...has deployed Linux and other open-source software in test labs used by business customers to experiment with Microsoft's products.
I don't know. Reading this line, I can't help but think Microsoft is somehow going to mess with Linux's code to just make it look like complete and utter crap compared next to Windows. Since, according to this, the lab is more used by Mircosoft's potential/current customers to test MS's products than by MS to test products, I seriously doubt Linux and other OSS will get a fair run in this "lab". Tell me you can't just see this conversation go down:
Customer: Well, Office and XP look and run great, but we are on a budget. My company was thinking about trying Linux and some Open-Source Stuff on at least some of our computers.
MS Rep: Oh, well, if you're wondering about that Open-Source Stuff, we have some preloaded on these machines so you can get a fair side by side comparision of the two.
Customer: Ok, great.
("Demo" goes on, Linux PC somehow manages to crash 3 times in 15 minutes. Open Office has strangely lost about 10 often used functions and runs horribly.)
Customer: Yeah, I think we'll go with MS.
Seriously, I do not see 1 ounce of good coming from this, only more material for the next anti-trust case.
Ok deuche, you had me not annoyed until this one. Figure it out junior. By and large, Iraq's civilian population is quite happy we are there. I think whenever we all saw the Saddam statue fall, and people running through the streets hitting the head with their shoes, it became pretty apparent they like us. Women blow kisses and throw flowers to passing military convoys, children play with our soilders, and most grown men actively go to our men and say thank you. Because a few left overs from Saddam's regime keep fucking around and taking lucky pot shots here and there does not mean the country does not love us. Same thing happened in Germany at the end of WW 2. Our soilders occasionally got sniped, but by and large, everyone loved us. Of course, this time things are a bit worse, mostly due to the fact Saddam figured he'd lose this war and, thanks heavily in part to the fact pussy nations like France and Russia that also, ironically, had huge contracts with Iraq, he had a huge amount of time to prepare for oncoming war, and later resistance, while we dicked around with the UN trying to do things the "right" way. Of course all this did was blow ANY element of suprise we may have had.
Now, as for WW 3 and the U.S. being liberated. You are a complete moron. I have no idea which shit hole country you are from that has either been saved directly or indirectly by the U.S. or completly owned by us in a war, but you really need to get your shit together. I mean, Jesus, someone may read your dribble and think you have some kind of valid point. So let me spell it out here for everyone interested: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ALLOWS ALL OF YOUR COUNTRIES TO EXIST. Understand one very beautiful fact. We own this world. We are unstopable. On a U.S. v. World standpoint, you can see how meaningless any dumb ass rant about other countries attacking us really is. On an ability top project military might stand point, we have 13 full blown nuclear powered aircraft carriers, and their battle groups, with about 9 of them actively deployed at any given time. Britian has 4 VTOL carriers (Think Harriers, great except for the fact any heat guided missle will kill them), France has 1 limited carrier, and a handful of nations have about 10 other VTOL carriers. Oh my, whatever will we do. And for nukes, we're to damn big to kill with a nuke strike, and even if something did happen and the US land mass was vanquished, you'd still have a minimum of seven nuke subs at sea with the ability to extract devine nuclear retribution on anyone stupid enough to launch a nuke strike against us. And I'm not even going to get into why and land invasion would never, ever work.
And on a history stand point, things are even greater for the US. We've decimated entire nations, killed rouge leaders and their families, destroyed governments, and generally took out anyone who's dicked with us. Hell, we only ever "lost" in Vietnam, and I think we really have to look at who really lost that one. We went, we fought bravely, the country still fell, we left, we moved on. Meanwhile, they still haven't recovered from everything we did to them. Yeah, we really "lost" that one... Look at the other countires we've went up against: Japan, one time Imperial War Machine, now they made most of the components for my TiBook. Germany, former Nazi empire, now makers of fine (albeit overpriced) auto mobiles. England, Spain, and Italy, ass whipped, in order, in 1776, 1812, and 1944, and now they are all valliant defenders of freedom along side us. Russia, we never even fought them, but still managed to crush the USSR. Just to name a few. And you know what? We are unbeatable. No one can challenge us. The best they could do is drop some nukes, and we're to big to kill that way. We are the rulers of this world, and we could take it all if we wanted, but we don't. No, we stand for justice and freedom. Weither or not the rest of the world ever sees that, who cares. Let them be ingrates and jealous and hateful of the very way of life, the very freedom, that we strive to pr
While I have no idea how much of Iraq's infrastructure we took out in the recent war (and, apparently, neither does the CIA, read from below link), I bet it was probably a pretty healthy amount. And seeing as they didn't have that much to begin with, this might actually be a very great thing for Iraq and her people. Since the country's comm. systems were already pretty lacking, and since a presumably fair amount of said systems we're damaged/destroyed, this provides Iraq with a golden opportunity to have a rebuilt, ultra modern communications system. If we do it right, Iraq could very well have one of the most technologically advanced comm. systems ever designed. And the people of Iraq, at least based on this story, seem more than willing to embrace the technology and as such would probably be willing to try out the newest communications technology. This would be the perfect time and place to test new/unproven technologies and if they work well, we could adopt them here in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Make the best of a bad situation.
I actually calculated this one night a few months ago whenever I was really boarded. I'm not sure where exactly I got the #s from, but they were from NASA and a few other sources I got off of Google searching for things like "Estimated number galaxies". I came up with ~60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which I have since dubbed 60 Hexillion. I have no idea what the real name is, but that seems logical based on the billion, trillion progression. My numbers took the approx. numbers of stars in the Milky Way, 200 Billion, assumed this to be about the average size of a galaxy (may or may not be true, I'm not certain, but it seems reasonable) and then multiplied by the total estimated number of galaxies. Seeing as they are professionals, and their numbers are probably based on something better than a few educated guess, a large amount of pepsi, and 30 minutes of free time, I suppose their numbers are probably a little more accurate.
...Germany - probably the economically most powerful nation along with USA, and the driving force behind Europe.
All in all a very well written post, but in my ongoing crusade to purge bad information wherever it rears its ugly head, either delibertily or by accident, I must make the following correction. I know, it's a stupid and more or less irrelevent thing to nit pick, but I figure if nothing else people can learn exactly how large national economies stack up, so it has its merits.
