You, then, are one of a minority that gets the balance between leaving well alone and caring right. Monitoring someone's activities isn't going to stop them. In fact, I think that, in the case of faster teenage drivers, the parents wouldn't like to know how they drive. I know my parents disapprove of some of my driving, but they'd just rather not know what I get up to than try to put a stop to it.
If such devices are implemented, then people are never going to learn how to judge safety for themselves. If a black box beeps at you whenever you take a turn slightly too sharply, or go a little too fast, great. You react to the beep.
I can see that this device would have problems distinguishing between different speed limit areas - go at 70 in a 70 and you're not doing anything wrong; do 70 in a 30 and you're more than doubling the speed limit.
Also, I can't see that such a device would help establish the cause of accidents. I have been in a couple of near misses where the only safe way out is to put your foot to the floor - but what would an insurance company say if they saw this information from a black box?
Over the pond, whenever anything goes wrong with our Dell kit, we always refer to Dell Boy (ala Only Fools And Horses) - I don't think I want to see the van the computers got delivered in:-)
I don't see Perens' stunt accomplishing anything except for boosting Perens' own notoriaty. All this does is create an image that "open source advocate == pirate." This is the political equivalent of a bunch of kids driving past the principal's house with their asses out the car window, honking the horn. It is entertaining in a juevenile sort of way, but it doesn't lower the price of pudding in the cafeteria
Perens has a point. He is not showing that OSS advocates are pirates. There is no reason why someone who buys a DVD from overseas should not be able to play it in their DVD player at home. The media attempted to exert control on buyers by limiting what area of the world they could buy their DVDs from, but of course there are many ways to circumvent this, and region-free players are widely available in the UK. This is how it should be.
To my knowledge, a number of DVD players can be made region-free by entering codes with the remote control - although this is never publicised by the manufacturers, because it'd land them in trouble: they'd be the ones breaking the law, not the end users.
Ultimately, what is being pointed out here is that the DMCA achieves nothing of any positive purpose. Manufacturers, it has been shown, are not in favour of such limitations (DVD player manufacturers; Philips in the case of protected CDs) - and rightly so.
Time for the American media industry to stop feeling all self-important, and realise that, if it wants to remain successful, it should stop behaving in such a childish manner, and start facing up to the fact that if it makes its products inaccessible to the world, the world won't be buying much of it.
Every time anything of this ilk comes up, I find myself thinking how good it is to live in the UK. I'm not going to extol the virtues of state broadcasting without commercials, because I think that has its own evils.
However, what the people over in the UK realise is that, in order to get people to watch TV, you have to make them want to watch it.
Locking people into watching shows live, rather than recording them, is going to reduce overall viewer figures, no two ways about it. The only way to make a system where people don't need a VCR is to allow them to watch the program whenever - i.e. make an individual stream available for each person each time they want to watch a programme. And that, my friends, ain't gonna happen, save for the odd few on-demand film channels.
I am still waiting for the day that the MPAA, RIAA, etc, realise that, no matter what they do, there will always be companies who are prepared to produce non-standards-compliant players to appease/please the marketplace. Just as you had region-free DVD players, so you'll get recorders that ignore the broadcast flag.
Of course, I'll be waiting a long time for the RIAA and MPAA to remove their heads from their behinds; however, in the meantime, it looks as if we can look forward to a world where legislation and licensing are so constrictive that starting up a new business anywhere remotely near the field of technology is going to be nigh on impossible.
Ah well - we can hardly say we didn't bring it upon ourselves.
It seems a good enough idea to develop a single, friendly interface to be used within embedded systems - you'd be able to put it on one standard chip, interfaces for all your devices could be pretty similar, they could be customisable, and so on and so forth.
What a lot of people seem to think is that Flash is an unnecessarily bloaty platform for such interfaces. To a large extent, that's true. But what the average end user 'wants', above a friendly, functional interface, is one that looks good. I'm trying to avoid using the phrase "looks flash", but it is just too appropriate here.
Ultimately, it would be very nice if the interface of choice were not Flash, and there will be many others who could enlighten everyone as to what the better option would be. It doesn't matter if things aren't standardised across the board either, but I don't think I'd like to see things go the way of Flash at the moment - apart from anything else, I find anything that's controllable with a keyboard - even if it is just shortcut keys for menus - far easier and quicker to use, and I've not seen that implemented in Flash.
