I don't think that's true at all. I have installed Ubuntu on a number of computers belonging to friends and family, and everybody (they're all pretty much computer-illiterates) agrees that it's easier to use and more intuitive than Windows. Take the "start" menu: you have an "Applications" menu and the last entry therein is "install/remove". Could it be any simpler?
IMHO the beauty of Linux and all the software for it is that you can pick what you need and ignore the rest. If you want to do stuff the hard way, you can. If you just want to use a computer, use something like Ubuntu. Linux has the potential to serve all needs, and by now the modern Linux distros are doing a fine job at it.
Is what I know this as. I used to get so much spam it drove me crazy. I set up filter rule after rule, used RBLs and everything but it only helped partially. I could still live with it. But eventually, I was hit by huge waves of collateral spam and eventually got more of that then the real thing*, and that was when I decided email was either going to be entirely useless to me or I had to do something very drastic.
I opted for something drastic. I still have a large number of filter rules, but in addition to that, I use a whitelist instead of a blacklist to filter email, and everything not on my whitelist that survives the spam filter rules ends up in a bulk mail folder I check about once a week. Now if someone I don't know emails me, that stinks, and I constantly have to adjust my whitelist to allow for more addresses, but at least I barely see any spam - real or collateral - anymore. Without that I'd have given up on spam altogether.
Uhm... we may live on the other side of the globe, but we don't live behind the moon. Of course we know Yahoo. A lot of people use it for mail, and while I am not one of them I do enjoy a good game of pool on their gaming site - even if the damn thing is written in java.
In the company I currently work for, every PC is powered down at night, with only a few exceptions. There are obviously servers still running, but they are actually doing something (backups for instance), and there's sometimes a few machines involved in over-night test procedures. Frankly there is no valid reason for keeping a PC running if it isn't being used. Same goes for the home PC, btw. Switch it off at night.
How about buying a more economic car? In the kind of societies we live in, voting with your wallet is still your best option for change, especially when your government fails you.
Yeah, well. T1s and OC3s are hardly the kind of connections consumers use. They're intended for commercial purposes, so I don't see how those prices are relevant here? Besides with things like SDSL you can get faster than T1 speeds with flat prices, at least here, so...
Me too! For my niece, as well. Pitty I can't get one because I don't live in the US or Canada. Pitty also for a child that has to go without laptop because of that limitation. I assume it's a) because of limited manufacturing capacities and b) logicistics. Still sucks though.
Ah, but there's such a thing as too picky. I know this from painful experience! I loved games like Fallout, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum, Bloodlines, Daggerfall, Ultima 7 etc etc., and I don't see any games like that anymore, games that offer a really deep RPGing experience where stats really do matter, just like the decisions you make. Games with really good dialog. I really don't see any of those around.
Of course there's NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, but I don't like* D&D based computer games. There you have it: too picky:(
I really don't see why anyone would mention Stallman, Torvalds and whatshisface... Raymond in one sentence. Seriously, ESR is a nobody and a nutcase. Actually, if anyone actually deserved to be attacked by ninjas (AND pirates AND monkeys) it's him.
I have to admit that I only played Planescape for the first time as recently as last year, but I was adicted instantly. I've never ever seen a game with such an incredible amount of dialog, nor have I ever seen this kind of quality dialog in any other game. It is deep, philosophical and you actually have meaningful choices that often have subtle nuances to them - for instance you may have the same sentence as a choice twice, but with one option lie and with the other actually mean what you say. There are not many stats, but what stats are there play a big role in dialog, and I can only think of a very few games that come even close in this regard. (mostly the Fallouts)
But the artistic achievement of this game is not limited to dialog. The art in this game is superb. AFAIK no other (significant) game has tried to recreate the world of the Planescape universe, but if they had, I'm sure they would never come as close as PS:T. It's so beautiful it makes you wheep. And the score by Mark Morgan is just perfect and one of the best games scores in general that I know.
If you haven't played this game yet, get it right now.
PS: Since when is PS:T a game of the Baldurs Gate series? It may use the same engine, but that's where the similarities end...
They're wasting 1.85 billion euros to showcase a technology that has no future because conventional trains are safer and much cheaper. The only people that are ever going to want this are governments that try desparately to prove they're on the bleeding edge of technology, like China.
Now, nobody would care if most of the cost was covered by those that stand the most to gain from this: Siemens and ThyssenKrupp. However, most of the cost is paid for by the German taxpayer, a whopping 925 million. Add another 475 million from the state of Bavaria. Siemens and ThyssenKrupp only contribute 50 million to make their big showcase thing a reality. Some here have voiced their suspicion that such a tremendous waste of money could meet resistance, and they're right. Tax payer groups and other organizations and people have fought this for years, and the local government of the city of Munich doesn't want it either.
