Hmm, judging by my userID, I've been here at least two or so years longer than you have, and even I can't remember Slashdot being "a polite, well moderated haven." You sure it wasn't kuro5hin.org you were talking about?
Well, the point of the GPL is that it's a fair exchange of code. I give you my networking code and let you use it, and in return you give me your chess code and let me use it.
Windows 95 is still a pretty decent consumer-level OS: unless you're going up to Win2k there's no real reason to upgrade beyond service packs (e.g. 98 & ME suck ass, NT sucks at multimedia).
Uhh, I don't think so. Windows 95 won't even install on lots of newer hardware (try getting it to support some of the newer AMD motherboards), and it doesn't do USB. Obtroll: Perhaps in the Linux world not having USB support is the norm, but some of us demand better. =P
How did it get a five? I have no idea. Slashdot moderation is horribly broken. I just posted it at Score: 2 because I have such an incredible amount of karma I'd have to be modded down lots and lots of times before I'd even lose the +1 bonus. And, as luck would have it, it got moderated up anyway, allowing me to continue posting whatever I feel like posting.
As for junk mail - why can't you just put your name on the no-junk-mail list? It works quite well (I personally haven't done it because I don't mind junk mail - it's better than no mail and sometimes amusing =P - but I know people who have done so and they now get almost none). It seems that people such as CmdrTaco are not really interested in reducing the amount of junk mail they get, since they'd rather waste time mailing envelopes of glue than asking to be put on a simple list that would have a much more dramatic effect. The junk mail which he and others don't even try to stop seems to just be a convenient excuse for some middle-school style mischief. Of course I guess then it makes sense that he and others have not subscribed to the do-not-junk-mail list, because then it would take away the excuse to post stupid stories like this one.
Second, I have a hard time believing that you could buy a car, furniture, applicances, or a decent computer, and pay it off within one month.
Why not? You will pay it off eventually, so why not wait until you have the money before buying it? Rather than buying your new 1.2 GHz computer now when you have no money, and then spend the next six months playing off $2000 plus $500 interest, why not wait 3 months and then buy it - by the 4th month (when the credit card bill comes) you'll have saved the $2000 and can pay it off at once, saving the $500 interest.
If you want no junk mail, sign up for the "no junk mail" list run by the Direct Marketing Association. This will have effects.
Sending back shit in envelopes just raises the prices on goods those companies sell, which are the goods you have to buy. Most junk mail comes from companies you do business with in some way - your bank, your credit card company, computer companies, etc. It does not make the companies lose money, it just makes you and anyone who does business with them lose money.
I suppose next you will throw another temper tantrum and decide that since local calls are free and you don't like your phone company, you'll attempt to screw them by calling your 2nd line with your 1st and leaving the line open and unattended all day.
Re:As a Caltech Student....
on
Infiltration
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· Score: 2
Of course, we at nearby Harvey Mudd already have switched 100BaseT in the dorms, so such projects are unecessary. =P
Just out of curiousity, because I know a lot of people taking college CS classes in Scheme, and I know a lot of academic-type people who like Scheme, does anyone actually use Scheme outside of academia? I can see Perl used to drive webpages, C used for applications and OSs, C++ and Java for applications (and Java for web applets), but I've never heard of Scheme actually ever being used outside of a college setting. Do people write production code in Scheme? If not, why not? Doesn't that make it rather useless except as a teaching tool?
The problem is that you can't just appropriate someone's work for your own even if you're not making a profit. The company owns the DragonBallZ characters, so you cannot use them in your own game. You could license the characters from them if you wished to. It's not fair use when you're appropriating their characters for your game, because you *are* depriving them of profit if they were ever to release a game themselves using their *own* characters.
What exactly is this? "We run AOL Instant Messenger servers which accept connections from only authenticated AOL Instant Messenger clients"? If that's bad, then I guess Quake3 servers are pretty bad too.
And then, you can turn the RBL off. Victims of Censorware can't turn it off because they aren't allowed to do so.
I don't see how you can make that distinction. The only way for a user to turn the RBL off is to switch ISPs to one that does not use it. If you consider this a legitimate solution then censorware is perfectly fine too, since you can always move to an internet connection which doesn't use censorware (using one at home instead of the library, for instance).
