So EVERY post suggesting Corel gets modded to 0? C'mon guys. Corel Draw and Paintshop are Darn good products. As others will surely note, Gimp is not for serious work for a number of good reasons. Is there an free vector drawing program? I know of none. This kind of software is VERY complex, and built by well paid people that really know what pros need. As for Adobe video production software, that's another story, but for graphics, there isn't a real free alternative.
I always wondered why Apple thinks that an (arguably) poor segment of society (artists) would want very expensive computers.
As unofficial computer fix-it man for my friends, I can say that I hate having to fix apple problems. Mostly it's because I don't have any clue how to do it at first, but also because the answer I get from the knowledgeable apple-types is typically "it won't work." Bad answer man...
1)If they wrote down every possible swear word, they would run out of paper 2)if they wrote it down then they would have to fine themselves for indecency.
I'll be honest, the only place I've seen it running is in the stores, and even some of them have turned it off for speed. Everybody else I know has reverted to the Win2k style.
Before you flame me, you have to see the abysmal state of federal IT systems. A federal CTO that REALLY understood what was going on and could reallocate the resources to fix the problems would be a HUGE boon to efficient government. Feds are like 90% MS anyway, so it's really not a huge conflict of interests. Somebody like Balmer (might?) get it. Personally I would prefer some sharp Google exec that understood the nature of information, but I'll take what I can get.
a tragedy of the commons were everybody would pollute it so much that it would become unusable. However in practice that has turned out to be a complete and absolute lie
Is it? I have no metrics to back up what I'm saying, I haven't done any research on the topic, but I live in a gadget soaked suburb, and anything in the 900mhz or 2.4 ghz band is completely unusable, and 5.8 used to be fine, but is worsening. I already had to wire my house to get around the massive interference from my neighbors and all their spurious emissions. My radio even picks up the digital clicks from their cell-phones. I don't know what the answer is, but a bunch of conflicting stuff is a bad answer.
Another prerequisite for this panel ought to be never having used a vampire as a character in any work. I was sick to my stomach when Stargate "jumped the vampire" but then I realized it had been a Sci-fi crutch for decades. All too many sci-fi writers suffer from the same lack of imagination as the politicians.
This is one anonymous jackass on the internet accusing an accountable corporation of fiddling with (unimportant) numbers because HE hasn't seen one. Well news for you friend, with million owned in a global potential market of around 1 billion, you aren't likely to see a lot. This is trollish
Oh wait, this is Slashdot and you're bashing Microsoft. That does pass for insightful around here these days...
Eg: privacy, 'total information awareness', Internet regulation and taxation, net neutrality, copyright/patent reform, the right to read, the right to secure communications, the right to tinker.
This is kind of presumptuous don't you think? Because I read slashdot I somehow make the copyright reform a keystone issue? Perhaps the "nerds" need to get their priorities straight, or perhaps they need to read the constitution to realize that the president doesn't pass laws, he enforces them. The concept of the president's stand on the issues is largely irrelevant. The president's real power comes from control of the military, control over foreign policy, and proposal of the budget. "Nerds" and everybody else should be looking for the technocrat that is interested in effective and efficient governance.
In business...email seems to be the #1 form of communication.
I agree, but there are a lot of places where people are just getting sick of it. Email is impersonal, slow (when compared to a phone call) and all too copious. My office (5k people) uses email extensively, but you definitely hear a developed backlash. There are places where sending email to people sitting next to you is "punishable" by bringing in donuts the next day, and most emails start with the line "I tried calling but..."
Is email dead? Certainly not, but there is certainly a massive overuse in the business world, and it is just a matter of time before the situation self-corrects to a more manageable level.
I am always in favor of new ways for politicians to identify who amongst them is foolish. That, and in the unfathomable event that it actually happens, the $0.50 per year collected from the few morons that would pay it could go to defraying the billions of dollars it would take to attempt to collect it. Also, we could finally declare email "dead."
To call Linux "user friendly" is bad comedy. I haven't tried whatever the current flavor of the month, but can you operate and expand a Linux system without EVER having to go to the command line? If you can't, stop the comparison right there.
