Oh? I can't run linux as root?
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Check out Lindows. I dare you:P
Under windows you don't have to run as admin.
Under linux you can run everything as root. (actually a few programs detect it and refuse to run but that is besides the point.)
About the only difference is that it is a whole lot easier under linux to work as a user and if and when you need root to simply open a terminal and become one. Please note that this may be out of date but I remember that in windows if you need admin privileges you need to logout and switch to the admin user. You can't open an admin session within your user session.
But just as windows has a lot of programs that don't "work" when you are not the admin there are a few to many linux programs that like to have sudo. If a clueless person was told that cool new game needed sudo do you think that would stop him and ask, hmmm why?
So apart from making it easier to run as a user and root only when needed and without having to close your current desktop (think about how importance this is. I browse a website for some admin help. I find out how to do it. but learn that I need to become root/admin to do it. On linux I simply leave the browser open running as a user and open a terminal and become root then do the instructions from the webpage. On windows I gotta logout/switch loosing me the webpage and then log in as admin. I then gotta reopen the webpage the BROWSER RUNNING AS ADMIN and then do the instructions. But NOW THE BROWSER IS RUNNING AS ADMIN.)
But a clueless person can still screwup his linux install. Never underestimate stupidity.
I don't know much about ancient wars so lets take the normandy invasion instead. Exactly why was Omaha so damn hard? I wasn't there so I have to go by people telling me about it and re-enactments in movies and documenturies.
If you watch "The longest day" you might get the idea that Omaha was the only defended beach and that all the others were a cakewalk. You see some brits fall down but no actual fighting. No germans to be seen. DESPITE the fact that the opening bit of the movie (with the fat german and the angry frenchman) seems to take place there and you can see german bunkers in the background. Reason I believe that scene is at the british sector because the frenchmen laters shows up with a bottle of wine. So either the movie is badly directed or there were german defences at the other beaches.
So what is the truth?
In a documentury about Hobarts funnies you see actual war footage that shows the brits did encounter serious resistance but that those funny inventions did amazing good work. At the end it is said that the americans did not use these special devices and tanks.
Is this the truth? That the british had heavy support where the americans only had soldiers?
But wait. In the movie "The longest day" you see the french assault on casino. At the end of the battle a tank comes to the rescue and it is a strange tank indeed. It got somekind of rubber ring around it. What is this? Well it was a flotation device. Pulled up it would reach above the tank and allow it to float like a boat. The high waterline helping to conceal the tank. One of hobarts funnies.
Another documentary investigates these floating tanks and it shows that america did use a couple of these. However where the british apparently used sailors as part of the crew the americans only had soldiers on them. The tanks were immensily powerfull and clever but had one fatal weakness. The side of the floatation ring was incredibly weak. Even a very small wave could break it. So the tanks had to go with the surf and could not allow themselves to go sideways with the waves crashing into the sides.
Sadly the tank crews did not now this not being sailors and instead tried to navigate to a point on the beach hoping to land in the right area. Ended up with the waves coming in to their side, the waves going over and the tanks sinking. Every last one of them.
If the tanks had arrived safely then the germans would have seen only a rowboat like construction until the tank was on the beach and dropped its skirt to reveal 1 cannon and 3 machine guns at point blank range to their bunkers. Me thinks that would have made a big difference. Can't machine gun a tank and mortars are not the most efficient weapon against them. They would certainly have drawn a lot of fire from the other landing boats and their human cargo.
So is this the final truth? That omaha was the slaughter it was because the troops were supposed to land with tank support and they didn't? That the other beaches where won by using technology and the americans in fact mounted a WW1 style human wave assault against entrenched machine guns?
Perhaps. Except one thing. Exactly how many canons and anti-tank weapons were there there at the beaches? None of the documenturies really seem to go into detail as to how many british tanks were destroyed. The re-encacted war footage and real war footage doesn't show a lot of cannons at omaha. Or at all. It would be terrible to think that the germans would have had no way to counter an assault by half a dozen tanks and that these tanks would have had easy pickings of the bunkers.
Thousands died only because the american command was uncapable of regonizing modern technology and using it properly.
Of course this is just my interpretation of it. But I think I have proven that 3 different interpretations excist supported by historians. None of them tell the whole story. Most of them even lie or let facts out. The longest day doesn't show those tanks as part of the american assault and the documentur
Isn't that the ideal of OpenBSD
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Or one of the BSD's at least? Not sure as I don't use it.
Anyway linux isn't anymore secure or insecure then windows. It is just that most linux users got a tiny bit of a clue. But a cluefull person could also be able to setup a secure windows machine.
I keep waiting for MS to be really smart and adopt a more gentoo like approach to new windows installations. A very real problem is that a new "legal" installation is unpacthced and will not survive long enough to download patches. But this is only because MS doesn't have "download latest software" stage in its installation.
Let me explain. The entire windows problem is that it has software with security holes in listening mode before you are fully patched. When you install gentoo you download a sorta up-to-date CD with a very basic linux install. If you boot the CD you got a working linux cli but nothing extra it won't be running any listening services. So even if the machine is connected directly to the internet there is no way to attack it. No software listening to ports == no way to attack. Only way to install a listening piece of software is to download the latest fully patched software and run it by choice.
So why does MS not do this as well. A new Windows install doesn't open any listening ports UNTIL it has downloaded the latest patches.
Well the answer is of course probably very simple. It would make windows look "hard" to use. MS loves to promote the image of a click and drool OS. While the unpatched listening software is a problem just as big a problem is that the average windows user will click and drool on anything.
Note my use of "legal" installations. If you bought XP then you got a CD that when installed will give you a totally insecure system. If you pirated XP then just download a version with the Service Packs included. Yet another case where piracy really pays.
George Lucas entire idea of good vs evil is that evil gets to possesive. Anakin goes to the dark side because he can't let go. He explains this in great detail in some interviews. But now look at George Lucas himself. Can he let Star Wars go? Can he say, okay I done what I can now let someone else take over? Nope.
The above person would have been an outcast, the mad old hermit. The house avoided by the kids, that parents warn not to go near too. Then one day the police break open the door to investigate the smell and a rotting corpse is found.
We either stand together or we shall all hang seperatly. This is usually used in big nobel speeches about human rights. It is just as important when it comes to your town.
