> You are FORCED by apple's opinion that
> everyone is a fucking idiot.
Nope. It's NOT the result of some random and arbitrary opinion of some miscelaneous yahoo at Apple. It's the result of Jef Raskin's research on human interfaces when he was at Xerox PARC.
You about know Xerox PARC, Right? The place that invented the GUI, and inspired Apple, in the first place. And Raskin's research there showed that even the PARC researchers routinely had difficulty with the original three-button mouse. They regularly made mouse-button errors, causing Raskin to actually do the research, and develop a superior alternative. And remember, we're not talking about "joe blow at CompUSA" here. PARC was filled with computer scientists and PhDs. And even THEY routinely had those mouse button errors.
From the article I linked:
I was the 31st employee at Apple (joining in January, 1978), but I had first met Jobs and Wozniak in their garage in 1976, and told them of the wonderful work being done at PARC. Working on the Apple I at the time, they weren't interested in human factors. While I was the first PARC-savvy person at Apple, Larry Tesler was the first PARC employee to join the company. At first he was strongly opposed to the Mac's easier-to-use mouse methods, and I eventually wrote a memo that showed, point by point, that the one-button mouse could do everything that PARCs three-button mouse could do and with the same number or fewer user actions. It was faster and more efficient, and much easier to learn and remember how to use. I had observed that people (including myself) at PARC often made wrong-button errors in using the mouse, which was part of my impetus for doing better.
Apple is not ALL smoke and mirrors, contrary to what the MS drones would have you believe. They're one of the VERY few computer companies out there that actually bothers to do human interface research. Try reading the "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" sometime. They're the result of a LOT of research in human factors; rathar than some random programmer deciding on his own how he'd like the interface to work THIS time.
I didn't know that little tidbit about the congressional record.
But I think the point here, is that if you catch their original remarks on cspan, and hit the record button on your VCR, the congressman does NOT get to barge into your house and edit the tape, ala 1984, to reflect his NEW version of what he said.
cya, john
Re:Needed: affordable self-cleaning public toilets
on
Best High-Tech Toilet?
·
· Score: 1
There was a story about these in The Guardian a while back.
Actually, The City didn't pay for them, and The City doesn't pay to maintain them. All SF does is allow free use of the real estate they occupy.
That French company maintains them free of charge to the city in exchange for the take from the coin box, and the right to sell advretising on the sides.
There are plans to add about 20 more. But the reason there are tens instead of hundreds is not money... the program pays for itself. The reason is that people in most parts of the city don't WANT them.
They are something of an eyesore in the first place. And SF, in general, doesn't take well to new advretising popping up where it wasn't before. Remember the flap about IBM's "Peack Love and Linux" sidewalk art?
Imagine the reaction to hundreds of new billboards masquerading as toilets.
I'm no audio guru myself, but I've a friend who is.
He swears up and down by Digidesign's ProTools. 'Says not to bother with anything else, as no one will ever take you seriously otherwise. (Kind of like no one will take anyone who claims to do graphics work seriously unless they know Photoshop, I guess)
Caught me by suprise, it did. I had always thought that ProTools was just a really high-end chunk of software. But, turns out it is a hardware/software combo package.
And it has an "LE" version, much like Adobe has the low end Photoshop, for novice users. And the LE version costs about that $500 you mentioned.
I know exactly where they are; exactly why everybody else's tech support blows chunks.
All of the good tech support people work at either Oracle or IBM.
My at my first job out of college, part of our project involved Oracle running on this big IBM beheamoth. By virtue of being the most junior engineer in the group, I got the added assignment of being the guy to call support whenever something went wrong.
My previous experiences with tech support people were with the likes of microsoft:
"It's not out fault. Talk to $applicationVendor or $hardwareVendor"
or
"Maybe we'll get around to fixing it in the next service pack. Get it when we get around to releasing, and install. Until then, fuck off and die"
So it was with a bit of dread that I prepared to call Oracle support that one day, when it actually MATTERED, and I was working on production hardware, rathar than dicking around on my home boxen.
Calling Oracle support would run more along the lines of:
"Good afternoon sir, Oracle support center"
"Ah, yes, hello sir, could you please read us the number from your purchase order?"
"Thank you sir, could you please describe the problem?"
(At this point, I described the problem, to CLUEFUL tech people who did NOT try to get me to go through any FSCK-ing "support call scripts"!)
"Thank you sir, could you please <execute some commands>, and read the results back to us?" (sometimes, it was email the results back to them, but you get the point)
Before long, one of three things would happen:
1)
"Okay sir, this is your problem, and this is how you fix it:" (and fix the problem, it did)
2)
"I'm sorry sir, we can't fix this over the phone, we'll have someone on-site in four hours." (And have someone on site in four hours, they did)
or, as happened twice:
3)
"I'm sorry sir, but that is a problem on the hardware side. If you call Mr. XXX at the IBM support center, and tell him $this, and $this2, and $this3; he'll have you fixed right up"
(And calling IBM's support people resulted in a similarly EXCELLENT tech support experience, with an equally fast response time.)
Now, I have no idea how the support offered by the varoius Linux vendors measures up. Whenever *I* have needed linux help, I've used newsgroups, or any of a number of gurus among my friends.