This is exactly what I've been saying about second-life. In second Life, I stand up, walk outside, consult my map, get in my virtual car, sit in virtual traffic, and go to a virtual zoo to see a virtual Kangaroo. On google, I type "kangaroo" and get a bajillion hits about kangaroos, with everything I ever wanted to know right in front of me. If boring games would sell, Second Life would be the new Warcraft
9mm bullets typically don't travel all that fast. High-power 9mm loads are up around 1300fps. The armor in the article is significant not for it's stopping power (threat level II and IIIA are for pistols) It is significant because it's VERY light and very thin. Many soldiers in Iraq are not wearing body armor not because they don't have it, but because it's hot, heavy, and reduces flexibility and athletic performance. (it is better to not get hit than it is get hurt less) The interceptor armor they are wearing is Class III and IV (with armor plates inserted) Your typical Ak-47 round is at about 2300fps, and it weighs a lot more, so the armor is a LOT bigger than 5mm thick. My point is that you shouldn't go buying this for your pal in Iraq until it's up to standard, and TESTED by the army so you don't end up buying expensive and ineffective stuff like "dragonskin"
This is certainly not a troll. Corporate censors need only answer to their customers. The Dixie Chicks are the perfect example. They made comments that offended people, those people stopped buying records. Radio stations stopped playing them because people were mad at them. The Grammys are certainly not given by "the people" but rather by the RIAA that everybody here claims to hate. It was given to them as a political statement, rather than a reflection of their album being the best. (note: I like the Dixie Chicks, but their last album was just "ok")
That's because the pirates think in absolute terms. They think that they are in a place that will not change it's laws (or the interpretation thereof) in response to international pressure. Firstly, let's not pretend that these are some sort of freedom fighters striking at an evil empire. They're crooks, stealing from people, and crooks don't get much sympathy. Second, don't think for a second that if their country needed something from the US, Europe, etc that they wouldn't crack down on Pirate Bay like a swat team.
A part that I excluded is that if I ditch the landline, my DSL jumps to $35/mo, More than I pay without it. My other option is cable at $45/mo. I'm not arguing against the convenience, but more the value of the service. The gentleman I responded to ends up paying $1.67 per minute to talk on the phone. I refuse to play that brand of ball. Getting a second cell on my wife's plan means $8/mo, but we also have to have a different plan to allow multiple phones, $10 more. $18/mo doesn't sound like much, but that would still likely put me over $1/min.
You make a good point, but I will propose myself as a counter-example. I have a land-line and no cell-phone. I'm 27. I make a decent enough salary to afford a cell phone, but I work in a building where I cant carry a phone, my commute is only about 6 miles in a reliable car, and I keep a fairly regular schedule so people can usually find me. Fairly basic plans around Washington DC like my wife's start at about $40, (actually more like $50 after tax) and the idea of paying $600 a year to provide a convenience to others didn't appeal to me. My landline is about $18/mo after tax, and it reduces the cost of my DSL to $15/mo. I've been 5 years without a cell, and I'm quite happy.
I too spend less than 30 min/mo on the phone, but I'm not spending over a dollar a minute to do it.
Ok, hear me out. If this is so important, then perhaps disrupting this motion could destroy a hurricane. An eye-wall is a much smaller target than the eye or the whole storm. Could a million pounds of propane in a fuel-air mix disrupt the air enough to destabilize the hurricane? At billions of dollars of damage per storm, it's time to start thinking offensively. Let's strike the storm abroad so that we don't have to face it at home.
Hear me out. If there were a passionate windows following, they would be screaming bloody murder about every little minute detail that didn't approve of. Rather fortunate for MS is their products are an integral fact of life for business around the world. Passion is not healthy for this, you need stability, calm, rational thought, and the ability to plan into the future. It may be wonderfully dramatic when Stevie J enveils the new anti-aliased cursor for thundercat V10.8.3.6.2, but third parties that create software need to not be caught off guard when functions change. Microsoft operates in a very friendly way to third party devs, enterprise infrastructure planners, and CIOs. These are dispassionate people, people that use a computer to do something productive.
I like the serial idea, but why does everybody always come down so hard on the "stupid American viewer?" Some shows are entertaining and compelling, some are overdone and cheezy. (BSG is a bit of both) I find your comment to be both incorrect (BSG plays around the world) and ridiculously condescending.
Battlestar is a fine show, but it's "Lost" in space. A whole lot of confusing nothing happens every week. That aside, the show is centered around an ongoing plot. It had a beginning, a middle, and it will have an end. Why are people holding on so tight? Let it go, let another good idea take it's slot and it's funding.
That is in fact exactly what you are saying. Were the drugs researched in Brazil, with Brazilian labor and Brazilian investment, the cost would have been far lower. As it is, the environment in Brazil doesn't support a robust pharmaceutical market, the US does, and as such the country must contribute to the recouping of losses (and generation of profit) in US terms. While compulsory licensing is technically legal, they are shooting themselves in the foot by discouraging international trade, foreign investment, and ANY access to the next drugs that cost billions to research.
