It's not too surprising that the government would use off-the shelf solutions for electronic devices. After all, there aren't many circuit boards made in the United States still, are there? How much does Texas Instruments produce domestically for instance?
I have a feeling AOL will release a LiveCD distro that gets the user online right away, and of course it's only AOL that can work on the computer. People might wonder why they can't play games in the CDROM drive, but many won't.
Every geek has a tale or two about a clueless user, who thought they knew what they were doing, when they really didn't understand the problem they were trying to solve. Some people really are that clueless, and a joke doesn't mean that I think most users don't know the difference between RAM and hard drive memory.
When was the last time you laughed about someone who got their computer upgrade right perfectly on the first try. Most people who tinker with computers have been in the situation where they thought they had the right part, only to find out a standard had changed, or a motherboard didn't support a particular CPU.
I'm sorry that you've lost touch with the users, and feel better by "protecting" them from obvious jokes. Walmart employees are going to have plenty of interesting jokes to tell. Wouldn't you laugh if someone tried to return a drier element because it didn't fit their bread toaster?
Schools bear some responsibility, by accepting sources on the Internet as valid footnotes in essays students make.
However,I found a school making a page for children to show them what a "fake" website on the Internet looks like. Here's the background behind one of the "fakes", which is actually a real item I sell, but is clearly a joke as well.
Google News isn't bad for giving a picture of American life, but if you really want to balance out your news sources I recommend a minor change to your visits. Load up http://news.google.ca/ instead of com and you'll get North American news. You'll see stories about the USA, but written not only by people being paid by General Electric, Fox News, or Viacom.
We already have Walmart and Target OS, they are called Microsoft Windows and Apple OS. They are large companies that make money not only by creating a product people will buy, but then going steps further to make sure no one can do the same things they did to make money. That's not how capitalism is supposed to work, price is supposed to be the deciding factor, and if you want to sell something that another person can create in their spare time and give away for free, you'll be on hard times. Move to producing something people aren't providing free, and better in another way.
Just yesterday, several prominant Canadian musicians formed a new alliance that opposes the RIAA lawsuits and promotes downloading of their music, although for a fee of course. It's becoming possible to buy music again from mainstream artists if you shop around.
I bought The Arrogant Worms latest album Beige online for less than the CD online price, it was $1CAN a song.
It's like Totally awesome. I like saw this girl and she's off the hook! She's got a new P-P-P-Powerbook and it like runs Linux and it only cost shipping it was like totally free!
"I hope this has something to do with April fools"
You're new around here aren't you?
Every year since at least 2002 Slashdot has run April Fool's stories, especially to attract comments such as yours. It's Cmrd Taco trolling you. The best gag I can remember is the Evil Bit story.
It's clear from the crackdown on smoking here that making something available more does not reduce its use. It's like what Coke does, they make 5 different pops, so you think you need one of theirs because you have "choice". When really you shouldn't be drinking pop at all on a daily basis.
I don't think we should be throwing people in jail for pot use, but it's naive of you to think drug crime would go away if it were legal. It would still be hard to buy and some people would still steal to fill their addiction. In addition, it would give credence to it being someway an acceptable life choice - poisoning one's self for recreation.
"They would spend more time retired, receiving government payouts but not working and paying taxes. "
This is already changing. Part of living longer because you don't smoke means you live healthier longer too, and so can work longer. Many people choose not to retire at age 65 then die 5 years later mostly from inactivity and boredom from not working. Improved medical care might also extend the working and healthy years for individuals.
I'm strongly in favour of restricting access to alcohol and more importantly cigarettes. The age requirements for alcohol is already sufficient to indicate to most people that it's not to be taken lightly, but the message hasn't gotten through to smokers yet it seems, so we should put more emphasis on enforcing the age restrictions that exist, and get rid of public smoking in a lot more jurisdictions.
It really is true that money spent on cigarettes alone could see dozens of space initiatives realized. When you look at money spent as work, which money really is [supposed to be] - an indicator of work. It's a crying shame that we work billions of dollars into poisoning ourselves over finding new ways to venture into space.
