I have played several MMOs, most notably EQ (played for a few years on and off) and more recently WOW (finally quit after my 3rd level 60, I cannot stand to raid and that is all there is to do at 60). I have never once bought gold and I dislike it when other people do it. I understand why someone would buy virtual currency with real money, but I feel it is unfair to anyone that does not have the IRL money to blow on fake money.
I could afford to buy gold, but I never will. Gold buyers and sellers apparantly do not care about the game one bit when they do this. Buying gold introduces more money into the economy makes all the prices go up. Every MMO suffers from this naturally because people will get one high lvl char, farm some gold for there alternative character, then send them a bunch of gold and items. I have no real problem with this as the player went through the game once the hard way, and as such, deserves to take it easy the next time around. When actual gold farmers that farm to sell get involved they purposely gather gold to sell to other players, and this has a net affect that drives all prices up to a very costly rate that eventually makes it so the honest player has no choice but to do the very long hard drawn out dungeon crawls (once or 5 times isn't so bad, but anymore then 5 times to the same damn place just gets old) until they get the gear they want as opposed to being able to buy items with nearly the same stat bonuses.
All and all buying gold hurts everyone in the end and is especially unfair on the people that are either A) not rich enough to blow more money on a game then they already are, or B) not willing to trade real money for fake money to feel special and important in a virtual universe.
I tend to be either happy or content, both of which are good. When I am bored it is usually because my mind is not engaged in doing something, anything. For instance, when I am at work, I have a great deal of responsibilities and I tend to keep my mind active on putting together a solution to whatever the problem(s) at hand may be. On the flip side, when I have 30 minutes of time but cannot seem to find anything to fill the time with, I get very bored, and tend to get sad or frusterated.
I know lots of people say that if they did not have a job or that if money was of no concern, they would be happy a great deal more often, but I find that if I did not have a job, I'd probably be very bored. Sure there are times, many times in fact, where I wish I could just call in sick and do whatever it is I want to do, including doing absolutely nothing if it so suits me, but generally speaking, my job keeps me engaged in doing something which helps pass the empty time.
I find the best times of my life are when I am hanging out with a couple of people, no more then 3 or 4, who are all interested in the same topics I am and we are engaged in interesting discussions. Even if we completely disagree on the topics, we are communicating and engaging our minds.
So keep your mind engaged on topics of interesting and you will find yourself a much more content or happy person.
The Cavern of Time can actually be accessed in the game without the mapviewer thing. Simply run up to the dragon and die as close to the door as you possible can. Ghost back and pass through the door, and revive on the other side.
Also, do not revive and you'll see a really awesome area that appears to be objects floating in an odd space-like background, think of something like the Mission to Mars background when they are with the alien at the end. You have to teleport or hearth out of here.
My account ends July 7th and until they really fix the major issues such as horrible end game caster items, the insanely crappy pvp system, and as well as battlegrounds, there really is no reason to play.
One of the main reasons a lot of grocery stores have open coolers, especially for beer, is for the simple reason that you can put more beer into that kind of cooler. The coolers with the doors have less space. So while the grocery store might save money on energy, they would have to do it at the cost of shelf space for beer. Or, assuming they want to keep the same amount of selection of beer, cut out something else to allow for the bigger cooler.
I do not use my cellphone for much of anything except receiving calls and calling out. Does sending and receiving an sms cost money? If so that could add up. I mean, when I search google, sometimes I do not pick the right wording, and I get bad results, whilst other times I pick the right wording. A bad series of wording could cost me several out goings, and maybe since data has to be transmitted back, some incomings as well.
Correct me if I am wrong but this sounds like a good way nickel and dime the SMS users. Although they did send it. Oh well.
I work in the grocery business myself and we user our fax/copier machine a great deal. A couple of examples of why we do this.
1) We have master copies of different test and sign off sheets for new hires. Most of these are involved with training and safety. Once they finish it, we make a copy for the store, then we send one to corporate. We need these to be done because OSHA says so. (OSHA is California's organization that ensures all businesses of all sizes are working safely and treating their employees well).
2. If a customer, or an employee slips and falls in the store, we have to fill out lots of paper work. Often times it is best for all parties involved to have copies of the paperwork, as well as more copies to corporate.
All this could be done with a computer, but we already have the fax machine in place. Also, if the computer goes down, we still have all our paper work safe. It would also cost money to upgrade everything.
Just because you do not need a fax/copy machine does not mean the rest of the world does not need one.
The only reason I believe that the old pots system is here to stay is that it just works. While I have never tried digital telephone through a cable company, I think it requires you have power. I could be wrong so if so, please correct me. With that being said, the pots system worked during an outage. That is incredibly important.
Another reason the land lines will not be going anywhere is that there are some places that wireless phones just do not work. An example of this is in Spring Valley, Ca, which is part of the San Diego County. I had a wireless phone that just would not work in that area. I had verizon at the time, so who knows, it might work now.
Also, remember during 9/11 how the cellphone networks were not prepared for the load? Well, I am fairly sure this would not be a problem for the old pots system. Like before, not positive but pretty sure.
I still have a land line because I use speakeasy DSL. Great ISP by the way.
You say that if you were a decision maker within Yahoo!, you would not have the company sell any nazi related items due to your personal beliefs. How exactly do you think your stock holders would feel about you bring your personal beliefs into the picture on whether to make money off a particular item?