You don't seem to grasp the reality of mass-market software production. When you make a game for xbox, you *know* that every single client is configured identically, and so you have a common base to work against. A PC is WAY more difficult for something complex like a game. Windows has overcome this by providing a *standard platform* on the PC, DirectX. DirectX is more than Direct3D. DirectDraw, DirectPlay, DirectPlay, and DirectSound make it easy to know that your software can work. OpenGL works well enough most places (it's considerably behind DirectX, but that's largely irrelevant) but What about the rest? OpenAL? (Don't know much about it, but it didn't work on my integrated sound card) And the rest you would have to write from scratch. This is a considerable level of effort for a miniscule market segment. What about Disc Protection schemes? (safedisc, macrovision, etc) How many of them work under Linux? (like em or not, the publishers use them)
The walls you speak of may not be technical ones, but economics trumps technology every time.
Slashdot Mirror
So EVERY post suggesting Corel gets modded to 0? C'mon guys. Corel Draw and Paintshop are Darn good products. As others will surely note, Gimp is not for serious work for a number of good reasons. Is there an free vector drawing program? I know of none. This kind of software is VERY complex, and built by well paid people that really know what pros need. As for Adobe video production software, that's another story, but for graphics, there isn't a real free alternative.
I always wondered why Apple thinks that an (arguably) poor segment of society (artists) would want very expensive computers.
As unofficial computer fix-it man for my friends, I can say that I hate having to fix apple problems. Mostly it's because I don't have any clue how to do it at first, but also because the answer I get from the knowledgeable apple-types is typically "it won't work." Bad answer man...
1)If they wrote down every possible swear word, they would run out of paper
2)if they wrote it down then they would have to fine themselves for indecency.
I'll be honest, the only place I've seen it running is in the stores, and even some of them have turned it off for speed. Everybody else I know has reverted to the Win2k style.
WTF? I make a statement and get a 0 karma Flamebait
he agrees with me and gets a 5 karma Insightful. No justice...
Before you flame me, you have to see the abysmal state of federal IT systems. A federal CTO that REALLY understood what was going on and could reallocate the resources to fix the problems would be a HUGE boon to efficient government. Feds are like 90% MS anyway, so it's really not a huge conflict of interests. Somebody like Balmer (might?) get it. Personally I would prefer some sharp Google exec that understood the nature of information, but I'll take what I can get.
However in practice that has turned out to be a complete and absolute lie
Is it? I have no metrics to back up what I'm saying, I haven't done any research on the topic, but I live in a gadget soaked suburb, and anything in the 900mhz or 2.4 ghz band is completely unusable, and 5.8 used to be fine, but is worsening. I already had to wire my house to get around the massive interference from my neighbors and all their spurious emissions. My radio even picks up the digital clicks from their cell-phones. I don't know what the answer is, but a bunch of conflicting stuff is a bad answer.
Another prerequisite for this panel ought to be never having used a vampire as a character in any work. I was sick to my stomach when Stargate "jumped the vampire" but then I realized it had been a Sci-fi crutch for decades. All too many sci-fi writers suffer from the same lack of imagination as the politicians.
Oh wait, this is Slashdot and you're bashing Microsoft. That does pass for insightful around here these days...
This is kind of presumptuous don't you think? Because I read slashdot I somehow make the copyright reform a keystone issue? Perhaps the "nerds" need to get their priorities straight, or perhaps they need to read the constitution to realize that the president doesn't pass laws, he enforces them. The concept of the president's stand on the issues is largely irrelevant. The president's real power comes from control of the military, control over foreign policy, and proposal of the budget. "Nerds" and everybody else should be looking for the technocrat that is interested in effective and efficient governance.
I agree, but there are a lot of places where people are just getting sick of it. Email is impersonal, slow (when compared to a phone call) and all too copious. My office (5k people) uses email extensively, but you definitely hear a developed backlash. There are places where sending email to people sitting next to you is "punishable" by bringing in donuts the next day, and most emails start with the line "I tried calling but..."
Is email dead? Certainly not, but there is certainly a massive overuse in the business world, and it is just a matter of time before the situation self-corrects to a more manageable level.
I am always in favor of new ways for politicians to identify who amongst them is foolish. That, and in the unfathomable event that it actually happens, the $0.50 per year collected from the few morons that would pay it could go to defraying the billions of dollars it would take to attempt to collect it. Also, we could finally declare email "dead."