This is just pure punishment, not even on the same track as trying to cut down on spam.
And that is why many of us dislike MAPS, because that is exactly what they suggest. In fact that is the original method by which they operated - the DNS method you mentioned was added later, and they still advocate the complete BLACKHOLING of all traffic to the sites on their blacklist.
Well, I started with a CLI (MS-DOS) and still often prefer one, but I disagree with the general "CLI is better" sentiment. For many common tasks I now use a GUI simply because it is a better interface, even though I already know how to do the task in a CLI. Thus the "hard to learn" has nothing to do with it - I've already learned, but still prefer the GUI. A trivial example is view files in an archive. If i want to view a textfile in a ZIP archive, i can either double-click on it then double-click the textfile to view (GUI) or type "pkunzip zipfile.zip filename.txt" and then "edit filename.txt." The first step is much easier, IMHO, especially if I want to browse through multiple files. (of course you can also "pkunzip zipfile.zip filename.txt|more" but that's not equivalent, as more doesn't let you scroll up/down and edit the textfile).
I'll cheerfully acknowledge that win2k is by far the best windows yet, but if it ran without any problems, I'd get over 100 hours uptime on a regular basis, which I don't. Almost without fail, windows crashes (or becomes unusably tangled) between about 75 and 125 hours uptime. That's a damn sight better than the ~5 hours uptime I'd get with win95, but hardly problem-free.
I'm not quite sure how everyone manages to get Windows set up so horribly. I'm currently writing this from a Windows 98 box with 88 hours and 16 minutes uptime. 75-100 hours uptime is the norm for me on Windows 98, so I find it hard to believe that your Win2000 box can't at least match that.
The difference between current cars and ones to which you can say "go to work" is not the difference between a CLI and a GUI - it's the difference between advanced AI and a lack thereof. A more appropriate analogy for the difference between a GUI and a CLI is the current GUI model wherein you use pedals and wheels to drive your car, and a CLI model wherein you say things like "speed up to 46 mph, turn left 1.2 degrees, slow down by 3 mph, turn on left blinker, turn left 5.6 degrees, center car again, turn off left blinker" etc. Obviously the GUI model in this case is much simpler, and this makes a good analogy to managing simple computer tasks with a GUI vs. arcane shell commands.
Don't believe me? Sure an automatic is easier to drive, but you lose the ability to downshift in bad weather.
Actually, you can. Nearly all (all?) automatic transmission cars can be shifted into first or second gear in addition to being put in automatic mode; usually this is used for mountain driving.
In fact this is a good model of an ideal computer system - for normal driving I tell it "manage the gear shifting yourself" and it happily shifts back and forth between my four gears. I really don't want to deal with this myself, and there's no reason I need to. But when I want to specify that the car stay in second gear, I can do so as well. Computer should be like that - provide additional control but not mandate that you use it.
Ah, Slashdotters love to emphasize how evil spammers are, attempting to construe what they're doing as theft, and then turn around and justify downloading mp3s as not being theft.
Of course since you have to unmount the filesystems to use this Linux kernel swapper it really is effectively a reboot. The system will still be up for the upgrade, but anything anyone is trying to do on it will be restarted, so you can still strike fear into the hearts of users. Not to mention of course that if you are not using an obsolete version of Windows, changing IP addresses and adding protocols do not require a reboot - stop spreading FUD.
Hmm, I got into the BBS scene rather late (around 1996), but I played Falcon's Eye quite a bit. It was the sequel to BRE (put out by the same people: Solar Realms, whose home BBS was local to me =) It contains quite a few gameplay improvements over BRE but is the same basic game. I wouldn't mind playing that again...
and then you posted a comment so your moderation was undone, so it's still at +2.
Re:My personal experience with HP and a suggestion
on
HP And Bruce Perens
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· Score: 3
Hmm. While generally the HP hardware has been fine and I haven't had any problems with it, the drivers have been complete crap. Forget shaky Linux support; they have shaky Windows support. The printer driver takes 80-90% CPU on my Pentium II 266 just to print a normal page. My old Canon took around 5-10% CPU to do the same thing. The scanner's drivers are utter crap - half the time you have to reinstall them before scanning will work, and if you use multiple Windows users you have to install the drivers/software from each user's login because of the retarded way it stores info in the registry. The CD burner had this minor little bug in that it didn't recognize CD-R's, whether blank or already burned that luckily was fixed in a firmware update by the time I had bought it. You'd think recognizing CD-R's would be a somewhat important feature to have in a CD burner.
