Have you really asked yourself why you want to use computers so badly? These students should be learning how to write a coherent paragraph. I really don't see how a blog is going to help.
This sounds like 1998 style overenthusiasm for the net.
I used to work at a tollway, and I think it's a bad idea. It involves creating a new bureacracy and employing hundreds of toll collectors, etc, which end up costing more than building a freeway.
I think it would be fairly easy to defeat email harvesting bots even if they tried harder.. if you said things like "fooTonySoprano@bar.net (minus the New Jersey gangster)" it would be pretty hard for a bot to figure it out. It would require either a truly intelligent, pop-culture aware bot, or a really really really really big (and ever expanding) dictionary.
As if freeing people from the drudgery of things like vacuuming isn't a worthwhile goal.. I suppose he would have said the same thing about washing machines, microwave ovens, power mowers, store-bought clothes and machine churned butter back in the old days.
Those labor saving devices had a huge impact. Back then, housekeeping was a full time job (generally for the wife). Now, women aren't stuck with that sort of drudgery. Getting rid of the several hours a day we each (those of us who can't afford domestic servants) have to devote to drudge-work will have a major impact too.
Re:If MS were to use such strategies, would anyone
on
Platform Evangelism
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Note that the previous poster pointed out that they have crushed companies that tried to *cooperate* with them, not just competitors (Wal-Mart generally doesn't do that). Also note the difficulties MS has had with their smart-phone producer of the week and EA. I assume the executives of those companies aren't dirty linux hippies.
Try J. Random Cheapass. My paycheck-to-paycheck living brother-in-law asked for my advice on what computer to buy. I told him to get one of these and put a pirated copy of Windows on it (he has Windows only boring business software he needs to run). For most people who are looking for a dirt-cheap system, these machines with either Lindows or Windows XPirated would be adequate.
People like this are not going to know the difference between RedHat, Mandrake, or Lindows. They want it because it meets their needs cheaply, not because it's Linux.
If Linux takes off on the desktop, I would think it would be among the poor and in the 3rd world, first. I recall spending over $2000 on a computer while earning $8 an hour at a McJob, several years ago - a big purchase, but one I could afford to make. One of these $200 Lindows machines would be an equivalent chunk of change to someone who makes 80 cents an hour. Time for Nike sweatshop workers to get free pr0n too?
But a normal user would not install their own OS, they would use the one that came with the machine. Presumably that would eliminate about half of your problems. Also, as a Debian user, I can get essentially anything I want with an "apt-get install", eliminating,the other half (except your scanner problem). (Graphical tools exist for those who are afraid of the command line). Maybe this says more about the worthiness of Red Hat 8.0 than anything else (disclaimer - I've never used it myself). I, myself, had a similar experience with Red Hat based Mandrake 9 and I nearly went back to Windows too, but now I can see it was the distro that was lacking.
If you're interested, give Knoppix a try. Since you don't have to install it to your hard drive to give it a try, you really don't waste much effort if it's not to your liking. It was the only distro I tried that actually configured my hardware properly (All I had to do was run sndconfig and
a 2 GUI configuration tools which were in the KDE menu to get everything to work. This is after spending days struggling unsuccessfully with Mandrake and Slackware to play an MP3 or print a document). It's amazing that some lone guy in Germany wrote a configuration utility that (for me anyway) was far superior to what these companies can produce.
They don't do porn because the head of Netflix is on the CA school board. They used to do porn but that was used against him politically so they dropped it.
Walmart also won't do porn because they're too "family". I wish I had enough money to start an online PornFlix business.. it seems sure fire.
No, I'm serious, she says it looks like e.e. cummings.
I can kind of see her point The weird structure of that poem looks kind of like code in some obfuscated language.
Yes, there is a postal monopoly. Companies are allowed to run courier services, and you could send your letters via courier (at a ridiculous cost) but the mail and mailbox are USPS only. It's illegal for anyone but the customer or the mailman to put stuff in or collect from the mailbox.
I signed up for their service once (several years ago when I spent way too much time playing games) and, although I only signed up for one month, I kept getting billed for it every month ad nauseam. You'd think 4 chargebacks would teach them a lesson.