So why do it? Well, that's easy. It's a memorial of some sort for the Bavarian PM Edmund Stoiber who's baby the Transrapid in Munich project is. He'll be stepping down really soon and he just wants to leave with a bang. And seeing how he's always boasted that Bavaria is by far the most advanced and superior of all German states, economically and technologically, this seems to be the best way to be remembered for him.
I can understand the complaints about how this may be an additional security risk, or at least would make an assholes job a bit easier if they hacked that central WP database. What I find somewhat irritating is that some people have voiced privacy concerns over this. I was under the impression that if you're running a blog, it means you're one of those Web 2.0 exhibitionists that tell everyone in the whole wide world all their daily activities in embarrassing detail anyway. Am I missing something?
Ah, but you do know that tasers are far from non-lethal, yes?
(2) Since tasers were first used in 2001 by law enforcement agencies in the USA and Canada, more than 260 people have died after being shocked with the weapon. Fifteen such deaths have been reported in Canada. In the USA, coroners have listed taser shocks as a cause of death or a contributory factor in more than two dozen cases in the past two years. While no such findings have yet been made in Canada, Amnesty International believes a link between deaths and taser shocks cannot be ruled out.
As I understand it, the tazer is supposed to be a replacement for lethal force. Does this mean that if they didn't have tazers, they would have gunned him down for being annoying? I just don't understand it.
Ok first of all, nobody said anything about binding anything to hardware, no idea where you got that notion from. Secondly, I'm only repeating what the department of the interior is claiming about their tool. No detailed explanation was given, only that the trojan would be adapted to indivdual needs (the software running on the target computer).
Supposedly, all incarnations of this crap will be "personalized" to match whatever software runs on the victims computer. How that is supposed to work is unclear as of yet. It seems unlikely they will rewrite their trojan every time, so it can be assumed they'll assemble a suitable trojan from components. So in other words it will probably not work on just any other computer, except if it happens to run the same software.
Slashdot Mirror
Obama -> GoDaddy
Clinton - Rackspace
Am I the only one who's laughing his ass off at this?
Didn't I use Ubuntu as an example here?
I don't think that's true at all. I have installed Ubuntu on a number of computers belonging to friends and family, and everybody (they're all pretty much computer-illiterates) agrees that it's easier to use and more intuitive than Windows. Take the "start" menu: you have an "Applications" menu and the last entry therein is "install/remove". Could it be any simpler?
IMHO the beauty of Linux and all the software for it is that you can pick what you need and ignore the rest. If you want to do stuff the hard way, you can. If you just want to use a computer, use something like Ubuntu. Linux has the potential to serve all needs, and by now the modern Linux distros are doing a fine job at it.
Is what I know this as. I used to get so much spam it drove me crazy. I set up filter rule after rule, used RBLs and everything but it only helped partially. I could still live with it. But eventually, I was hit by huge waves of collateral spam and eventually got more of that then the real thing*, and that was when I decided email was either going to be entirely useless to me or I had to do something very drastic.
I opted for something drastic. I still have a large number of filter rules, but in addition to that, I use a whitelist instead of a blacklist to filter email, and everything not on my whitelist that survives the spam filter rules ends up in a bulk mail folder I check about once a week. Now if someone I don't know emails me, that stinks, and I constantly have to adjust my whitelist to allow for more addresses, but at least I barely see any spam - real or collateral - anymore. Without that I'd have given up on spam altogether.
*) In the order of several 1000 a day
I wonder if the Ancients ever had debates like this when they created the repository of all their knowledge...
Uhm... we may live on the other side of the globe, but we don't live behind the moon. Of course we know Yahoo. A lot of people use it for mail, and while I am not one of them I do enjoy a good game of pool on their gaming site - even if the damn thing is written in java.
In the company I currently work for, every PC is powered down at night, with only a few exceptions. There are obviously servers still running, but they are actually doing something (backups for instance), and there's sometimes a few machines involved in over-night test procedures. Frankly there is no valid reason for keeping a PC running if it isn't being used. Same goes for the home PC, btw. Switch it off at night.
How about buying a more economic car? In the kind of societies we live in, voting with your wallet is still your best option for change, especially when your government fails you.
Yeah, well. T1s and OC3s are hardly the kind of connections consumers use. They're intended for commercial purposes, so I don't see how those prices are relevant here? Besides with things like SDSL you can get faster than T1 speeds with flat prices, at least here, so...
$1.5/GB? Last time I heard that kind of price was seven years ago! Where do you pay THAT MUCH?