But since IBM in now a Linux vendor, I know of ONE place where you can get badass Linux tech support. Certianly more support than you'll EVER get from those (un)trained monkeys in redmond.
cya,
john
Re:What it'll do for me
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
>Use public transportation again because it solves
>the mid-range travel problem of getting to/from the
>bus terminal/train station
I'll hold off on THAT judgement until I see the thing up close. From looking at the pictures, IT looks rathar large and unwieldy. I'd be quite unpopular, were I to take one on to the bus with me.
Taking one onto a BART should be okay tho... So long as the train is not TOO crowded.
>sometimes you have to let other countries
>solve their own problems. It's called
>soveriegnty.
Yes, well the problem begins when those other countries begin to export their problems to other countries.
Socialism, as defined by it's creator, is supposed to be spread through the violent overthrow of other governments.
See, for example, china's conquest of Tibet, and their continual sabre-ratteling towards Taiwan. I beleive socialist forces were also on the verge of defeat in the Korean war, until china sent its owh troops in to prop up north korea.
>Also the american telcos didn't manage to attract
>younger people with customized offerings (here
>74% of the 12-19 years olds have cell phones.
>They produce a large share of the telcos's
>revenue.).
Heh... you can blame the war on (some) drugs for that one.
Well, things MAY have changed since I graduated high school, but given the pigheaded stubbornness and vindictiveness of administrative and law enforcement types, I doubt it.
Anyway, when I was in high school, the "powers that be" had decreed that only drug dealers and users carried either pagers or cell phones. Thus, in the name of the holy crusade against (some) drugs, any student caught with either was subject to a five-day (minimum) suspension.
Kinda slows down adoption in that demographic when the petty tyrants that lord over them ban the technology from a good half of their waking hours.
>I don't know a single person who thinks having
>one button is better
How about the people who INVENTED it?
Jef Raskin, originator of the Macintosh product, was often a visiting academic and consultant at PARC and joined Apple. He had done useability studies which demonstrated that NORMAL people (the target market for the "for the rest of us" Macintosh) found a ONE button mouse easier to use than the original Xerox mice (which had THREE buttons. Remember, not EVERYONE in the world has a PhD in CS. Hell, even people at PARC (plenty of PhDs there.. and plenty of human interface experts as well) and Raskin HIMSELF had mouse button errors, as he describes here.
While I was the first PARC-savvy person at Apple, Larry Tesler was the first PARC employee to join the company. At first he was strongly opposed to the Mac's easier-to-use mouse methods, and I eventually wrote a memo that showed, point by point, that the one-button mouse could do everything that PARCs three-button mouse could do and with the same number or fewer user actions. It was faster and more efficient, and much easier to learn and remember how to use. I had observed that people (including myself) at PARC often made wrong-button errors in using the mouse, which was part of my impetus for doing better.
Myself, I don't have Raskin's expertise, nor have I done any "useability studies". But I worked tech support and helldesk jobs when I was in college. And *I* can sure tell you the anguish of getting a call from someone who didn't understand "left-click" vs. "right-click", and trying to explain the difference.
1)
It's a USB keyboard. So it SHOULD work. But, as others have said, the eject, volumes, and mute keys go beyond the "basic" USB spec. So expect them to act funky. I've NO idea how command and option will map.
2)
Just buy one from Frys. Try it out. If it doesn't work, you can easily take advantage of their liberal return policy, and... uh... not too bright employees, to get your money back.
True enough, but it's not as if it matters... Try a quick game of mad libs...
Take any statement, article, or press release by those people. Do a search and replace...
RIAA/Metallica/MPAA...
They're all interchangable
Rosen/Lars/Valenti...
They're all interchangable
SDMI hack/Napster/DeCSS...
They're all interchangable.
Do the substitutions. They're all equally vile and redundant entities, fronted by equally small-minded, pitiful drones. And they're all equally fearful and resentful of the new generation and the new technology that is leaving their pathetic selves behind.
>Obviously Mr. Red-White-and-Blue hasn't been
>paying attention to the motherland. The
>Confederate Flag is being banned all over the
>southern states.
Nothing of the kind is happening in the south.
What is happening is anti-racism and equal rights groups are BOYCOTTING (or threatening to do so) the tourism industries of those more primitave states whose GOVERNMENTS endorse the confederacy.
In some cases, said governments have bowed to economic pressure (or the threat therof) and removed the PUBLIC endorsement from the confederate flag.
But NOWHERE is there a law stopping any given bigoted, hatemongering redneck from displaying the confederate flag, or the swasika, or whatever, on his own, PRIVATE property.
The equivelent would be if the city of, say, Bonn, were to adopt the swastika as it's city seal and display it above public buildings. Then, after a public outcry, and watching the tourist dollars dry up, realise that GOVERNMENT endorsement of racial hatred is a BAD idea, and remove the swastika from PUBLIC buildings, but still allow individual bigots identify themselves as such.
Well, there WAS that story a couple of weeks back about gates offering a reward to drones which turn in people for buying non-windoze computers.
I dunno what happened to that program. I think I may have read an article about the bounty being recinded and gates admitting that it was a bad idea in the first place.... or I could just be remembering a weblog discussion...
1)
Westwood aquires the computer game rights to the Dune franchise.
2)
Well, great, this is a tremendously valuable property... tons of SciFi fans'll buy it on name alone. But just WHAT kind of game do we make out of it???
3)
Westwood releases Dune... a first-person-ish pseudo-adventure game. It is absolutely resounding in its mediocrity... tons of SciFi fans do NOT buy it on name alone.
4)
Well, