Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was about to comment the same thing when I saw your post. *Truthfully* if these folks really wanted to defend the *sanctity* of marriage then why are they not going after outlawing (or imposing more barriers) to divorce, civil marriages, co-habitation, pre-marital sex, adultery, and wedding chapels? Or is that on hold till after gay marriage is outlawed?
Though I guess if you personally find something offensive, what better way to get people behind your cause than to invoke a pseudo religious reason for your cause!
There's always the argument that with Linux you can install the window manager/distro to suit your PC, now if only one distro would have it automatically choose the most efficient WM for your computer. Though really every distro should have the minimum and recommended specs displayed in an easy to read format (for their average install) and distrowatch should be searcheable by such, would only make sense...
That said, anybody know any interesting Linux Kernel tricks/features that take advantage of dual or quad core CPU's that our Windows using bretheren aren't enjoying now?
They trying to say that all 4 cores get traction or something?
That aside the dual x16 PCI express Mobo looks sweet. I can finally have my triple headed, neigh, quad head display! Note that a quad cpu quad display setup might be useful for MMO gold farmers... they could have one machine running 4 bots unencumbered and have the ability to monitor all 4 at the same time...
I'd rather buy my CD's used online for about $4 shipped. I can wait till they drop to that price and by then I'm sure I'm not contributing to the RIAA's pockets.
"Dell is generally the main example of poor indian tech support. I suspect they are buying from the bottom of the barrel when it comes support home users."
I would like to add that this is not limited to outsourcing to foreign agencies. I used to work in tech support for one of the major PC manufacturers (not Dell) in a call center populated with some of the brightest and most ethical individuals. We were paid well, had great benefits (3 weeks of vacation time) and loved our jobs and our customers.
We had outsourced some of our calls to an external company in the US. Most of our complaints (in fact all complaints I heard) originated due to a customer dealing with an outsourcer (told to format right away, didn't troubleshoot, mailed a part to fix the issue that didn't, etc). Keep in mind, poor troubleshooting can lead to *increased* costs as parts are replaced that were ok, customers have to call back repeatedly to get an issure resolved that should have taken one call, and generally fed up customers end up with the competition. Fast forward a few months, and all of the Company owned call centers are closed down in favor of these cheaper outsourcers (who were not trained properly *and* taking calls from several different industries).
So now a company that was best known for its quality support has some of the worst support I could ever wish on an enemy, and they didn't have to shop beyond our borders.
Btw, some will say that closing down it's call centers were necessary due to "financial hardship", keep in mind this company aired a commercial during the superbowl a month before laying us all off.
I would venture they can launch a nuke on South Korea. I'm afraid if this is real this is what's gonna happen:
* US and other countries send Diplomats to get NK to disarm * North Korea warns other countries to stay out of it's "affairs" or else. * NK newest "internal affair" the re-unification of North and South Korea * After an invasion of South Korea the US is left with an ugly choice, let SK fall or risk Nuclear retalliation against a 3rd neighboring coutnry from the NK.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong (and god I hope I'm wrong) but with NK's history of covert aggression against the South, isn't this the most logical progression? Unless were lead to believe that Kim Jong-il has no ambitions beyond his borders. And according to this the north does have short and medium range missles...
"Nukes are the most useless weapon any country can have"
Nukes may be useless in that it's pointless to launch them (unless you do want to bring about the armageddon), but they do have a purpose. Being a nuclear power almost guarantees that your country won't get invaded. Nobody would risk you launching your nukes as a last ditch effort to "save" your country.
8 Hour PvP shift? Slacker. You'll never get to High Warlord/Gran Marshall like that, you need 16 Hours a day PvP'ing! And remember, when the expansion comes out you'll get to upgrade that HWL gear you *worked* for ^^
Holy crap, I just downloaded the Live CD (not the "free" one - the one with the nVidia drivers) - you have to look further down on the download page, and I just booted into it. Wow is all I gotta say, I have Mandriva 2006 installed atm and I'm definitely gonna upgrade.
My 2 of my main gripes in the older version of Mandriva have been taken care of. Namely I got sound mixing working by default (like I had in Fedora Core 4), and the new RPM drake now has install/remove on the same window (no re-install option that I see atm though). Plus the eye-candy is pretty nice too.
