"Oh, and don't even get me started on requirements that belong in cartoons and comic books, not the real world of engineering."
So you bait us with some potentially interesting and funny stories but tell us not to get you started?! Come now cough up on the idiocy, it sounds fun.
"It is a looming inevitability, but media scare-mongering has the average american thinking that something has to be done NOW"
I was under the impression common fucking sense was suggesting it should be NOW?! We dipshit humans wait far far too late on most of our self caused problems, I for one am a believer in global warming and a coming energy crisis. The more these things are planned for, the safer and better everyone is.
and no, I'm not an American nor do I live there (or Canada)
The law of diminishing returns has and will kick in to full effect with movie discs. VHS to DVD was a noticable increase and DVD to Blu ray is possible to notice with either exceptional eyesight and a 42" or mediocre eyesight and 50" (and beyond)
I do believe blu ray will actually end up completely adopted but DVD will linger around for a long long time. The format after blu ray however, if on disc, will definitely flop if all it offers is more resolution.
I agree with you completely, the other problem seems to me that it's about the audacity of the company implimenting the new technology and from that point onwards, what is then perceived to be the standard for consumers.
(Please bear in mind, this is 'to my knowledge' not fact)
In the U.K SMS messages cost about 1p (maybe 2c US or 2c AUD) and they have cost so little afaik since they were first introduced with early digital mobile phones. Now the Aussies in our case, they brought SMS's in for 25c a shot and that's now the 'standard' price we're accustomed to over here, if you tell a user he or she can have 10c SMS's on a 'special plan' which is expensive anyhow, the user perceive value in that - sad but true. (FWIW we do have a few unlimited SMS plans I believe but they are not cheap and furthermore your 'average' mobile plan still charge a nice cushy 25c for SMS)
The same is true for the states, you guys have a perceived 'standard' for your mobile phones which you're then happy to pay despite some aspects being completely outrageous in other countries. (paying to RECEIVE a call = what.the.expletive...!?!)
The same can be said for most things, you guys are accustomed to your incredibly expensive medical system whereas over here in Australia, things are much much muchcheaper (although the slimy bastards want ours to become like yours) The real problem here people is the internet, it's allowing us all to speak with people in other countries and discover things from other countries at the drop of a hat, very very easily. To be honest I'd almost rather bury my head in the sand than actually know that the UK get such cheap SMS's because there's little chance in hell it will be implimented over here yet I still have to hear of people paying stuff all for SMS.
Essentially, I want my quad core machine, with 4gb of ram, 18mbit DSL medium latency line (minimum 80ms being ADSL) to feel like the hardware it is. I want each tab to be running in a different process, so when one tab calls a a nasty plugin which locks the browser for 30 seconds, it's still usable.
I have major problems with paypal. I've never been scammed but I've heard they frequently favour the buyer over the seller (I'm a seller)
My real issue is the god damned *expletive* fees. For an ONLINE system which costs them absoloutely stuff all to run (when you factor in the quantity of auctions on the system) the prices are ridiculously high. They could take.01% of all auctions and still make a killing, they don't though, not even close.
I really wish I purchased ebay shares long long ago.
Oh I couldn't agree with you more, my god I couldn't at all!
I am what's often reffered to as a 'whining pussy' - I hate to admit it but it's true. Sunburn, itching, aches, all kinds of things bug me and I find pain to be an absoloute well pain.
For example, I hurt my back (pinched a nerve perhaps) about 2 years ago and I suffered a 'twanging' pain if I moved the wrong way, very very frequently throughout the day. So I could sit (as I write and you read this) quite comfortably, not a pain in the world, then move to pick up a coffee cup and get a small but short sharp pain, most 'men' could deal with this fine but as I said I'm a pussy:(
This brought no end of misery to me for about 6 weeks, absoloute misery - I really thought that for the rest of my life I would be in pain, I'm not accustomed to this. Perhaps it's a result of being a gen X who was brought up in a fairly soft world, not enough discipline and hard work (I admit it, sadly) so my threshold of patience and tolerance to pain as well as other things is frankly far far too low.
The pain did eventually go away but I can imagine old age and pains as you describe, taking the 'joy' out of life to be nothing short of misery, I would love for this not to be an option, sadly I'm skeptical. It remains to be seen however if having pain and dealing with it, isn't one of those things which strengthens people up in life and is a positive influence, frankly I wouldn't be surprised.