Germany is a very economically prosperous nation, and they are the nation doing the best in Europe, but by no means are they the approx. equivlent of the US. Really, no one is near the US, but here's how things break down for those curious. (All numbers taken from the one and only CIA World Factbook) National GDP (yes, it accounts for currency changes) of all nations with at least $1 trillion in GDP, starting at the top, all numbers in trillions:
USA - $10.082
China - $6
Japan - $3.55
India - $2.66
Germany - $2.184
France - $1.54
UK - $1.52
Italy - $1.438
Brazil - $1.34
Russia - $1.27
And for those wondering, the world as a whole has a GDP of $47 trillion, meaning just these 10 countries make up $31.584 trillion of that, and the US almost 1/3rd of that.
This has been another Bloodmoon Empire service announcement. Carry on.
Assuming this is true, I'm sure Sony would make Rockstar eat this one hard. I have 0 evidence to support this, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that, especially after the success of GTA 3, Sony must have thown enough very heavy bags of money at Rockstar to make them keep VC (And probably GTA3) a PS2 exclusive (as far as consoles go), if not forever, for at least a good few years. Rockstar doing this would probably get them the support of X-Box fans, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Sony blocked Rockstar titles in the future as a form of punishment. And there are a lot more people with PS2's then X-Boxs (Though this may have something to do with PS2 failure rates inflating sales numbers, but that's another post) so a Sony block would hurt Rockstar in the long run.
Besides, I'm sure a healthy number of people with X-Boxs probably have PCs, and those that would buy VC probably already bought it when it came to PC, so I really think any customer gain would be slim, mostly limted to X-Boxers without PCs capable of running VC. I'm not saying it wouldn't still sell well, but it probably wouldn't be worth: 1) Alienating Sony for the rest of time, 2) The loss of whatever "retention" bonus I'm sure Sony would violently take back out of Rockstar's ass, and 3) Any costs associated with said violent anal raping of Rockstar by Sony, i.e. Court Fees. So, again, assuming this is true, it would be a very bad case of near sightedness on the part of Rockstar.
And as for the validility of this story, why the hell would Rockstar risk fucking up like this a year or less before their Sony exclusive deal is supposidly going to expire? Odd both these come from the same source.
Now, I'm well aware of the fact that DNA testing is probably the most vital forensic tool since the finger print, but how exactly does it work? I remember seeing once that all Humans share about 99.9% of the same DNA (Please do correct me if I'm wrong), so what do they look for to say either "Yes, this person did this" or "No, this person didn't do this"?
Ok, this is a serious question, not an attempt to start a flame war or anything, but why does this always happen to MS systems? I use a Mac and have only had to work with Windows at my college and a few other times here and there. I've NEVER seen a live Mac trojan or worm and have only ever encountered one virus (the 666 one) that wasn't really malicious and only added some extra resources labeled "(Box thingy)666" in an application's resource fork that caused an application to run a little slower. And that was 4 or 5 years ago in OS 7.5 or 8.
Now, I understand the "security through obscurity" theory that basically says Mac's have far fewer virii problems than PCs because not nearly as many people use Macs, but that's sort of a dead idea nowadays. While we don't have nearly the numbers of any MS OS, by Apple's numbers, there are 7 million users of OS X, which makes the current number of users in the OS X community about as large as the populations of Hong Kong (7,303,334) or Switzerland (7,301,994), and about 1 million more people than the pop. of Israel (6,029,529). (Go on, check my numbers.) And just for good measure, add to that the fact we now have a more or less Unix based OS and therefore must have some common ground with numerous other OSes. It's not like we're a tiny little niche to go after, or one that no one knows how to program for. Hell, Apple even gives away developer tools to write out and compile programs. So why don't we ever see any worm, trojan, or virus outbreaks for OS X?
So, basically if I'm understanding this right, and correct me if I'm wrong, the Initiative for Software Choice is lobbying to basically remove South Australia's choice to use Open Source Software from consideration and more or less force them into using closed source software. Kind of ironic. Groups with names that don't support their actual agenda like this should really be openly chastised by major media outlets for being hypocritical to the point of just being ridiculous, if not just made flat out illegal. Think of it as a truth-in-advertising kind of thing. A company/group/whatever's name is their best form of advertising, it forms the base of their brand recognition. So if their name is so out of whack from their goals, it's kind of like misleading advertising.
I'll agree with you on that one by far. YES! Anyone reading this thread, LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES! At least I'm still young and have time to fix the errors of my ways. I always said I would finish college. Problem is I never had a real time frame laid out, now I do, and now I will. I still have to figure out what the hell I want to do, but I'm sure by Spring of next year, I'll have something.
So my words of advice to anyone getting out of school this year? Don't. Seriously. I didn't think I would need it, and let's face it, evidence is building I was wrong. Hell, even in the Air Force with a college degree I could have went as an officer and made some real money. Also, if you're joining the Air Force, go as an Officer. Aside from less responsibility and less work, there's nothing to being enlisted in the AF besides less money and a big fricken' rank insignia on your arm, which while it may look important, is a big disadvantage in a combat scenario (think sniper/C&C relation). But I digress... Go to school, damn it!
Back when I was in highschool (Class '01), I was sold on taking Cisco classes at our Community College for the better part of my day all year. My initial plan was to graduate early, get a job doing whatever, but I went for Cisco instead because 1) It was 13 free college credits and 2) EVERYONE was telling me how I'd be making $30k/yr easy, probably even before I got out of college. Took the classes, got my CCNA in Nov. '01, right about the time the economy officially turned to shit. I worked making collection calls for Ford until 6-02 when I joined the AF, got a medical discharge 6 months ago, and now I can't find a job anywhere. I know my stuff, I'm a CCNA, but I can't get a job. I do mean anywhere to. I never had a problem getting jobs when I was in high school, but now that I have a diploma, some college, a professional cert., and some life experience, I'm having to dig through the my sofa for change for food or gas.