Granted wobbly windows are really unecessary, but the (not sure what to call it... whatever you use to alt-tab between programs) is pretty damn nice and useful. Plus a quick check on the cedega forums shows that people are able to get Cedega and xgl to play nicely together so It looks like it wont get turned off by default on my system.
Man, I was this close to switching to Kubuntu (had already let my Mandriva membership lapse).
Maybe manufacturers could be convinced to submit their hardware for linux testing and award them a logo they could attach (or imprint) on their product to demonstrate Linux compatibility... Just a though and sure most may not care but it could be a start.
Or we could draft up a generic letter to some manufacturers statings something along the lines of:
"Your (insert product here) has met or exceeded criteria to be considered ready for linux thanks to (community/oem drivers). As such please feel free to attach this logo to your packaging for (said product) as a means for your Linux using customers to identify this useful feature!"
More specifically, he got banned for "unattended gameplay":
"Thank you for explaining your situation further, however the fact still remains; your character was found interacting with the surroundings unattended and the advantage gained from this is a clear violation to both our Term of Use and a common sense of fair play."
I still honestly think blizzard should have given him a warning (after all, essentially destroying 3000 hours worth of work because you took a shorcut for a little bit is a tad harsh). But wine was not the reason at all. Likely someone saw him fighting a mob, came back an hour later, he was still fighting the same mob, talked to him and he didn't respond, GM sent him a tell - GM got no response.
In all fairness though, he should have sent his emails to logitech, they were the ones who made the keyboard that they advertised as "Great for WoW" but still got this chap banned.
no re-install? Reason I ask is I've had some packages flake out on me and a simple re-install would fix it though even with the old urpmi, manually removing and re-installing was never an option with some packaged (due to the dependecies spreading deep into KDE). Before anybody says that packages should not "flake out", ever had a HDD sector go bad?
I may have to try the live CD then. Mainly I want to test the new rpm drake and more importantly I want to see if my soundcards digital out is supported by default (Fedora Core 4 picked it up by default! In Mandriva 2005,2006 I couldn't get it to work for the life of me - even following the ALSA website instructions).
You really consider uprmi superior to synaptic? I mainly use Mandriva 2006 at home, but from what I've used of synaptic I loved it. It was faster and allowed you to remove, install, and upgrade in the same window unlike the gui version of urpmi (where you have to open a version suited to *only* that one function).
Most importantly, synaptic has the option to re-install a package without much fuss, I have not found this functionality in (the gui version of) urpmi. I was seriously considering switching to Kubuntu for this reason plus the availability of more recent packages (though I've recently discovered the mde repositories for Mandriva).
I'm wondering what would I be missing, other than the shiny Mandriva Control Center with an Ubuntu Migration?
You are correct, the integrated Video graphics could use some more official benchmarking (since that is what alot of people will be comparing a new Vid Card to).
Of the integrated chipsets I can vouch for the 6100 (and by extension the 6150), I've built two Linux Gaming rigs using a mobo with that chipset and I get decent FPS in WoW (with most everything turned up). Best sub 400 machine I've built!
Heheh, this idea isn't too far from Divx , except they're testing the waters by offering part of the game as an added purchase (instead of the whole thing). How long do you think before we see $10 games that you can play for 2 days then you have the choice to buy "unlimited playing" for $50 more? (Oh and it'll only play on your PS3 Xbox360 so your buddy will have to pay to play it on his system.)
Ok, maybe I'm being too paranoid. Nobody would try *that* idea again...
Nice that they're prepackaging all this and supplying the drivers and all. But this seems to me to be a 6150 Mobo and case w/ remote. Good Mobo (use a 6100 for 2 Linux WoW machines), though sound was a pain to configure (ended up getting a external card).
Not sure how much the case is worth but the mobo is only $60-$80. Still guess it may be a good deal for those that don't wanna mess too much getting their own drivers and tweaking them properly.
If this technology could be refined and then mass-produced to where freezing someone for say 8 hours would be cheaper than day care then I can definitely see a market for that...