Another angle you might want to look at is say you stop carrying nazi stuff, what if someone else that also gets to make decisions thinks the company should stop carrying items related to the ideas of extremist left wing movements such as anarchism, and communism? Should your company also now stop carrying those items because someone is offended?
One more angle, what if Isreal decides it does not want you to peddle pro christain, or pro muslim related items? My point is once you start banning items based on personal beliefs, or politics or any other reason simply because if offends someone you start down a slippery slope that ultimately leaves nothing for your company to sell.
I think it is great that XP sp2 does this. End users might be inconvient, but it might actually help stop the spread of some viruses and worms. At least until they blindly click yes when asked if they wish to allow said program to access the internet.
Many many users have this thing where they click yes without reading so that they can go on their merry way. It is how many problems come up in the first place. While it is tempting to blame MS because they insist on asking "Are you sure?" every time you do anything, the user should still read the damn box.
Is there a way to set the XP firewall to allow all outgoing connections, but no incoming connections unless they are established by the computer first? This of course assumes you know exactly what your computer is doing. Personally I think that might be a better idea, but all and all it is good to see MS be responsible and turn on some security.
Is it just me, or does this sound like an aweful lot of work just to run windows? I mean, we all know that windows 98 is not going to last more then a year anyway.
Blockquote
In his case, he needed
* a CD with all of the relevent tools and updates
* a windows boot disk with CD support
* an understanding of the windows command line in order to copy a subset of these tools to a convenient folder on the hard drive from the CD
* The knowledge to run these tools from Safe mode, and how to get there in the first place
* Include in the subset of tools one that can fix the broken LSP setup.
LSP or Layered Service Provider is a piece of software that can be inserted into the Windows TCP/IP handler like a link in a chain. However, due to bugs in the LSP software or deletion of the software, this chain can get broken, rendering the user unable to access the Internet. Spyware is good at this, and some cleaners leave a broken LSP behind.
With the correct tool, the fix takes seconds. Without the tool, you need to uninstall and re-install the winsocket, or else the same with the entire network support. Otherwise you fall into the trap this poor bloke got into.
When I read all this I the first thought I had was, gee I could through a slackware boot cd and be up and running in under an hour, and have all the applications I would ever need to do a great deal of work. Not counting patch time of course, but then slack 10 does not have that many fixes to it yet anyway.
Just my thoughts.
Brendan
P.S. I know we are saving a windows box but after a while is it really worth it?
I'll probably get modded down for this because my comment is in disagreeance, but here we go.
One of the principal reasons for 9/11 was American hegemony in the Middle East. So what do we do? Invade Iraq! Brilliant!
You obviously do not support Invading Iraq. I support that action. In this case, doing nothing would of been far worse then what we did do. You imply this will cause more attacks, when really, they (terrorist) probably already have several targets setup and are in the setup process as we speak. They will happen whether we like it or not.
As you said before, our government and the middle east do not see eye to eye. The problem is not that we do not repsect the rights of other global citizens, but rather that we often times pick a side of a conflict that we should not get involved in to start.
The entire middle east problem with regards to the U.S. can probably be placed at about 1936 when the British pulled out of Palastine (which was a colony of their at the time) due to fighting between the relocated jewish people and the palastians. We decided to pick up where the british left off, and we sided with the Jewish people, helping them setup Isreal. Taking the side of Isreal was basically telling the Islamic people that we chose Judeism over Islam. Now we have put ourselves right in the middle of a holy war that has been going on for over a thousand years.
Obviously there is no easy solution, and I think it is rash and vey unfair of you to so strongly accuse our current adminitration for some of the problems we face today, when in all reality, these problems were here well before G. W. Bush was in office. I am not claiming that all the dicessions by this administration are great, but it is not fair to blame all the problems on Bush Jr. and company.
If you want to mod me down because I do not have the slashdot view of politics, so be it.
First off I would like to say, I disagree with parts what you wrote. I respect your right to write it, and you should be able to believe whatever you want to believe.
The idea that a bunch of cameras will stop a determined individual from doing wrong is silly. I think everyone will agree on that. With the Olympics being such a major event, I think that the cameras may let some people have a sense of security. Even if it is a false sense. I think the general masses need to have some sense of security, real or not. You may disagree or not.
I personally think war and battles and such are never going to solve anything. It is a primitive way to solve a problem. Talking is of course the best way to solve any problem. The real question is, how do you get everyone to the table? That is the hard part.
Now, assuming we could get a terrorist group to the table with a particular goverment (like that would ever happen), the two parties would both have to fully explain there position and why they feel they are right. What if both sides feel they are so right and the other side so wrong that no agreement between the two parties ever comes to fruition? Fighting will surely start again.
It is my belief that the current problems between the West and the terrorist groups of the Middle East go back at least 50 years, perhaps even longer, and they are by no means simple. Every side feels they are right, and neither side wants to give up anything. Many of the people involved with the terrorist groups in the middle east believe deep down inside in what they are doing. They are willing to die for what they believe in. Talking with these people just will not work. If it was that simple, it would of happened. This is the very reason that so many atrocities happen on a daily basis between Isreal and Palastien.