Now, I'm really not trying to sound like I'm bitching, because I'm not, I'm just recounting my experience. I'm also not saying all those people who told me Cisco was great screwed me, but rather, I think they we're just going with the info they knew to be true. Problem is their info was from '99 or so. Now all the IT jobs I can find open want more experience and skills than I think any human could have, and want to pay them something in line with McWages.
All in all, my whole experience has me actually wondering if IT is even going to be a viable career for long. For some reason, I see it going to something of a plumber type occupation. Very few places have a in-house plumber and only call one when they are need for their specialized skills. With computers becoming easier to use and more stable all the time, I can see IT people no longer needed on a day to day basis and instead delegated to being the IT plumbers. Seriously, have you ever seen one of Apple's XServe's? I don't think it can get much easier than that. Maybe I can be a teacher, seems like I'm always hearing about more of them being needed...
You're an idiot, I hope you realize this. You won't, in fact, you'll probably accuse me and many others of beings idiots ourselves, but who gives a shit? I mean, really, who? Once, just once before I die, I would just like to see one US hating idiot stand up and say, "Yes, I'm an idiot. The only reason I'm not speaking German, Russian, Japanese, or some other language of a one time world threat is because of the USA. I owe them my very ability to be an ingrate for all they have provided for me, both in saving my sorry (insert weak nationality here) ass/providing me the freedoms I take for granted every day as one of their own citizens and for being brave enough to risk their own men and women in a cause that is just and right, to forever ensure we will have the freedoms we take for granted, which we seek to use to spite those who tirelessly seek to provide them to us. Yes, I am an Oxygen Thief." Just once, just one fucking time, that's all I ask. I don't even care if they say the whole thing, a simple recognition that America is all that has stood between them and oppression is all I ask. Well, we can dream.
Really, the AC thing is more because I don't feel like getting modded down by the same oxygen thiefs who consider this to be news. Jesus, I get meta-modded unfair if I mod down a pro Linux comment as flamebait that's in the middle of a Apple story and more or less calls anyone who uses anything besides Linux a moron. I'm not complaining so much that my stories were rejected, I can handle that just fine, I've been a news reporter, it happens, I understand that. I'm complaining that this dribble was accepted when many more worthy stories were rejected. Not just mine. For example, I personally have had stories about court decisions on Internet bans, large law suits affecting several tech companies, and Apple's open sourcing of various technologies, as well as several interesting science stories, all rejected. And that's just me.
You're the highest # I've seen, so that means there are at least 645,752 Slashdot users. Now, assuming 1% of those submit a story a month, that means there are 6457 stories/month. I'm sure there's probably many more total stories than that, but let's go ahead and use that number. Now say there's 20 stories/day accepted, 30 * 20 = 600 stories in a month accepted, 5857 rejected. Again, surely a very low number. Now, out of all those stories, you can't tell me there weren't easly 100 more that were more news worthy than this. And you've clearly never submitted a story, (or much of an original thought, since out of the 11 comments to your credit, 1 is not a reply), or you just can't pay attention to details, otherwise you would have noted that submitting as an AC does not effect your chance to have a story accepted.
So just to review, a couple of editors either: A) Get a hard on from someone on Buffy and thereby allow crap like this through due to their infatuation, or B) Are 13 year old girls and thereby allow crap like this through due to their infatuation.
Now, I'm done with my rant. And just for you, my precious stealer of breath, I won't post AC this time. And all of you mods can come and try to karma fuck me, because I really don't give a shit. Honestly, I'll be a little dissapointed if I don't get AT LEAST a -1 for this.
And to stop the gravest injustice being done to me at this moment: Move away from my air space, and do it quickly, oxygen thief!
Because we did to much Dramamine. Seriously though, I can re-hash the same better proformance, better longevity, better service, just works arguments you and probably everyone else has heard a thousand times. Really, until you've used one for a extended amount of time, you can't really understand it. We seem to view our machines less as machines and more as friends. I think it's because they have a soul.
Ok, now let's see how many people bitch about this as usually do about the US government *possibly* doing things like this that no one ever seems to be able to offer up hard evidence on. Either we don't do it, or we're that damn good at it.
"can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC."
Well, I don't know about inferior PCs, but this isn't 100,000 times faster than the fastest G4. The fastest Apple G4 is the Dual 1.42 GHz. It has a peak performance of 21 Gigaflops, or 21 billion operations per second. Now let's break that down:
Divide 21 by 2, since there are 2 processors after all = 10.5 Billion ops per second for one G4.
Working in Billions, 330,000/10.5 = 31428.57
As you can see, the DNA computer is only 31,428.57 times faster than the fastest G4. The MHz (GHz) Myth is destroyed once again. Go Apple!
And don't forget the irony here. By most accounts, BMW has about 2% of the automotive market share, while Apple probably has around 5% of the computer market. Essentially, BMW is locking out a company twice as big as them (in their respective markets), basically saying they are to minor of a company to support.
After the success of the initial iMac, EVERY DAMN THING came in 5 plastic fruity colors that, oddly, matched the origional iMac colors. You could not escape Apple's market influence. Even now their design's are copied. XP looks like OS X if they just ass slacked on it (And has that edgy X in the name), Vaio's have tended to look like PowerBooks, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Tux gets a Aqua makeover... No, wait, to late.
Me personally, I always have been real into computers and other nerdly behaviors, but in school I was pretty popular. I was on our moarning news and was just seen as the cool guy by everyone for some reason. I think a lot of it has to do with how you carry yourself. I always looked realitively cool (6' 2", weight proportionate to height, well kept, and a black leather trench coat that everyone dug) and was pretty laid back, and everyone just seemed to think I was just some cool guy. I never had a lot of friends, but everyone knew me and liked me. One nice effect of this was that whenever I'd start going off about space time or my theories on the universe or anything like that, they'd actually listen and take what I said to heart. One of my favorite times was when the girls soccer team captain (a otherwise ditzy blond girl) and one of the girls from the swim team (see above, now in burnette) said they wished they could have thought like I did.
I also knew many of the more nerdly kids, and it's safe to say most of them brought any type of abuse upon themselves. The nerdly kids really just stuck out like sore thumbs, and were unfortunitly abused often. Nothing major, like none of them ever really got their asses kicked or anything, but their high school lives were more painful then they should have been. I mean, most of them weren't to bad, but they're were a few even I wanted to hit when they started babbeling endlessly about VB or Dragon Ball Z or any of that. The best thing though was when one of the more jocky kids would let it slip they did some nerdly things, and then try to cover it up as fast as possible.
I saw a thing on the History channel about the Nazi's attempts to get a nuclear weapon during WW II. It turns out, the researcher in charge of the program had some bad math for how much uranium was needed (weither or not this was deliberate is still a matter of debate) to make a working nuke, and that's the main reason they never produced one. They had an example that showed how bad of a miscalculation he made. First, only about a baseball sized amount was needed. They then pulled back to show the amount the scientist said was needed, and it was a ball about as large as the host, who had to be around 6 ft tall. I don't remember the exact amount, I think it was something like 800 Kg's, but just figure a baseball vs. a small boulder. By the end of the war, the Nazi's were churning out enough refined uranium to make about 1.5 nukes a day, but thought it was only a fraction of what was needed.
Now see, here we go. G3 and G4 processors are not imbedded processors, they are full blown computer processors. In fact, the main reason they haven't approached the almost usless (Find out how many orders Intel has got for Itanimum or however that made up word is spelled, even Google has shuned them) 2 and 3 GHz marks is because Motorola, the company that makes the chips, focuses more on the embedded market then the computer chip markets. And if Intel is so shit hot, why can their processors that are, by clock rates, 2x faster still not completly destroy G4's, or the sucky chip as you would say. Get your shit together before you post retarded garbage that just shows your ignorance. In fact, it would probably be best if no one else replies to this post because it has already turned into a flaming pit of slashell.
If this goes through, I don't think it is going to get far. It is probably going to get dragged through the courts for years, and I'd imagine a judge somewhere will grant an injunction to keep CA from collecting on this. It will eventually be crushed either as unconstitutional, or just if it comes before a judge/jury with common sense. So mes thinks CA only stands to lose a shit load of money fighting to keep this garbage alive if it makes. And I have to agree, if Davis has ANY future political goals, this is a good way to never accomplish any of them.
The space program is a waste of money and a waste of time.
Yet the computer you type on is a product of, not only technology initially devised for war, but also for the space program. Look around. Light weight materials, flat panal screens, in fact, most technologies you and many others take for granted today, are all spin-offs of technologies at first used in the space program. Today, we're living off of the fruits of the Apollo program. Just imagine what will be possible in 20 years thanks to, in no small part, technologies and research done by the current Shuttle fleet. And we can't even imagine what sort of advances will be made in the next hundred or thousand years thanks to space, or what we may never know if we leave now.
So we want to spend money to explore space, while we wipe out species on our own planet?...our current goal should be to end strife and warfare here, and explore the world we live in.
I'm not saying we should just give up here and write Earth off as a lost cause. Do we still have a lot of work to do here? Of course, but we have even more to do out there, and there's no reason we can't do both. Explore the world we live in? Explore what? With the exception of some very high mountains and very deep oceans, we don't have much left here to explore. We have something close to 100 worlds to explore out there in our solar system alone. You tell me where we have more to explore. And as much as I'd like to say I'd like to see a end to war, I know it won't happen. I'm what I like to refer to as realistic. Besides, war has, despite what everyone else may think, solved more problems throughout human history than everything else combined and has advanced humanity further then we thought possible. The flat screen on your computer (or one you may like to have) is a spin-off of space technology, which is derived from rocket weapon technology captured from the Nazi's at the end of WW2. I suppose you oppose war on Iraq on the grounds that it's a war, no matter how good the cause, even though we'd personally end that countries strife (see: Afganistan). But I digress.
If we find life out there, and they know how our civilization has worked out thus far, how should they treat us? Do you think they want a McUniverse?
I'd assume in the great big galaxy that exists, capatilism is likely to have found a home with at least one other species. And I think our civilization has worked out nicely. Your old enough to have children yourself, so you must be at least 20, probably closer to 30+. Now without good old medical technology (not so much from space this time) developed by our "poor" civilization, you would probably be close to your expected life span. This assumes you haven't already been killed in a war that dragged on for some 50 years (which they don't anymore, thanks again to our civilization and space. JDAM's are beautiful things). It's easy to sit where you are now and try to critique what you think is flawed with our world, but the reason you are able to be in such a position is because of those advances. You may not see it, but I would expect nothing more.
The space program is a waste of money and a waste of time. I have never been inspired by space travel, nor is my son. He likes to look in the telescope and see the stars but at age of four he has said to me "Daddy, why are we going there? We are not ready". Out of the mouths of babes........
That they heared from the mouths of their parents. First, being 4, your kid shouldn't be inspired by space travel, he should be inspired by a new toy or book. Most kids don't quite comprehend space travel, and apparently, some never do. The only way a 4 year old is going to say anything that ignorant is if they heard it from a parent first. Kids hear things and then repeat them for about the next month. And usually, as is the case with a kid getting in trouble at school for swearing, they repeat the worst selection of the garbage they hear. You're really doing your kid a big disservice if you're putting these ideas into his head now. My goal is to see a new star in person before I die. Will it happen? Probably not, but do I always have something to aim for and is everything else a lesser goal than that at this point in time? Yes. And what will his goal be? Probably to be just like his dad... I weep for the future.
One thing we must not do (and I'm quite glad I haven't seen a post on it yet, if only everyone could be as smart as/.ers) is let the Columbia disaster set us back, or even stop us for going into space at all. A common thing I here when I talk to most people about space is, "We should solve our problems here before we waste all kinds of money on space." I think this has to be the worst outlook people could have on space. NASA barely gets any money anyway, and part of our problems on Earth are that we're over crowded, going to space will probably only help. Our big goal should be to get to the stars. Not just Mars, an asteroid, or even Pluto, which are all important steps along the way, but to get out among the galaxy and then the Universe. Granted, we probably have several billion years before we must leave, but we will have to someday. And this isn't just something we can put of for our great great great grand children to deal with, by then it might be to late. It's important that whatever we do, we always push forward the boundries of technology and of ourselves and into the great unknown. Onward!