We're talking about home users here, not corporations. Do you think a home user is going to be consoled by, "Your pictures, documents, movies, and music were wiped out by the virus, but don't worry the Operating System wasn't damaged and you can get back to normal now"? Some kind of malicious code detection system will still be required for Linux computers down the road when it starts making bigger inroads to Joe Sickpack's computer.
Just yesterday the President [God be upon him] was telling us that Outsourcing is GOOD for the American workforce. Please don't contradict what the President [God be upon him] says!
Why aren't the drives designed in a way that the drive technology worries about the details of retrieving and writing files, and sends them the way USB, IDE, SATA, or SCSI drives already do? Why would these drives need special drivers?
Can I patent the method for extorting money out of a company that produces a product I dreamed up but never actually bothered to make? While I'm at it, I'm also going to patent the process for exchanging currency under a table like structure to encourage laws favourable to me making more money.
Being digital doesn't mean squat if you can't read/write the format it's saved in. I'm sure you know that Motorola's digital organization of bits isn't the same as Intel's organization? The tools to read and write it into INFORMATION can't be neglected and fall into disuse before the information is converted to fresh or new media. That's why Open Document is so good, since the specs for reading and writing it are available to anyone, but also it should be a good enough format so that it's used as a standard file format in 25 years [I'd hope] so that documents I create today don't need a special tool to be opened in 2030.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not too surprising that the government would use off-the shelf solutions for electronic devices. After all, there aren't many circuit boards made in the United States still, are there? How much does Texas Instruments produce domestically for instance?
I have a feeling AOL will release a LiveCD distro that gets the user online right away, and of course it's only AOL that can work on the computer. People might wonder why they can't play games in the CDROM drive, but many won't.
"so if you do put a memory module into the CDROM, it will install it for you, and spit out the old stick if there isn't enough room."
They already make it able to hold your coffee, you can't expect miracles you know.
Your joke had me laughing louder than I should in an office, even though I'm done work for today.
Every geek has a tale or two about a clueless user, who thought they knew what they were doing, when they really didn't understand the problem they were trying to solve. Some people really are that clueless, and a joke doesn't mean that I think most users don't know the difference between RAM and hard drive memory.
When was the last time you laughed about someone who got their computer upgrade right perfectly on the first try. Most people who tinker with computers have been in the situation where they thought they had the right part, only to find out a standard had changed, or a motherboard didn't support a particular CPU.
I'm sorry that you've lost touch with the users, and feel better by "protecting" them from obvious jokes. Walmart employees are going to have plenty of interesting jokes to tell. Wouldn't you laugh if someone tried to return a drier element because it didn't fit their bread toaster?
I can see it now:
Customer - "The computer memory won't upgrade."
Walmart - "What was the problem?"
Customer - "I put it inside the CDROM drive and didn't get any more hard drive space."
Walmart - "Alrighty then."
Schools bear some responsibility, by accepting sources on the Internet as valid footnotes in essays students make.
However,I found a school making a page for children to show them what a "fake" website on the Internet looks like. Here's the background behind one of the "fakes", which is actually a real item I sell, but is clearly a joke as well.
I guess that explains why Nigerian scammers send faxes to the workplace overnight for people to read in the morning ;-)
*slurps coffee* "Oooh I can be a millionaire by Friday???"
Google News isn't bad for giving a picture of American life, but if you really want to balance out your news sources I recommend a minor change to your visits. Load up http://news.google.ca/ instead of com and you'll get North American news. You'll see stories about the USA, but written not only by people being paid by General Electric, Fox News, or Viacom.
We already have Walmart and Target OS, they are called Microsoft Windows and Apple OS. They are large companies that make money not only by creating a product people will buy, but then going steps further to make sure no one can do the same things they did to make money. That's not how capitalism is supposed to work, price is supposed to be the deciding factor, and if you want to sell something that another person can create in their spare time and give away for free, you'll be on hard times. Move to producing something people aren't providing free, and better in another way.
Just yesterday, several prominant Canadian musicians formed a new alliance that opposes the RIAA lawsuits and promotes downloading of their music, although for a fee of course. It's becoming possible to buy music again from mainstream artists if you shop around.
i d=177 and also my blog for a writeup on the new group.