Note that I don't care what the above person chooses to do. Just that those that choose to be parents need to realize what parenting is. And that city planners need to realize that just creating a new suburb in the middle of nowhere can create a very sterile and unnatural place for childeren to grow up in. People become people by watching other people be people. In short kids learn from older kids. Remove that at your peril.
Oh and the temper tantrums he complains about? A kid growing up alone does that. Do it in a group of other childeren and the child soon will learn that it accomplishes nothing. Be a pest and you will spend a lot of time playing alone or you will just be clobbered. Only bad parents tolerate tantrums.
Guys that in western media are geeks and incapable of even getting the ugly girl in japanese anime are often the center of a harem while it is the jocks that get ignored. Only in Japan eh. Well anime anyway, japanese live action doesn't follow that at all. I guess that shows that in japan geeks are a big enough market to aim programs at.
MS has itself admitted that its mediaplayer phoned home with the info of wich DVD you were watching. Complete with identifiable information. An accident they called it. They really didn't mean to do it. Of course they claimed this AFTER someone else proved they did. MS own quality QA didn't detect it. Or so they claim. (It called home to get info about the DVD you were watching, was the excuse, to give you a better viewing experience. Whenever someone wants to give me a better experience my paranoia rises through the roof)
Now go to court and demand they pay damages. Good luck.
More and more parents are not doing their job instead shoving the parenting responsibilty onto others. Two extreme examples. 1: Some immigrants from shall we say more traditional countries are complaining in holland that their kids are undisciplined. In their view it is the state via the police and schools that should teach discipline and they are suprised dutch teachers are not allowed to beat kids. (Note that it is not an immigrant issue, school beatings were only recently outlawed in england)
Second example, a recent investigation by a bbc program into daycare nurseries. With an undercover worker they intended to show how bad the care was. Except that I as an old angry white male couln't see what the problem was half of the time. The kids being left alone or in the care of untrained staff that sure is bad. A kid somehow managing to burn its hand very very badly on a radiator (sounds unlikely since anything with a spinalcord would yerk the hands back long before it could burn so badly) that is bad too.
A child being told of for being a pest sounds like teaching the kid a little bit of discipline. No you are not allowed to be a pest to everyone now go play alone until you can play together.
Apparently this is not "right" anymore.
But parenting is not just the parents. It is society as well. I don't mean the complex society, I mean the people in your neighbourhood. I grew up in an old part of town with a whole mix of people. As I grew up it became one of the bigger town in but when I grew up a few houses down was a working farm. So we had the very very old to the very very young. Kids weren't just raised by their parents they were raised as much by the older kids in the neighbourhood. Those unlucky to grow up 4-5 years behind a group of girls never learned to walk until ten being carried everywhere. I watched my sister and in turn was watched by an older girl. It was as normal to get a bandaid from a young girl as from your own mother.
The idea that nowadays both parents work and they don't take care of their kid is wrong. My mother worked and in general most of the mothers did now I think about it. Certainly the farmers wife did. It was just that they made sure there always were enough people around to watch over things. I can't remember ever having been left alone for real. There always was someone responsible around.
Much later I lived for a while in almere. Wich is a very new city and I noticed something. There was a very distinct age border with the kids playing. These kids did not grow up with older kids. No older kids to teach/show them what is and what isn't done.
Where I currently live is a small group of kids in a mostly single household area and they are between 7-10 yrs old. During the summer days they do never leave the street they live in, no kids around to go play with. Their parents don't seem intrestted in taking them somewhere or even playing with them. Their is large park extremely close yet it is rarely used.
Maybe I am just old but I think my childhood was a lot better. I learned not to bully because the kid you bully would have an older brother/sister/nephew/etc. But you also stood up for the younger ones in turn. It was a community.
Every child will go through a hurting other people stage. They simply will not have learned yet that kicking someone hurts. The old way of teaching that is hurting the child back. Not a beating but a hard slap on the leg will soon teach it that kicking other people is bad. If for no other reason then that you will be hurt in turn. Not very nice but it works. Current more PC educators seem not to agree. Problem? There methods don't work.
So I don't think video games are that much of a problem. They are merely an excuse. Sorta like don't kill people they just make it a lot easier.
Kids being not raised by parents who have not been raised because all the parents want to be their kids friends or worse don't want to be parents. Take the recent so-called x-box murder. This has nothing to do with x
You can only pull this kinda crap (that MS has been proven and even admitted to of having done) when your sure it is the other guy that is blamed. Kinda like when IE fails to load a page it is the websites fault but when Mozilla fails to load a page it is Mozilla's fault.
OS/2 has been killed but it is still being used. Those customers are smart enough to know that any problems are not OS/2 fault but MS. Since MS wants them at one time or another to switch it is probably not to wise to alienate them by showing them how buggy MS software is. Once they switched and are totally locked in THEN you spring the bugs on them. It helps sell the next version. Just explain to me exactly why I should have upgraded from Win95? What exactly has been added that is so helpfull? Stability? Stabilty is a bug, it should have been fixed in a patch.
The last thing OSS needs is a half-assed linux vendor. Now unisys is a windows only company and everyone knows it. They can add linux as an option but always pitch windows as the better solution. This allows them a foot in the door in cases where the requirement is unix or opensource. Once you got a foot in the door you can sell them practically anything.
As the guy from unisys himself said, there are many contracts they can't even bid on. Now they can but what they are really selling is windows controlling some linux. If other comments are correct buying one of these machines running linux you still need windows to control it. And of course they will be only to willing to help you go back to pure windows.
No, as others said, with friends like these who needs enemies.
Dutch social services has started to realize that if your at the poverty line for a long time the old fridge breaks down and it becomes impossible to replace it.
It now has the option to give people household equipment if replacing old stuff themselves proves to be impossible. Sounds nice? Well not all that much since being able to "save" money is considered an indicator that you are to rich for social services. Lost you job but got say 2000 in savings? First consume the savings then come back.
But programs like in this article may be needed. It sounds like part of it is budgetting. Working out what is the best buy is not all that easy. And while I am the last to suggest that poverty == stupid it is not unreasonable to think that many poor people did not do well in school (if parents were poor there may have been no money for quality schooling).
but poor is also having to buy crap. Terry Pratchet put a very nice simple example in one of his books. He has one character draw the difference between a rich man buying 1 pair of expensive quality boots that last a life time and a poor man only being able to buy cheap boots that last a year and barely keep you dry during that year. In the end the poor man spends more in a lifetime AND got wet feet.