Another difference between the web and TV as that you can just put an interstitial in the background, ignore it, and look at something else in another browser tab/window until the ad is over. And unlike TV, the content that you actually want will wait as long as it takes. With TV you might miss some of your show if you go flipping around during commercials, and you can really only watch one show at a time. If you find something else interesting on TV you have to choose which show to watch, but online you just push the first site on the stack and pop it when you're ready for it.
I wouldn't watch this thing any more than I'd watch the status bar on an.iso download crawl to completion.
They have an example at this companies page. All it is is a big popup playing an annoying video like those x-cam ads, except bigger. People will just close it as soon as it opens, unless they really really want to see the page that comes after (or else they'll put that window in the background till the ad is finished). This is with Firebird - maybe it's a lot worse with IE (what isn't?).
I recall having some ideas during the boom that could have been (say) million dollar companies, doing some reasearch, and finding that some company was already doing it with $30,000,000 of VC. They could therefore do things like give stuff away to customers, buy the best servers and connections, and be totally unconstrained by the need to turn a profit. It was intimidating. I never tried to implement any of those ideas.
Now those companies are all out of business, and a sane company could do those same things without having to compete with companies that don't even have to be competitive. In that sense, you'd have it easier today than you would have in 1998.
A few weeks ago I had to make a 2 AM trip to Kinkos and pay $5 to print out a.doc file created by someone else. That sort of thing should be a good enough reason. OpenOffice still doesn't handle a lot of.doc files.
I saw a project once (can't find it now or remember the name of it) which was a script that goes on a Windows server.. you email it a doc file and it automatically converts it to some other format using MS Word and sends it back to you. Since that would obviously handle any.doc, it would sure be nice if someone would set up a publically accessible server that does that.
But OS's usually come preinstalled with a PC. If linux is to really catch on, it'll have to be pushed to the consumer by PC vendors, not software vendors. Normal people would never install an alternative OS over Windows if it comes with their computer and they've already paid for it. They don't want to think about stuff like that or bother with it. They just want to get their work done and get on the net, and they can do that with Windows.
PC vendors who used linux would still be selling something, and paying nothing to Redmond would give them a competitive advantage if linux becomes well enough accepted that it doesn't scare customers away. Some companies are already doing this (I'm sure you've heard of the $200 Walmart Lindows boxes), but it hasn't really become a big thing yet.
Think of it like this - if free RAM suddenly became available, don't you think PC manufacturers would be all over it? An OS is more like that - just one component of the product that people are actually buy - than, say, a game that you would actually go to Best Buy and purchase by itself.
Final point - the PC market is saturated, and I would think that the only real untapped markets would be people without a lot of money - people in third world countries and the poor in Western countries - for whom the Windows tax is a significant amount of money. And in the present economy, money is tight for everyone. So price is becoming a more important point to compete on.
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This sounds like 1998 style overenthusiasm for the net.
I used to work at a tollway, and I think it's a bad idea. It involves creating a new bureacracy and employing hundreds of toll collectors, etc, which end up costing more than building a freeway.
I think it would be fairly easy to defeat email harvesting bots even if they tried harder.. if you said things like "fooTonySoprano@bar.net (minus the New Jersey gangster)" it would be pretty hard for a bot to figure it out. It would require either a truly intelligent, pop-culture aware bot, or a really really really really big (and ever expanding) dictionary.
Leading us into war under false pretenses to destroy fictitious weapons of mass destruction != integrity.
Those labor saving devices had a huge impact. Back then, housekeeping was a full time job (generally for the wife). Now, women aren't stuck with that sort of drudgery. Getting rid of the several hours a day we each (those of us who can't afford domestic servants) have to devote to drudge-work will have a major impact too.
Note that the previous poster pointed out that they have crushed companies that tried to *cooperate* with them, not just competitors (Wal-Mart generally doesn't do that). Also note the difficulties MS has had with their smart-phone producer of the week and EA. I assume the executives of those companies aren't dirty linux hippies.