As for your rant about cameras in grocery stores and other businesses. Those cameras are there because in some cases the store will be able to pick up shop lifters. In other cases these cameras are there to record what happens with the customers. A perfect example of why a company needs this footage is for use in court against people that would fake a fall. It might surprise you to find out just how many people out there think it would be a perfect plan to trip on something, anything, and get the company to pony up the dough.
Also, and this probably will fall on deaf ears, the people watching the cameras, if anyone, will not tell much a difference between one customer and another. There are simply to many people and quite frankly, the company just does not care what you are doing. Chances are, your like most people and you just want to shop. You go on with your life, the company goes on providing a service to the customers.
There are many reasons people wish to terrorize other people. Simply saying people just need to talk and all would be good is naive. Sure, it sounds great on paper, and it would be nice, but its just not how things work.
I disagree. I'm 20 years old so my rates are naturally higher. I also drive a sport car. So I pay even more. When I was 18, I had a corsica 91' and was on my parents insurance. I forget what I paided. When I bought my sport car at 19 I got a quote from All State for $2200 for 6 months (Yes, just six months).
Well, that was insane, and I could not, nor would I try to afford it. I got another quote from Progressive for $2200 for 12 months. Still high but better then anyone else I tried. After my first year of having insurance with them, on my second renewal, they gave me a 20% discount for being a good driver.
So far progressive has been nothing but good to me, where as everyone else was trying to get even more money.
To be on topic, I really hope these devices do not become mandatory, although I would not be surprised to see it happen.
Some made a point earlier that at the way things are going, we will have so many restrictions on how we can drive, that the fun in driving will be anything but. I really wish I lived in a community where I did not need a car. Unfortunately I live in San Diego, and while we do have the trolly system, it really is does not cut it. Also, everything is spread out here. Living downtown might fix the problem, but I would rather not live downtown.
Before you go off into your world of Doom, just remember to get your daily windows patches. Oh, and I hope they work right without breaking anything. And do not worry about those other unfixed problems with windows, those apparently are not important enough to be fixed, because hey, if they were wouldn't they be already?
Either way, have fun. Seems to be the only thing windows is good for is gaming anyway.
It is the principle of the matter. The fact that it takes 15 years to expire is not the issue, but rather that common sense ideas are now owned.
To make matters worse, all these common sense ideas will not be aviable for 15 years. Wow. That's insane. Who will care in 15 years? By that time it won't matter as things will have progressed so much.
Everything that seems to happen in the IT industry happens overnight, and after as little as three months, its already to late.
For Microsoft to do this as a business is just business sense. Why not do it? Does not hurt them to have it all. Sure it could hurt the company in the long run, but do you think the top executives really care about the long run? They care for maybe 10-15 years. Microsoft will not be gone in 15 years. I'm sure of that.
So, to get back to the point of the parent, why should we have to wait 15 years to use common sense ideas that have been used many many many times before? We should be able to use them now. I bet Asia will be using them, as well as South American. Europe will be screwed like us, but I'm still hoping for them to get it right.
Brendan
p.s. I'm an American, and the patent system is insane.
This is a perfect example of why I really hate software patents. Company X will talk about something, hype it up, not mention a bloody patent, then when someone uses it, the company waits around until the opportune moment, then BAM!!!! pulls some patent infringment BS out of their bum.
It is not right. I understand the importance of patents outside of the software industry, I really do. I think that if someone comes up with a clever idea and makes a prototype and intends to sell said object, then they should have a grace period of how long they can be the only ones. I'm up for debate on how long this period should be, but still. In software this just does not happen. You have these companies that are entirely setup with a bunch of patents and they just sue other companies to make money. Talk about shaddy business.
Patent a way to click a button, or how a shadow is rendered, or something just as rediculous is wrong and should not be possible. It hurts the industry more then it helps anyone. It will be aweful to see the rest of the world pass us by because we are unable to innovate because of all the legal mess we have. We have no one to blame but ourselves though.
I hope all of this mess does not affect Doom 3 release date, and it is almost a shame ID did not stick it to Creative. It is nice to see a company care about the user for once to though.
This whole article seems rather pointless. So much to the fact that any high school student who has took an economics class (required at many high schools) will know this simply as price disrimination. It happens in many different markets. Why would the technology market be any different?
I always have disliked the electoral college. The idea of winner take all was never appealing to me. I live in California, San Diego in fact. Whenever I vote republican in national matters, it feels like my vote does not count since my state almost always goes democrat. While the 2000 election would of elected Gore if it was a direct democracy, I still would of felt like my vote counted.
Say what you want, but I was still glad to see Bush Jr. win the election of 2000, although that does not change my feelings toward the electoral college.
This is a surprise to me. I always liked the idea of having a dev branch, and a stable branch. With 2.6 being active development, it kind of makes me worried about switching to the new kernel.
I run Slackware, and we use a vanilla kernel to start. I run 9.1 at the moment completely patched, and since I need no new functionality, I've no reason to move to Slack 10. For my own desktop I'm not really that concerned about the next kernel because I'm not changing my current (everything works) I am concerned about people that need to upgrade to get extra things on a newer system working. This could cause problems down the road.
Another problem which does scare me is that getting vendors (mainly gaming companies) to release ports for linux may have just become that much harder now that they can not write for a vanilla kernel. Perhaps it will not be a problem, or perhaps they will just release for RH (which I do not care for).
Suppose we will have to wait and see and hope for the best.
