Data: Syntax error, unknown command setspeed. Please see error log for details.
Picard: Dammit Data! stcrs Devidia, setspd warp8. Honestly, why you don't understand contractions but can't run on fully spelled commands is beyond me.
I owe ya an apology. I think I misread your tone a bit. I thought you were harshly accusing me out of the blue of trying to capitalize on a Slashdot story, but I reread your post and realize you were being nicer than I had originally imagined.
I'm sorry, my response was harsher than it should have been. I should have read what you said a little more closely.
The ref=sr is part of the link that the search came up with. I imagine the sr stands for 'search results'. No idea. I promise you, though, if you follow the same steps I did you'll get the same result.
If so, quite clever, saying that you have $20 to put in this stunt knowing that if the link gets slashdotted by people buying this book for Ralsky you will get a little bit of money from each, thus making more than the $20 that you won't shell out anyway.
Oh well, given that you put the whole link visible in the post I suppose I will take it as a rather good joke.
Um no. I would make $0 if that got Slashdotted. I have absolutely 0 affiliation with Amazon or anybody that deals with a book like that. Your accusation is unfounded.
Here is how I came across that book:
1.) Go to www.amazon.com 2.) Click on 'Books' 3.) Do a Search in the Books section for 'Spam' 4.) Look at #5, the title is "Removing the SPAM" 5.) Click on that link, and you get exactly the same link that I provided. In other words, Amazon has absolutely 0 idea that the book referrals came from me.
I find it interesting that you'd accuse me of that, though. Dontcha think that my choice of books was a little too topical? I mean, did you really think I was lurking around Slashdot for an opportunity to sell books?
"UNIX systems, namely SGI, and Macs generally have been the choice of studios with UNIX iron running in the render rooms..."
That was true a few years ago. Recently, it's not so true anymore. As a matter of fact, companies like Foundation Imaging have been able to save quite a bit of money by not buying that expensive hardware, yet they still turn around kick ass digital effects.
It used to be that if you bought a $10,000 machine, you got a hell of a lot more than if you bought a $2,000 running inferior software. That gap has narrowed considerably in recent years. PC software has gotten cheaper and more powerful (Maya dropped from $7,500 to $2,500, Lightwave dropped from $2,500 to $1,500, etc...). Network rendering licenses are dirt cheap. With that $10k, you can buy a number of headless PCs.
You'll notice that SGI's not exactly a big screaming deal anymore, despite the surge in digitally produced movies.
a.) He is not going to turn a big profit around. The more money you have, the less you worry about piddly amounts like $10. He would not turn enough money around to be worth his time, and he definitely wouldn't say "I enjoy all these books I'm recieving!".
b.) So what if he did? He would not be glad for the opportunity. He'd be annoyed, VERY annoyed. (Hello?! That's the main objective!)
c.) A surge of sales for anti-spam books might be enough to cause some spam-bidnesses to rethink their strategy. I certainly wouldn't be interested in using a spam marketer to sell my product if it riles up people so much they're willing to buy+read books to hide from me.
I'm amazed at the negativity towards my idea. It's a good thing when customers take steps to fight back against SPAM. Rich people aren't dumb. If they realize that scores of people are organizing, it'll make them wonder if it's worth pissing people off.
"The only performance that counts is yours, not the machines. I really don't give a s**t about 30 percent faster, 50 percent faster, or whatever. I care that I have to lose a half a day trying to figure out why my CD-RW no longer records. And then give up and just buy another CD-RW, losing a few more hours. Or that my settings suddenly change for no reason. Or that my computer sends pornography to everyone on my email list without me knowing about it. Or that my system freezes once a week. That's the difference between a Mac & PC."
What the hell were you running? eMachines? Compaq?
Seriously, those problems on a PC are a myth, provided you get the right hardware/OS. If you scrap together a no-name brand pc with Windows 98, then you can expect things like that to happen. Put together a machine with reputable components and an OS like Windows 2000, and you ain't gonna have those problems. I can tell you that right now from experience. I rely on my machines (yes, machines plural) to do rendering, video editing, ect. I can't afford down-time like you described.
Honestly, if those problems existed, I would be a Mac user.
"Before you tell me i'm wrong, take a stroll through any of the big (or small) production and post-production shops in the world, and marvel at the fact that, with the exception of secretarial workstations, every machine in the office is some sort of macintosh, or else a highly specialized box like an SGI running Inferno[discreet.com] or Fire[discreet.com]."
