out just fine for Microsoft. The Dells and the Compaqs of the world love 'em because their software'll run on stuff that'd make a linux or bsd puke it's guts out.
You'll ask, how is Microsoft to blame? The answer's simple: they make it possible for venders to ship crap. Instead of forcing the vender to accually **gasp** fix things, they hack around it. That's all well and good for joe average, who doesn't really want or need a computer. But if you're like me, just knowing that your computer crashes every now and then bugs the hell out of you. I went through 3 cheap mobos before I got something stable (thank God for nvidia).
Now, you're tech savy (your lack of spyware proves it). You probably cherry picked your hardware (or at least bought a good quality Dell or IBM). When you upgrade, you don't buy the no name special. Plus, you don't install software for the hell of it or just for something to do with your $1000 dollar paper weight. So you never see the instablity and general crappiness of Windows. If you used your computer the way Microsoft intended, you'd see a lot more of those bugs.
it's a sign that you're not paying enough. If you really need them, your client needs them, and they'll have to pay. In the end the money will come out of some rich bastards pocket (your boss). We've got plenty of resources in this country, both people and goods. What we don't have is a second world economy where the poor are played against each other to enthrone a few lucky capital kings. But attitudes like yours will get us there.
What disgusts me about your company is this: You complain about not getting engineers you want, but you aren't willing to pay them what they're worth. It takes years to get the skills you want and constant effort to maintain them. Typical to HR, all you think about is the 40/week the tech puts in, not the other 40/week he's spending keeping his skills up to day. You people have road too far too long on the good graces of 'geeks' who haven't considered that extra job 'work'. People who thought it was fun designing a network topology. Now, there's so much competition for labor that there's not enough uber geeks doing it for love, and you're having to pay up for the expertise you want. To be honest, your companies standards are probably artificially high to create exactly the situation that makes it possible to let more cheap foreign labor in. This isn't some nutball conspiracy either. It's a known fact that during the 90's reports were forged to justify the rapidly increasing the H-1B Visa program.
Put another way, why should you expect to pay less for someone who maintains your most critical IT infrastructure, then for someone maintaining your most critical legal structure? Or Accounting Systems? If you can find competent Lawyers and Accountants, what makes you think you can't find competent Engineers?
Sorry to be so blunt, but that's the reality of it.
Just saying that slavory wasn't a good econimic model for an Industrialized society. The problem with slavery isn't that the labor isn't cheap, it's that you tie up your capital in slaves, and that makes it tough when it's time to build a new factory that makes the new widgets. With poorly paid laborers, you can hire 'em and fire 'em whenever needed, and keep your capital free for expansion. Slavery's great in the long run, but short run it's hard to get the money together to build a factor and man it with slaves.
I can't imagine the average imigrant working thinking that far ahead anyhow (try getting even a well educated American today to do something about outsourcing and compare them to an Irish dirt farmer from the 1800's). Unless the idea was being drummed into their heads by weathly Northernors for their own purposes, which I could see happening, but it's a moot point. Slavery just doesn't make sense in a dynamic economy. Slaves are too expensive, and too easily replaced with machine labor. Hell, think of how many slaves a cotton gin replaced.
because it was economically impractical. The South had all it's capital tied up in slaves, which they were encouraged to treat at least as well as a horse. The North was busy utilizing a steady influx of imigrant labor they could treat far worse (not that I'm saying slaves were better off. That might be true only in select cases and in the short run, but they could never improve their situation without violent social upheaval). In any case, freedom gave the North had more free capital to spare for the Industrial Revolution.
that Sony's trading in, and not 'items' in the traditional sense. That +10 Axe you just bought? It's software, and Sony's no more bound to guarantee it's value than Microsoft is bound to gaurantee Excel won't eat your work. Most states allow for minimal or no damages caused by defective or faulty software, so the most you'll get out of Sony for losing that $500 dollar sword is $5 bucks (except in Nebraska, of course).
Put another way, can you sue Microsoft because Word XP won't read your Word 5.0 documents? It's the same for Sony. You can't sue just because your sword's worth half what is was in EQ 1.0.
And before you jump up and say the law should be changed, don't forget what would happen to your favorite open source project is there was as much accountablity for software as there is for real products.
and the realization that games could be that well written. And without further ado, here's the three stages of playing Torment:
Stage 1: The aformentioned realization, and a desire to write my own Planescape stories.
Stage 2: The realization that I suck as a writer, and can't come close to Torment.
Stage 3: The final realization that the game more or less bombed, and that they'll probably never be a game with that much effort put into writing again.
It's the kind of game I wish I'd never played so I could go back and play it again.
It really got the ball rolling on the whole genre.
maybe we'll see some Japanese games with a sub track now. Tales of Destiney II was absoulutely ruined by bad voice acting.
and for the opposite, overcharging. I've got friends who travel and the airline will use tracking cookies in combination with other sites (like travel sites) to guess what people are willing to pay and offer different (often higher) rates.
Example: I know you've been hitting a lot of sites about Hawaii and a few about China, so I know you're more likely to want to go to Hawaii and I adjust my rates accordingly.
In your face Germany and Hungary! USA! USA!
I am right now, and it's hard. I don't mean like, "I really want a cheeseburger" hard, I mean like, how the hell do I avoid trans-fats (i.e. Hydrogenated Oils)? How the heck do I afford 5 servings of fresh vegetables/day if I don't have the time to prepare bulk and I can't afford the premade stuff. Americans aren't fat for just any old reason. We really are getting the stuff cramed down are throats. Junk food's not just cheaper, it's more profitable. Food made with Hydrogenated Oils costs a fraction to make than with butter or traditional oils, and lasts up to 18 times longer on the shelf.
I'm an out of work computer tech, and my budgets gone to hell. I can eat fast food for $20/week. No matter how I run the numbers, I can't eat truely healthy for less than $100/week. This assumes I cook everything myself. Remember, eating healthier isn't just more expensive per meal, it means eating more and more often. 2 Big Macs'll get you through the day, if only digesting the fat calories. That doesn't work with fish and vegetables.
I'm not saying we're blameless. Part of the problem is all the fat asses out there eat the junk. Economies of scale and what not. But once again take hydrogenated oils. What do you suppose are the odds, given the enormous profitability they represent, of Americans getting clued in on just how bad they are for you?
Anyway, yeah, we're a bunch of fat bastards. But it's not as easy to stop being a fat bastard in America as you think.
from what I've heard, the whole thing started with a heated exchange over 3rd Edition vs. 2nd. It got pretty bloody after that.
That's why the UI is getting button-bloat. When you see wmp 6.x, it's so minimalistic it could be anything. When you see wmp 10, there's no doubt you're looking at wmp 10 from Microsoft. Branding is far more important that usability.
the fact the Half-Life 2 has an expansion or that G4TV might show something I care about!
To combining the wobbly window effect, and image viewer, and some of my favorite web sites From Utah's new list for ISPs. Boing!
Moderate Religious Fundamentalists like you aren't the problem, and aren't what we're discussing here. Just because there are moderates doesn't make the vocal minority any less destructive. ex.: the vast majority of FCC complaints are from a few groups. I'll stop bitching about your extremists when you actually do something about them.
On a side note, it'd kinda hard to be a moderate Fundamentalist. There's tons of evidence against your beliefs, and only your faith to support them. Circumstances like that create a kind of all-or-nothing atmosphere.