I bet you've also managed to increase your breast size by WHOLE CUP SIZES!
-me, I just set up e-mail accounts on my domain name when I sign up for things, then deactivate them as soon as I get my password. Oh, and I use the nice little bit of text off cexx.org (would give URL but proxy prohibits) that ends "We like it when e-mail harvesters crash;-)"
Re:Why is this an unusual occurrence?
on
Forbes on Linux
·
· Score: 1
Open Source developments are a viable option for companies these days viable in what way? that you dont know when your project will be finished, since you arent paying anyone to complete it? or is it viable because its relatively unsupported, at least officially? or is its viability just based on its being free beer?
A lot of software nowaday is purchased after it is written. You don't see many orders for Office 2005 about, do you? The point is that, if you look around at all the various bits of software to carry out your task, the open source / free ones are now being looked at seriously by businesses, because it has been proven that such software works, and works well.
It will be interesting to see if, ultimately, businesses do perform a complete about-turn on their strategies... ah, another holy warrior. always preaching about the coming software revolution, with the new economy wiping out the old, transforming our world into Lin-utopia in one or two days. However, holy warrior, there are a few flaws with your logic.
I said "it will be interesting to see if". Never once did I make any suggestion that I was a "holy warrior". I don't believe that we'll see a total revolution. Some companies may switch. Others won't. It'll be interesting to see how many do. Meantime, read what I post.:-)
1. Licensing and maintenence contracts are a good thing, from a business standpoint. you dont need to pay staff to support something, you just pay either per incident or whatever.
I think you'll find that there are a lot of companies which do support contracting. Maintenance contracts may be good, but licensing is a method of attempting to lock companies, users et al. into their upgrade path. IMHO.
2. small-medium size businesses generally cannot afford to have an in-house expert.
See above.
3. there simply arent enough experts to go around, leaving businesses with tighter salary requirements with less options, and generally worse support.
Given the same number of computers and the same number of applications, you need the same number of support staff, whether contracting out or not. If anything, it's the fact that migrating to a new OS will require retraining that means that this isn't happening. If "there aren't enough experts to go around", why are businesses managing fine as they are?
4. "has a bug patch written before the user finds the bug"? what kind of prognosticating b.s. are you spouting? I didnt know Linux had any more access to the bug tracking crystal ball than Windows or any other OS or program, or whatever.
I speak from experience: I've downloaded the latest version of whatever open source / free software, looked at the changelog, and found that bugs have been fixed that I didn't even know existed. Because open source / free software seems to get updated a lot more frequently than other software, the fixes are released in minor versions, and consequently, if you're always running on the latest version, it's quite likely that you don't find the bugs that are there.
Please use some intelligence and logic before hitting that "submit" button. Just because you can whip around foolish opinions quite easily these days doesnt always mean you should.
I think I used enough intelligence and logic on my original post; perhaps not enough in deciding whether or not to reply, Mr. Anonymous Coward. Also, I'm more than welcome to state my opinion, foolish or otherwise. The only opinion I stated is that "Open Source developments are a viable option for companies these days" - a statement which is hard to deny. The rest is speculation, as indicated by "It will be interesting to see if...".
Lesson Of The Day: Reply to what the poster wrote, not what you want the poster to have written. That said, it seems that those who don't want to do this post as AC;-)
...an article in Computer Shopper recently reported that the development could, were the cost of production to decrease sufficiently, result in animated displays being produced and used in things like product packaging - but who really wants animated cornflakes?
Re:Why is this an unusual occurrence?
on
Forbes on Linux
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'll probably get flamed for this, but where are all the open source Linux companies that are currently truely making a profit (and not just using some creative accounting tricks)?
In my eagerness to get first non-troll post, ambiguity kicked in. I meant that, for clients, open-source software (commercial or otherwise) is a viable alternative to licensed/paid-for/whatever.
Why is this an unusual occurrence?
on
Forbes on Linux
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
IMHO, it was at first unusual for Linux to be given credit in the "real" OS stakes: I remember the first time I saw Linux in the UK, on a Computer Shopper cover CD. I can't remember what the distribution was, but it was incredibly flaky.
However, what Linux has proved, more than anything else, is not that Linux is a viable OS, but, far more importantly, that Open Source developments are a viable option for companies these days.
It will be interesting to see if, ultimately, businesses do perform a complete about-turn on their strategies and, rather than going for licensed software, with maintence contracts etc., have maintenance in-house for software which, for the most part, has a bug patch written for it before the user finds the bug.
- The key to get into the door can only fit one right side up, afterall it is case sensitive.
Did you ever own a VW Beetle? They built that feature in many decades ago.
and another parallel - some cars these days do have four different settings for Drive.
...all of which makes me lament the fact that so many drivers seem like newbies, not knowing how to use the things they don't need (like indicators...)
...I can't wait to see the illicit copies of films that start floating about the Internet - rather than being your average filmed-from-the-back-of-the-movie-theatre quality, some bright spark would have managed to point their satellite dish at the right point in the sky, decrypt the signal, monitor the transmission of the film, get the data, decrypt it, post up a perfect copy.
Only thing is, though, that films would of course be of incredibly high resolution if they were being shown in the cinema. About that terabyte disk...
Of course, you can do this with real radio broadcasts, too, but everyone's decision-making abilities go haywire as soon as the word "digital" enters the debate: the streamed version would yield a DIGITAL copy of the song in question, and is therefore evil and scary.
My Psion Wavefinder receives DAB digital radio, and allows me to directly record the mp2 stream, exactly as it was transmitted (at 100% signal, which I usually get), without conversion of file format. Digital radio, however, was hailed as a revolution by all concerned, and it didn't seem to bother the recording industry that I have a nice little source of 192kbps stereo music whenever I feel like it.
Oh, and I can record from all the stations on the DAB multiplex simultaneously without tying up my sound card. So why do they have problems with Internet stations?
Aspirin bottle? Me, I just reach for the sledgehammer and drive my car, which doesn't have any computers in it to go wrong, right over to the user, and wield the sledgehammer telling them they WILL accept it's their fault it's gone wrong.
If that's true, it's a great shame - I thought that the original, moving scroll wheel was quite a nice feature, and very slick. Oh well, they call it progress.
I've seen a fair few overinflated claims before, but a scroll wheel with no moving parts is an impossibility. Unless the wheel doesn't move, in which case it's just no damn good.
And for that I get email, online file storage, and my own web site. That's cheaper than the dial-up account I have now that I never actually dial into. I'll sign up.
...all of which you get in the UK for free, on a free dialup account.
It seems that what Apple wants to concentrate on is a feeling of class and exclusivity - which it certainly will get if they provide expensive services like that. Apple's market is pretty much a captive one - many Mac users simply love their Mac for the way it works; in the graphics industry, Macs are still used, because they're the best at what they do. Those iTools users will probably cough up, because there's no alternative, unified service.
I'm not sure of the commercial sense of the fact that 1GB of additional storage costs $350 a year to add - a 20GB external USB drive is $150 on Amazon.
In any case, it's always been the way: Macs are more expensive than PCs, but they do things in a much nicer way. Similarly, iTools/.Mac/whatever does what so many other services do, and sure it's more expensive, but it does it a little more nicely.
While Microsoft's new page is a nice change from the old one, it still contains quite a bit of their same old FUD.
This is exactly the point, though. Steve Ballmer comes out with a completely 'new' approach, saying there's no way Windows can be as cheap initially as Linux, yada yada.
This makes the people who aren't sufficiently enlightened think that M$ are being frank and earnest about things, and saying that, overall, Windows is the better option.
The point is this: M$ may not have changed their attitude towards Linux, but by making people believe that they have, it gives more weight to their arguments. This is probably based on the "Any change is good change" argument, one oft used by managers.
You've got to admit, it is a rather eval - ahem, evil - trick they're playing. (groan)
What nd didn't point out is that the first link from Google's search for "retrireview" features "* Implementation of Java mainframe data retrireview process..." - well, at least it replaced "eval" within three words of "Java".
Re:look at the other sites reviews instead
on
nForce2 Preview
·
· Score: 1
Never mind the detestable Comic Sans font, who in their right mind allows popup ads for Gator on their website?