While NWN is not an MMO, the persistant world(PW) out there are nothing short of amazing. And they are all free to play. I paided for the three NWN games, and I can play in as many different world as I like. The choice is astonishing. You can play a story based PW and do lots of DM stuff with a group of people, or you can find an Action based PW with lots of built in quests and hundreds of places to play in.
Also, finding people to play with is not nearly so bad as most MMOs. There is no ideal group, you just join up and have fun. Most classes can solo, and if your base cannot, you can always multiclass (who doesn't do this?) and become more diverse in your abilities.
I do not mind paying an online fee, but NWN is better then all the MMOs I've played, and it is free. Also, it runs on linux. What is not to like?
A while back (whenever 8.1 came out) I decided to try linux. I read a few reviews, and what not. I first tested out mandrake. I had bought it at the store for a couple of dollars (less then $40, maybe less). I played with it for a while, but it just did not feel right.
I tried Debian next, but apparently thats above my head cause when I got to the dselect area I was overwhelmed. Decided, perhaps not for me.
Finally I tried slackware. What I really liked from the start was they had an entire book, for free, on their website that I could read for help. Although when I started the installation, I did not really need any help. Slackware has a great menu-driven installer. With some previous computer experience, and a little network know how, installation was a breeze.
At the time the kernel supported my sound card, but did not compile in the drive automatically. Before I realized I could of just built the module and used it that way, I decided to recompile the kernel. Also a very easy task in slackware.
Ultimately, I love the distribution, and have been using it since. I have a subscription so I get the latest distro in the mail a few days after it is released. Although truth be known I have no reason to even break the plastic on 10 because I have kept myself patched up and just do not need anything new. It does feel good to support Patrick and the slackware team. They deserve that, and much more.
I will say you have to be willing to read and learn (which means 99% of the world just won't like it) to use slackware. But, once you have learned how, you realize just how great Slackware is.
Brendan
p.s. www.linuxquestions.com has distro specific forums. If you need help, try their first.
I remember a few years ago I had a run in with people like this. I was trying to sell my 91' corsica on autotrader.com. It was rather humorous. The guy sent me an email in incredibly broken english saying he wished to purchase my car and ship it back to Africa (forget what country). Considering the car was only worth about $2000 USD, and that the cost of shipping was more then the car's value, yeah. I probably played with this fool for 5 or 6 email transgressions. I was almost tempted to contact my bank and see about getting this guy busted, but decided that the bank just wants to do legit business, not fight crime and that I did not have the time anyway. Always good to keep these bastards occupied. Plus its fun!!!
I work for Vons, a grocery store chain in southern california. I know exactly what it is like to have customers that will go out of their way completely for a dollar. Being a checker, I typically either A) give them the dollar to go away so I can help customers I like or B) tell them they must speak with my boss.
Typically if they are bothersome enough will simply give in. Mostly it depends on the item and the customer. We are a small store and we know our customers because have the employees are friends with them.
If we have a wrong price on the shelf and the item comes up higher, we give it to you free, but only the first one. We have one customer that looks for these particular items and bitches every single time.
We have other customers that we call coupon shoppers. They buy everything on sale, and they have a coupon for each and every item. We the first unique coupon. These customers generally leave with $100 of stuff for under $10. To make matters worse, they send each and every child they have with another club card (its one per family, not person) and a whole set of exactly the same coupons. As a checker you could very well end up ringing up the same exact order 5-10 times a day. This by the way is why many products are out of stock all the time. We order enough for normal customers, we do not order enough to stock other people's small business.
Sorry about the rant, but people who have never worked retail just do not understand.
The problem with saying that every here at slashdot needs to come together and email congress about this issue is assuming we all share the same views. Like any community we have many vocal people that post very often, and then there are people that post very rarely, if ever. From the post it would seem a decent amount agree with your post, but then how many do not agree, and simply do not want to post?
Just something to think about. That's all.
Brendan
I debated whether or not to respond to this post. Many of the things you pointed out are indeed true. Groupthink does tend to lead to this at one time or another.
*Copyright laws. I could possibly careless either way. GPL seems interesting enough. RIAA has the right to do what they are doing, the artists signed the contract. DO I like RIAA or dislike them? I don't think about it eitherway. I personally can't stand most music out these days except some of the new rock, and country. I mostly listen to metal, classical, and country that covers the past 40 years.
*VA Linux? I could possibly careless about them. I run slackware. Every time they release a stable version I buy it from their site. I like them.
*Your hang up over the GNU/Linux thing is rather silly. Not everyone here sees this as a religion. I personally think this stuff is great. Being legally free is great. Do I care if all software is opensource, or free as RMS would think? No not really, but hey, he can believe whatever he likes.
*"Linux is ready for the desktop" I think so yes. Do I think normal (read non-geeks) should run linux? Absolutely not. In fact I hope linux gets just enough market share on the desktop to convince Blizzard (yes i like them, no I don't care about their fights with bnetd) to make games, then stops. Whenever anything (computer or not) gets popular it starts to suck.
*I just installed win98 on a spare box so my girlfriend could play all her old games. I had all the drivers for the hardware, and I am using an onboard NIC. It took windows several tries to load this damn driver, where as in linux it was just reconized. So really, linux was EASIER in this case. Not all hardware works with all software. It's just a fact of life. Accept this, move on, stop b*tching.