That is the problem about being poor that "rich" people don't get. Not even if they had a "poor" period (typically they claim they had no money while being a student). Why don't they get it? Because they don't need to replace anything in that time. The bed the "rich" kid got from home when he wen't out of the house will last him a couple of years till he finished study and has found a job.
The poor kid's bed is already at the end of its live. Same with washing machines (Is it only in holland that the kid moving out gets the old one while the parents buy a new one?) a tv, a car, furniture, anything.
Poverty really starts to show its teeth when things start breaking down. The washing machine breaks and you don't have the money to replace it, worse you now need to use the laundromat wich is more expensive preventing you from saving up for a new one. It also takes more time, time you can no longer spend improving your lot.
Social services in the Netherlands are beginning to get this. That it may be all very nice to give just enough money to survive and perhaps a little bit more but that it ain't enough for those who can't get out (remember that unemployment is good for business, full employment would mean it is a workers job market. See bubble on what happens then) of their situation. So they now make it possible under certain circumstances to get washing machines, fridges and other household equipment.
The above poster if obviously a "rich" person who doesn't get it. He mentions that having a car makes you rich. He forgets that a car may be essential for having a job. Public transport is great if you work in a office block and work 9-5. If you clean that office then you may find that all the buses stop running after 5. Or that your work is in a factory in the middle of nowwhere and the shift starts at 6. Long before their is anykind of public transport service. Even if your shift neatly fall in public tranportation times that may make it impossible to do overtime if your shift ends 5 minutes before the last bus.
So he got it exactly the wrong way around. Being able NOT to have a car shows your "rich".
So get a cheap old car? Cheap old cars break down more often and consume more fuel. Worse, in high paying jobs you may have "flexible" hours. Factory shifts tend to rely on everyone being on time.
A tv is the only form of information/entertainment the poor can "afford". Go to the library and read a book? Check opening times of the local branch library. Oh the city branch has evening opening times? And how do you get there?
Being poor is constantly being constrained by money for a long time (10yrs+). That is where the real problems occur that are hardest to spot and hardest to get for politicians. "Rich" people just don't get it. They can't, it would be like expecting men to understand the feelings of motherhood.
Sadly goverment is formed by the "rich". Even the "socialist" goverments, just check on how many of even the most socialist parties had to survive at or below the poverty line during they youth for long periods.
So please ignore the above poster. He ain't got a clue, he is just a little rich boy who doesn't realize how good he has it. Being poor is not having no money this month. Being poor is not having enough money for live. Think of it as a company operating at a loss. No problem so long as you can make up for the loss by the profits in the past, kinda like Sun is doing now. But if you never had profits you can't do that. Human beings don't go bankrupt, they just slowly die. Poor people live significantly shorter then "rich" people.
Ehm, try both linux and bsd? The processors named are not exactly that rare. Both are supported by linux and maybe bsd.
Europe to repeat sales? Don't think so.
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How many people do you think managed to hold out waiting for the game to finally come into the shops? While being discussed over and over and over on the Net we europeans are just supposed to wait? Wait to spend 50bucks or get it free now?
The people at ID are complete and utter morons. Movies have shown that it is possible to have a worldwide release AND that it cuts down on piracy.
I hold out a week before I finally downloaded Doom3. There is no reason for the delay. Piracy has many many reasons but restricting supply is clearly a stupid mistake to make by the supplier.
Content owners pay attention. If your product has worldwide appeal make sure you sell it to the world. It goes from movies, don't make us have to stop reading the web for 6 months just to avoid spoilers, it goes for tv-series, waiting for the latest star trek can take years, and it goes for games. Get the goddamn fucking product out there.
Worse when it finally arrives it will have a manual in dutch (manual for doom?) that is badly translated, imporatant keywords translated inaccuratly, tech info in english, with no support and a total amateur publisher site.
In worst cases updates never get translated to the european version or at minimum you have to play a guessing game wich version you have.
Screw it. I waited for a week with the cash in my pocket. I surrendered and downloaded and finished the game. Smart move ID. 50 euro you won't see.
In europe it is being looked at wether SUV and their kind should even be allowed on the roads. They are to lethal in accidents both to other vehicles but especially to pedestrians.
It would be a very sad development if we get an arms race on the roads. Needing ever heavier vehicles just to survive. Perhaps we should do like germany has done with motorcycles. You need a higher license for a heavier car and a proven record of safe driving.
The entire idea of the olympics is a joke anyway. Peace and mutual understanding through sports? HA. Yeah then please explain to me why each countries media only focusses on their own athletes and on how many medals they will win. It is just a giant ego contest.
Then you got tiny countries competing with giants, some of who can afford to spend huge sums of money on training and some who can't. Add events that some countries just can't train, bit hard to learn to sail in a landlocked desert, and what is the point.
Open up the drugs and lets see what we can do to the human body eh? Doctors have to be very carefull in human testing of new drugs but here you got a bunch of idiots^H^H^H^H^H^Hvolunteers who happily pump themselves full of the latest medicine. Most of these performance enhancing drugs can be used in real medicine.
Lets try muscle building medicine in those without social value ehm, in athletes and if it works we can use it in people struck with disease.
The games ain't fair anyway, if they are all pumped up at least that bit balances out.
Why? Because Dungeon & Dragons is used while there is no need for it.
What does D&D do exactly. It creates a ruleset for imaginary characters to behave in a fictional world. So it has rules stating that for each point of strength you have you can lift X amount of goods. That before you can do action X you need skills Y and Z. Nothing wrong with this being used in computer games right?
Wrong. D&D does something else as well. It has carefully twisted and tweaked the rules to be playable with nothing more then a piece of paper a pencil and some dice. This means that the calculations used are kinda simplified, way more simple then a modern computer could handle. It would be like playing a modern flight simulator but for some reason restricting your self to a flight model wich can be calculated by hand. Why? We have a bloody computer. Doing complex math and keeping track of stats is what it does best. Let the CPU sweat.
