Then tell me, what is the "correct" word for hacker nowadays?
Computer hobbyist. Sorry if that doean't sound all "wicked cool" and such, but when Walmart started selling Linux PCs, you should have realized you've come careening into the mainstream. Pop open another Miller Lite and slip some more Bruce into the CD player, my brother -- It's a Good Thing!
And what is the new cracker doing?
Shovelling cheese into my mouth. Truth to tell, "cracker," competing in meaning as it was against the perjorative slang term for southern American, never stood a chance.
It's all relative. Chirac is right wing relative to the rest of his country's Socialist bent. If Clinton were to run for office in France, he'd look like Ghengis Khan.
Hey, not only did you apparently "have to read it," but something compelled you to COMMENT on it as well. Wow! You should really look into getting your computer fixed, it's begun to eat away at your free will, and that sounds serious...
Man, if MY computer made me read and comment on every story posted on SlashDot, I'd never get any work done! You must have a pretty cushy job!
Dude, I'm using Mozilla 1.3 over Mandrake 9.0 on a HP Pavilion with a P3. I use a MS generic PS2 wheelmouse.
What hardware and software are you running that MAKE you click on a particular story on SlashDot?! You should consider upgrading, or something... Anything that takes away from your freedom of choice or dictates exactly what you must read on a website must be a really, really scary technology.
"'Runs Linux'? Where have I heard that word before? What's Linux?"
"...isn't that the system that doean't work with Windows, or something like that? Well, I have a Windows PC... hmmm, better take another look at these pocketPC's..."
Where Linux needs the mention is NOT on the embedded hardware, but on the sides of the boxes of software. Joe Sixpack needs to be able to walk into WalMart and see the Linux name on the compatibilities list of the mass-appeal home design, graphics, and pre-school apps.
Screen type, signal-to-noise ration, etc. are relevant in the purchase of AV equipment. They represent objective, measurable criteria.
The unit's OS, and -- Dear God in His Heaven! -- its kernel version, lack that relevance. In the marketing of a PDA, where it might easily cause confusion over the unit's synching capability with some (vastly) more popular consumer desktop OS's, it's poison.
You and I, for whom this kind of stuff is of interest, can find out the answers to our questions easily enough without frightening the newbs off.
It's an Operating System, not a Religion, and when you preach to the choir, you risk boring the sinners.
Same thing with TiVo. What's the purpose for excluding it from their advertisements?
Probably because the target audience for TiVos are humans. Seriously, Dude, we're "Geeks," and just _some_ of us care about a device's OS. Sure, it would be great from a Linux Evangelist's perspective for every mainstream thingamabob running Linux to promote such, but I can just as easily see the Marketing Guy saying, "Look, can we ose-lay the Inux-Lay references, it makes it sound too geeky." Perfectly reasonable, given these companies' goal is to sell widgets, not push Linux.
Mickey D's doesn't tout what brand of vegetable oil it uses on its fries, Chyrsler doesn't promote the brand of spark plugs they use, Tommy Hilfiger doesn't waste copy space telling people where he buys his textiles. A Broadway show puts its actors names up in lights, not those of its stage crew.
Which brings us back to Sharp and the Zaurus. The guys who use and compile Linux already _know_ the Zaurus runs on it. We're already on the team, have done the research. It's a given. Sharp is out there competing with the Palm and PocketPC crowd, and the LAST thing they want to do is muddy the comparison waters with even a whiff of OS incompatibility.
...long, long after he wrote any new jokes for the poor weathered keychain-adorning tykes.
Give Breathed and Larson credit for knowing when to hold, when to fold, and going out on top.
The Truth That Dare Not Speak Its Name
on
The Tyranny of Email
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You want to increase office productivity?