To call Linux "user friendly" is bad comedy. I haven't tried whatever the current flavor of the month, but can you operate and expand a Linux system without EVER having to go to the command line? If you can't, stop the comparison right there.
This is exactly what I've been saying about second-life. In second Life, I stand up, walk outside, consult my map, get in my virtual car, sit in virtual traffic, and go to a virtual zoo to see a virtual Kangaroo. On google, I type "kangaroo" and get a bajillion hits about kangaroos, with everything I ever wanted to know right in front of me. If boring games would sell, Second Life would be the new Warcraft
9mm bullets typically don't travel all that fast. High-power 9mm loads are up around 1300fps. The armor in the article is significant not for it's stopping power (threat level II and IIIA are for pistols) It is significant because it's VERY light and very thin. Many soldiers in Iraq are not wearing body armor not because they don't have it, but because it's hot, heavy, and reduces flexibility and athletic performance. (it is better to not get hit than it is get hurt less) The interceptor armor they are wearing is Class III and IV (with armor plates inserted) Your typical Ak-47 round is at about 2300fps, and it weighs a lot more, so the armor is a LOT bigger than 5mm thick. My point is that you shouldn't go buying this for your pal in Iraq until it's up to standard, and TESTED by the army so you don't end up buying expensive and ineffective stuff like "dragonskin"
This is certainly not a troll. Corporate censors need only answer to their customers. The Dixie Chicks are the perfect example. They made comments that offended people, those people stopped buying records. Radio stations stopped playing them because people were mad at them. The Grammys are certainly not given by "the people" but rather by the RIAA that everybody here claims to hate. It was given to them as a political statement, rather than a reflection of their album being the best. (note: I like the Dixie Chicks, but their last album was just "ok")
Yeah, but not so slow that you had to leave out the word "of" It's like 2 bytes for crying out loud!
That's because the pirates think in absolute terms. They think that they are in a place that will not change it's laws (or the interpretation thereof) in response to international pressure. Firstly, let's not pretend that these are some sort of freedom fighters striking at an evil empire. They're crooks, stealing from people, and crooks don't get much sympathy. Second, don't think for a second that if their country needed something from the US, Europe, etc that they wouldn't crack down on Pirate Bay like a swat team.
A part that I excluded is that if I ditch the landline, my DSL jumps to $35/mo, More than I pay without it. My other option is cable at $45/mo. I'm not arguing against the convenience, but more the value of the service. The gentleman I responded to ends up paying $1.67 per minute to talk on the phone. I refuse to play that brand of ball. Getting a second cell on my wife's plan means $8/mo, but we also have to have a different plan to allow multiple phones, $10 more. $18/mo doesn't sound like much, but that would still likely put me over $1/min.
I too spend less than 30 min/mo on the phone, but I'm not spending over a dollar a minute to do it.
Ok, hear me out. If this is so important, then perhaps disrupting this motion could destroy a hurricane. An eye-wall is a much smaller target than the eye or the whole storm. Could a million pounds of propane in a fuel-air mix disrupt the air enough to destabilize the hurricane? At billions of dollars of damage per storm, it's time to start thinking offensively. Let's strike the storm abroad so that we don't have to face it at home.
Hear me out. If there were a passionate windows following, they would be screaming bloody murder about every little minute detail that didn't approve of. Rather fortunate for MS is their products are an integral fact of life for business around the world. Passion is not healthy for this, you need stability, calm, rational thought, and the ability to plan into the future. It may be wonderfully dramatic when Stevie J enveils the new anti-aliased cursor for thundercat V10.8.3.6.2, but third parties that create software need to not be caught off guard when functions change. Microsoft operates in a very friendly way to third party devs, enterprise infrastructure planners, and CIOs. These are dispassionate people, people that use a computer to do something productive.
Battlestar is a fine show, but it's "Lost" in space. A whole lot of confusing nothing happens every week. That aside, the show is centered around an ongoing plot. It had a beginning, a middle, and it will have an end. Why are people holding on so tight? Let it go, let another good idea take it's slot and it's funding.
That is in fact exactly what you are saying. Were the drugs researched in Brazil, with Brazilian labor and Brazilian investment, the cost would have been far lower. As it is, the environment in Brazil doesn't support a robust pharmaceutical market, the US does, and as such the country must contribute to the recouping of losses (and generation of profit) in US terms. While compulsory licensing is technically legal, they are shooting themselves in the foot by discouraging international trade, foreign investment, and ANY access to the next drugs that cost billions to research.
The walls you speak of may not be technical ones, but economics trumps technology every time.