That's really not an indication of definitive superiority of the Mac over PC. It means that the big production houses got a good deal on a ton of the machines, as opposed to worrying about the benchmarks. I've worked in 1 TV studio, visisted another, and talked with a few places that do animation and digital video. PC is their primary hardware, by far.
The truth of the matter is that when you get a Mac, you don't really get more than what you'd get with a PC. Firewire (and I can personally attest to this) works great on a PC with Windows 2000 installed. And yes, I do DV work. I don't have stability or maintenance issues. I have more software. I have more plugin support for apps such as After Effects or Lightwave. And I have access to nearly all the hardware that's out there.
Studios that use these machines have similar feelings, but they need to be well supported. They can't afford to hire a team of sysadmins to keep a 100 computer network working. Any big studios are going to have to heavily consider who their vendor is, even if it means a cut in per-machine performance. If Apple comes up and says "it can do what you need it to do, we can fit within your budget, and we'll make sure to keep you running because you're a valued customer" , that is a more valuable proposition than "we're 1.5 times as fast as Mac."
He's human. No amount of money can cope with excessive annoyance.
It occurs to me that there may be another way to turn the heat up on him: What if a large group of people was to buy cheap used books at Amazon and ship them to him? I got $20 I'd put into that heh.
"He's going to sue whom? He has to find them first. And then prove that they did it. And prove that he is suffereing damages."
Hopefully when he thinks about that, he'll realize the fundamental problem with a business like that: There's no verification process.
Let me give you an example: I did an experiment with Slashdot a few weeks ago. I created a brand new, never before used email address and made it visible in my info w/o the anti-spam armor. Within days, I was on a mailing list for volunteer fire fighters. Volunteer Firefighters? I'm reaaaaaaaaaaally curious how I ended up with that. heh.
It's too easy to sign up anonymously. Because of that, it's too hard to sue somebody over a stunt like that. Want my opinion? Blast a few other people in the same way until they realize that the only way to deal with this problem is to make the signup process more secure. When that happens, (hopefully) we'll see less unsolicited advertisements.
"Now most HAM's wouldent intentialy do this (unlike the CB crew) but some will and the legal department of AT&T I'm sure will start sending out nasty grams and trying to get the FCC to knock on peoples doors looking for there HAM liscence."
When you become a HAM Radio Operator, the first second and third rule is "do not jam". They make sure to burn the idea into your brain that you are not to intentionally disrupt other people's transmissions.
The reason that most HAMs wouldn't intentionally jam a signal like that is that the FCC will fine the living hell out of them. Not just that, but the HAM community seriously frowns on that type of behaviour.
"Blah blah corporate rule take over the world why isn't everything free blah blah evil empire conspiracy."
Yeah. It sucks when a company ambitiously sets out to provide a service that people really want, and then has the nerve to charge money for it. Heh. Damn them!!
" I think the best way to get mass market appeal in a setting like this is to add head-to-head Tetris, chess, or checkers to the menu. Girls LOVE Tetris."
You do realize that games like Counterstrike and Quake already have mass market appeal, right? Heh.
Girls only make up half of the population, we don't need them.
"The parent poster never claimed Windows was the cheapest OS. They claimed that Microsoft rose to get the marketshare they did because of the price of Windows versus the alternatives way back when."
Good luck getting that idea across to everybody. Thanks to the media and general dislike of MS, everybody thinks that they got to the top by putting a gun to everybody's head and forcing them to reach for their wallet. There's little to no understanding that MS got to the top because MS was what the collective people wanted.
"For the vast majority of people, price is way more important than quality. If it's cheap and reasonably useable, people will buy it in large numbers."
Just to add to this idea: specs on a computer are very difficult to wrap your mind around. What is MHZ? What is GBs? What is Megabits? Etc. Lots of people out there just want a computer, and they don't understand why the numbers are important.
To be honest, I think the PC market is suffering from too many choices. Right now, I have a budget for a laptop. But I'm totally stalled on buying one because there are too many trade-offs to make! I'm busy worrying about what it can't do instead of worrying about the important factor: what it can do.
Apple had the right idea with the iMac: make the actual choices few in number. If you think about it, the only real choice to make was what color you wanted. (I'm oversimplifying a bit, but when you compare PC to Mac that really does seem to be the biggest issue.)
I'm not surprised at all by Walmart's success with the product. It takes a while when you first start using a computer to realize what the upgrades actually buy you.
"One wonders if Wal-Mart's bluff on this was simply a ploy to have the prices taken down before the sale and while planning all along to back down later."