It's really easy: Position everyone from CEO in his corner office through cube dweller to mail clerk on his mailbench so that their computer monitors -- what they are currently "working on" -- is viewable by anyone walking casually nearby. Give 'em all big 25" monitors as well. Anticipated increase: 35%
At the end of each month, have IT run and post a report with every employee's name and the amount of time he spent parked on what particular web sites. Anticipated Increase: 60%
E-mail, schmee-mail. You want to increase productivity, you restrict web access. Many, many office workers today do not even NEED Web access of ANY kind while on the job. Give these guys an e-mail reading client with word processor capabilitiy. Add a spreadsheet for the Accountants. Anticipated Increase: 75%
SlashDot regurgitates, period. NYT, Wired, whatever. The vast majority of the stories mentioned on SlashDot I've seen elsewhere, sometimes days earlier.
What's the problem?
This is not a "Breaking News" site, it's a community discussion board. One doesn't come here for "news," per se, but to read what like-minded people in the "geek community" think about that news.
You're getting upset because your dog doesn't 'meow.'
Some people aspire to greatness, some have it thrust upon them, and some wander into it. I think you and your guys have had a mix of the three. A belated congratulations, by the way...
But, as Stan Lee has taught us, with great power comes great responsibility, which is to say:
D00d, take the $40 I just sent you and invest in a good spell-checker. (Open Source or Closed, your choice!)
My point is that some people take Slashdot far to seriously. We're not CNN. We're just some guys trying to post a fun mix of the serious, the important, and the entertaining. Lighten up!
(pssssst! Taco! You're asking people to pony up more money! Ixnay on the efensivenessday!)
Reality Check:/. is NOT a news oganization. I do not mean any disrespect by that (although I *will* admit to doing a spit-take with my coffee when I read it)./. serves as a community site where topics culled from different news sources are discussed. If you're looking for the latest news, presented in an objective manner, you should not be looking to/., and the editors here will be the first to tell you that.
Open Source code is, by definition, free. But Information is not, nor need it be, nor should it. Whatever made you think that?!
As for karma-whoring, etc., sure, the subscribers have a leg up. They'll be the first to post the mirrors, spew the obvious (but funny) jokes, and generally have an advantage in racking up k-points over the non-subscriber. What's the problem? Taco and posse *invented* k-points, and are responsible for their continued and prevalent (albeit bizarre) value in the "Geek Community." I'm glad to see somebody finally figuring out a way to make an extra buck from that (eerie) invention.
If/. Karma is (strangely) important to you, than you owe it the inventors to kick some dough their way. But nothing stops you from enjoying the site without contributing.
Personally, I'd pay quadruple the subscription rate for a site without AC's which also allowed me to filter by a subscriber's age. It's all just a little "too free" for my tastes. Here's hoping that, after I subscribe today, the pre-general release climate is a little less noisey.
Instead of calling it "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" it should be renamed "Microsoft's XBox marketing platform."
I'm not sure I understand this attitude. The XBox is the coolest geek tinkertoy since the Palm Pilot and Lego Mindstorms. You're pretty short-sighted if you haven't explored it simply because you're a PS2 fanboy and/or anti-MS zealot. You're also missing quite a bit.
FYI, I own a PS2, run Linux on my home network cuz I hate Windows, but XBox is, as the 14 year-olds say, da Bomb.
No, MS just wants to buy the current Sega, and since the current Sega is on the cusp of a merger with Asian Arcade Magnate Sammy, the newly announced XBox strategy makes a bit more sence, dunnit?
I thought the whole MS-Sega-Sammy dance was old news
Also, I heard that if you disconnect the power, it crashes out and becomes completely unresponsive
Not only that, but a buddy of mine once dropped his XBox out of an 8th story window after slamming it repeatedly with a toaster oven (something about trying to get Linux to run on it, I dunno...) and would you believe the damn piece of M$ Sh*t died on him a week later?
The implication here is that the Xbox crashes and freezes to a degree similar to MS Windows.
In fact, it does not. I've played the hell out of mine for 15 months, and it flows like buttah. I'm no MS apologist, and their PC operating systems have nearly made me Elvis my monitors on a number of occasions. But their XBox? Technical problems on an un-modded unit? Unheard of.