I couldn't agree more. I'm someone who frequently goes through phases of playing games and watching TV shows religiously, while eating bad food and / or drinking heavily on the weekends, gaining huge amounts of weight and moping / sulking around. Then after a few months I will reverse the situation, eat healthily, excercise and generally lead a 'normal' lifestyle, until it breaks again. I definitely know a deeper problem is at hand than just having an addtive personality.
I have been smart enough to avoid WOW though, I know that game would destroy me.
Perhaps my googling and wikipedia skills are off the mark but I was looking up large buildings just earlier this week and that solar tower in Australia seems to be on hold / cancelled.
Last info I could find mentioned the company attempting to do the same thing but in texas now, infact that entire project has been quiet / off the grid for maybe over a year.
If that's wrong, what else on the list isn't happening?
I couldn't agree more, I want an incredibly incredibly snappy browser, I don't care how much resources it requires.
I have a theory and I'm convinced of this theory that cache in browsers simply has been broken, since the beggining I've used netscape, ie, ffox, netcaptor and god knows what else and no matter how big I set the cache or how regularly I hit sites, they still seem slow to load images and content.
Perhaps it's the complexity of the pages has scaled up, I spose that is possible. I've gone from browsing on a Pentium 166mmx with 32mb over the years up to a quad core 3.2ghz machine with 4gb of ram and moved from 128k dsl / 512k dsl / 1.5mbit dsl / 8mbit dsl and 18mbit dsl.
I am impatient, make no mistake but surely if we're just throwing images and text around, these damned things should be snappier? FFox 3 is definitely a move in the right direction, it's noticably faster than FFox 2 but I still find moving back / forward, clicking links and interaction in general should still be faster:/
I wanted that thing since I first ever saw it in a catalogue, you could totally tell it was by far the most awesome battleship ever made. I did have this baby http://www.brickset.com/detail.aspx?Set=6985-1 which was an awesome set (bloody heavy too) but it was clearly a science vessel and damnit if I didn't want 6980.
Why are people modding this down, just because it's an AC? Stop with the AC hate for no apparent reason. If an AC makes a stupid post, mark it as such, if you read this post it's a pretty valid question, is it not?
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I don't know much about this stuff, so I likely am) but isn't multi-casting an ipv6 thing? If so, I'd wait another 5 or 10 years, because ipv6 adoption (like many things humans do) is going to be slow until it's urgent.
I love the ideals of OSS, I love the hippie side of it, it's utopian it's grand and it's great, the whole concept is brilliant. Linux is fantastic for free, no doubt about it.
The problem is in order for a product to beat another product it needs to be substantially better. Here's an example, AMD CPU's had a piss poor name for many many years amongst the mainstream and the enthusiasts to an extent, there was a few of using them, despite the lower cost, they simply weren't compelling enough.
You need to offer MORE for LESS in order for a product to 'win' AMD finally released the X2's when Intel could only offer the toasty hot P4's - for about 18 months AMD finally had the clearly superior product and initially at a better price too if I recall. This and only this finally swayed people over, their name was finally clear.
If you people want linux to beat Windows, it needs to not be 'as good' it needs to be better AND easier AND faster AND cheaper - ridiculous expectations, YES! but this is what idiot consumers (and myself to be frank) need, once these are all finally accomplished users will move en masse to linux. Much like the new macs, they may be pricier but they are substantially easier / simpler to work with, that convienience is what users want.
I've been building my own machines since I was 14 years old, I ran DOS 5, I ran DOS 6.22, I ran 3.11 etc - I'm not a 'dummy user' by any means, sure I can't code but I'm not an idiot. None the less linux still continues to be a box of mystery to me, (partial lazyness, I admit) it's a huge uphill battle and honestly I have to ask if the plethora of options available hinder rather than help linux adoption in general.
FWIW I think Vista is an absoloute piece of shit, I detest that operating system, but XP is ideal, it has issues, no doubt but once setup properly it's fast, simple, easy and in my opinion substantially less bugs to boot.
I don't know how many times I need to post this or link to my old posts or whatever.