So in short: HP has some quality hardware but need to hire some programmers who can write drivers.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure there's already a private mirror for the faculty.
i hear harvey mudd is going to stop paying for power and spend the money on a local mirror of goatse.cx instead
Hmm, judging by my userID, I've been here at least two or so years longer than you have, and even I can't remember Slashdot being "a polite, well moderated haven." You sure it wasn't kuro5hin.org you were talking about?
Well, the point of the GPL is that it's a fair exchange of code. I give you my networking code and let you use it, and in return you give me your chess code and let me use it.
Windows 95 is still a pretty decent consumer-level OS: unless you're going up to Win2k there's no real reason to upgrade beyond service packs (e.g. 98 & ME suck ass, NT sucks at multimedia).
Uhh, I don't think so. Windows 95 won't even install on lots of newer hardware (try getting it to support some of the newer AMD motherboards), and it doesn't do USB. Obtroll: Perhaps in the Linux world not having USB support is the norm, but some of us demand better. =P
As for junk mail - why can't you just put your name on the no-junk-mail list? It works quite well (I personally haven't done it because I don't mind junk mail - it's better than no mail and sometimes amusing =P - but I know people who have done so and they now get almost none). It seems that people such as CmdrTaco are not really interested in reducing the amount of junk mail they get, since they'd rather waste time mailing envelopes of glue than asking to be put on a simple list that would have a much more dramatic effect. The junk mail which he and others don't even try to stop seems to just be a convenient excuse for some middle-school style mischief. Of course I guess then it makes sense that he and others have not subscribed to the do-not-junk-mail list, because then it would take away the excuse to post stupid stories like this one.
Why not? You will pay it off eventually, so why not wait until you have the money before buying it? Rather than buying your new 1.2 GHz computer now when you have no money, and then spend the next six months playing off $2000 plus $500 interest, why not wait 3 months and then buy it - by the 4th month (when the credit card bill comes) you'll have saved the $2000 and can pay it off at once, saving the $500 interest.
(figures are very rounded of course)
Let me be the 597th person to say:
Taco, you are a fucking idiot.
If you want no junk mail, sign up for the "no junk mail" list run by the Direct Marketing Association. This will have effects.
Sending back shit in envelopes just raises the prices on goods those companies sell, which are the goods you have to buy. Most junk mail comes from companies you do business with in some way - your bank, your credit card company, computer companies, etc. It does not make the companies lose money, it just makes you and anyone who does business with them lose money.
I suppose next you will throw another temper tantrum and decide that since local calls are free and you don't like your phone company, you'll attempt to screw them by calling your 2nd line with your 1st and leaving the line open and unattended all day.
Of course, we at nearby Harvey Mudd already have switched 100BaseT in the dorms, so such projects are unecessary. =P
Just out of curiousity, because I know a lot of people taking college CS classes in Scheme, and I know a lot of academic-type people who like Scheme, does anyone actually use Scheme outside of academia? I can see Perl used to drive webpages, C used for applications and OSs, C++ and Java for applications (and Java for web applets), but I've never heard of Scheme actually ever being used outside of a college setting. Do people write production code in Scheme? If not, why not? Doesn't that make it rather useless except as a teaching tool?
The problem is that you can't just appropriate someone's work for your own even if you're not making a profit. The company owns the DragonBallZ characters, so you cannot use them in your own game. You could license the characters from them if you wished to. It's not fair use when you're appropriating their characters for your game, because you *are* depriving them of profit if they were ever to release a game themselves using their *own* characters.
AOL's fscked-up stance on Instant Messaging
What exactly is this? "We run AOL Instant Messenger servers which accept connections from only authenticated AOL Instant Messenger clients"? If that's bad, then I guess Quake3 servers are pretty bad too.
And then, you can turn the RBL off. Victims of Censorware can't turn it off because they aren't allowed to do so.