I wish work would install Webwasher, I really do.
Re:Question for people who know more than I...
on
nForce2 Preview
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Seems you skimped a little too much on the motherboard, as it's not even on the parts list. Perhaps if you had the crucial device connecting your CPU, RAM, graphics and sound cards together, you might get a little performance out of them.;-)
but seriously... Not sure what bus speed the 1.0GHz Athlon does (I think it's 200MHz), but more than anything else, it's bus speed that matters - of course, you need a board that can support high bus speeds to maximise performance, which, if you have DDR RAM, you should have. You'll still be needing a CPU with 266MHz bus to maximise performance from your current setup, though. Could be time to get an Athlon 1.4GHz, at least.
There was once a time when people plodded along, happy that the law covered any wrongdoing that anyone could do.
That time is now, apparently, gone. You cannot use a computer these days without worrying that there is some stupid specific little bit of law that relates to what you are doing and makes it illegal. Everyone (well, everyone on Slashdot, probably) knows about the DMCA, and its implications. That's the kind of thing we have to steer clear of: needless restrictions on the use of computers.
We don't need any more laws pertaining to computers, because everything that has gone before covers the crimes you can commit using a computer. Fake an e-mail, hack into a server and change some data - it's fraud. Hack in and take some sensitive data - theft and probably all kinds of other things. And if your hacking into systems happens to be with the sole purpose of killing someone - well, of course, it's murder, as stated by CountBrass above.
Just because the way of committing crime is different doesn't mean that there needs to be a law introduced for it - after all, when the first gun was made, they didn't need to make a new law for that - the previous one, covering knives, axes, legal training (oh sorry, that just causes brain-death:-) ) etc, did just fine.
Law usually is set by a precedent. And have we seen a precedent for this?
There was a Maglev railway set up way back in 1984 to take passengers from Birmingham International station to the airport it served, and it worked, albeit briefly. However, it was closed in 1995 and a new, but far less exciting, railway link is being set up.
This site (cache of a BBC page) gives a few details on the old Maglev system that was in use - it doesn't look as impressive as the 350mph+ trains being trialled in Japan though.
Slashdot Mirror
You, then, are one of a minority that gets the balance between leaving well alone and caring right. Monitoring someone's activities isn't going to stop them. In fact, I think that, in the case of faster teenage drivers, the parents wouldn't like to know how they drive. I know my parents disapprove of some of my driving, but they'd just rather not know what I get up to than try to put a stop to it.
If such devices are implemented, then people are never going to learn how to judge safety for themselves. If a black box beeps at you whenever you take a turn slightly too sharply, or go a little too fast, great. You react to the beep.
I can see that this device would have problems distinguishing between different speed limit areas - go at 70 in a 70 and you're not doing anything wrong; do 70 in a 30 and you're more than doubling the speed limit.
Also, I can't see that such a device would help establish the cause of accidents. I have been in a couple of near misses where the only safe way out is to put your foot to the floor - but what would an insurance company say if they saw this information from a black box?
Over the pond, whenever anything goes wrong with our Dell kit, we always refer to Dell Boy (ala Only Fools And Horses) - I don't think I want to see the van the computers got delivered in :-)
I don't see Perens' stunt accomplishing anything except for boosting Perens' own notoriaty. All this does is create an image that "open source advocate == pirate." This is the political equivalent of a bunch of kids driving past the principal's house with their asses out the car window, honking the horn. It is entertaining in a juevenile sort of way, but it doesn't lower the price of pudding in the cafeteria
Perens has a point. He is not showing that OSS advocates are pirates. There is no reason why someone who buys a DVD from overseas should not be able to play it in their DVD player at home. The media attempted to exert control on buyers by limiting what area of the world they could buy their DVDs from, but of course there are many ways to circumvent this, and region-free players are widely available in the UK. This is how it should be.
To my knowledge, a number of DVD players can be made region-free by entering codes with the remote control - although this is never publicised by the manufacturers, because it'd land them in trouble: they'd be the ones breaking the law, not the end users.
Ultimately, what is being pointed out here is that the DMCA achieves nothing of any positive purpose. Manufacturers, it has been shown, are not in favour of such limitations (DVD player manufacturers; Philips in the case of protected CDs) - and rightly so.