Man, I just can't but help thinking "sellout" when I read that article. Kato says he'll leave artistic control to the film professionals
Yeah, know what you mean. Guy's probably got a wife, kids, mortgage, bills to pay... DAMN HIM! Damn him to HELL!!
Seriously, if it helps, imagine him as the Linux-loving, MS-Bashing SysAdmin forced to run NT because of his job in the Fortune 500.
...or can only artists "sell out?"
Re:Alex should have just waited
on
Half Mast
·
· Score: 1
You just wait for them to try to bully you again. Then you point out that you can buy and sell them. That way, you're not starting the bullying, you're ending it.
If being able to "Buy and Sell" them has become your criterion for superiority, then your victory came too late; the bullies already Own you.
Maybe the university administrators have more important things to do
Actually, I would have thought it was the students who had more important things to do. Not to get all "back in my day" here on y'all, but how do kids today find the time for all this MP3 crap after handling the books, beer, and babes?
I'm here to save you from a life of bitter regret: You have the rest of your lives to "trade" music, guys, but there is only a narrow window of opportunity for kegs and co-eds!
SlashDot has so-o-o-o-o romanticized that organization, to the point now that we are supposed to regard them as some kind of cyber-digital Lone Ranger/Zorro amalgam.
I've been following their progress since the early 90's, and I just don't get it. As best as I can glean, they've thrown some great cocktail parties. I mean, we all have that non-lawyer's respect for their esquires and DC addresses, but I've seen no indication that any lawyer or lobbyist or legislator or corporation on "the other side" takes these EFF guys seriously.
Of course, I'm sure that if we all donate just a little more money to them, everything will be just fine. sh'yeah.
I'm beginning to think that our great burning desire to have some white hat organization to turn to has over-powered our collective bullshit detectors...
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if people I meet in chatrooms will appear more witty and charming if my laptop is running "fully juiced up?"
Then tell me, what is the "correct" word for hacker nowadays?
Computer hobbyist. Sorry if that doean't sound all "wicked cool" and such, but when Walmart started selling Linux PCs, you should have realized you've come careening into the mainstream. Pop open another Miller Lite and slip some more Bruce into the CD player, my brother -- It's a Good Thing!
And what is the new cracker doing?
Shovelling cheese into my mouth. Truth to tell, "cracker," competing in meaning as it was against the perjorative slang term for southern American, never stood a chance.
It's all relative. Chirac is right wing relative to the rest of his country's Socialist bent. If Clinton were to run for office in France, he'd look like Ghengis Khan.
Hey, not only did you apparently "have to read it," but something compelled you to COMMENT on it as well. Wow! You should really look into getting your computer fixed, it's begun to eat away at your free will, and that sounds serious...
Man, if MY computer made me read and comment on every story posted on SlashDot, I'd never get any work done! You must have a pretty cushy job!
Dude, I'm using Mozilla 1.3 over Mandrake 9.0 on a HP Pavilion with a P3. I use a MS generic PS2 wheelmouse.
What hardware and software are you running that MAKE you click on a particular story on SlashDot?! You should consider upgrading, or something... Anything that takes away from your freedom of choice or dictates exactly what you must read on a website must be a really, really scary technology.
"'Runs Linux'? Where have I heard that word before? What's Linux?"
"...isn't that the system that doean't work with Windows, or something like that? Well, I have a Windows PC... hmmm, better take another look at these pocketPC's..."
Where Linux needs the mention is NOT on the embedded hardware, but on the sides of the boxes of software. Joe Sixpack needs to be able to walk into WalMart and see the Linux name on the compatibilities list of the mass-appeal home design, graphics, and pre-school apps.
Of course, that's a whole 'nother topic.
Screen type, signal-to-noise ration, etc. are relevant in the purchase of AV equipment. They represent objective, measurable criteria.
The unit's OS, and -- Dear God in His Heaven! -- its kernel version, lack that relevance. In the marketing of a PDA, where it might easily cause confusion over the unit's synching capability with some (vastly) more popular consumer desktop OS's, it's poison.