If that's true, then they shot themselves in the foot. When the next major retail holiday rolls around, nobody (including FatWallet) will be inclined to take anything down.
"More interesting would be a test of this under high saturation. Current systems are already getting bogged down, reception is getting craps, calls lost, etc"
There are different circumstances with data than there is with voice. With voice, the requirement is that you have a constant connection with a minimum bandwidth and a minimum latency. Standards for data trasmission would be much more relaxed. It's okay to wait a few seconds to get a burst of data. At best, most of the cell phones will be bursty instead of constant download streams.
There are going to be people that use the phone to keep their computer on the net constantly. You can bet, though, that the service providers will provide incentives not to use the internet phone much. For example, they'll charge you by the kilobyte. Maybe one day that'll all be worthwhile, but for the first round I'm reasonably sure that they won't have saturation issues.
I do whole heartedly agree with your 'up to' comment, though. Seems like it'd be more useful to post a practical data average. Of course, they'd inflate that # too. heh.
Just curious if 3G will jumpstart a faster Bluetooth spec. To the best of my knowledge, Bluetooth isn't capable of reaching 2 megabits.
Right now I have a BT enabled cell phone. I use it as an organizer that syncs up with Outlook on my laptop. I've heard that you can use BT to get an internet connection to the laptop, but I haven't personally verified that. If I could, though, it'd mean that my laptop would be able to get on the net without needing to remove my cell phone from my pocket. One less thing sitting 3 inches from my laptop with a 6' cable attached.
Slashdot Mirror
"I wonder if Data runs on an advanced version of the Linux kernel... It would explain his lack of humor...."
Nah, if he did, this is what a conversation would sound like:
Picard: Data, set a course for the Devidia system, warp 8.
Data: Syntax error, please see error log for details.
Picard: *sigh* Man Course
Data: Entries found: setcrs, clrcrs, setspd, engwrp
Picard: Data, stcrs Devidia, setspeed warp 8.
Data: Syntax error, unknown command setspeed. Please see error log for details.
Picard: Dammit Data! stcrs Devidia, setspd warp8. Honestly, why you don't understand contractions but can't run on fully spelled commands is beyond me.
Data: Success sir, please see log for details.
"Anyway, no bad feelings I hope, because there are none here."
:) Happy Holidays!
No worries.
Hmm..
I owe ya an apology. I think I misread your tone a bit. I thought you were harshly accusing me out of the blue of trying to capitalize on a Slashdot story, but I reread your post and realize you were being nicer than I had originally imagined.
I'm sorry, my response was harsher than it should have been. I should have read what you said a little more closely.
The ref=sr is part of the link that the search came up with. I imagine the sr stands for 'search results'. No idea. I promise you, though, if you follow the same steps I did you'll get the same result.
Um no. I would make $0 if that got Slashdotted. I have absolutely 0 affiliation with Amazon or anybody that deals with a book like that. Your accusation is unfounded.
Here is how I came across that book:
1.) Go to www.amazon.com
2.) Click on 'Books'
3.) Do a Search in the Books section for 'Spam'
4.) Look at #5, the title is "Removing the SPAM"
5.) Click on that link, and you get exactly the same link that I provided. In other words, Amazon has absolutely 0 idea that the book referrals came from me.
I find it interesting that you'd accuse me of that, though. Dontcha think that my choice of books was a little too topical? I mean, did you really think I was lurking around Slashdot for an opportunity to sell books?
Heh.
I found a more interesting one:
279. A print-out of a Slashdot home-page free of any flamebait MS stories.
"UNIX systems, namely SGI, and Macs generally have been the choice of studios with UNIX iron running in the render rooms..."
That was true a few years ago. Recently, it's not so true anymore. As a matter of fact, companies like Foundation Imaging have been able to save quite a bit of money by not buying that expensive hardware, yet they still turn around kick ass digital effects.
It used to be that if you bought a $10,000 machine, you got a hell of a lot more than if you bought a $2,000 running inferior software. That gap has narrowed considerably in recent years. PC software has gotten cheaper and more powerful (Maya dropped from $7,500 to $2,500, Lightwave dropped from $2,500 to $1,500, etc...). Network rendering licenses are dirt cheap. With that $10k, you can buy a number of headless PCs.
You'll notice that SGI's not exactly a big screaming deal anymore, despite the surge in digitally produced movies.