Slashdot Mirror
...has deployed Linux and other open-source software in test labs used by business customers to experiment with Microsoft's products.
I don't know. Reading this line, I can't help but think Microsoft is somehow going to mess with Linux's code to just make it look like complete and utter crap compared next to Windows. Since, according to this, the lab is more used by Mircosoft's potential/current customers to test MS's products than by MS to test products, I seriously doubt Linux and other OSS will get a fair run in this "lab". Tell me you can't just see this conversation go down:
Customer: Well, Office and XP look and run great, but we are on a budget. My company was thinking about trying Linux and some Open-Source Stuff on at least some of our computers.
MS Rep: Oh, well, if you're wondering about that Open-Source Stuff, we have some preloaded on these machines so you can get a fair side by side comparision of the two.
Customer: Ok, great.
("Demo" goes on, Linux PC somehow manages to crash 3 times in 15 minutes. Open Office has strangely lost about 10 often used functions and runs horribly.)
Customer: Yeah, I think we'll go with MS.
Seriously, I do not see 1 ounce of good coming from this, only more material for the next anti-trust case.
Ok deuche, you had me not annoyed until this one. Figure it out junior. By and large, Iraq's civilian population is quite happy we are there. I think whenever we all saw the Saddam statue fall, and people running through the streets hitting the head with their shoes, it became pretty apparent they like us. Women blow kisses and throw flowers to passing military convoys, children play with our soilders, and most grown men actively go to our men and say thank you. Because a few left overs from Saddam's regime keep fucking around and taking lucky pot shots here and there does not mean the country does not love us. Same thing happened in Germany at the end of WW 2. Our soilders occasionally got sniped, but by and large, everyone loved us. Of course, this time things are a bit worse, mostly due to the fact Saddam figured he'd lose this war and, thanks heavily in part to the fact pussy nations like France and Russia that also, ironically, had huge contracts with Iraq, he had a huge amount of time to prepare for oncoming war, and later resistance, while we dicked around with the UN trying to do things the "right" way. Of course all this did was blow ANY element of suprise we may have had.
Now, as for WW 3 and the U.S. being liberated. You are a complete moron. I have no idea which shit hole country you are from that has either been saved directly or indirectly by the U.S. or completly owned by us in a war, but you really need to get your shit together. I mean, Jesus, someone may read your dribble and think you have some kind of valid point. So let me spell it out here for everyone interested: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ALLOWS ALL OF YOUR COUNTRIES TO EXIST. Understand one very beautiful fact. We own this world. We are unstopable. On a U.S. v. World standpoint, you can see how meaningless any dumb ass rant about other countries attacking us really is. On an ability top project military might stand point, we have 13 full blown nuclear powered aircraft carriers, and their battle groups, with about 9 of them actively deployed at any given time. Britian has 4 VTOL carriers (Think Harriers, great except for the fact any heat guided missle will kill them), France has 1 limited carrier, and a handful of nations have about 10 other VTOL carriers. Oh my, whatever will we do. And for nukes, we're to damn big to kill with a nuke strike, and even if something did happen and the US land mass was vanquished, you'd still have a minimum of seven nuke subs at sea with the ability to extract devine nuclear retribution on anyone stupid enough to launch a nuke strike against us. And I'm not even going to get into why and land invasion would never, ever work.
And on a history stand point, things are even greater for the US. We've decimated entire nations, killed rouge leaders and their families, destroyed governments, and generally took out anyone who's dicked with us. Hell, we only ever "lost" in Vietnam, and I think we really have to look at who really lost that one. We went, we fought bravely, the country still fell, we left, we moved on. Meanwhile, they still haven't recovered from everything we did to them. Yeah, we really "lost" that one... Look at the other countires we've went up against: Japan, one time Imperial War Machine, now they made most of the components for my TiBook. Germany, former Nazi empire, now makers of fine (albeit overpriced) auto mobiles. England, Spain, and Italy, ass whipped, in order, in 1776, 1812, and 1944, and now they are all valliant defenders of freedom along side us. Russia, we never even fought them, but still managed to crush the USSR. Just to name a few. And you know what? We are unbeatable. No one can challenge us. The best they could do is drop some nukes, and we're to big to kill that way. We are the rulers of this world, and we could take it all if we wanted, but we don't. No, we stand for justice and freedom. Weither or not the rest of the world ever sees that, who cares. Let them be ingrates and jealous and hateful of the very way of life, the very freedom, that we strive to pr
While I have no idea how much of Iraq's infrastructure we took out in the recent war (and, apparently, neither does the CIA, read from below link), I bet it was probably a pretty healthy amount. And seeing as they didn't have that much to begin with, this might actually be a very great thing for Iraq and her people. Since the country's comm. systems were already pretty lacking, and since a presumably fair amount of said systems we're damaged/destroyed, this provides Iraq with a golden opportunity to have a rebuilt, ultra modern communications system. If we do it right, Iraq could very well have one of the most technologically advanced comm. systems ever designed. And the people of Iraq, at least based on this story, seem more than willing to embrace the technology and as such would probably be willing to try out the newest communications technology. This would be the perfect time and place to test new/unproven technologies and if they work well, we could adopt them here in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Make the best of a bad situation.
I actually calculated this one night a few months ago whenever I was really boarded. I'm not sure where exactly I got the #s from, but they were from NASA and a few other sources I got off of Google searching for things like "Estimated number galaxies". I came up with ~60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which I have since dubbed 60 Hexillion. I have no idea what the real name is, but that seems logical based on the billion, trillion progression. My numbers took the approx. numbers of stars in the Milky Way, 200 Billion, assumed this to be about the average size of a galaxy (may or may not be true, I'm not certain, but it seems reasonable) and then multiplied by the total estimated number of galaxies. Seeing as they are professionals, and their numbers are probably based on something better than a few educated guess, a large amount of pepsi, and 30 minutes of free time, I suppose their numbers are probably a little more accurate.
All in all a very well written post, but in my ongoing crusade to purge bad information wherever it rears its ugly head, either delibertily or by accident, I must make the following correction. I know, it's a stupid and more or less irrelevent thing to nit pick, but I figure if nothing else people can learn exactly how large national economies stack up, so it has its merits.