Time for the American media industry to stop feeling all self-important, and realise that, if it wants to remain successful, it should stop behaving in such a childish manner, and start facing up to the fact that if it makes its products inaccessible to the world, the world won't be buying much of it.
Every time anything of this ilk comes up, I find myself thinking how good it is to live in the UK. I'm not going to extol the virtues of state broadcasting without commercials, because I think that has its own evils.
However, what the people over in the UK realise is that, in order to get people to watch TV, you have to make them want to watch it.
Locking people into watching shows live, rather than recording them, is going to reduce overall viewer figures, no two ways about it. The only way to make a system where people don't need a VCR is to allow them to watch the program whenever - i.e. make an individual stream available for each person each time they want to watch a programme. And that, my friends, ain't gonna happen, save for the odd few on-demand film channels.
I am still waiting for the day that the MPAA, RIAA, etc, realise that, no matter what they do, there will always be companies who are prepared to produce non-standards-compliant players to appease/please the marketplace. Just as you had region-free DVD players, so you'll get recorders that ignore the broadcast flag.
Of course, I'll be waiting a long time for the RIAA and MPAA to remove their heads from their behinds; however, in the meantime, it looks as if we can look forward to a world where legislation and licensing are so constrictive that starting up a new business anywhere remotely near the field of technology is going to be nigh on impossible.
Ah well - we can hardly say we didn't bring it upon ourselves.
It seems a good enough idea to develop a single, friendly interface to be used within embedded systems - you'd be able to put it on one standard chip, interfaces for all your devices could be pretty similar, they could be customisable, and so on and so forth.
What a lot of people seem to think is that Flash is an unnecessarily bloaty platform for such interfaces. To a large extent, that's true. But what the average end user 'wants', above a friendly, functional interface, is one that looks good. I'm trying to avoid using the phrase "looks flash", but it is just too appropriate here.
Ultimately, it would be very nice if the interface of choice were not Flash, and there will be many others who could enlighten everyone as to what the better option would be. It doesn't matter if things aren't standardised across the board either, but I don't think I'd like to see things go the way of Flash at the moment - apart from anything else, I find anything that's controllable with a keyboard - even if it is just shortcut keys for menus - far easier and quicker to use, and I've not seen that implemented in Flash.
I bet you've also managed to increase your breast size by WHOLE CUP SIZES!
;-)"
-me, I just set up e-mail accounts on my domain name when I sign up for things, then deactivate them as soon as I get my password. Oh, and I use the nice little bit of text off cexx.org (would give URL but proxy prohibits) that ends "We like it when e-mail harvesters crash
Open Source developments are a viable option for companies these days
:-)
;-)
viable in what way? that you dont know when your project will be finished, since you arent paying anyone to complete it? or is it viable because its relatively unsupported, at least officially? or is its viability just based on its being free beer?
A lot of software nowaday is purchased after it is written. You don't see many orders for Office 2005 about, do you? The point is that, if you look around at all the various bits of software to carry out your task, the open source / free ones are now being looked at seriously by businesses, because it has been proven that such software works, and works well.
It will be interesting to see if, ultimately, businesses do perform a complete about-turn on their strategies...
ah, another holy warrior. always preaching about the coming software revolution, with the new economy wiping out the old, transforming our world into Lin-utopia in one or two days. However, holy warrior, there are a few flaws with your logic.
I said "it will be interesting to see if". Never once did I make any suggestion that I was a "holy warrior". I don't believe that we'll see a total revolution. Some companies may switch. Others won't. It'll be interesting to see how many do. Meantime, read what I post.
1. Licensing and maintenence contracts are a good thing, from a business standpoint. you dont need to pay staff to support something, you just pay either per incident or whatever.
I think you'll find that there are a lot of companies which do support contracting. Maintenance contracts may be good, but licensing is a method of attempting to lock companies, users et al. into their upgrade path. IMHO.
2. small-medium size businesses generally cannot afford to have an in-house expert.
See above.
3. there simply arent enough experts to go around, leaving businesses with tighter salary requirements with less options, and generally worse support.
Given the same number of computers and the same number of applications, you need the same number of support staff, whether contracting out or not. If anything, it's the fact that migrating to a new OS will require retraining that means that this isn't happening. If "there aren't enough experts to go around", why are businesses managing fine as they are?