"He'd sell 'em on eBay, what do you think? "
I doubt he would.
a.) He is not going to turn a big profit around. The more money you have, the less you worry about piddly amounts like $10. He would not turn enough money around to be worth his time, and he definitely wouldn't say "I enjoy all these books I'm recieving!".
b.) So what if he did? He would not be glad for the opportunity. He'd be annoyed, VERY annoyed. (Hello?! That's the main objective!)
c.) A surge of sales for anti-spam books might be enough to cause some spam-bidnesses to rethink their strategy. I certainly wouldn't be interested in using a spam marketer to sell my product if it riles up people so much they're willing to buy+read books to hide from me.
I'm amazed at the negativity towards my idea. It's a good thing when customers take steps to fight back against SPAM. Rich people aren't dumb. If they realize that scores of people are organizing, it'll make them wonder if it's worth pissing people off.
What the hell were you running? eMachines? Compaq?
Seriously, those problems on a PC are a myth, provided you get the right hardware/OS. If you scrap together a no-name brand pc with Windows 98, then you can expect things like that to happen. Put together a machine with reputable components and an OS like Windows 2000, and you ain't gonna have those problems. I can tell you that right now from experience. I rely on my machines (yes, machines plural) to do rendering, video editing, ect. I can't afford down-time like you described.
Honestly, if those problems existed, I would be a Mac user.
"Before you tell me i'm wrong, take a stroll through any of the big (or small) production and post-production shops in the world, and marvel at the fact that, with the exception of secretarial workstations, every machine in the office is some sort of macintosh, or else a highly specialized box like an SGI running Inferno[discreet.com] or Fire[discreet.com]."
That's really not an indication of definitive superiority of the Mac over PC. It means that the big production houses got a good deal on a ton of the machines, as opposed to worrying about the benchmarks. I've worked in 1 TV studio, visisted another, and talked with a few places that do animation and digital video. PC is their primary hardware, by far.
The truth of the matter is that when you get a Mac, you don't really get more than what you'd get with a PC. Firewire (and I can personally attest to this) works great on a PC with Windows 2000 installed. And yes, I do DV work. I don't have stability or maintenance issues. I have more software. I have more plugin support for apps such as After Effects or Lightwave. And I have access to nearly all the hardware that's out there.
Studios that use these machines have similar feelings, but they need to be well supported. They can't afford to hire a team of sysadmins to keep a 100 computer network working. Any big studios are going to have to heavily consider who their vendor is, even if it means a cut in per-machine performance. If Apple comes up and says "it can do what you need it to do, we can fit within your budget, and we'll make sure to keep you running because you're a valued customer" , that is a more valuable proposition than "we're 1.5 times as fast as Mac."
"But I bet he won't stop, the money is too good."
1 379570/qid=1039199736/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/103-247312 5-9558250?v=glance&s=books
He's human. No amount of money can cope with excessive annoyance.
It occurs to me that there may be another way to turn the heat up on him: What if a large group of people was to buy cheap used books at Amazon and ship them to him? I got $20 I'd put into that heh.
Here's one we could send him:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/020
I wonder what'd happen if he recieved a few hundred of those.
"He's going to sue whom? He has to find them first. And then prove that they did it. And prove that he is suffereing damages."
Hopefully when he thinks about that, he'll realize the fundamental problem with a business like that: There's no verification process.
Let me give you an example: I did an experiment with Slashdot a few weeks ago. I created a brand new, never before used email address and made it visible in my info w/o the anti-spam armor. Within days, I was on a mailing list for volunteer fire fighters. Volunteer Firefighters? I'm reaaaaaaaaaaally curious how I ended up with that. heh.
It's too easy to sign up anonymously. Because of that, it's too hard to sue somebody over a stunt like that. Want my opinion? Blast a few other people in the same way until they realize that the only way to deal with this problem is to make the signup process more secure. When that happens, (hopefully) we'll see less unsolicited advertisements.
Maybe I'm too optimistic.
"I don't the OSS would have the slightest idea how to deal with something this big."
What's their incentive to do so? AT&T, on the other hand, makes quite a pretty penny on providing a service people need/want.
"Now most HAM's wouldent intentialy do this (unlike the CB crew) but some will and the legal department of AT&T I'm sure will start sending out nasty grams and trying to get the FCC to knock on peoples doors looking for there HAM liscence."
When you become a HAM Radio Operator, the first second and third rule is "do not jam". They make sure to burn the idea into your brain that you are not to intentionally disrupt other people's transmissions.
