This wont put even a tiny dent in spam. In Virginia or any where else. What it will do is set a precedent. This is one huge step in the right direction. Now you can write your local representative with "If Virginia can do it, why can't State X?" Lets take this spam victory and run with it.
You're right. After many installs a restart is needed. What I was getting at is that a restart has become the end-all-fix-all. Users have gotten so used to this that they no longer even call it into question. Instead of looking into a problem just reboot and poof! Problem gone. You've made my point perfectly. It's totally unacceptable for a reboot to be the second step to making a change or installing software. It's been going on for so many years now (in the Windows world) that people expect it. It's not a flaw in the OS, it just is.
And about the illegal operation. Sadly I am not lying. Granted, she was a high school student, but that aside, she actually believed that an illegal operation meant that she, or her computer, was doing something against the law. She was using AOL 3.0 which was giving her the error seemingly randomly. She thought that it meant that her brother had accessed porn on the computer and it was warning her that it was illegal.
"Adding new features like embedding full-length motion pictures into Word documents (apologies to Neal Stephenson) is one kind of 'innovation,' but it comes at the cost of gains in stability."
So if you mounted a rocket on your car to help with acceleration but you knew that one out of every ten uses it would completely fail and likely destroy your car are you innovating or are you being stupid? Innovating is when you add a feature and it just works. When Microsoft or any other company adds a feature to their software the end users expect it to work. They use it assuming it does. If it's still an un-reliably "beta" feature than what the companies is really doing is passing off all the testing costs onto the user.
About the only group of people out there that do accept new features at the cost of stability is the Open Source community. But even then, take 99% of the OSS community and put them in a business situation where real cash rides on software stability and they'll opt to not have that "cool new" feature.
I'd say that most non-geek users are completely ignorant of software reliability. A computer just has errors. They have grown to accept that. To them that's why they have a warranty and that's why tech support exists. The typical windows 9x users believes that a restart is the natural second step to every click or change they make. I knew a girl that thought an illegal operation meant she could go to jail (for what she did not know.) So the first step in making software companies more reliable and more accountable is educating the common users. If people know what they are getting is bad their excuse wont be that Dell sold them a shitty computer, it will be that Software Maker X sold them buggy crappy software. Until then companies like Microsoft will run-amuck.
I would like to see the evidence of this. The day Sony does this is the day I stop buying Sony.
Re:3 words: Car Ogg Player
on
Mini-Box M-100
·
· Score: 5, Informative
"...and does floating point, so Ogg is possible."
If you will recall, the XIPH team re-wrote the Ogg decoder so that it can run on systems that can only do integer math. "Several optimizations were made that resulted in the decoder being twice as fast. We've also tuned the code to be tolerant for those who implement Vorbis using integer-only math. This allows hardware and embedded devices to more easily support Ogg Vorbis playback."http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4416.
Or maybe we should switch to the Dvorak. It addresses the poor design issues. And if you want a totally different layout you can get Dvoraks in different shapes and no row-offset too.
Actually it goes:
D.nnr igfo cm gocbi a ekrpat t.fxrape yr yfl. abe cyo ip.ay!
Only the first two hours are like how you described. After that it's all downhill.
It's entirly possible to write a program to listen for ctrl+q/j/k and send ctrl+x/c/v instead. It never really bugged me when I switched. I know how to do this in windows, would have no idea in linux. Perhaps I'll do some research into it and write on for win/lin. The Dvorak DOES rule.