I do not care WHAT Vista does under the hood which is better, I don't care how many rumours and myths you debunk, I do not argue with those, Vista's 'core engine' may well be better for security, drivers, stability or reliability in the long term. Vistas performance may be better on a high end machine once the silly caching and search / index tools have finally finished thrashing the drive- I'll EVEN let those bloody things slide.
The problem is that Vista's front end UI is FLAWED and BROKEN. There are NUMEROUS bugs with Windows Explorer, they are absoloutely insanely goddamned frustrating, the UI is _worse_ without any doubt in my mind than the XP Windows Explorer.
The majority of business's I've worked at use XP's classic interface as it's simple, fast and well known. They would very likely do the same for Vista, which is of course a problem since it's BROKEN.
There's refresh issues on folder selection, there's it not remembering settings in certain views, there's simple stuff like poor design (not bugs) which is infuriating.
As a very very heavy explorer user, I can not and will not put up with Windows Vista explorer, period, it's an absoloute clusterfuck for anyone who actually wants to USE the OS and manipulate files.
Time and time again people claim that Vista naysayers are idiots or some such, I firmly believe these people use applications only (probably firefox and counterstrike) and nothing else.......they don't actually USE the damned operating system for the functionality it should provide.
No, the Americans spell 'aluminum' differently - that's fine, if they want to do that, weird but fine. Solder however is spelt 'solder' but they chose to omit the L for some strange unknown reason and well it just sounds stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
"Oh, and don't even get me started on requirements that belong in cartoons and comic books, not the real world of engineering."
So you bait us with some potentially interesting and funny stories but tell us not to get you started?!
Come now cough up on the idiocy, it sounds fun.
I have those pics on CD actually - 3 copies infact.
I can never ever take those pictures again - it's simply not possible.
That being said, I really should just get rid of them, 'trophies' are a burden.
(course it'd break my heart if I lost the damn things)
"It is a looming inevitability, but media scare-mongering has the average american thinking that something has to be done NOW"
I was under the impression common fucking sense was suggesting it should be NOW?!
We dipshit humans wait far far too late on most of our self caused problems, I for one am a believer in global warming and a coming energy crisis.
The more these things are planned for, the safer and better everyone is.
and no, I'm not an American nor do I live there (or Canada)
The law of diminishing returns has and will kick in to full effect with movie discs.
VHS to DVD was a noticable increase and DVD to Blu ray is possible to notice with either exceptional eyesight and a 42" or mediocre eyesight and 50" (and beyond)
I do believe blu ray will actually end up completely adopted but DVD will linger around for a long long time.
The format after blu ray however, if on disc, will definitely flop if all it offers is more resolution.
About four foot one, but only if it's jolly, jolly good content.
I agree with you completely, the other problem seems to me that it's about the audacity of the company implimenting the new technology and from that point onwards, what is then perceived to be the standard for consumers.
(Please bear in mind, this is 'to my knowledge' not fact)
In the U.K SMS messages cost about 1p (maybe 2c US or 2c AUD) and they have cost so little afaik since they were first introduced with early digital mobile phones.
Now the Aussies in our case, they brought SMS's in for 25c a shot and that's now the 'standard' price we're accustomed to over here, if you tell a user he or she can have 10c SMS's on a 'special plan' which is expensive anyhow, the user perceive value in that - sad but true.
(FWIW we do have a few unlimited SMS plans I believe but they are not cheap and furthermore your 'average' mobile plan still charge a nice cushy 25c for SMS)
The same is true for the states, you guys have a perceived 'standard' for your mobile phones which you're then happy to pay despite some aspects being completely outrageous in other countries.
(paying to RECEIVE a call = what.the.expletive...!?!)
The same can be said for most things, you guys are accustomed to your incredibly expensive medical system whereas over here in Australia, things are much much muchcheaper (although the slimy bastards want ours to become like yours)
The real problem here people is the internet, it's allowing us all to speak with people in other countries and discover things from other countries at the drop of a hat, very very easily. To be honest I'd almost rather bury my head in the sand than actually know that the UK get such cheap SMS's because there's little chance in hell it will be implimented over here yet I still have to hear of people paying stuff all for SMS.
Performance performance performance performance, performance performance performance performance, p...