The reason that most HAMs wouldn't intentionally jam a signal like that is that the FCC will fine the living hell out of them. Not just that, but the HAM community seriously frowns on that type of behaviour.
"Blah blah corporate rule take over the world why isn't everything free blah blah evil empire conspiracy."
Yeah. It sucks when a company ambitiously sets out to provide a service that people really want, and then has the nerve to charge money for it. Heh. Damn them!!
" I think the best way to get mass market appeal in a setting like this is to add head-to-head Tetris, chess, or checkers to the menu. Girls LOVE Tetris."
You do realize that games like Counterstrike and Quake already have mass market appeal, right? Heh.
Girls only make up half of the population, we don't need them.
"I don't think MS was ever what people wanted. It was closest to what they wanted."
Closest doesn't automatically mean success. The Newton was the only kid on it's block, but it still didn't do so well.
"The parent poster never claimed Windows was the cheapest OS. They claimed that Microsoft rose to get the marketshare they did because of the price of Windows versus the alternatives way back when."
Good luck getting that idea across to everybody. Thanks to the media and general dislike of MS, everybody thinks that they got to the top by putting a gun to everybody's head and forcing them to reach for their wallet. There's little to no understanding that MS got to the top because MS was what the collective people wanted.
"For the vast majority of people, price is way more important than quality. If it's cheap and reasonably useable, people will buy it in large numbers."
Just to add to this idea: specs on a computer are very difficult to wrap your mind around. What is MHZ? What is GBs? What is Megabits? Etc. Lots of people out there just want a computer, and they don't understand why the numbers are important.
To be honest, I think the PC market is suffering from too many choices. Right now, I have a budget for a laptop. But I'm totally stalled on buying one because there are too many trade-offs to make! I'm busy worrying about what it can't do instead of worrying about the important factor: what it can do.
Apple had the right idea with the iMac: make the actual choices few in number. If you think about it, the only real choice to make was what color you wanted. (I'm oversimplifying a bit, but when you compare PC to Mac that really does seem to be the biggest issue.)
I'm not surprised at all by Walmart's success with the product. It takes a while when you first start using a computer to realize what the upgrades actually buy you.
"One wonders if Wal-Mart's bluff on this was simply a ploy to have the prices taken down before the sale and while planning all along to back down later."
If that's true, then they shot themselves in the foot. When the next major retail holiday rolls around, nobody (including FatWallet) will be inclined to take anything down.
"More interesting would be a test of this under high saturation. Current systems are already getting bogged down, reception is getting craps, calls lost, etc"
There are different circumstances with data than there is with voice. With voice, the requirement is that you have a constant connection with a minimum bandwidth and a minimum latency. Standards for data trasmission would be much more relaxed. It's okay to wait a few seconds to get a burst of data. At best, most of the cell phones will be bursty instead of constant download streams.
There are going to be people that use the phone to keep their computer on the net constantly. You can bet, though, that the service providers will provide incentives not to use the internet phone much. For example, they'll charge you by the kilobyte. Maybe one day that'll all be worthwhile, but for the first round I'm reasonably sure that they won't have saturation issues.
I do whole heartedly agree with your 'up to' comment, though. Seems like it'd be more useful to post a practical data average. Of course, they'd inflate that # too. heh.
Don'tcha love marketing?
"The first time I see... some a-hole driving along surfing the web...I'm gonna kill him."
Yeah, because you know how cool cell phone rage is.
"This is not yet a strong enough reason to move to Dallas, though."
In Soviet Russia, there is not yet strong enough reason to move out of Dallas. Heek heek!
"In fact, there's no such thing as "a strong enough reason to move to Dallas.": +1, Funny
"There are precious few reasons strong enough to make one move to Dallas", -1, Troll
Anybody else think that's a little odd? Heh.
Just curious if 3G will jumpstart a faster Bluetooth spec. To the best of my knowledge, Bluetooth isn't capable of reaching 2 megabits.
Right now I have a BT enabled cell phone. I use it as an organizer that syncs up with Outlook on my laptop. I've heard that you can use BT to get an internet connection to the laptop, but I haven't personally verified that. If I could, though, it'd mean that my laptop would be able to get on the net without needing to remove my cell phone from my pocket. One less thing sitting 3 inches from my laptop with a 6' cable attached.
"Sorry if this comes across as flamebait or redundant, but I just think that there's more relevant problems here on Earth that we could fix."
We all have our choices. The reason I chose Seti over cancer is because alien research is underfunded, cancer research is not.