So if the D&D rules lost their pencil&paper&dice simplifications/optimizations then it would be perfect right?
Wrong. D&D games have something a computer does not have. A sentient game controller. Even if dungeon master is using a boxed adventure he will/should have the capability to adjust the game on the fly to the party playing it. If the thief of the party isn't there any half decent game master will of course quickly add a way around a crucial lock. If a roll fails that is going to kill the adventure to early or a party fails to pick up a clue he will make a choice wether he had enough or to step in and help out. An extra NPC helping in a fight, a monster that stumbles. Or just cut things short if the party is getting bored. The computer has no such capability. It can't adjust the game because it will never detect the need for it.
So if the ruleset started to make full use of the CPU capabilities and the game had godlike scripting to adjust the game to the player it would be good right?
WRONG. D&D has yet one more difference. D&D is a social game, you play it in a group. It is the going on an adventure together that makes Pen&Paper RPG's fun. But it also means a lot of the rules are there to make everyone a "equal" member of the party. No super powerfull everything devastating wizards wiping the battlefield clean while the thief is running for his life from everything bigger then a rat. The most famous adventure party, the fellowship of the ring, would be hard to put in D&D rules. Exactly what is the problem with a healing thief. A sword wielding wizard? Why am I so restricted in my classes? Simple, so that I need the other players in my party. BUT computer games are solo afairs. I am the hero, I am the center of the story, the universe revolves around me! No need to play fair. If I want to stab someone with the biggest sword available and then pour magic into the wound like there is no tomorrow then let me.
But no. Wizards don't sweep the battlefield. They can do 3-4 spells and then must go for a lie down. Constantly finding resting places. IS that supposed to be fun? I rarely use magic in D&D games. I prefer to kick ass.
Get rid of the limits. Battles do not have to be balanced, the computer controlled NPC's are not going to suffer confidence crisises because my player character scores all the kills. Or even the other way around, let the beginner player character have the help of a more powerfull older master. You know to stop the annoying killed by rat syndrome.
D&D has its uses but it is now more restraint on game development then an aid. One of my biggest peefs is that it shouts artificial. Take weapon skills. My character has totally mastered the long sword (one-handed) but if you put a short sword in his hands he has no idea wich end to hold. WTF? It is a bloody sword. Same with bows. Exactly how can someone master the long bow yet have no clue on how to use a short bow? Or going further. The art of using a bow involves working out flightpaths. A skill also needed in using a sling or a thr
You don't wait, you install it right away. On your test systems. Then you try it, the lenght depends. unix/linux patches a few hours/days depending on how critical, windows a week or so at least. MS sadly has a really bad history not all MSes fault. It just seems that more things go wrong with 3rd party software as well. Also MS doesn't really do patches but it does updates. The difference? Well take the SSH/SSL bugs that have occured, the fixes for this were patches to the bugs. You could look at it and see what was changed. So unless your setup used the bug for some reason patching it should be no worry. The only thing that can happen is that either the bug is patched, it ain't patched or the patch opens another bug.
But with MS updates you are guessing. Sure an update may fix a bug but what else have they done?
It is not that I fear patches being badly done, the SSH/SSL stuff had recently 2 patches right behind each other, but that I fear the "features" they added.
Remember this update really gives you a different product that behaves differently.
So a simple rule is to always first test a patch/update on a test setup. Then you test it for a length of time in scale with the size/complexity of the patch/update. I would suggest that SP2 is somewhere between a version upgrade and an OS rollout.
All I can say about SP2 is, thank god I am a unix guy. Yeehaw!
As another poster mentioned T-rex was big. Lions are excellent scavengers because they are big. Most predators scavenge if they get the change but it helps if your big enough to scare others away. Being able to claim any food source by your size, wether that food is still runningm, you just killed it, killed by someone else or dropped dead of old age, is a bit of an advantage.
It also works for herbivores. Elephants can be big and smart because they are big and smart. Big enough to stand up to a lion and smart enough to do so. Elephant calves are preyed upon if predators get the chance but elephants got the brains to protect their young. Because their young are so well protected by adults (the whole group helps) they don't need to grow up in a hurry and can therefore use growing energy into growing brains.
Cheetahs on the other hand are excellent hunters but crap at keeping their food or even protecting their young. They are also pretty stupid.
Of course humans would conclude that lions are therefore better evolved then cheetahs. it all depends however on what happens next. Evolution doesn't have an end and it is certainly possible for nature to change enough to make lions the underdog (remove big groups of prey they need and replace with singular small fast prey).
Hmmm, if I get this straight then these machines are like the iMac. Well apart from the looks and price of course. Do they come with a monitor?
So what sold the iMac? Was it the looks and people didn't care about the price? Or was it that you turned the iMac on and you had a working pc that you never touched the insides of and rarely installed new software on?
These walmart PC's are cheap and all and perhaps Linspire is good at providing a Mac like, no hazzles, experience. Linux can be hard when you are installing it on unknown hardware but that is not the case here, Walmart does the install and they decide the hardware.
Anyone wanting to do something "extra" like gaming with these PC's is going to be in for a rude suprise. Even the few commercial linux games that exist won't run to well on this. Then gain XP won't run on this. 128mb? HAHA. Linux can do that, windows? 3.1 maybe.
So is there a market for this kinda cheap PC? You can use it to download music and movies and watch them. Mplayer is far superior to anything MS ever developed (install mplayer and you will never even need to know about divx xvid or any codec) and properly installed users could have a very easy time. IF all they want is a working desktop for "light" work/entertainment.
This may be real inroad for linux. Don't sell linux. Sell a working internet PC.
Now all that remains is to find out sales figures AND more importantly update figures. How many machines remain linux and how many get a windows install on them?
I currently do factory work and my laziness is extremely helpfull there. It makes me determine exactly how I can arrange tasks so I get the maximum amount of sitting time. Of course this means that if the shit hits the fan I can use the extended sitting time to fix the crisis while the regular tasks don't have to wait.
Sadly I am enjoying this work a whole lot more. No after-work calls about work, no unpaid overtime, getting some of my muscles back, loosing some flab, talking to real people not suits, being reminded the world does not consist of white 30 something males.
Oh well, just my excuses for not looking for tech jobs.
Well the true geeks anyway, not the script kiddies.