*Not everyone here even remotely agrees with the majority of the posters here. Look at my post records. It's really low. I'm fairly sure that if their is a way to look up the average post per userid, you'd see most people do not post.
This might get modded down or not at all, but I just had to respond.
Brendan
P.S. If you do not like what Slashdot says anymore, your free to find a new place to frequent.
Slashdot Mirror
I have played several MMOs, most notably EQ (played for a few years on and off) and more recently WOW (finally quit after my 3rd level 60, I cannot stand to raid and that is all there is to do at 60). I have never once bought gold and I dislike it when other people do it. I understand why someone would buy virtual currency with real money, but I feel it is unfair to anyone that does not have the IRL money to blow on fake money.
I could afford to buy gold, but I never will. Gold buyers and sellers apparantly do not care about the game one bit when they do this. Buying gold introduces more money into the economy makes all the prices go up. Every MMO suffers from this naturally because people will get one high lvl char, farm some gold for there alternative character, then send them a bunch of gold and items. I have no real problem with this as the player went through the game once the hard way, and as such, deserves to take it easy the next time around. When actual gold farmers that farm to sell get involved they purposely gather gold to sell to other players, and this has a net affect that drives all prices up to a very costly rate that eventually makes it so the honest player has no choice but to do the very long hard drawn out dungeon crawls (once or 5 times isn't so bad, but anymore then 5 times to the same damn place just gets old) until they get the gear they want as opposed to being able to buy items with nearly the same stat bonuses.
All and all buying gold hurts everyone in the end and is especially unfair on the people that are either A) not rich enough to blow more money on a game then they already are, or B) not willing to trade real money for fake money to feel special and important in a virtual universe.
I tend to be either happy or content, both of which are good. When I am bored it is usually because my mind is not engaged in doing something, anything. For instance, when I am at work, I have a great deal of responsibilities and I tend to keep my mind active on putting together a solution to whatever the problem(s) at hand may be. On the flip side, when I have 30 minutes of time but cannot seem to find anything to fill the time with, I get very bored, and tend to get sad or frusterated.
I know lots of people say that if they did not have a job or that if money was of no concern, they would be happy a great deal more often, but I find that if I did not have a job, I'd probably be very bored. Sure there are times, many times in fact, where I wish I could just call in sick and do whatever it is I want to do, including doing absolutely nothing if it so suits me, but generally speaking, my job keeps me engaged in doing something which helps pass the empty time.
I find the best times of my life are when I am hanging out with a couple of people, no more then 3 or 4, who are all interested in the same topics I am and we are engaged in interesting discussions. Even if we completely disagree on the topics, we are communicating and engaging our minds.
So keep your mind engaged on topics of interesting and you will find yourself a much more content or happy person.
The Cavern of Time can actually be accessed in the game without the mapviewer thing. Simply run up to the dragon and die as close to the door as you possible can. Ghost back and pass through the door, and revive on the other side.
Also, do not revive and you'll see a really awesome area that appears to be objects floating in an odd space-like background, think of something like the Mission to Mars background when they are with the alien at the end. You have to teleport or hearth out of here.
My account ends July 7th and until they really fix the major issues such as horrible end game caster items, the insanely crappy pvp system, and as well as battlegrounds, there really is no reason to play.
One of the main reasons a lot of grocery stores have open coolers, especially for beer, is for the simple reason that you can put more beer into that kind of cooler. The coolers with the doors have less space. So while the grocery store might save money on energy, they would have to do it at the cost of shelf space for beer. Or, assuming they want to keep the same amount of selection of beer, cut out something else to allow for the bigger cooler.
It is all about maximum choice for the customer.
I do not use my cellphone for much of anything except receiving calls and calling out. Does sending and receiving an sms cost money? If so that could add up. I mean, when I search google, sometimes I do not pick the right wording, and I get bad results, whilst other times I pick the right wording. A bad series of wording could cost me several out goings, and maybe since data has to be transmitted back, some incomings as well.
Correct me if I am wrong but this sounds like a good way nickel and dime the SMS users. Although they did send it. Oh well.
Brendan
I work in the grocery business myself and we user our fax/copier machine a great deal. A couple of examples of why we do this.
1) We have master copies of different test and sign off sheets for new hires. Most of these are involved with training and safety. Once they finish it, we make a copy for the store, then we send one to corporate. We need these to be done because OSHA says so. (OSHA is California's organization that ensures all businesses of all sizes are working safely and treating their employees well).
2. If a customer, or an employee slips and falls in the store, we have to fill out lots of paper work. Often times it is best for all parties involved to have copies of the paperwork, as well as more copies to corporate.
All this could be done with a computer, but we already have the fax machine in place. Also, if the computer goes down, we still have all our paper work safe. It would also cost money to upgrade everything.
Just because you do not need a fax/copy machine does not mean the rest of the world does not need one.
Brendan
The only reason I believe that the old pots system is here to stay is that it just works. While I have never tried digital telephone through a cable company, I think it requires you have power. I could be wrong so if so, please correct me. With that being said, the pots system worked during an outage. That is incredibly important.
Another reason the land lines will not be going anywhere is that there are some places that wireless phones just do not work. An example of this is in Spring Valley, Ca, which is part of the San Diego County. I had a wireless phone that just would not work in that area. I had verizon at the time, so who knows, it might work now.