I type with the Dvorak layout, It took me a month to learn (about 2 hours before I could type anything) and another month to well surpass my old speed. I was a 90 wpm typist with the QWERTY, I'm a 110 wpm typist with the Dvorak. Most people do not have this large an increase. Generally the most increase seen is about 5-10 wpm. The major benefit to me is the extra comfort. Not only with English, but when I program. The ' ; - / = < > keys are all right underneath my pinkies (the < > are the w and e) and I find my programming efficiency greatly increased. I can also type on the QWERTY with no trouble (it takes about 3 sentences for my fingers to remember where everything is). In the Fall of 1998 issue of "Science Supplement" published by Webster's starting on page 62 there is a detailed scientific study of actual learning times and speed increases. Most of the criticism I have heard comes from economists who claim switching the whole world over would just cost too much. They are of course either very shortsighted or only looking at the short run. I recommend everyone attempt to switch. Three of my friends have also made the switch in under a month and seen significant results. If you're an English speaker/typist my recommendation is try to switch. Any operating system (I use Linux primarily) can be switched in no time.
I type with the Dvorak layout, It took me a month to learn (about 2 hours before I could type anything) and another month to well surpass my old speed. I was a 90 wpm typist with the QWERTY, I'm a 110 wpm typist with the Dvorak. Most people do not have this large an increase. Generally the most increase seen is about 5-10 wpm. The major benefit to me is the extra comfort. Not only with English, but when I program. The ' ; - / = < > keys are all right underneath my pinkies (the < > are the w and e) and I find my programming efficiency greatly increased. I can also type on the QWERTY with no trouble (it takes about 3 sentences for my fingers to remember where everything is). In the Fall of 1998 issue of "Science Supplement" published by Webster's starting on page 62 there is a detailed scientific study of actual learning times and speed increases. Most of the criticism I have heard comes from economists who claim switching the whole world over would just cost too much. They are of course either very shortsighted or only looking at the short run. I recommend everyone attempt to switch. Three of my friends have also made the switch in under a month and seen significant results. If you're an English speaker/typist my recommendation is try to switch. Any operating system (I use Linux primarily) can be switched in no time.
How many more times are we going to hear about the DMCA and the extreem mesures some companies and people will go to use it? When will the DMCA start getting some media attention outside of/.? The DMCA strikes down a lot of rights that many people hold near and dear. I don't know about the rest of/. readers but I disgusted by the DMCA.
Child porn is illegal everywhere I am aware of. Why block the websites when they can be taken down like they should be? That's like when your mother told you to clean your room and so you just shoved it all under the bed, didn't make your room clean and this wont make the internet better. A band-aid won't stop the bleeding.
I did a format and install of RH9 last night and so in the process of getting it all to work, installed the latest nVidia drivers. Since I always run a custom kernel installing them used to be difficult. I can't tell you how surprised I was that nVidia compleatly re-wrote their installer to do all the work for me. It detected a "non-standard" kernel and compiled and installed for me. Smooth. I want to see more companies put that much effort into getting their hardware to work under linux. I wouldn't even concider another vender now unless they could demonstrate the dedicacion to the *nix world that nVidia has.
That's rather funny but from my experiance the AMD processors almost run as well as their version number. They could never get away with that in ram though, it's apples to oranges.
NTSC? Surely you meant NTSC: Not The Same Color twice. Yeah I know this is a troll but really, have you ever tried to reproduce the same colors on different hardware using the same (NTSC) standard? It's nearly impossible.
How hard is it to run the last mile of cable when you aren't running cable at all?
It's sad that this sounds state-of-the-art. Fiber backbones have been around for a long time. I'm betting that their backbone is switched gigabit. Nice for the local intranet, but not noticeably faster than a good old 10Mbps CAT5 link. In fact, in my opinion, putting in wires has already dated the project. What would have really gotten me going is if Issaquah WA had installed 802.11.x (a, b, or g) access points and was offering Intra/Inter net via wireless access. Yesterday wires were in, wireless is happening today.
And don't even mention security; there are many good stream ciphers out there. (Does RC4 ring a bell?)
Slashdot Mirror
This wont put even a tiny dent in spam. In Virginia or any where else. What it will do is set a precedent. This is one huge step in the right direction. Now you can write your local representative with "If Virginia can do it, why can't State X?" Lets take this spam victory and run with it.