Germany is a very economically prosperous nation, and they are the nation doing the best in Europe, but by no means are they the approx. equivlent of the US. Really, no one is near the US, but here's how things break down for those curious. (All numbers taken from the one and only CIA World Factbook) National GDP (yes, it accounts for currency changes) of all nations with at least $1 trillion in GDP, starting at the top, all numbers in trillions:
And for those wondering, the world as a whole has a GDP of $47 trillion, meaning just these 10 countries make up $31.584 trillion of that, and the US almost 1/3rd of that.
This has been another Bloodmoon Empire service announcement. Carry on.
Assuming this is true, I'm sure Sony would make Rockstar eat this one hard. I have 0 evidence to support this, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that, especially after the success of GTA 3, Sony must have thown enough very heavy bags of money at Rockstar to make them keep VC (And probably GTA3) a PS2 exclusive (as far as consoles go), if not forever, for at least a good few years. Rockstar doing this would probably get them the support of X-Box fans, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Sony blocked Rockstar titles in the future as a form of punishment. And there are a lot more people with PS2's then X-Boxs (Though this may have something to do with PS2 failure rates inflating sales numbers, but that's another post) so a Sony block would hurt Rockstar in the long run.
Besides, I'm sure a healthy number of people with X-Boxs probably have PCs, and those that would buy VC probably already bought it when it came to PC, so I really think any customer gain would be slim, mostly limted to X-Boxers without PCs capable of running VC. I'm not saying it wouldn't still sell well, but it probably wouldn't be worth: 1) Alienating Sony for the rest of time, 2) The loss of whatever "retention" bonus I'm sure Sony would violently take back out of Rockstar's ass, and 3) Any costs associated with said violent anal raping of Rockstar by Sony, i.e. Court Fees. So, again, assuming this is true, it would be a very bad case of near sightedness on the part of Rockstar.
And as for the validility of this story, why the hell would Rockstar risk fucking up like this a year or less before their Sony exclusive deal is supposidly going to expire? Odd both these come from the same source.
Now, I'm well aware of the fact that DNA testing is probably the most vital forensic tool since the finger print, but how exactly does it work? I remember seeing once that all Humans share about 99.9% of the same DNA (Please do correct me if I'm wrong), so what do they look for to say either "Yes, this person did this" or "No, this person didn't do this"?
Ok, this is a serious question, not an attempt to start a flame war or anything, but why does this always happen to MS systems? I use a Mac and have only had to work with Windows at my college and a few other times here and there. I've NEVER seen a live Mac trojan or worm and have only ever encountered one virus (the 666 one) that wasn't really malicious and only added some extra resources labeled "(Box thingy)666" in an application's resource fork that caused an application to run a little slower. And that was 4 or 5 years ago in OS 7.5 or 8.
Now, I understand the "security through obscurity" theory that basically says Mac's have far fewer virii problems than PCs because not nearly as many people use Macs, but that's sort of a dead idea nowadays. While we don't have nearly the numbers of any MS OS, by Apple's numbers, there are 7 million users of OS X, which makes the current number of users in the OS X community about as large as the populations of Hong Kong (7,303,334) or Switzerland (7,301,994), and about 1 million more people than the pop. of Israel (6,029,529). (Go on, check my numbers.) And just for good measure, add to that the fact we now have a more or less Unix based OS and therefore must have some common ground with numerous other OSes. It's not like we're a tiny little niche to go after, or one that no one knows how to program for. Hell, Apple even gives away developer tools to write out and compile programs. So why don't we ever see any worm, trojan, or virus outbreaks for OS X?
So, basically if I'm understanding this right, and correct me if I'm wrong, the Initiative for Software Choice is lobbying to basically remove South Australia's choice to use Open Source Software from consideration and more or less force them into using closed source software. Kind of ironic. Groups with names that don't support their actual agenda like this should really be openly chastised by major media outlets for being hypocritical to the point of just being ridiculous, if not just made flat out illegal. Think of it as a truth-in-advertising kind of thing. A company/group/whatever's name is their best form of advertising, it forms the base of their brand recognition. So if their name is so out of whack from their goals, it's kind of like misleading advertising.
I'll agree with you on that one by far. YES! Anyone reading this thread, LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES! At least I'm still young and have time to fix the errors of my ways. I always said I would finish college. Problem is I never had a real time frame laid out, now I do, and now I will. I still have to figure out what the hell I want to do, but I'm sure by Spring of next year, I'll have something.
So my words of advice to anyone getting out of school this year? Don't. Seriously. I didn't think I would need it, and let's face it, evidence is building I was wrong. Hell, even in the Air Force with a college degree I could have went as an officer and made some real money. Also, if you're joining the Air Force, go as an Officer. Aside from less responsibility and less work, there's nothing to being enlisted in the AF besides less money and a big fricken' rank insignia on your arm, which while it may look important, is a big disadvantage in a combat scenario (think sniper/C&C relation). But I digress... Go to school, damn it!
Back when I was in highschool (Class '01), I was sold on taking Cisco classes at our Community College for the better part of my day all year. My initial plan was to graduate early, get a job doing whatever, but I went for Cisco instead because 1) It was 13 free college credits and 2) EVERYONE was telling me how I'd be making $30k/yr easy, probably even before I got out of college. Took the classes, got my CCNA in Nov. '01, right about the time the economy officially turned to shit. I worked making collection calls for Ford until 6-02 when I joined the AF, got a medical discharge 6 months ago, and now I can't find a job anywhere. I know my stuff, I'm a CCNA, but I can't get a job. I do mean anywhere to. I never had a problem getting jobs when I was in high school, but now that I have a diploma, some college, a professional cert., and some life experience, I'm having to dig through the my sofa for change for food or gas.
Now, I'm really not trying to sound like I'm bitching, because I'm not, I'm just recounting my experience. I'm also not saying all those people who told me Cisco was great screwed me, but rather, I think they we're just going with the info they knew to be true. Problem is their info was from '99 or so. Now all the IT jobs I can find open want more experience and skills than I think any human could have, and want to pay them something in line with McWages.