Some kid will crack it in a week.
People like this are not going to know the difference between RedHat, Mandrake, or Lindows. They want it because it meets their needs cheaply, not because it's Linux.
If Linux takes off on the desktop, I would think it would be among the poor and in the 3rd world, first. I recall spending over $2000 on a computer while earning $8 an hour at a McJob, several years ago - a big purchase, but one I could afford to make. One of these $200 Lindows machines would be an equivalent chunk of change to someone who makes 80 cents an hour. Time for Nike sweatshop workers to get free pr0n too?
If you're interested, give Knoppix a try. Since you don't have to install it to your hard drive to give it a try, you really don't waste much effort if it's not to your liking. It was the only distro I tried that actually configured my hardware properly (All I had to do was run sndconfig and a 2 GUI configuration tools which were in the KDE menu to get everything to work. This is after spending days struggling unsuccessfully with Mandrake and Slackware to play an MP3 or print a document). It's amazing that some lone guy in Germany wrote a configuration utility that (for me anyway) was far superior to what these companies can produce.
You might as well say you hate HTML because there are tags which can crash Internet Explorer.
I recall that it was "10 PRINT 'FUCK YOU'/20 GOTO 10", preferably at the showroom at a department store.
They don't do porn because the head of Netflix is on the CA school board. They used to do porn but that was used against him politically so they dropped it. Walmart also won't do porn because they're too "family". I wish I had enough money to start an online PornFlix business.. it seems sure fire.
This is link to the poem I meant to post. Oops.
No, I'm serious, she says it looks like e.e. cummings.
I can kind of see her point The weird structure of that poem looks kind of like code in some obfuscated language.
My girlfriend just read that over my shoulder and said "Is that a poem?"
After you install it to your HD, Knoppix is essentially Debian, except that it doesn't ask you obscure details about your monitor and crap like that.
Yes, there is a postal monopoly. Companies are allowed to run courier services, and you could send your letters via courier (at a ridiculous cost) but the mail and mailbox are USPS only. It's illegal for anyone but the customer or the mailman to put stuff in or collect from the mailbox.
I signed up for their service once (several years ago when I spent way too much time playing games) and, although I only signed up for one month, I kept getting billed for it every month ad nauseam. You'd think 4 chargebacks would teach them a lesson.
I wouldn't watch this thing any more than I'd watch the status bar on an .iso download crawl to completion.
Back to the drawing board, marketroids.
They have an example at this companies page. All it is is a big popup playing an annoying video like those x-cam ads, except bigger. People will just close it as soon as it opens, unless they really really want to see the page that comes after (or else they'll put that window in the background till the ad is finished). This is with Firebird - maybe it's a lot worse with IE (what isn't?).
Now those companies are all out of business, and a sane company could do those same things without having to compete with companies that don't even have to be competitive. In that sense, you'd have it easier today than you would have in 1998.
(wants to quit job but doesn't dare)
It's extreme. Extremely what, I don't know But it's definitely extreme.
Yeah, this web thing is a nice idea, but it'll never go anywhere without any content.
I saw a project once (can't find it now or remember the name of it) which was a script that goes on a Windows server.. you email it a doc file and it automatically converts it to some other format using MS Word and sends it back to you. Since that would obviously handle any .doc, it would sure be nice if someone would set up a publically accessible server that does that.
PC vendors who used linux would still be selling something, and paying nothing to Redmond would give them a competitive advantage if linux becomes well enough accepted that it doesn't scare customers away. Some companies are already doing this (I'm sure you've heard of the $200 Walmart Lindows boxes), but it hasn't really become a big thing yet.
Think of it like this - if free RAM suddenly became available, don't you think PC manufacturers would be all over it? An OS is more like that - just one component of the product that people are actually buy - than, say, a game that you would actually go to Best Buy and purchase by itself.
Final point - the PC market is saturated, and I would think that the only real untapped markets would be people without a lot of money - people in third world countries and the poor in Western countries - for whom the Windows tax is a significant amount of money. And in the present economy, money is tight for everyone. So price is becoming a more important point to compete on.