Peer pressure wether it is to do well or not well is immense and very hard to resist for most people. Geeks seem to be imune to it. Ask any real geek if he/she ever felt pressured to wear a certain type of clothing, fail or pass an exam, listen to certain music and the answer will probably be no.
We may feel the pressure like you feel discouraged but we don't let it influence us. Some people call this being socially inept. Not caring about others opinions does have some drawbacks but it also allows you to go against the stream.
For some reason many girls are unable to do this. The pressure to get a boyfriend and to please this boy even if this means dumbing themselves down is just to great.
Whose fault is this? No-ones really. It is just the way it is. You can blame men for being boys but if boys are such assholes then blame mothers for raising them and wives for having their childeren.
How about you not talking to us about who is the hottest cutie on the latest reality soap eh?
Oh you don't do that, that is just some women who do that and some men as well?
Then why do you lump together all men?
I have worked with a number of women in both tech and non-tech, in both boss and superior roles and I think that sexism goes both ways and you just proved me right once again.
Many techies are not the greatest communicators, don't attribute to sexism what can be attributed to pisspoor verbal skills.
I sometimes get a kind of glazed look. It usually happens when a non-geek woman tries for whatever perverted reason to join a geek conversation. The glazed look comes from trying to work out how much you gotta dumb down the conversation without it becoming insulting. The same occurs when non-geek guys try to talk geek but there we don't care about being insulting.
Best way to avoid the glazed geek look? Don't talk to us. Many many women already took this advice.
As to the problem of CS students. I think many men take CS because it is their hobby. The few women I met who are into CS mostly took it as a career option. They figured that it is light physical highly paid work and they got the brains so why not. Or they become programmers as a step up to management. Only one woman I ever met in work was into programming for her hobby. And she was working in Human Resources. Oh the irony.
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Under windows you don't have to run as admin.
Under linux you can run everything as root. (actually a few programs detect it and refuse to run but that is besides the point.)
About the only difference is that it is a whole lot easier under linux to work as a user and if and when you need root to simply open a terminal and become one. Please note that this may be out of date but I remember that in windows if you need admin privileges you need to logout and switch to the admin user. You can't open an admin session within your user session.
But just as windows has a lot of programs that don't "work" when you are not the admin there are a few to many linux programs that like to have sudo. If a clueless person was told that cool new game needed sudo do you think that would stop him and ask, hmmm why?
So apart from making it easier to run as a user and root only when needed and without having to close your current desktop (think about how importance this is. I browse a website for some admin help. I find out how to do it. but learn that I need to become root/admin to do it. On linux I simply leave the browser open running as a user and open a terminal and become root then do the instructions from the webpage. On windows I gotta logout/switch loosing me the webpage and then log in as admin. I then gotta reopen the webpage the BROWSER RUNNING AS ADMIN and then do the instructions. But NOW THE BROWSER IS RUNNING AS ADMIN.)
But a clueless person can still screwup his linux install. Never underestimate stupidity.
If you watch "The longest day" you might get the idea that Omaha was the only defended beach and that all the others were a cakewalk. You see some brits fall down but no actual fighting. No germans to be seen. DESPITE the fact that the opening bit of the movie (with the fat german and the angry frenchman) seems to take place there and you can see german bunkers in the background. Reason I believe that scene is at the british sector because the frenchmen laters shows up with a bottle of wine. So either the movie is badly directed or there were german defences at the other beaches.
So what is the truth?
In a documentury about Hobarts funnies you see actual war footage that shows the brits did encounter serious resistance but that those funny inventions did amazing good work. At the end it is said that the americans did not use these special devices and tanks.
Is this the truth? That the british had heavy support where the americans only had soldiers?
But wait. In the movie "The longest day" you see the french assault on casino. At the end of the battle a tank comes to the rescue and it is a strange tank indeed. It got somekind of rubber ring around it. What is this? Well it was a flotation device. Pulled up it would reach above the tank and allow it to float like a boat. The high waterline helping to conceal the tank. One of hobarts funnies.
Another documentary investigates these floating tanks and it shows that america did use a couple of these. However where the british apparently used sailors as part of the crew the americans only had soldiers on them. The tanks were immensily powerfull and clever but had one fatal weakness. The side of the floatation ring was incredibly weak. Even a very small wave could break it. So the tanks had to go with the surf and could not allow themselves to go sideways with the waves crashing into the sides.
Sadly the tank crews did not now this not being sailors and instead tried to navigate to a point on the beach hoping to land in the right area. Ended up with the waves coming in to their side, the waves going over and the tanks sinking. Every last one of them.
If the tanks had arrived safely then the germans would have seen only a rowboat like construction until the tank was on the beach and dropped its skirt to reveal 1 cannon and 3 machine guns at point blank range to their bunkers. Me thinks that would have made a big difference. Can't machine gun a tank and mortars are not the most efficient weapon against them. They would certainly have drawn a lot of fire from the other landing boats and their human cargo.
So is this the final truth? That omaha was the slaughter it was because the troops were supposed to land with tank support and they didn't? That the other beaches where won by using technology and the americans in fact mounted a WW1 style human wave assault against entrenched machine guns?
Perhaps. Except one thing. Exactly how many canons and anti-tank weapons were there there at the beaches? None of the documenturies really seem to go into detail as to how many british tanks were destroyed. The re-encacted war footage and real war footage doesn't show a lot of cannons at omaha. Or at all. It would be terrible to think that the germans would have had no way to counter an assault by half a dozen tanks and that these tanks would have had easy pickings of the bunkers.
Thousands died only because the american command was uncapable of regonizing modern technology and using it properly.
Of course this is just my interpretation of it. But I think I have proven that 3 different interpretations excist supported by historians. None of them tell the whole story. Most of them even lie or let facts out. The longest day doesn't show those tanks as part of the american assault and the documentur
Anyway linux isn't anymore secure or insecure then windows. It is just that most linux users got a tiny bit of a clue. But a cluefull person could also be able to setup a secure windows machine.
I keep waiting for MS to be really smart and adopt a more gentoo like approach to new windows installations. A very real problem is that a new "legal" installation is unpacthced and will not survive long enough to download patches. But this is only because MS doesn't have "download latest software" stage in its installation.