4. "has a bug patch written before the user finds the bug"? what kind of prognosticating b.s. are you spouting? I didnt know Linux had any more access to the bug tracking crystal ball than Windows or any other OS or program, or whatever.
I speak from experience: I've downloaded the latest version of whatever open source / free software, looked at the changelog, and found that bugs have been fixed that I didn't even know existed. Because open source / free software seems to get updated a lot more frequently than other software, the fixes are released in minor versions, and consequently, if you're always running on the latest version, it's quite likely that you don't find the bugs that are there.
Please use some intelligence and logic before hitting that "submit" button. Just because you can whip around foolish opinions quite easily these days doesnt always mean you should.
I think I used enough intelligence and logic on my original post; perhaps not enough in deciding whether or not to reply, Mr. Anonymous Coward. Also, I'm more than welcome to state my opinion, foolish or otherwise. The only opinion I stated is that "Open Source developments are a viable option for companies these days" - a statement which is hard to deny. The rest is speculation, as indicated by "It will be interesting to see if...".
Lesson Of The Day: Reply to what the poster wrote, not what you want the poster to have written. That said, it seems that those who don't want to do this post as AC
...an article in Computer Shopper recently reported that the development could, were the cost of production to decrease sufficiently, result in animated displays being produced and used in things like product packaging - but who really wants animated cornflakes?
I'll probably get flamed for this, but where are all the open source Linux companies that are currently truely making a profit (and not just using some creative accounting tricks)?
In my eagerness to get first non-troll post, ambiguity kicked in. I meant that, for clients, open-source software (commercial or otherwise) is a viable alternative to licensed/paid-for/whatever.
IMHO, it was at first unusual for Linux to be given credit in the "real" OS stakes: I remember the first time I saw Linux in the UK, on a Computer Shopper cover CD. I can't remember what the distribution was, but it was incredibly flaky.
However, what Linux has proved, more than anything else, is not that Linux is a viable OS, but, far more importantly, that Open Source developments are a viable option for companies these days.
It will be interesting to see if, ultimately, businesses do perform a complete about-turn on their strategies and, rather than going for licensed software, with maintence contracts etc., have maintenance in-house for software which, for the most part, has a bug patch written for it before the user finds the bug.
- The key to get into the door can only fit one right side up, afterall it is case sensitive.
...all of which makes me lament the fact that so many drivers seem like newbies, not knowing how to use the things they don't need (like indicators...)
Did you ever own a VW Beetle? They built that feature in many decades ago.
and another parallel - some cars these days do have four different settings for Drive.
...I can't wait to see the illicit copies of films that start floating about the Internet - rather than being your average filmed-from-the-back-of-the-movie-theatre quality, some bright spark would have managed to point their satellite dish at the right point in the sky, decrypt the signal, monitor the transmission of the film, get the data, decrypt it, post up a perfect copy.
Only thing is, though, that films would of course be of incredibly high resolution if they were being shown in the cinema. About that terabyte disk...
Of course, you can do this with real radio broadcasts, too, but everyone's decision-making abilities go haywire as soon as the word "digital" enters the debate: the streamed version would yield a DIGITAL copy of the song in question, and is therefore evil and scary.
My Psion Wavefinder receives DAB digital radio, and allows me to directly record the mp2 stream, exactly as it was transmitted (at 100% signal, which I usually get), without conversion of file format. Digital radio, however, was hailed as a revolution by all concerned, and it didn't seem to bother the recording industry that I have a nice little source of 192kbps stereo music whenever I feel like it.
Oh, and I can record from all the stations on the DAB multiplex simultaneously without tying up my sound card. So why do they have problems with Internet stations?
Aspirin bottle? Me, I just reach for the sledgehammer and drive my car, which doesn't have any computers in it to go wrong, right over to the user, and wield the sledgehammer telling them they WILL accept it's their fault it's gone wrong.
If that's true, it's a great shame - I thought that the original, moving scroll wheel was quite a nice feature, and very slick. Oh well, they call it progress.
I've seen a fair few overinflated claims before, but a scroll wheel with no moving parts is an impossibility. Unless the wheel doesn't move, in which case it's just no damn good.