"Never miss your child's first steps, first words, or anything they do!" "*Always* be there for your kids!" "Never worry about where your children are at night!" "Freeze and Forget!" "Spend more time alone with your spouse without having to worry about the little ones barging in!"
But desktop linux won't become popular enough until you can run down to Staples (or your favorite retailer) and buy some software for it.
Funny you should mention that. I built a new gaming PC for my wife running Mandriva 64 w/ wine and Cedega installed (to play World of Warcraft). Well since it's tax season she bought a copy of H+R Blocks (I believe) $20 tax prep software, she was about to pop it into her old Windows Laptop when I had her instead put the CD into her new Linux box. Well suprise it installed just fine and we did our taxes on her linux box.
Maybe we need to start convincing software manufacturers to get their programs tested under Linux with Wine and/or Cedega and have a corresponding logo that can go on the box if it passes. Where to start would be the big question though...
I would be happy if Blizzard just formed a partnership with TransGaming. Something along the lines of paying them some token amount ($2-$3/mo per Linux user) to support/keep supporting their Linux customer service base. This saves them from having to dedicate any fixed resources to porting a version to Linux, uses the giant effort put in by Wine and TransGaming developers, and provides a viable solution for those users who right now (like me) are paying 14.99/mo to Blizzard and 4.99/mo to Transgaming.
In simpler terms, Blizzard can provide a "bounty" for every customer Transgaming gets them. This would be greatly beneficial to all parties (and the consumers). Lastly customers who are getting the combined WoW subscription/Transgaming for 14.99/mo can be given an option to pay x amount more ($2-3) for a full Transgaming acct. This may set a precedent for more companies to support TransGaming via "bounties" and lead to better Linux support. Well I can dream can't I?
Slashdot Mirror
"hacking in a very obvious way might be the only way to get the attention of *most* Americans"
I think George P. Burdell needs to win the election for this to happen. After all he is educated enough to lead our people!
Thank you sir for one of the funniest things I've read in a long time.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was about to comment the same thing when I saw your post. *Truthfully* if these folks really wanted to defend the *sanctity* of marriage then why are they not going after outlawing (or imposing more barriers) to divorce, civil marriages, co-habitation, pre-marital sex, adultery, and wedding chapels? Or is that on hold till after gay marriage is outlawed?
Though I guess if you personally find something offensive, what better way to get people behind your cause than to invoke a pseudo religious reason for your cause!
Plus you can just set your middle mouse button to close a tab.
There's always the argument that with Linux you can install the window manager/distro to suit your PC, now if only one distro would have it automatically choose the most efficient WM for your computer. Though really every distro should have the minimum and recommended specs displayed in an easy to read format (for their average install) and distrowatch should be searcheable by such, would only make sense...
That said, anybody know any interesting Linux Kernel tricks/features that take advantage of dual or quad core CPU's that our Windows using bretheren aren't enjoying now?
Ahh all the ludicrous amounts of cores, when will it end?
"Sir it's AMD.... they've gone plaid"
They trying to say that all 4 cores get traction or something?
That aside the dual x16 PCI express Mobo looks sweet. I can finally have my triple headed, neigh, quad head display! Note that a quad cpu quad display setup might be useful for MMO gold farmers... they could have one machine running 4 bots unencumbered and have the ability to monitor all 4 at the same time...
I'd rather buy my CD's used online for about $4 shipped. I can wait till they drop to that price and by then I'm sure I'm not contributing to the RIAA's pockets.
"Dell is generally the main example of poor indian tech support. I suspect they are buying from the bottom of the barrel when it comes support home users."
I would like to add that this is not limited to outsourcing to foreign agencies. I used to work in tech support for one of the major PC manufacturers (not Dell) in a call center populated with some of the brightest and most ethical individuals. We were paid well, had great benefits (3 weeks of vacation time) and loved our jobs and our customers.
We had outsourced some of our calls to an external company in the US. Most of our complaints (in fact all complaints I heard) originated due to a customer dealing with an outsourcer (told to format right away, didn't troubleshoot, mailed a part to fix the issue that didn't, etc). Keep in mind, poor troubleshooting can lead to *increased* costs as parts are replaced that were ok, customers have to call back repeatedly to get an issure resolved that should have taken one call, and generally fed up customers end up with the competition. Fast forward a few months, and all of the Company owned call centers are closed down in favor of these cheaper outsourcers (who were not trained properly *and* taking calls from several different industries).