I don't see how you can make that distinction. The only way for a user to turn the RBL off is to switch ISPs to one that does not use it. If you consider this a legitimate solution then censorware is perfectly fine too, since you can always move to an internet connection which doesn't use censorware (using one at home instead of the library, for instance).
This is just pure punishment, not even on the same track as trying to cut down on spam.
And that is why many of us dislike MAPS, because that is exactly what they suggest. In fact that is the original method by which they operated - the DNS method you mentioned was added later, and they still advocate the complete BLACKHOLING of all traffic to the sites on their blacklist.
Well, I started with a CLI (MS-DOS) and still often prefer one, but I disagree with the general "CLI is better" sentiment. For many common tasks I now use a GUI simply because it is a better interface, even though I already know how to do the task in a CLI. Thus the "hard to learn" has nothing to do with it - I've already learned, but still prefer the GUI. A trivial example is view files in an archive. If i want to view a textfile in a ZIP archive, i can either double-click on it then double-click the textfile to view (GUI) or type "pkunzip zipfile.zip filename.txt" and then "edit filename.txt." The first step is much easier, IMHO, especially if I want to browse through multiple files. (of course you can also "pkunzip zipfile.zip filename.txt|more" but that's not equivalent, as more doesn't let you scroll up/down and edit the textfile).
It's said that in civilized debate, the first person to compare his opponent to the Nazis automatically loses. Sorry ESR, you lose.
Counting bugs is irrelevant - if I started counting the "admitted" bugs in the Linux kernel I'd be counting for quite a while.
I'll cheerfully acknowledge that win2k is by far the best windows yet, but if it ran without any problems, I'd get over 100 hours uptime on a regular basis, which I don't. Almost without fail, windows crashes (or becomes unusably tangled) between about 75 and 125 hours uptime. That's a damn sight better than the ~5 hours uptime I'd get with win95, but hardly problem-free.
I'm not quite sure how everyone manages to get Windows set up so horribly. I'm currently writing this from a Windows 98 box with 88 hours and 16 minutes uptime. 75-100 hours uptime is the norm for me on Windows 98, so I find it hard to believe that your Win2000 box can't at least match that.
The difference between current cars and ones to which you can say "go to work" is not the difference between a CLI and a GUI - it's the difference between advanced AI and a lack thereof. A more appropriate analogy for the difference between a GUI and a CLI is the current GUI model wherein you use pedals and wheels to drive your car, and a CLI model wherein you say things like "speed up to 46 mph, turn left 1.2 degrees, slow down by 3 mph, turn on left blinker, turn left 5.6 degrees, center car again, turn off left blinker" etc. Obviously the GUI model in this case is much simpler, and this makes a good analogy to managing simple computer tasks with a GUI vs. arcane shell commands.
Don't believe me? Sure an automatic is easier to drive, but you lose the ability to downshift in bad weather.
Actually, you can. Nearly all (all?) automatic transmission cars can be shifted into first or second gear in addition to being put in automatic mode; usually this is used for mountain driving.
In fact this is a good model of an ideal computer system - for normal driving I tell it "manage the gear shifting yourself" and it happily shifts back and forth between my four gears. I really don't want to deal with this myself, and there's no reason I need to. But when I want to specify that the car stay in second gear, I can do so as well. Computer should be like that - provide additional control but not mandate that you use it.
Ah, Slashdotters love to emphasize how evil spammers are, attempting to construe what they're doing as theft, and then turn around and justify downloading mp3s as not being theft.
Of course since you have to unmount the filesystems to use this Linux kernel swapper it really is effectively a reboot. The system will still be up for the upgrade, but anything anyone is trying to do on it will be restarted, so you can still strike fear into the hearts of users. Not to mention of course that if you are not using an obsolete version of Windows, changing IP addresses and adding protocols do not require a reboot - stop spreading FUD.
Hmm, I got into the BBS scene rather late (around 1996), but I played Falcon's Eye quite a bit. It was the sequel to BRE (put out by the same people: Solar Realms, whose home BBS was local to me =) It contains quite a few gameplay improvements over BRE but is the same basic game. I wouldn't mind playing that again...
and then you posted a comment so your moderation was undone, so it's still at +2.
So in short: HP has some quality hardware but need to hire some programmers who can write drivers.