Let me explain. The entire windows problem is that it has software with security holes in listening mode before you are fully patched. When you install gentoo you download a sorta up-to-date CD with a very basic linux install. If you boot the CD you got a working linux cli but nothing extra it won't be running any listening services. So even if the machine is connected directly to the internet there is no way to attack it. No software listening to ports == no way to attack. Only way to install a listening piece of software is to download the latest fully patched software and run it by choice.
So why does MS not do this as well. A new Windows install doesn't open any listening ports UNTIL it has downloaded the latest patches.
Well the answer is of course probably very simple. It would make windows look "hard" to use. MS loves to promote the image of a click and drool OS. While the unpatched listening software is a problem just as big a problem is that the average windows user will click and drool on anything.
Note my use of "legal" installations. If you bought XP then you got a CD that when installed will give you a totally insecure system. If you pirated XP then just download a version with the Service Packs included. Yet another case where piracy really pays.
By his own words he has strayed to the dark side.
We either stand together or we shall all hang seperatly. This is usually used in big nobel speeches about human rights. It is just as important when it comes to your town.
Note that I don't care what the above person chooses to do. Just that those that choose to be parents need to realize what parenting is. And that city planners need to realize that just creating a new suburb in the middle of nowhere can create a very sterile and unnatural place for childeren to grow up in. People become people by watching other people be people. In short kids learn from older kids. Remove that at your peril.
Oh and the temper tantrums he complains about? A kid growing up alone does that. Do it in a group of other childeren and the child soon will learn that it accomplishes nothing. Be a pest and you will spend a lot of time playing alone or you will just be clobbered. Only bad parents tolerate tantrums.
Guys that in western media are geeks and incapable of even getting the ugly girl in japanese anime are often the center of a harem while it is the jocks that get ignored. Only in Japan eh. Well anime anyway, japanese live action doesn't follow that at all. I guess that shows that in japan geeks are a big enough market to aim programs at.
Now go to court and demand they pay damages. Good luck.
More and more parents are not doing their job instead shoving the parenting responsibilty onto others. Two extreme examples. 1: Some immigrants from shall we say more traditional countries are complaining in holland that their kids are undisciplined. In their view it is the state via the police and schools that should teach discipline and they are suprised dutch teachers are not allowed to beat kids. (Note that it is not an immigrant issue, school beatings were only recently outlawed in england)
Second example, a recent investigation by a bbc program into daycare nurseries. With an undercover worker they intended to show how bad the care was. Except that I as an old angry white male couln't see what the problem was half of the time. The kids being left alone or in the care of untrained staff that sure is bad. A kid somehow managing to burn its hand very very badly on a radiator (sounds unlikely since anything with a spinalcord would yerk the hands back long before it could burn so badly) that is bad too.
A child being told of for being a pest sounds like teaching the kid a little bit of discipline. No you are not allowed to be a pest to everyone now go play alone until you can play together.
Apparently this is not "right" anymore.
But parenting is not just the parents. It is society as well. I don't mean the complex society, I mean the people in your neighbourhood. I grew up in an old part of town with a whole mix of people. As I grew up it became one of the bigger town in but when I grew up a few houses down was a working farm. So we had the very very old to the very very young. Kids weren't just raised by their parents they were raised as much by the older kids in the neighbourhood. Those unlucky to grow up 4-5 years behind a group of girls never learned to walk until ten being carried everywhere. I watched my sister and in turn was watched by an older girl. It was as normal to get a bandaid from a young girl as from your own mother.
The idea that nowadays both parents work and they don't take care of their kid is wrong. My mother worked and in general most of the mothers did now I think about it. Certainly the farmers wife did. It was just that they made sure there always were enough people around to watch over things. I can't remember ever having been left alone for real. There always was someone responsible around.
Much later I lived for a while in almere. Wich is a very new city and I noticed something. There was a very distinct age border with the kids playing. These kids did not grow up with older kids. No older kids to teach/show them what is and what isn't done.
Where I currently live is a small group of kids in a mostly single household area and they are between 7-10 yrs old. During the summer days they do never leave the street they live in, no kids around to go play with. Their parents don't seem intrestted in taking them somewhere or even playing with them. Their is large park extremely close yet it is rarely used.
Maybe I am just old but I think my childhood was a lot better. I learned not to bully because the kid you bully would have an older brother/sister/nephew/etc. But you also stood up for the younger ones in turn. It was a community.
Every child will go through a hurting other people stage. They simply will not have learned yet that kicking someone hurts. The old way of teaching that is hurting the child back. Not a beating but a hard slap on the leg will soon teach it that kicking other people is bad. If for no other reason then that you will be hurt in turn. Not very nice but it works. Current more PC educators seem not to agree. Problem? There methods don't work.
So I don't think video games are that much of a problem. They are merely an excuse. Sorta like don't kill people they just make it a lot easier.
Kids being not raised by parents who have not been raised because all the parents want to be their kids friends or worse don't want to be parents. Take the recent so-called x-box murder. This has nothing to do with x
You can only pull this kinda crap (that MS has been proven and even admitted to of having done) when your sure it is the other guy that is blamed. Kinda like when IE fails to load a page it is the websites fault but when Mozilla fails to load a page it is Mozilla's fault.
OS/2 has been killed but it is still being used. Those customers are smart enough to know that any problems are not OS/2 fault but MS. Since MS wants them at one time or another to switch it is probably not to wise to alienate them by showing them how buggy MS software is. Once they switched and are totally locked in THEN you spring the bugs on them. It helps sell the next version. Just explain to me exactly why I should have upgraded from Win95? What exactly has been added that is so helpfull? Stability? Stabilty is a bug, it should have been fixed in a patch.
As the guy from unisys himself said, there are many contracts they can't even bid on. Now they can but what they are really selling is windows controlling some linux. If other comments are correct buying one of these machines running linux you still need windows to control it. And of course they will be only to willing to help you go back to pure windows.
No, as others said, with friends like these who needs enemies.
It is the logo for the blog software being used.
It now has the option to give people household equipment if replacing old stuff themselves proves to be impossible. Sounds nice? Well not all that much since being able to "save" money is considered an indicator that you are to rich for social services. Lost you job but got say 2000 in savings? First consume the savings then come back.