So now a company that was best known for its quality support has some of the worst support I could ever wish on an enemy, and they didn't have to shop beyond our borders.
Btw, some will say that closing down it's call centers were necessary due to "financial hardship", keep in mind this company aired a commercial during the superbowl a month before laying us all off.
I would venture they can launch a nuke on South Korea. I'm afraid if this is real this is what's gonna happen:
* US and other countries send Diplomats to get NK to disarm
* North Korea warns other countries to stay out of it's "affairs" or else.
* NK newest "internal affair" the re-unification of North and South Korea
* After an invasion of South Korea the US is left with an ugly choice, let SK fall or risk Nuclear retalliation against a 3rd neighboring coutnry from the NK.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong (and god I hope I'm wrong) but with NK's history of covert aggression against the South, isn't this the most logical progression? Unless were lead to believe that Kim Jong-il has no ambitions beyond his borders. And according to this the north does have short and medium range missles...
I was about to say, 1,013 neutrinos... How the hell did you figure out the radiation dispertion down to the single neutrino!
"Nukes are the most useless weapon any country can have"
Nukes may be useless in that it's pointless to launch them (unless you do want to bring about the armageddon), but they do have a purpose. Being a nuclear power almost guarantees that your country won't get invaded. Nobody would risk you launching your nukes as a last ditch effort to "save" your country.
Reason it's called a peacetime weapon.
8 Hour PvP shift? Slacker. You'll never get to High Warlord/Gran Marshall like that, you need 16 Hours a day PvP'ing! And remember, when the expansion comes out you'll get to upgrade that HWL gear you *worked* for ^^
It does have better battery life than a Nomad but can I play all my favorite Genesis games on it?
Holy crap, I just downloaded the Live CD (not the "free" one - the one with the nVidia drivers) - you have to look further down on the download page, and I just booted into it. Wow is all I gotta say, I have Mandriva 2006 installed atm and I'm definitely gonna upgrade. My 2 of my main gripes in the older version of Mandriva have been taken care of. Namely I got sound mixing working by default (like I had in Fedora Core 4), and the new RPM drake now has install/remove on the same window (no re-install option that I see atm though). Plus the eye-candy is pretty nice too. Granted wobbly windows are really unecessary, but the (not sure what to call it... whatever you use to alt-tab between programs) is pretty damn nice and useful. Plus a quick check on the cedega forums shows that people are able to get Cedega and xgl to play nicely together so It looks like it wont get turned off by default on my system. Man, I was this close to switching to Kubuntu (had already let my Mandriva membership lapse).
Maybe manufacturers could be convinced to submit their hardware for linux testing and award them a logo they could attach (or imprint) on their product to demonstrate Linux compatibility... Just a though and sure most may not care but it could be a start.
Or we could draft up a generic letter to some manufacturers statings something along the lines of:
"Your (insert product here) has met or exceeded criteria to be considered ready for linux thanks to (community/oem drivers). As such please feel free to attach this logo to your packaging for (said product) as a means for your Linux using customers to identify this useful feature!"
Thoughts?
More specifically, he got banned for "unattended gameplay":
"Thank you for explaining your situation further, however the fact still remains; your character was found interacting with the surroundings unattended and the advantage gained from this is a clear violation to both our Term of Use and a common sense of fair play."
I still honestly think blizzard should have given him a warning (after all, essentially destroying 3000 hours worth of work because you took a shorcut for a little bit is a tad harsh). But wine was not the reason at all. Likely someone saw him fighting a mob, came back an hour later, he was still fighting the same mob, talked to him and he didn't respond, GM sent him a tell - GM got no response.
In all fairness though, he should have sent his emails to logitech, they were the ones who made the keyboard that they advertised as "Great for WoW" but still got this chap banned.
no re-install? Reason I ask is I've had some packages flake out on me and a simple re-install would fix it though even with the old urpmi, manually removing and re-installing was never an option with some packaged (due to the dependecies spreading deep into KDE). Before anybody says that packages should not "flake out", ever had a HDD sector go bad?