How about patent the rotate clockwise button. It's there in Acrobat Reader and XPDF.
You're right. After many installs a restart is needed. What I was getting at is that a restart has become the end-all-fix-all. Users have gotten so used to this that they no longer even call it into question. Instead of looking into a problem just reboot and poof! Problem gone. You've made my point perfectly. It's totally unacceptable for a reboot to be the second step to making a change or installing software. It's been going on for so many years now (in the Windows world) that people expect it. It's not a flaw in the OS, it just is.
And about the illegal operation. Sadly I am not lying. Granted, she was a high school student, but that aside, she actually believed that an illegal operation meant that she, or her computer, was doing something against the law. She was using AOL 3.0 which was giving her the error seemingly randomly. She thought that it meant that her brother had accessed porn on the computer and it was warning her that it was illegal.
"Adding new features like embedding full-length motion pictures into Word documents (apologies to Neal Stephenson) is one kind of 'innovation,' but it comes at the cost of gains in stability."
So if you mounted a rocket on your car to help with acceleration but you knew that one out of every ten uses it would completely fail and likely destroy your car are you innovating or are you being stupid? Innovating is when you add a feature and it just works. When Microsoft or any other company adds a feature to their software the end users expect it to work. They use it assuming it does. If it's still an un-reliably "beta" feature than what the companies is really doing is passing off all the testing costs onto the user.
About the only group of people out there that do accept new features at the cost of stability is the Open Source community. But even then, take 99% of the OSS community and put them in a business situation where real cash rides on software stability and they'll opt to not have that "cool new" feature.
And the Polar Lander accident was not the cause of bad coding, it was the cause of poor communication among international collaborators.
You must be new here; Slashdot doesn't believe in the Y2K myth.
I'd say that most non-geek users are completely ignorant of software reliability. A computer just has errors. They have grown to accept that. To them that's why they have a warranty and that's why tech support exists. The typical windows 9x users believes that a restart is the natural second step to every click or change they make. I knew a girl that thought an illegal operation meant she could go to jail (for what she did not know.) So the first step in making software companies more reliable and more accountable is educating the common users. If people know what they are getting is bad their excuse wont be that Dell sold them a shitty computer, it will be that Software Maker X sold them buggy crappy software. Until then companies like Microsoft will run-amuck.
I would like to see the evidence of this. The day Sony does this is the day I stop buying Sony.
"...and does floating point, so Ogg is possible."
If you will recall, the XIPH team re-wrote the Ogg decoder so that it can run on systems that can only do integer math. "Several optimizations were made that resulted in the decoder being twice as fast. We've also tuned the code to be tolerant for those who implement Vorbis using integer-only math. This allows hardware and embedded devices to more easily support Ogg Vorbis playback." http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4416.
Or maybe we should switch to the Dvorak. It addresses the poor design issues. And if you want a totally different layout you can get Dvoraks in different shapes and no row-offset too.
Actually it goes: D.nnr igfo cm gocbi a ekrpat t.fxrape yr yfl. abe cyo ip.ay! Only the first two hours are like how you described. After that it's all downhill.
It's entirly possible to write a program to listen for ctrl+q/j/k and send ctrl+x/c/v instead. It never really bugged me when I switched. I know how to do this in windows, would have no idea in linux. Perhaps I'll do some research into it and write on for win/lin. The Dvorak DOES rule.