Essentially, I want my quad core machine, with 4gb of ram, 18mbit DSL medium latency line (minimum 80ms being ADSL) to feel like the hardware it is.
I want each tab to be running in a different process, so when one tab calls a a nasty plugin which locks the browser for 30 seconds, it's still usable.
Much like this post I made only days ago.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=594055&cid=23926639
I have major problems with paypal.
I've never been scammed but I've heard they frequently favour the buyer over the seller (I'm a seller)
My real issue is the god damned *expletive* fees. .01% of all auctions and still make a killing, they don't though, not even close.
For an ONLINE system which costs them absoloutely stuff all to run (when you factor in the quantity of auctions on the system) the prices are ridiculously high.
They could take
I really wish I purchased ebay shares long long ago.
Correct, infact a penguin in the northern hemisphere will spontaneously turn inside out, quite messy business I hear.
Oh I couldn't agree with you more, my god I couldn't at all!
I am what's often reffered to as a 'whining pussy' - I hate to admit it but it's true.
Sunburn, itching, aches, all kinds of things bug me and I find pain to be an absoloute well pain.
For example, I hurt my back (pinched a nerve perhaps) about 2 years ago and I suffered a 'twanging' pain if I moved the wrong way, very very frequently throughout the day. :(
So I could sit (as I write and you read this) quite comfortably, not a pain in the world, then move to pick up a coffee cup and get a small but short sharp pain, most 'men' could deal with this fine but as I said I'm a pussy
This brought no end of misery to me for about 6 weeks, absoloute misery - I really thought that for the rest of my life I would be in pain, I'm not accustomed to this.
Perhaps it's a result of being a gen X who was brought up in a fairly soft world, not enough discipline and hard work (I admit it, sadly) so my threshold of patience and tolerance to pain as well as other things is frankly far far too low.
The pain did eventually go away but I can imagine old age and pains as you describe, taking the 'joy' out of life to be nothing short of misery, I would love for this not to be an option, sadly I'm skeptical.
It remains to be seen however if having pain and dealing with it, isn't one of those things which strengthens people up in life and is a positive influence, frankly I wouldn't be surprised.
I couldn't agree more.
I'm someone who frequently goes through phases of playing games and watching TV shows religiously, while eating bad food and / or drinking heavily on the weekends, gaining huge amounts of weight and moping / sulking around. Then after a few months I will reverse the situation, eat healthily, excercise and generally lead a 'normal' lifestyle, until it breaks again.
I definitely know a deeper problem is at hand than just having an addtive personality.
I have been smart enough to avoid WOW though, I know that game would destroy me.
Perhaps my googling and wikipedia skills are off the mark but I was looking up large buildings just earlier this week and that solar tower in Australia seems to be on hold / cancelled.
Last info I could find mentioned the company attempting to do the same thing but in texas now, infact that entire project has been quiet / off the grid for maybe over a year.
If that's wrong, what else on the list isn't happening?
I couldn't agree more, I want an incredibly incredibly snappy browser, I don't care how much resources it requires.
I have a theory and I'm convinced of this theory that cache in browsers simply has been broken, since the beggining
I've used netscape, ie, ffox, netcaptor and god knows what else and no matter how big I set the cache or how regularly I hit sites, they still seem slow to load images and content.
Perhaps it's the complexity of the pages has scaled up, I spose that is possible.
I've gone from browsing on a Pentium 166mmx with 32mb over the years up to a quad core 3.2ghz machine with 4gb of ram and moved from 128k dsl / 512k dsl / 1.5mbit dsl / 8mbit dsl and 18mbit dsl.
I am impatient, make no mistake but surely if we're just throwing images and text around, these damned things should be snappier? :/
FFox 3 is definitely a move in the right direction, it's noticably faster than FFox 2 but I still find moving back / forward, clicking links and interaction in general should still be faster
http://images.google.com/images?q=6980%20lego&hl=en
I wanted that thing since I first ever saw it in a catalogue, you could totally tell it was by far the most awesome battleship ever made.
I did have this baby http://www.brickset.com/detail.aspx?Set=6985-1 which was an awesome set (bloody heavy too) but it was clearly a science vessel and damnit if I didn't want 6980.
Oh the memories.
Interesting, I'd heard there was some kind of iso loader to run copied games themselves but clearly not - probably best in Nintendos favour to boot.