Me too! For my niece, as well. Pitty I can't get one because I don't live in the US or Canada. Pitty also for a child that has to go without laptop because of that limitation. I assume it's a) because of limited manufacturing capacities and b) logicistics. Still sucks though.
Ah, but there's such a thing as too picky. I know this from painful experience! I loved games like Fallout, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum, Bloodlines, Daggerfall, Ultima 7 etc etc., and I don't see any games like that anymore, games that offer a really deep RPGing experience where stats really do matter, just like the decisions you make. Games with really good dialog. I really don't see any of those around.
Of course there's NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, but I don't like* D&D based computer games. There you have it: too picky :(
*) I liked Torment despite being a D&D game.
I really don't see why anyone would mention Stallman, Torvalds and whatshisface... Raymond in one sentence. Seriously, ESR is a nobody and a nutcase. Actually, if anyone actually deserved to be attacked by ninjas (AND pirates AND monkeys) it's him.
Where you go by engine, I go by content. And that is worlds apart! :)
I have to admit that I only played Planescape for the first time as recently as last year, but I was adicted instantly. I've never ever seen a game with such an incredible amount of dialog, nor have I ever seen this kind of quality dialog in any other game. It is deep, philosophical and you actually have meaningful choices that often have subtle nuances to them - for instance you may have the same sentence as a choice twice, but with one option lie and with the other actually mean what you say. There are not many stats, but what stats are there play a big role in dialog, and I can only think of a very few games that come even close in this regard. (mostly the Fallouts)
But the artistic achievement of this game is not limited to dialog. The art in this game is superb. AFAIK no other (significant) game has tried to recreate the world of the Planescape universe, but if they had, I'm sure they would never come as close as PS:T. It's so beautiful it makes you wheep. And the score by Mark Morgan is just perfect and one of the best games scores in general that I know.
If you haven't played this game yet, get it right now.
PS: Since when is PS:T a game of the Baldurs Gate series? It may use the same engine, but that's where the similarities end...
Forgot this: Bavarian PM Stoiber and his vision
They're wasting 1.85 billion euros to showcase a technology that has no future because conventional trains are safer and much cheaper. The only people that are ever going to want this are governments that try desparately to prove they're on the bleeding edge of technology, like China.
Now, nobody would care if most of the cost was covered by those that stand the most to gain from this: Siemens and ThyssenKrupp. However, most of the cost is paid for by the German taxpayer, a whopping 925 million. Add another 475 million from the state of Bavaria. Siemens and ThyssenKrupp only contribute 50 million to make their big showcase thing a reality. Some here have voiced their suspicion that such a tremendous waste of money could meet resistance, and they're right. Tax payer groups and other organizations and people have fought this for years, and the local government of the city of Munich doesn't want it either.
So why do it? Well, that's easy. It's a memorial of some sort for the Bavarian PM Edmund Stoiber who's baby the Transrapid in Munich project is. He'll be stepping down really soon and he just wants to leave with a bang. And seeing how he's always boasted that Bavaria is by far the most advanced and superior of all German states, economically and technologically, this seems to be the best way to be remembered for him.
I can understand the complaints about how this may be an additional security risk, or at least would make an assholes job a bit easier if they hacked that central WP database. What I find somewhat irritating is that some people have voiced privacy concerns over this. I was under the impression that if you're running a blog, it means you're one of those Web 2.0 exhibitionists that tell everyone in the whole wide world all their daily activities in embarrassing detail anyway. Am I missing something?
You JUST don't GET it, do you?
Well, neither do I, and I'm 20 years your junior. It's not your age, friend, and you're not alone.
Ah, but you do know that tasers are far from non-lethal, yes?
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR200022007
As I understand it, the tazer is supposed to be a replacement for lethal force. Does this mean that if they didn't have tazers, they would have gunned him down for being annoying? I just don't understand it.
Best of luck to Ms. Lindor, I hope she succeeds and deals those bastards a serious blow that'll make them think twice!
Maybe if by WPA you really mean WPA2. WPA is not much more secure than WEP :)
Ok first of all, nobody said anything about binding anything to hardware, no idea where you got that notion from. Secondly, I'm only repeating what the department of the interior is claiming about their tool. No detailed explanation was given, only that the trojan would be adapted to indivdual needs (the software running on the target computer).
Supposedly, all incarnations of this crap will be "personalized" to match whatever software runs on the victims computer. How that is supposed to work is unclear as of yet. It seems unlikely they will rewrite their trojan every time, so it can be assumed they'll assemble a suitable trojan from components. So in other words it will probably not work on just any other computer, except if it happens to run the same software.