Admittedly, it's a matter of opinion, and it could just be that Apple users are stuck in their ways, but it's the general impression that I've got.
Am I partial on this matter? Well, I use Linux and Win2K - make of that what you will.
6. Customer returns iMac to store, gets a Compaq or something.
.Mac can we expect a similar portal called .Paq?
Compaq always seems to follow Apple - after the iMac came the iPaq... after
And for that I get email, online file storage, and my own web site. That's cheaper than the dial-up account I have now that I never actually dial into. I'll sign up.
...all of which you get in the UK for free, on a free dialup account.
It seems that what Apple wants to concentrate on is a feeling of class and exclusivity - which it certainly will get if they provide expensive services like that. Apple's market is pretty much a captive one - many Mac users simply love their Mac for the way it works; in the graphics industry, Macs are still used, because they're the best at what they do. Those iTools users will probably cough up, because there's no alternative, unified service.
I'm not sure of the commercial sense of the fact that 1GB of additional storage costs $350 a year to add - a 20GB external USB drive is $150 on Amazon.
In any case, it's always been the way: Macs are more expensive than PCs, but they do things in a much nicer way. Similarly, iTools/.Mac/whatever does what so many other services do, and sure it's more expensive, but it does it a little more nicely.
While Microsoft's new page is a nice change from the old one, it still contains quite a bit of their same old FUD.
This is exactly the point, though. Steve Ballmer comes out with a completely 'new' approach, saying there's no way Windows can be as cheap initially as Linux, yada yada.
This makes the people who aren't sufficiently enlightened think that M$ are being frank and earnest about things, and saying that, overall, Windows is the better option.
The point is this: M$ may not have changed their attitude towards Linux, but by making people believe that they have, it gives more weight to their arguments. This is probably based on the "Any change is good change" argument, one oft used by managers.
You've got to admit, it is a rather eval - ahem, evil - trick they're playing. (groan)
What nd didn't point out is that the first link from Google's search for "retrireview" features "* Implementation of Java mainframe data retrireview process..." - well, at least it replaced "eval" within three words of "Java".
Never mind the detestable Comic Sans font, who in their right mind allows popup ads for Gator on their website?
I wish work would install Webwasher, I really do.
Seems you skimped a little too much on the motherboard, as it's not even on the parts list. Perhaps if you had the crucial device connecting your CPU, RAM, graphics and sound cards together, you might get a little performance out of them. ;-)
but seriously... Not sure what bus speed the 1.0GHz Athlon does (I think it's 200MHz), but more than anything else, it's bus speed that matters - of course, you need a board that can support high bus speeds to maximise performance, which, if you have DDR RAM, you should have. You'll still be needing a CPU with 266MHz bus to maximise performance from your current setup, though. Could be time to get an Athlon 1.4GHz, at least.
There was once a time when people plodded along, happy that the law covered any wrongdoing that anyone could do.
:-) ) etc, did just fine.
That time is now, apparently, gone. You cannot use a computer these days without worrying that there is some stupid specific little bit of law that relates to what you are doing and makes it illegal. Everyone (well, everyone on Slashdot, probably) knows about the DMCA, and its implications. That's the kind of thing we have to steer clear of: needless restrictions on the use of computers.
We don't need any more laws pertaining to computers, because everything that has gone before covers the crimes you can commit using a computer. Fake an e-mail, hack into a server and change some data - it's fraud. Hack in and take some sensitive data - theft and probably all kinds of other things. And if your hacking into systems happens to be with the sole purpose of killing someone - well, of course, it's murder, as stated by CountBrass above.
Just because the way of committing crime is different doesn't mean that there needs to be a law introduced for it - after all, when the first gun was made, they didn't need to make a new law for that - the previous one, covering knives, axes, legal training (oh sorry, that just causes brain-death
Law usually is set by a precedent. And have we seen a precedent for this?
There was a Maglev railway set up way back in 1984 to take passengers from Birmingham International station to the airport it served, and it worked, albeit briefly. However, it was closed in 1995 and a new, but far less exciting, railway link is being set up.
This site (cache of a BBC page) gives a few details on the old Maglev system that was in use - it doesn't look as impressive as the 350mph+ trains being trialled in Japan though.