But programs like in this article may be needed. It sounds like part of it is budgetting. Working out what is the best buy is not all that easy. And while I am the last to suggest that poverty == stupid it is not unreasonable to think that many poor people did not do well in school (if parents were poor there may have been no money for quality schooling).
That is the problem about being poor that "rich" people don't get. Not even if they had a "poor" period (typically they claim they had no money while being a student). Why don't they get it? Because they don't need to replace anything in that time. The bed the "rich" kid got from home when he wen't out of the house will last him a couple of years till he finished study and has found a job.
The poor kid's bed is already at the end of its live. Same with washing machines (Is it only in holland that the kid moving out gets the old one while the parents buy a new one?) a tv, a car, furniture, anything.
Poverty really starts to show its teeth when things start breaking down. The washing machine breaks and you don't have the money to replace it, worse you now need to use the laundromat wich is more expensive preventing you from saving up for a new one. It also takes more time, time you can no longer spend improving your lot.
Social services in the Netherlands are beginning to get this. That it may be all very nice to give just enough money to survive and perhaps a little bit more but that it ain't enough for those who can't get out (remember that unemployment is good for business, full employment would mean it is a workers job market. See bubble on what happens then) of their situation. So they now make it possible under certain circumstances to get washing machines, fridges and other household equipment.
The above poster if obviously a "rich" person who doesn't get it. He mentions that having a car makes you rich. He forgets that a car may be essential for having a job. Public transport is great if you work in a office block and work 9-5. If you clean that office then you may find that all the buses stop running after 5. Or that your work is in a factory in the middle of nowwhere and the shift starts at 6. Long before their is anykind of public transport service. Even if your shift neatly fall in public tranportation times that may make it impossible to do overtime if your shift ends 5 minutes before the last bus.
So he got it exactly the wrong way around. Being able NOT to have a car shows your "rich".
So get a cheap old car? Cheap old cars break down more often and consume more fuel. Worse, in high paying jobs you may have "flexible" hours. Factory shifts tend to rely on everyone being on time.
A tv is the only form of information/entertainment the poor can "afford". Go to the library and read a book? Check opening times of the local branch library. Oh the city branch has evening opening times? And how do you get there?
Being poor is constantly being constrained by money for a long time (10yrs+). That is where the real problems occur that are hardest to spot and hardest to get for politicians. "Rich" people just don't get it. They can't, it would be like expecting men to understand the feelings of motherhood.
Sadly goverment is formed by the "rich". Even the "socialist" goverments, just check on how many of even the most socialist parties had to survive at or below the poverty line during they youth for long periods.
So please ignore the above poster. He ain't got a clue, he is just a little rich boy who doesn't realize how good he has it. Being poor is not having no money this month. Being poor is not having enough money for live. Think of it as a company operating at a loss. No problem so long as you can make up for the loss by the profits in the past, kinda like Sun is doing now. But if you never had profits you can't do that. Human beings don't go bankrupt, they just slowly die. Poor people live significantly shorter then "rich" people.
Ehm, try both linux and bsd? The processors named are not exactly that rare. Both are supported by linux and maybe bsd.
The people at ID are complete and utter morons. Movies have shown that it is possible to have a worldwide release AND that it cuts down on piracy.
I hold out a week before I finally downloaded Doom3. There is no reason for the delay. Piracy has many many reasons but restricting supply is clearly a stupid mistake to make by the supplier.
Content owners pay attention. If your product has worldwide appeal make sure you sell it to the world. It goes from movies, don't make us have to stop reading the web for 6 months just to avoid spoilers, it goes for tv-series, waiting for the latest star trek can take years, and it goes for games. Get the goddamn fucking product out there.
Worse when it finally arrives it will have a manual in dutch (manual for doom?) that is badly translated, imporatant keywords translated inaccuratly, tech info in english, with no support and a total amateur publisher site.
In worst cases updates never get translated to the european version or at minimum you have to play a guessing game wich version you have.
Screw it. I waited for a week with the cash in my pocket. I surrendered and downloaded and finished the game. Smart move ID. 50 euro you won't see.
It would be a very sad development if we get an arms race on the roads. Needing ever heavier vehicles just to survive. Perhaps we should do like germany has done with motorcycles. You need a higher license for a heavier car and a proven record of safe driving.
Then you got tiny countries competing with giants, some of who can afford to spend huge sums of money on training and some who can't. Add events that some countries just can't train, bit hard to learn to sail in a landlocked desert, and what is the point.
Open up the drugs and lets see what we can do to the human body eh? Doctors have to be very carefull in human testing of new drugs but here you got a bunch of idiots^H^H^H^H^H^Hvolunteers who happily pump themselves full of the latest medicine. Most of these performance enhancing drugs can be used in real medicine.
Lets try muscle building medicine in those without social value ehm, in athletes and if it works we can use it in people struck with disease.
The games ain't fair anyway, if they are all pumped up at least that bit balances out.
What does D&D do exactly. It creates a ruleset for imaginary characters to behave in a fictional world. So it has rules stating that for each point of strength you have you can lift X amount of goods. That before you can do action X you need skills Y and Z. Nothing wrong with this being used in computer games right?
Wrong. D&D does something else as well. It has carefully twisted and tweaked the rules to be playable with nothing more then a piece of paper a pencil and some dice. This means that the calculations used are kinda simplified, way more simple then a modern computer could handle. It would be like playing a modern flight simulator but for some reason restricting your self to a flight model wich can be calculated by hand. Why? We have a bloody computer. Doing complex math and keeping track of stats is what it does best. Let the CPU sweat.
So if the D&D rules lost their pencil&paper&dice simplifications/optimizations then it would be perfect right?
Wrong. D&D games have something a computer does not have. A sentient game controller. Even if dungeon master is using a boxed adventure he will/should have the capability to adjust the game on the fly to the party playing it. If the thief of the party isn't there any half decent game master will of course quickly add a way around a crucial lock. If a roll fails that is going to kill the adventure to early or a party fails to pick up a clue he will make a choice wether he had enough or to step in and help out. An extra NPC helping in a fight, a monster that stumbles. Or just cut things short if the party is getting bored. The computer has no such capability. It can't adjust the game because it will never detect the need for it.
So if the ruleset started to make full use of the CPU capabilities and the game had godlike scripting to adjust the game to the player it would be good right?