I may have to try the live CD then. Mainly I want to test the new rpm drake and more importantly I want to see if my soundcards digital out is supported by default (Fedora Core 4 picked it up by default! In Mandriva 2005,2006 I couldn't get it to work for the life of me - even following the ALSA website instructions).
You really consider uprmi superior to synaptic? I mainly use Mandriva 2006 at home, but from what I've used of synaptic I loved it. It was faster and allowed you to remove, install, and upgrade in the same window unlike the gui version of urpmi (where you have to open a version suited to *only* that one function).
Most importantly, synaptic has the option to re-install a package without much fuss, I have not found this functionality in (the gui version of) urpmi. I was seriously considering switching to Kubuntu for this reason plus the availability of more recent packages (though I've recently discovered the mde repositories for Mandriva).
I'm wondering what would I be missing, other than the shiny Mandriva Control Center with an Ubuntu Migration?
You are correct, the integrated Video graphics could use some more official benchmarking (since that is what alot of people will be comparing a new Vid Card to). Of the integrated chipsets I can vouch for the 6100 (and by extension the 6150), I've built two Linux Gaming rigs using a mobo with that chipset and I get decent FPS in WoW (with most everything turned up). Best sub 400 machine I've built!
Heheh, this idea isn't too far from Divx , except they're testing the waters by offering part of the game as an added purchase (instead of the whole thing). How long do you think before we see $10 games that you can play for 2 days then you have the choice to buy "unlimited playing" for $50 more? (Oh and it'll only play on your PS3 Xbox360 so your buddy will have to pay to play it on his system.)
Ok, maybe I'm being too paranoid. Nobody would try *that* idea again...
Nice that they're prepackaging all this and supplying the drivers and all. But this seems to me to be a 6150 Mobo and case w/ remote. Good Mobo (use a 6100 for 2 Linux WoW machines), though sound was a pain to configure (ended up getting a external card).
Not sure how much the case is worth but the mobo is only $60-$80. Still guess it may be a good deal for those that don't wanna mess too much getting their own drivers and tweaking them properly.
Child Care!
If this technology could be refined and then mass-produced to where freezing someone for say 8 hours would be cheaper than day care then I can definitely see a market for that...
"Never miss your child's first steps, first words, or anything they do!" "*Always* be there for your kids!" "Never worry about where your children are at night!" "Freeze and Forget!" "Spend more time alone with your spouse without having to worry about the little ones barging in!"
But desktop linux won't become popular enough until you can run down to Staples (or your favorite retailer) and buy some software for it.
Funny you should mention that. I built a new gaming PC for my wife running Mandriva 64 w/ wine and Cedega installed (to play World of Warcraft). Well since it's tax season she bought a copy of H+R Blocks (I believe) $20 tax prep software, she was about to pop it into her old Windows Laptop when I had her instead put the CD into her new Linux box. Well suprise it installed just fine and we did our taxes on her linux box.
Maybe we need to start convincing software manufacturers to get their programs tested under Linux with Wine and/or Cedega and have a corresponding logo that can go on the box if it passes. Where to start would be the big question though...
BTW, Wine setup is a breeze with winetools.
I would be happy if Blizzard just formed a partnership with TransGaming. Something along the lines of paying them some token amount ($2-$3/mo per Linux user) to support/keep supporting their Linux customer service base. This saves them from having to dedicate any fixed resources to porting a version to Linux, uses the giant effort put in by Wine and TransGaming developers, and provides a viable solution for those users who right now (like me) are paying 14.99/mo to Blizzard and 4.99/mo to Transgaming.
In simpler terms, Blizzard can provide a "bounty" for every customer Transgaming gets them. This would be greatly beneficial to all parties (and the consumers). Lastly customers who are getting the combined WoW subscription/Transgaming for 14.99/mo can be given an option to pay x amount more ($2-3) for a full Transgaming acct. This may set a precedent for more companies to support TransGaming via "bounties" and lead to better Linux support. Well I can dream can't I?