I bought The Arrogant Worms latest album Beige online for less than the CD online price, it was $1CAN a song.
Check out http://www.huntershack.org/nucleus/index.php?item
It figures, us being white collar and all.
It's like Totally awesome. I like saw this girl and she's off the hook! She's got a new P-P-P-Powerbook and it like runs Linux and it only cost shipping it was like totally free!
"I hope this has something to do with April fools"
You're new around here aren't you?
Every year since at least 2002 Slashdot has run April Fool's stories, especially to attract comments such as yours. It's Cmrd Taco trolling you. The best gag I can remember is the Evil Bit story.
"I challenge someone to live-action-ify the Futurama intro."
I was just about to suggest that. Are you me, in the future?
It's clear from the crackdown on smoking here that making something available more does not reduce its use. It's like what Coke does, they make 5 different pops, so you think you need one of theirs because you have "choice". When really you shouldn't be drinking pop at all on a daily basis.
I don't think we should be throwing people in jail for pot use, but it's naive of you to think drug crime would go away if it were legal. It would still be hard to buy and some people would still steal to fill their addiction. In addition, it would give credence to it being someway an acceptable life choice - poisoning one's self for recreation.
"They would spend more time retired, receiving government payouts but not working and paying taxes. "
This is already changing. Part of living longer because you don't smoke means you live healthier longer too, and so can work longer. Many people choose not to retire at age 65 then die 5 years later mostly from inactivity and boredom from not working. Improved medical care might also extend the working and healthy years for individuals.
I'm strongly in favour of restricting access to alcohol and more importantly cigarettes. The age requirements for alcohol is already sufficient to indicate to most people that it's not to be taken lightly, but the message hasn't gotten through to smokers yet it seems, so we should put more emphasis on enforcing the age restrictions that exist, and get rid of public smoking in a lot more jurisdictions.
It really is true that money spent on cigarettes alone could see dozens of space initiatives realized. When you look at money spent as work, which money really is [supposed to be] - an indicator of work. It's a crying shame that we work billions of dollars into poisoning ourselves over finding new ways to venture into space.
When I see anything "bundled" with the words Cash, Reward, or Save, the little SCAM bells go off in my head.
We're talking about home users here, not corporations. Do you think a home user is going to be consoled by, "Your pictures, documents, movies, and music were wiped out by the virus, but don't worry the Operating System wasn't damaged and you can get back to normal now"? Some kind of malicious code detection system will still be required for Linux computers down the road when it starts making bigger inroads to Joe Sickpack's computer.
Oh Slashdot, why are you being so left wing?/ 03/1712242&threshold=0
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03
Just yesterday the President [God be upon him] was telling us that Outsourcing is GOOD for the American workforce. Please don't contradict what the President [God be upon him] says!
Yes I'm being sarcastic, thank you for noticing.
You sir are the most paranoid mellonfarmer on the planet. Why aren't you in the next James Bond movie?
That's what I thought until I noticed the story was from yesterday, and it was because the spot had only recently turned RED from white.
Why aren't the drives designed in a way that the drive technology worries about the details of retrieving and writing files, and sends them the way USB, IDE, SATA, or SCSI drives already do? Why would these drives need special drivers?
"More likely, he's hoping he can luck out and get super-powers next time there's a lightning storm."
I didn't RTFA, but I'm guessing his name is Frankenstein?
Can I patent the method for extorting money out of a company that produces a product I dreamed up but never actually bothered to make? While I'm at it, I'm also going to patent the process for exchanging currency under a table like structure to encourage laws favourable to me making more money.
Being digital doesn't mean squat if you can't read/write the format it's saved in. I'm sure you know that Motorola's digital organization of bits isn't the same as Intel's organization? The tools to read and write it into INFORMATION can't be neglected and fall into disuse before the information is converted to fresh or new media. That's why Open Document is so good, since the specs for reading and writing it are available to anyone, but also it should be a good enough format so that it's used as a standard file format in 25 years [I'd hope] so that documents I create today don't need a special tool to be opened in 2030.