Also, remember during 9/11 how the cellphone networks were not prepared for the load? Well, I am fairly sure this would not be a problem for the old pots system. Like before, not positive but pretty sure.
I still have a land line because I use speakeasy DSL. Great ISP by the way.
Brendan
You say that if you were a decision maker within Yahoo!, you would not have the company sell any nazi related items due to your personal beliefs. How exactly do you think your stock holders would feel about you bring your personal beliefs into the picture on whether to make money off a particular item?
Another angle you might want to look at is say you stop carrying nazi stuff, what if someone else that also gets to make decisions thinks the company should stop carrying items related to the ideas of extremist left wing movements such as anarchism, and communism? Should your company also now stop carrying those items because someone is offended?
One more angle, what if Isreal decides it does not want you to peddle pro christain, or pro muslim related items? My point is once you start banning items based on personal beliefs, or politics or any other reason simply because if offends someone you start down a slippery slope that ultimately leaves nothing for your company to sell.
Brendan
I think it is great that XP sp2 does this. End users might be inconvient, but it might actually help stop the spread of some viruses and worms. At least until they blindly click yes when asked if they wish to allow said program to access the internet.
Many many users have this thing where they click yes without reading so that they can go on their merry way. It is how many problems come up in the first place. While it is tempting to blame MS because they insist on asking "Are you sure?" every time you do anything, the user should still read the damn box.
Is there a way to set the XP firewall to allow all outgoing connections, but no incoming connections unless they are established by the computer first? This of course assumes you know exactly what your computer is doing. Personally I think that might be a better idea, but all and all it is good to see MS be responsible and turn on some security.
Brendan
Blockquote
When I read all this I the first thought I had was, gee I could through a slackware boot cd and be up and running in under an hour, and have all the applications I would ever need to do a great deal of work. Not counting patch time of course, but then slack 10 does not have that many fixes to it yet anyway.
Just my thoughts.
Brendan
P.S. I know we are saving a windows box but after a while is it really worth it?
I'll probably get modded down for this because my comment is in disagreeance, but here we go.
One of the principal reasons for 9/11 was American hegemony in the Middle East. So what do we do? Invade Iraq! Brilliant!
You obviously do not support Invading Iraq. I support that action. In this case, doing nothing would of been far worse then what we did do. You imply this will cause more attacks, when really, they (terrorist) probably already have several targets setup and are in the setup process as we speak. They will happen whether we like it or not.
As you said before, our government and the middle east do not see eye to eye. The problem is not that we do not repsect the rights of other global citizens, but rather that we often times pick a side of a conflict that we should not get involved in to start. The entire middle east problem with regards to the U.S. can probably be placed at about 1936 when the British pulled out of Palastine (which was a colony of their at the time) due to fighting between the relocated jewish people and the palastians. We decided to pick up where the british left off, and we sided with the Jewish people, helping them setup Isreal. Taking the side of Isreal was basically telling the Islamic people that we chose Judeism over Islam. Now we have put ourselves right in the middle of a holy war that has been going on for over a thousand years. Obviously there is no easy solution, and I think it is rash and vey unfair of you to so strongly accuse our current adminitration for some of the problems we face today, when in all reality, these problems were here well before G. W. Bush was in office. I am not claiming that all the dicessions by this administration are great, but it is not fair to blame all the problems on Bush Jr. and company.
If you want to mod me down because I do not have the slashdot view of politics, so be it.
Brendan
First off I would like to say, I disagree with parts what you wrote. I respect your right to write it, and you should be able to believe whatever you want to believe.
The idea that a bunch of cameras will stop a determined individual from doing wrong is silly. I think everyone will agree on that. With the Olympics being such a major event, I think that the cameras may let some people have a sense of security. Even if it is a false sense. I think the general masses need to have some sense of security, real or not. You may disagree or not.
I personally think war and battles and such are never going to solve anything. It is a primitive way to solve a problem. Talking is of course the best way to solve any problem. The real question is, how do you get everyone to the table? That is the hard part.
Now, assuming we could get a terrorist group to the table with a particular goverment (like that would ever happen), the two parties would both have to fully explain there position and why they feel they are right. What if both sides feel they are so right and the other side so wrong that no agreement between the two parties ever comes to fruition? Fighting will surely start again.
It is my belief that the current problems between the West and the terrorist groups of the Middle East go back at least 50 years, perhaps even longer, and they are by no means simple. Every side feels they are right, and neither side wants to give up anything. Many of the people involved with the terrorist groups in the middle east believe deep down inside in what they are doing. They are willing to die for what they believe in. Talking with these people just will not work. If it was that simple, it would of happened. This is the very reason that so many atrocities happen on a daily basis between Isreal and Palastien.
As for your rant about cameras in grocery stores and other businesses. Those cameras are there because in some cases the store will be able to pick up shop lifters. In other cases these cameras are there to record what happens with the customers. A perfect example of why a company needs this footage is for use in court against people that would fake a fall. It might surprise you to find out just how many people out there think it would be a perfect plan to trip on something, anything, and get the company to pony up the dough.
Also, and this probably will fall on deaf ears, the people watching the cameras, if anyone, will not tell much a difference between one customer and another. There are simply to many people and quite frankly, the company just does not care what you are doing. Chances are, your like most people and you just want to shop. You go on with your life, the company goes on providing a service to the customers.