Me too. Great keyboard. (QWERTY remapped)
I type with the Dvorak layout, It took me a month to learn (about 2 hours before I could type anything) and another month to well surpass my old speed. I was a 90 wpm typist with the QWERTY, I'm a 110 wpm typist with the Dvorak. Most people do not have this large an increase. Generally the most increase seen is about 5-10 wpm. The major benefit to me is the extra comfort. Not only with English, but when I program. The ' ; - / = < > keys are all right underneath my pinkies (the < > are the w and e) and I find my programming efficiency greatly increased. I can also type on the QWERTY with no trouble (it takes about 3 sentences for my fingers to remember where everything is). In the Fall of 1998 issue of "Science Supplement" published by Webster's starting on page 62 there is a detailed scientific study of actual learning times and speed increases. Most of the criticism I have heard comes from economists who claim switching the whole world over would just cost too much. They are of course either very shortsighted or only looking at the short run. I recommend everyone attempt to switch. Three of my friends have also made the switch in under a month and seen significant results. If you're an English speaker/typist my recommendation is try to switch. Any operating system (I use Linux primarily) can be switched in no time.
I type with the Dvorak layout, It took me a month to learn (about 2 hours before I could type anything) and another month to well surpass my old speed. I was a 90 wpm typist with the QWERTY, I'm a 110 wpm typist with the Dvorak. Most people do not have this large an increase. Generally the most increase seen is about 5-10 wpm. The major benefit to me is the extra comfort. Not only with English, but when I program. The ' ; - / = < > keys are all right underneath my pinkies (the < > are the w and e) and I find my programming efficiency greatly increased. I can also type on the QWERTY with no trouble (it takes about 3 sentences for my fingers to remember where everything is). In the Fall of 1998 issue of "Science Supplement" published by Webster's starting on page 62 there is a detailed scientific study of actual learning times and speed increases. Most of the criticism I have heard comes from economists who claim switching the whole world over would just cost too much. They are of course either very shortsighted or only looking at the short run. I recommend everyone attempt to switch. Three of my friends have also made the switch in under a month and seen significant results. If you're an English speaker/typist my recommendation is try to switch. Any operating system (I use Linux primarily) can be switched in no time.
Last I checked this wasn't something you put on your resume. So social engineering isn't going to be that great a job skill.
How many more times are we going to hear about the DMCA and the extreem mesures some companies and people will go to use it? When will the DMCA start getting some media attention outside of /.? The DMCA strikes down a lot of rights that many people hold near and dear. I don't know about the rest of /. readers but I disgusted by the DMCA.
I'm still waiting for Project Von Neumann to come out. The game idea sounds great.
Child porn is illegal everywhere I am aware of. Why block the websites when they can be taken down like they should be? That's like when your mother told you to clean your room and so you just shoved it all under the bed, didn't make your room clean and this wont make the internet better. A band-aid won't stop the bleeding.
I did a format and install of RH9 last night and so in the process of getting it all to work, installed the latest nVidia drivers. Since I always run a custom kernel installing them used to be difficult. I can't tell you how surprised I was that nVidia compleatly re-wrote their installer to do all the work for me. It detected a "non-standard" kernel and compiled and installed for me. Smooth. I want to see more companies put that much effort into getting their hardware to work under linux. I wouldn't even concider another vender now unless they could demonstrate the dedicacion to the *nix world that nVidia has.
That's rather funny but from my experiance the AMD processors almost run as well as their version number. They could never get away with that in ram though, it's apples to oranges.
They arn't tired of this one yet? I am.
That's an interesting theory since this article was posted at 1:59 PM.
NTSC? Surely you meant NTSC: Not The Same Color twice. Yeah I know this is a troll but really, have you ever tried to reproduce the same colors on different hardware using the same (NTSC) standard? It's nearly impossible.
How hard is it to run the last mile of cable when you aren't running cable at all?
It's sad that this sounds state-of-the-art. Fiber backbones have been around for a long time. I'm betting that their backbone is switched gigabit. Nice for the local intranet, but not noticeably faster than a good old 10Mbps CAT5 link. In fact, in my opinion, putting in wires has already dated the project. What would have really gotten me going is if Issaquah WA had installed 802.11.x (a, b, or g) access points and was offering Intra/Inter net via wireless access. Yesterday wires were in, wireless is happening today.
And don't even mention security; there are many good stream ciphers out there. (Does RC4 ring a bell?)