All in all, my whole experience has me actually wondering if IT is even going to be a viable career for long. For some reason, I see it going to something of a plumber type occupation. Very few places have a in-house plumber and only call one when they are need for their specialized skills. With computers becoming easier to use and more stable all the time, I can see IT people no longer needed on a day to day basis and instead delegated to being the IT plumbers. Seriously, have you ever seen one of Apple's XServe's? I don't think it can get much easier than that. Maybe I can be a teacher, seems like I'm always hearing about more of them being needed...
You're an idiot, I hope you realize this. You won't, in fact, you'll probably accuse me and many others of beings idiots ourselves, but who gives a shit? I mean, really, who? Once, just once before I die, I would just like to see one US hating idiot stand up and say, "Yes, I'm an idiot. The only reason I'm not speaking German, Russian, Japanese, or some other language of a one time world threat is because of the USA. I owe them my very ability to be an ingrate for all they have provided for me, both in saving my sorry (insert weak nationality here) ass/providing me the freedoms I take for granted every day as one of their own citizens and for being brave enough to risk their own men and women in a cause that is just and right, to forever ensure we will have the freedoms we take for granted, which we seek to use to spite those who tirelessly seek to provide them to us. Yes, I am an Oxygen Thief." Just once, just one fucking time, that's all I ask. I don't even care if they say the whole thing, a simple recognition that America is all that has stood between them and oppression is all I ask. Well, we can dream.
Really, the AC thing is more because I don't feel like getting modded down by the same oxygen thiefs who consider this to be news. Jesus, I get meta-modded unfair if I mod down a pro Linux comment as flamebait that's in the middle of a Apple story and more or less calls anyone who uses anything besides Linux a moron. I'm not complaining so much that my stories were rejected, I can handle that just fine, I've been a news reporter, it happens, I understand that. I'm complaining that this dribble was accepted when many more worthy stories were rejected. Not just mine. For example, I personally have had stories about court decisions on Internet bans, large law suits affecting several tech companies, and Apple's open sourcing of various technologies, as well as several interesting science stories, all rejected. And that's just me.
You're the highest # I've seen, so that means there are at least 645,752 Slashdot users. Now, assuming 1% of those submit a story a month, that means there are 6457 stories/month. I'm sure there's probably many more total stories than that, but let's go ahead and use that number. Now say there's 20 stories/day accepted, 30 * 20 = 600 stories in a month accepted, 5857 rejected. Again, surely a very low number. Now, out of all those stories, you can't tell me there weren't easly 100 more that were more news worthy than this. And you've clearly never submitted a story, (or much of an original thought, since out of the 11 comments to your credit, 1 is not a reply), or you just can't pay attention to details, otherwise you would have noted that submitting as an AC does not effect your chance to have a story accepted.
So just to review, a couple of editors either: A) Get a hard on from someone on Buffy and thereby allow crap like this through due to their infatuation, or B) Are 13 year old girls and thereby allow crap like this through due to their infatuation.
Now, I'm done with my rant. And just for you, my precious stealer of breath, I won't post AC this time. And all of you mods can come and try to karma fuck me, because I really don't give a shit. Honestly, I'll be a little dissapointed if I don't get AT LEAST a -1 for this.
And to stop the gravest injustice being done to me at this moment: Move away from my air space, and do it quickly, oxygen thief!
Because we did to much Dramamine. Seriously though, I can re-hash the same better proformance, better longevity, better service, just works arguments you and probably everyone else has heard a thousand times. Really, until you've used one for a extended amount of time, you can't really understand it. We seem to view our machines less as machines and more as friends. I think it's because they have a soul.
Ok, now let's see how many people bitch about this as usually do about the US government *possibly* doing things like this that no one ever seems to be able to offer up hard evidence on. Either we don't do it, or we're that damn good at it.
Well, I don't know about inferior PCs, but this isn't 100,000 times faster than the fastest G4. The fastest Apple G4 is the Dual 1.42 GHz. It has a peak performance of 21 Gigaflops, or 21 billion operations per second. Now let's break that down:
- Divide 21 by 2, since there are 2 processors after all = 10.5 Billion ops per second for one G4.
- Working in Billions, 330,000/10.5 = 31428.57
As you can see, the DNA computer is only 31,428.57 times faster than the fastest G4. The MHz (GHz) Myth is destroyed once again. Go Apple!And don't forget the irony here. By most accounts, BMW has about 2% of the automotive market share, while Apple probably has around 5% of the computer market. Essentially, BMW is locking out a company twice as big as them (in their respective markets), basically saying they are to minor of a company to support.
My favorite line from the article:
...appears to have no influence on the market...
After the success of the initial iMac, EVERY DAMN THING came in 5 plastic fruity colors that, oddly, matched the origional iMac colors. You could not escape Apple's market influence. Even now their design's are copied. XP looks like OS X if they just ass slacked on it (And has that edgy X in the name), Vaio's have tended to look like PowerBooks, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Tux gets a Aqua makeover... No, wait, to late.
Me personally, I always have been real into computers and other nerdly behaviors, but in school I was pretty popular. I was on our moarning news and was just seen as the cool guy by everyone for some reason. I think a lot of it has to do with how you carry yourself. I always looked realitively cool (6' 2", weight proportionate to height, well kept, and a black leather trench coat that everyone dug) and was pretty laid back, and everyone just seemed to think I was just some cool guy. I never had a lot of friends, but everyone knew me and liked me. One nice effect of this was that whenever I'd start going off about space time or my theories on the universe or anything like that, they'd actually listen and take what I said to heart. One of my favorite times was when the girls soccer team captain (a otherwise ditzy blond girl) and one of the girls from the swim team (see above, now in burnette) said they wished they could have thought like I did.
I also knew many of the more nerdly kids, and it's safe to say most of them brought any type of abuse upon themselves. The nerdly kids really just stuck out like sore thumbs, and were unfortunitly abused often. Nothing major, like none of them ever really got their asses kicked or anything, but their high school lives were more painful then they should have been. I mean, most of them weren't to bad, but they're were a few even I wanted to hit when they started babbeling endlessly about VB or Dragon Ball Z or any of that. The best thing though was when one of the more jocky kids would let it slip they did some nerdly things, and then try to cover it up as fast as possible.