You and I, for whom this kind of stuff is of interest, can find out the answers to our questions easily enough without frightening the newbs off.
It's an Operating System, not a Religion, and when you preach to the choir, you risk boring the sinners.
Same thing with TiVo. What's the purpose for excluding it from their advertisements?
Probably because the target audience for TiVos are humans. Seriously, Dude, we're "Geeks," and just _some_ of us care about a device's OS. Sure, it would be great from a Linux Evangelist's perspective for every mainstream thingamabob running Linux to promote such, but I can just as easily see the Marketing Guy saying, "Look, can we ose-lay the Inux-Lay references, it makes it sound too geeky." Perfectly reasonable, given these companies' goal is to sell widgets, not push Linux.
Mickey D's doesn't tout what brand of vegetable oil it uses on its fries, Chyrsler doesn't promote the brand of spark plugs they use, Tommy Hilfiger doesn't waste copy space telling people where he buys his textiles. A Broadway show puts its actors names up in lights, not those of its stage crew.
Which brings us back to Sharp and the Zaurus. The guys who use and compile Linux already _know_ the Zaurus runs on it. We're already on the team, have done the research. It's a given. Sharp is out there competing with the Palm and PocketPC crowd, and the LAST thing they want to do is muddy the comparison waters with even a whiff of OS incompatibility.
Give Breathed and Larson credit for knowing when to hold, when to fold, and going out on top.
You want to increase office productivity?
It's really easy: Position everyone from CEO in his corner office through cube dweller to mail clerk on his mailbench so that their computer monitors -- what they are currently "working on" -- is viewable by anyone walking casually nearby. Give 'em all big 25" monitors as well.
Anticipated increase: 35%
At the end of each month, have IT run and post a report with every employee's name and the amount of time he spent parked on what particular web sites.
Anticipated Increase: 60%
E-mail, schmee-mail. You want to increase productivity, you restrict web access. Many, many office workers today do not even NEED Web access of ANY kind while on the job. Give these guys an e-mail reading client with word processor capabilitiy. Add a spreadsheet for the Accountants.
Anticipated Increase: 75%
Happy to Help!
SlashDot regurgitates, period. NYT, Wired, whatever. The vast majority of the stories mentioned on SlashDot I've seen elsewhere, sometimes days earlier.
What's the problem?
This is not a "Breaking News" site, it's a community discussion board. One doesn't come here for "news," per se, but to read what like-minded people in the "geek community" think about that news.
You're getting upset because your dog doesn't 'meow.'
Most of the site has been inaccessible to me since about 3:45 ET. The outage, attack, or whatever it is, is at least 4 hours old now.
It's a Murphy thing, obviously. Yesterday, Taco and Crew pitched for more paid subscribers; now this. Oh, well; keep a sense of humor...
But, as Stan Lee has taught us, with great power comes great responsibility, which is to say:
D00d, take the $40 I just sent you and invest in a good spell-checker. (Open Source or Closed, your choice!)
My point is that some people take Slashdot far to seriously. We're not CNN. We're just some guys trying to post a fun mix of the serious, the important, and the entertaining. Lighten up!
(pssssst! Taco! You're asking people to pony up more money! Ixnay on the efensivenessday!)
Reality Check: /. is NOT a news oganization. I do not mean any disrespect by that (although I *will* admit to doing a spit-take with my coffee when I read it). /. serves as a community site where topics culled from different news sources are discussed. If you're looking for the latest news, presented in an objective manner, you should not be looking to /., and the editors here will be the first to tell you that.
/. Karma is (strangely) important to you, than you owe it the inventors to kick some dough their way. But nothing stops you from enjoying the site without contributing.
Open Source code is, by definition, free. But Information is not, nor need it be, nor should it. Whatever made you think that?!
As for karma-whoring, etc., sure, the subscribers have a leg up. They'll be the first to post the mirrors, spew the obvious (but funny) jokes, and generally have an advantage in racking up k-points over the non-subscriber. What's the problem? Taco and posse *invented* k-points, and are responsible for their continued and prevalent (albeit bizarre) value in the "Geek Community." I'm glad to see somebody finally figuring out a way to make an extra buck from that (eerie) invention.