There are many reasons people wish to terrorize other people. Simply saying people just need to talk and all would be good is naive. Sure, it sounds great on paper, and it would be nice, but its just not how things work.
Brendan
I disagree. I'm 20 years old so my rates are naturally higher. I also drive a sport car. So I pay even more. When I was 18, I had a corsica 91' and was on my parents insurance. I forget what I paided. When I bought my sport car at 19 I got a quote from All State for $2200 for 6 months (Yes, just six months).
Well, that was insane, and I could not, nor would I try to afford it. I got another quote from Progressive for $2200 for 12 months. Still high but better then anyone else I tried. After my first year of having insurance with them, on my second renewal, they gave me a 20% discount for being a good driver.
So far progressive has been nothing but good to me, where as everyone else was trying to get even more money.
To be on topic, I really hope these devices do not become mandatory, although I would not be surprised to see it happen.
Some made a point earlier that at the way things are going, we will have so many restrictions on how we can drive, that the fun in driving will be anything but. I really wish I lived in a community where I did not need a car. Unfortunately I live in San Diego, and while we do have the trolly system, it really is does not cut it. Also, everything is spread out here. Living downtown might fix the problem, but I would rather not live downtown.
Brendan
Before you go off into your world of Doom, just remember to get your daily windows patches. Oh, and I hope they work right without breaking anything. And do not worry about those other unfixed problems with windows, those apparently are not important enough to be fixed, because hey, if they were wouldn't they be already?
Either way, have fun. Seems to be the only thing windows is good for is gaming anyway.
It is the principle of the matter. The fact that it takes 15 years to expire is not the issue, but rather that common sense ideas are now owned.
To make matters worse, all these common sense ideas will not be aviable for 15 years. Wow. That's insane. Who will care in 15 years? By that time it won't matter as things will have progressed so much.
Everything that seems to happen in the IT industry happens overnight, and after as little as three months, its already to late.
For Microsoft to do this as a business is just business sense. Why not do it? Does not hurt them to have it all. Sure it could hurt the company in the long run, but do you think the top executives really care about the long run? They care for maybe 10-15 years. Microsoft will not be gone in 15 years. I'm sure of that.
So, to get back to the point of the parent, why should we have to wait 15 years to use common sense ideas that have been used many many many times before? We should be able to use them now. I bet Asia will be using them, as well as South American. Europe will be screwed like us, but I'm still hoping for them to get it right.
Brendan
p.s. I'm an American, and the patent system is insane.
This is a perfect example of why I really hate software patents. Company X will talk about something, hype it up, not mention a bloody patent, then when someone uses it, the company waits around until the opportune moment, then BAM!!!! pulls some patent infringment BS out of their bum.
It is not right. I understand the importance of patents outside of the software industry, I really do. I think that if someone comes up with a clever idea and makes a prototype and intends to sell said object, then they should have a grace period of how long they can be the only ones. I'm up for debate on how long this period should be, but still. In software this just does not happen. You have these companies that are entirely setup with a bunch of patents and they just sue other companies to make money. Talk about shaddy business.
Patent a way to click a button, or how a shadow is rendered, or something just as rediculous is wrong and should not be possible. It hurts the industry more then it helps anyone. It will be aweful to see the rest of the world pass us by because we are unable to innovate because of all the legal mess we have. We have no one to blame but ourselves though.
I hope all of this mess does not affect Doom 3 release date, and it is almost a shame ID did not stick it to Creative. It is nice to see a company care about the user for once to though.
Brendan
This whole article seems rather pointless. So much to the fact that any high school student who has took an economics class (required at many high schools) will know this simply as price disrimination. It happens in many different markets. Why would the technology market be any different?
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Brendan
I always have disliked the electoral college. The idea of winner take all was never appealing to me. I live in California, San Diego in fact. Whenever I vote republican in national matters, it feels like my vote does not count since my state almost always goes democrat. While the 2000 election would of elected Gore if it was a direct democracy, I still would of felt like my vote counted.
.02 cents.
Say what you want, but I was still glad to see Bush Jr. win the election of 2000, although that does not change my feelings toward the electoral college.
Just my
Brendan
This is a surprise to me. I always liked the idea of having a dev branch, and a stable branch. With 2.6 being active development, it kind of makes me worried about switching to the new kernel.
I run Slackware, and we use a vanilla kernel to start. I run 9.1 at the moment completely patched, and since I need no new functionality, I've no reason to move to Slack 10. For my own desktop I'm not really that concerned about the next kernel because I'm not changing my current (everything works) I am concerned about people that need to upgrade to get extra things on a newer system working. This could cause problems down the road.
Another problem which does scare me is that getting vendors (mainly gaming companies) to release ports for linux may have just become that much harder now that they can not write for a vanilla kernel. Perhaps it will not be a problem, or perhaps they will just release for RH (which I do not care for).
Suppose we will have to wait and see and hope for the best.
Brendan
While NWN is not an MMO, the persistant world(PW) out there are nothing short of amazing. And they are all free to play. I paided for the three NWN games, and I can play in as many different world as I like. The choice is astonishing. You can play a story based PW and do lots of DM stuff with a group of people, or you can find an Action based PW with lots of built in quests and hundreds of places to play in.
Also, finding people to play with is not nearly so bad as most MMOs. There is no ideal group, you just join up and have fun. Most classes can solo, and if your base cannot, you can always multiclass (who doesn't do this?) and become more diverse in your abilities.