I saw a thing on the History channel about the Nazi's attempts to get a nuclear weapon during WW II. It turns out, the researcher in charge of the program had some bad math for how much uranium was needed (weither or not this was deliberate is still a matter of debate) to make a working nuke, and that's the main reason they never produced one. They had an example that showed how bad of a miscalculation he made. First, only about a baseball sized amount was needed. They then pulled back to show the amount the scientist said was needed, and it was a ball about as large as the host, who had to be around 6 ft tall. I don't remember the exact amount, I think it was something like 800 Kg's, but just figure a baseball vs. a small boulder. By the end of the war, the Nazi's were churning out enough refined uranium to make about 1.5 nukes a day, but thought it was only a fraction of what was needed.
Now see, here we go. G3 and G4 processors are not imbedded processors, they are full blown computer processors. In fact, the main reason they haven't approached the almost usless (Find out how many orders Intel has got for Itanimum or however that made up word is spelled, even Google has shuned them) 2 and 3 GHz marks is because Motorola, the company that makes the chips, focuses more on the embedded market then the computer chip markets. And if Intel is so shit hot, why can their processors that are, by clock rates, 2x faster still not completly destroy G4's, or the sucky chip as you would say. Get your shit together before you post retarded garbage that just shows your ignorance. In fact, it would probably be best if no one else replies to this post because it has already turned into a flaming pit of slashell.
But I wonder if all the Intel folk that have always (wrongly) said Apple processors suck because they're slow will sing a different song now.
If this goes through, I don't think it is going to get far. It is probably going to get dragged through the courts for years, and I'd imagine a judge somewhere will grant an injunction to keep CA from collecting on this. It will eventually be crushed either as unconstitutional, or just if it comes before a judge/jury with common sense. So mes thinks CA only stands to lose a shit load of money fighting to keep this garbage alive if it makes. And I have to agree, if Davis has ANY future political goals, this is a good way to never accomplish any of them.
I hope you see the ignorance of your post.
The space program is a waste of money and a waste of time.
Yet the computer you type on is a product of, not only technology initially devised for war, but also for the space program. Look around. Light weight materials, flat panal screens, in fact, most technologies you and many others take for granted today, are all spin-offs of technologies at first used in the space program. Today, we're living off of the fruits of the Apollo program. Just imagine what will be possible in 20 years thanks to, in no small part, technologies and research done by the current Shuttle fleet. And we can't even imagine what sort of advances will be made in the next hundred or thousand years thanks to space, or what we may never know if we leave now.
So we want to spend money to explore space, while we wipe out species on our own planet?...our current goal should be to end strife and warfare here, and explore the world we live in.
I'm not saying we should just give up here and write Earth off as a lost cause. Do we still have a lot of work to do here? Of course, but we have even more to do out there, and there's no reason we can't do both. Explore the world we live in? Explore what? With the exception of some very high mountains and very deep oceans, we don't have much left here to explore. We have something close to 100 worlds to explore out there in our solar system alone. You tell me where we have more to explore. And as much as I'd like to say I'd like to see a end to war, I know it won't happen. I'm what I like to refer to as realistic. Besides, war has, despite what everyone else may think, solved more problems throughout human history than everything else combined and has advanced humanity further then we thought possible. The flat screen on your computer (or one you may like to have) is a spin-off of space technology, which is derived from rocket weapon technology captured from the Nazi's at the end of WW2. I suppose you oppose war on Iraq on the grounds that it's a war, no matter how good the cause, even though we'd personally end that countries strife (see: Afganistan). But I digress.
If we find life out there, and they know how our civilization has worked out thus far, how should they treat us? Do you think they want a McUniverse?
I'd assume in the great big galaxy that exists, capatilism is likely to have found a home with at least one other species. And I think our civilization has worked out nicely. Your old enough to have children yourself, so you must be at least 20, probably closer to 30+. Now without good old medical technology (not so much from space this time) developed by our "poor" civilization, you would probably be close to your expected life span. This assumes you haven't already been killed in a war that dragged on for some 50 years (which they don't anymore, thanks again to our civilization and space. JDAM's are beautiful things). It's easy to sit where you are now and try to critique what you think is flawed with our world, but the reason you are able to be in such a position is because of those advances. You may not see it, but I would expect nothing more.
The space program is a waste of money and a waste of time. I have never been inspired by space travel, nor is my son. He likes to look in the telescope and see the stars but at age of four he has said to me "Daddy, why are we going there? We are not ready". Out of the mouths of babes........
That they heared from the mouths of their parents. First, being 4, your kid shouldn't be inspired by space travel, he should be inspired by a new toy or book. Most kids don't quite comprehend space travel, and apparently, some never do. The only way a 4 year old is going to say anything that ignorant is if they heard it from a parent first. Kids hear things and then repeat them for about the next month. And usually, as is the case with a kid getting in trouble at school for swearing, they repeat the worst selection of the garbage they hear. You're really doing your kid a big disservice if you're putting these ideas into his head now. My goal is to see a new star in person before I die. Will it happen? Probably not, but do I always have something to aim for and is everything else a lesser goal than that at this point in time? Yes. And what will his goal be? Probably to be just like his dad... I weep for the future.
One thing we must not do (and I'm quite glad I haven't seen a post on it yet, if only everyone could be as smart as /.ers) is let the Columbia disaster set us back, or even stop us for going into space at all. A common thing I here when I talk to most people about space is, "We should solve our problems here before we waste all kinds of money on space." I think this has to be the worst outlook people could have on space. NASA barely gets any money anyway, and part of our problems on Earth are that we're over crowded, going to space will probably only help. Our big goal should be to get to the stars. Not just Mars, an asteroid, or even Pluto, which are all important steps along the way, but to get out among the galaxy and then the Universe. Granted, we probably have several billion years before we must leave, but we will have to someday. And this isn't just something we can put of for our great great great grand children to deal with, by then it might be to late. It's important that whatever we do, we always push forward the boundries of technology and of ourselves and into the great unknown. Onward!