If
Personally, I'd pay quadruple the subscription rate for a site without AC's which also allowed me to filter by a subscriber's age. It's all just a little "too free" for my tastes. Here's hoping that, after I subscribe today, the pre-general release climate is a little less noisey.
I'll let you know!
Instead of calling it "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" it should be renamed "Microsoft's XBox marketing platform."
I'm not sure I understand this attitude. The XBox is the coolest geek tinkertoy since the Palm Pilot and Lego Mindstorms. You're pretty short-sighted if you haven't explored it simply because you're a PS2 fanboy and/or anti-MS zealot. You're also missing quite a bit.
FYI, I own a PS2, run Linux on my home network cuz I hate Windows, but XBox is, as the 14 year-olds say, da Bomb.
Or does Microsoft just want to be the next Sega?
No, MS just wants to buy the current Sega, and since the current Sega is on the cusp of a merger with Asian Arcade Magnate Sammy, the newly announced XBox strategy makes a bit more sence, dunnit?
I thought the whole MS-Sega-Sammy dance was old news
Also, I heard that if you disconnect the power, it crashes out and becomes completely unresponsive
Not only that, but a buddy of mine once dropped his XBox out of an 8th story window after slamming it repeatedly with a toaster oven (something about trying to get Linux to run on it, I dunno...) and would you believe the damn piece of M$ Sh*t died on him a week later?
Redmond Bastards!
The implication here is that the Xbox crashes and freezes to a degree similar to MS Windows.
In fact, it does not. I've played the hell out of mine for 15 months, and it flows like buttah. I'm no MS apologist, and their PC operating systems have nearly made me Elvis my monitors on a number of occasions. But their XBox? Technical problems on an un-modded unit? Unheard of.
Somebody mod this ignorant buffoon down.
it's just the music industry really pisses me off with all the selling out and whining like two year olds
Actually, it's the Oil Companies that piss me off, but every time I pump gasoline without paying for it I get arrested.
Go Figure!
Yeah, know what you mean. Guy's probably got a wife, kids, mortgage, bills to pay... DAMN HIM! Damn him to HELL!!
Seriously, if it helps, imagine him as the Linux-loving, MS-Bashing SysAdmin forced to run NT because of his job in the Fortune 500.
...or can only artists "sell out?"
You just wait for them to try to bully you again. Then you point out that you can buy and sell them. That way, you're not starting the bullying, you're ending it.
If being able to "Buy and Sell" them has become your criterion for superiority, then your victory came too late; the bullies already Own you.
What kind of IT are you using to write nowadays?
He's Larry friggin' Niven, ferchrissakes!! FORGET you're a nerd for one lousy minute and DON'T ask him questions about what Word Processor he uses!!
ye gods...
Maybe the university administrators have more important things to do
Actually, I would have thought it was the students who had more important things to do. Not to get all "back in my day" here on y'all, but how do kids today find the time for all this MP3 crap after handling the books, beer, and babes?
I'm here to save you from a life of bitter regret: You have the rest of your lives to "trade" music, guys, but there is only a narrow window of opportunity for kegs and co-eds!
EFF?
SlashDot has so-o-o-o-o romanticized that organization, to the point now that we are supposed to regard them as some kind of cyber-digital Lone Ranger/Zorro amalgam.
I've been following their progress since the early 90's, and I just don't get it. As best as I can glean, they've thrown some great cocktail parties. I mean, we all have that non-lawyer's respect for their esquires and DC addresses, but I've seen no indication that any lawyer or lobbyist or legislator or corporation on "the other side" takes these EFF guys seriously.
Of course, I'm sure that if we all donate just a little more money to them, everything will be just fine. sh'yeah.
I'm beginning to think that our great burning desire to have some white hat organization to turn to has over-powered our collective bullshit detectors...