Does this allow you to play imported or backed up games or only homebrew, I'm still not entirely sure what the point of it is?
If I recall, someone dug up an old picture of the IE cake, because that happened several years ago and some chump on digg just re-submitted it.
Unless they've now sent 2 cakes - either way it was done several years ago for FFox 1.5? or 1.0, I can't recall precisely.
Why are people modding this down, just because it's an AC? Stop with the AC hate for no apparent reason.
If an AC makes a stupid post, mark it as such, if you read this post it's a pretty valid question, is it not?
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I don't know much about this stuff, so I likely am) but isn't multi-casting an ipv6 thing?
If so, I'd wait another 5 or 10 years, because ipv6 adoption (like many things humans do) is going to be slow until it's urgent.
You pro-linux people absoloutely crack me up.
I love the ideals of OSS, I love the hippie side of it, it's utopian it's grand and it's great, the whole concept is brilliant.
Linux is fantastic for free, no doubt about it.
The problem is in order for a product to beat another product it needs to be substantially better.
Here's an example, AMD CPU's had a piss poor name for many many years amongst the mainstream and the enthusiasts to an extent, there was a few of using them, despite the lower cost, they simply weren't compelling enough.
You need to offer MORE for LESS in order for a product to 'win'
AMD finally released the X2's when Intel could only offer the toasty hot P4's - for about 18 months AMD finally had the clearly superior product and initially at a better price too if I recall.
This and only this finally swayed people over, their name was finally clear.
If you people want linux to beat Windows, it needs to not be 'as good' it needs to be better AND easier AND faster AND cheaper - ridiculous expectations, YES! but this is what idiot consumers (and myself to be frank) need, once these are all finally accomplished users will move en masse to linux.
Much like the new macs, they may be pricier but they are substantially easier / simpler to work with, that convienience is what users want.
I've been building my own machines since I was 14 years old, I ran DOS 5, I ran DOS 6.22, I ran 3.11 etc - I'm not a 'dummy user' by any means, sure I can't code but I'm not an idiot.
None the less linux still continues to be a box of mystery to me, (partial lazyness, I admit) it's a huge uphill battle and honestly I have to ask if the plethora of options available hinder rather than help linux adoption in general.
FWIW I think Vista is an absoloute piece of shit, I detest that operating system, but XP is ideal, it has issues, no doubt but once setup properly it's fast, simple, easy and in my opinion substantially less bugs to boot.
I will seriously consider a mac if they don't replace XP with something decent. and I can assure you all, I'm in no way a mac fanboy.
Wow, I'd never heard of this, thanks for bringing it to our attention.
I don't know how many times I need to post this or link to my old posts or whatever.
I do not care WHAT Vista does under the hood which is better, I don't care how many rumours and myths you debunk, I do not argue with those, Vista's 'core engine' may well be better for security, drivers, stability or reliability in the long term.
Vistas performance may be better on a high end machine once the silly caching and search / index tools have finally finished thrashing the drive- I'll EVEN let those bloody things slide.
The problem is that Vista's front end UI is FLAWED and BROKEN.
There are NUMEROUS bugs with Windows Explorer, they are absoloutely insanely goddamned frustrating, the UI is _worse_ without any doubt in my mind than the XP Windows Explorer.
The majority of business's I've worked at use XP's classic interface as it's simple, fast and well known.
They would very likely do the same for Vista, which is of course a problem since it's BROKEN.
There's refresh issues on folder selection, there's it not remembering settings in certain views, there's simple stuff like poor design (not bugs) which is infuriating.
As a very very heavy explorer user, I can not and will not put up with Windows Vista explorer, period, it's an absoloute clusterfuck for anyone who actually wants to USE the OS and manipulate files.
Time and time again people claim that Vista naysayers are idiots or some such, I firmly believe these people use applications only (probably firefox and counterstrike) and nothing else.......they don't actually USE the damned operating system for the functionality it should provide.
No, the Americans spell 'aluminum' differently - that's fine, if they want to do that, weird but fine.
Solder however is spelt 'solder' but they chose to omit the L for some strange unknown reason and well it just sounds stupid.
John, if you're reading you'd probably be one of the better people to drop some comments here.