WRONG. D&D has yet one more difference. D&D is a social game, you play it in a group. It is the going on an adventure together that makes Pen&Paper RPG's fun. But it also means a lot of the rules are there to make everyone a "equal" member of the party. No super powerfull everything devastating wizards wiping the battlefield clean while the thief is running for his life from everything bigger then a rat. The most famous adventure party, the fellowship of the ring, would be hard to put in D&D rules. Exactly what is the problem with a healing thief. A sword wielding wizard? Why am I so restricted in my classes? Simple, so that I need the other players in my party. BUT computer games are solo afairs. I am the hero, I am the center of the story, the universe revolves around me! No need to play fair. If I want to stab someone with the biggest sword available and then pour magic into the wound like there is no tomorrow then let me.
But no. Wizards don't sweep the battlefield. They can do 3-4 spells and then must go for a lie down. Constantly finding resting places. IS that supposed to be fun? I rarely use magic in D&D games. I prefer to kick ass.
Get rid of the limits. Battles do not have to be balanced, the computer controlled NPC's are not going to suffer confidence crisises because my player character scores all the kills. Or even the other way around, let the beginner player character have the help of a more powerfull older master. You know to stop the annoying killed by rat syndrome.
D&D has its uses but it is now more restraint on game development then an aid. One of my biggest peefs is that it shouts artificial. Take weapon skills. My character has totally mastered the long sword (one-handed) but if you put a short sword in his hands he has no idea wich end to hold. WTF? It is a bloody sword. Same with bows. Exactly how can someone master the long bow yet have no clue on how to use a short bow? Or going further. The art of using a bow involves working out flightpaths. A skill also needed in using a sling or a thr
But with MS updates you are guessing. Sure an update may fix a bug but what else have they done?
It is not that I fear patches being badly done, the SSH/SSL stuff had recently 2 patches right behind each other, but that I fear the "features" they added.
Remember this update really gives you a different product that behaves differently.
So a simple rule is to always first test a patch/update on a test setup. Then you test it for a length of time in scale with the size/complexity of the patch/update. I would suggest that SP2 is somewhere between a version upgrade and an OS rollout.
All I can say about SP2 is, thank god I am a unix guy. Yeehaw!
Am I missing something here?
A suicide bomber wouldn't exactly drop of the bomb now would they?
It also works for herbivores. Elephants can be big and smart because they are big and smart. Big enough to stand up to a lion and smart enough to do so. Elephant calves are preyed upon if predators get the chance but elephants got the brains to protect their young. Because their young are so well protected by adults (the whole group helps) they don't need to grow up in a hurry and can therefore use growing energy into growing brains.
Cheetahs on the other hand are excellent hunters but crap at keeping their food or even protecting their young. They are also pretty stupid.
Of course humans would conclude that lions are therefore better evolved then cheetahs. it all depends however on what happens next. Evolution doesn't have an end and it is certainly possible for nature to change enough to make lions the underdog (remove big groups of prey they need and replace with singular small fast prey).
So what sold the iMac? Was it the looks and people didn't care about the price? Or was it that you turned the iMac on and you had a working pc that you never touched the insides of and rarely installed new software on?
These walmart PC's are cheap and all and perhaps Linspire is good at providing a Mac like, no hazzles, experience. Linux can be hard when you are installing it on unknown hardware but that is not the case here, Walmart does the install and they decide the hardware.
Anyone wanting to do something "extra" like gaming with these PC's is going to be in for a rude suprise. Even the few commercial linux games that exist won't run to well on this. Then gain XP won't run on this. 128mb? HAHA. Linux can do that, windows? 3.1 maybe.
So is there a market for this kinda cheap PC? You can use it to download music and movies and watch them. Mplayer is far superior to anything MS ever developed (install mplayer and you will never even need to know about divx xvid or any codec) and properly installed users could have a very easy time. IF all they want is a working desktop for "light" work/entertainment.
This may be real inroad for linux. Don't sell linux. Sell a working internet PC.
Now all that remains is to find out sales figures AND more importantly update figures. How many machines remain linux and how many get a windows install on them?
I currently do factory work and my laziness is extremely helpfull there. It makes me determine exactly how I can arrange tasks so I get the maximum amount of sitting time. Of course this means that if the shit hits the fan I can use the extended sitting time to fix the crisis while the regular tasks don't have to wait.
Sadly I am enjoying this work a whole lot more. No after-work calls about work, no unpaid overtime, getting some of my muscles back, loosing some flab, talking to real people not suits, being reminded the world does not consist of white 30 something males.
Oh well, just my excuses for not looking for tech jobs.
Peer pressure wether it is to do well or not well is immense and very hard to resist for most people. Geeks seem to be imune to it. Ask any real geek if he/she ever felt pressured to wear a certain type of clothing, fail or pass an exam, listen to certain music and the answer will probably be no.
We may feel the pressure like you feel discouraged but we don't let it influence us. Some people call this being socially inept. Not caring about others opinions does have some drawbacks but it also allows you to go against the stream.
For some reason many girls are unable to do this. The pressure to get a boyfriend and to please this boy even if this means dumbing themselves down is just to great.
Whose fault is this? No-ones really. It is just the way it is. You can blame men for being boys but if boys are such assholes then blame mothers for raising them and wives for having their childeren.
Oh you don't do that, that is just some women who do that and some men as well?
Then why do you lump together all men?
I have worked with a number of women in both tech and non-tech, in both boss and superior roles and I think that sexism goes both ways and you just proved me right once again.
Many techies are not the greatest communicators, don't attribute to sexism what can be attributed to pisspoor verbal skills.
I sometimes get a kind of glazed look. It usually happens when a non-geek woman tries for whatever perverted reason to join a geek conversation. The glazed look comes from trying to work out how much you gotta dumb down the conversation without it becoming insulting. The same occurs when non-geek guys try to talk geek but there we don't care about being insulting.
Best way to avoid the glazed geek look? Don't talk to us. Many many women already took this advice.
As to the problem of CS students. I think many men take CS because it is their hobby. The few women I met who are into CS mostly took it as a career option. They figured that it is light physical highly paid work and they got the brains so why not. Or they become programmers as a step up to management. Only one woman I ever met in work was into programming for her hobby. And she was working in Human Resources. Oh the irony.