I do not mind paying an online fee, but NWN is better then all the MMOs I've played, and it is free. Also, it runs on linux. What is not to like?
If your interested in a good Action PW check this out. http://www.worldofamon.com/index.php
A while back (whenever 8.1 came out) I decided to try linux. I read a few reviews, and what not. I first tested out mandrake. I had bought it at the store for a couple of dollars (less then $40, maybe less). I played with it for a while, but it just did not feel right.
I tried Debian next, but apparently thats above my head cause when I got to the dselect area I was overwhelmed. Decided, perhaps not for me.
Finally I tried slackware. What I really liked from the start was they had an entire book, for free, on their website that I could read for help. Although when I started the installation, I did not really need any help. Slackware has a great menu-driven installer. With some previous computer experience, and a little network know how, installation was a breeze.
At the time the kernel supported my sound card, but did not compile in the drive automatically. Before I realized I could of just built the module and used it that way, I decided to recompile the kernel. Also a very easy task in slackware.
Ultimately, I love the distribution, and have been using it since. I have a subscription so I get the latest distro in the mail a few days after it is released. Although truth be known I have no reason to even break the plastic on 10 because I have kept myself patched up and just do not need anything new. It does feel good to support Patrick and the slackware team. They deserve that, and much more.
I will say you have to be willing to read and learn (which means 99% of the world just won't like it) to use slackware. But, once you have learned how, you realize just how great Slackware is.
Brendan
p.s. www.linuxquestions.com has distro specific forums. If you need help, try their first.
I remember a few years ago I had a run in with people like this. I was trying to sell my 91' corsica on autotrader.com. It was rather humorous. The guy sent me an email in incredibly broken english saying he wished to purchase my car and ship it back to Africa (forget what country). Considering the car was only worth about $2000 USD, and that the cost of shipping was more then the car's value, yeah. I probably played with this fool for 5 or 6 email transgressions. I was almost tempted to contact my bank and see about getting this guy busted, but decided that the bank just wants to do legit business, not fight crime and that I did not have the time anyway. Always good to keep these bastards occupied. Plus its fun!!!
Brendan
I work for Vons, a grocery store chain in southern california. I know exactly what it is like to have customers that will go out of their way completely for a dollar. Being a checker, I typically either A) give them the dollar to go away so I can help customers I like or B) tell them they must speak with my boss.
Typically if they are bothersome enough will simply give in. Mostly it depends on the item and the customer. We are a small store and we know our customers because have the employees are friends with them.
If we have a wrong price on the shelf and the item comes up higher, we give it to you free, but only the first one. We have one customer that looks for these particular items and bitches every single time.
We have other customers that we call coupon shoppers. They buy everything on sale, and they have a coupon for each and every item. We the first unique coupon. These customers generally leave with $100 of stuff for under $10. To make matters worse, they send each and every child they have with another club card (its one per family, not person) and a whole set of exactly the same coupons. As a checker you could very well end up ringing up the same exact order 5-10 times a day. This by the way is why many products are out of stock all the time. We order enough for normal customers, we do not order enough to stock other people's small business.
Sorry about the rant, but people who have never worked retail just do not understand.
Brendan
The problem with saying that every here at slashdot needs to come together and email congress about this issue is assuming we all share the same views. Like any community we have many vocal people that post very often, and then there are people that post very rarely, if ever. From the post it would seem a decent amount agree with your post, but then how many do not agree, and simply do not want to post? Just something to think about. That's all. Brendan
I debated whether or not to respond to this post. Many of the things you pointed out are indeed true. Groupthink does tend to lead to this at one time or another.
*Copyright laws. I could possibly careless either way. GPL seems interesting enough. RIAA has the right to do what they are doing, the artists signed the contract. DO I like RIAA or dislike them? I don't think about it eitherway. I personally can't stand most music out these days except some of the new rock, and country. I mostly listen to metal, classical, and country that covers the past 40 years.
*VA Linux? I could possibly careless about them. I run slackware. Every time they release a stable version I buy it from their site. I like them.
*Your hang up over the GNU/Linux thing is rather silly. Not everyone here sees this as a religion. I personally think this stuff is great. Being legally free is great. Do I care if all software is opensource, or free as RMS would think? No not really, but hey, he can believe whatever he likes.
*"Linux is ready for the desktop" I think so yes. Do I think normal (read non-geeks) should run linux? Absolutely not. In fact I hope linux gets just enough market share on the desktop to convince Blizzard (yes i like them, no I don't care about their fights with bnetd) to make games, then stops. Whenever anything (computer or not) gets popular it starts to suck.
*I just installed win98 on a spare box so my girlfriend could play all her old games. I had all the drivers for the hardware, and I am using an onboard NIC. It took windows several tries to load this damn driver, where as in linux it was just reconized. So really, linux was EASIER in this case. Not all hardware works with all software. It's just a fact of life. Accept this, move on, stop b*tching.
*Not everyone here even remotely agrees with the majority of the posters here. Look at my post records. It's really low. I'm fairly sure that if their is a way to look up the average post per userid, you'd see most people do not post.
This might get modded down or not at all, but I just had to respond.
Brendan
P.S. If you do not like what Slashdot says anymore, your free to find a new place to frequent.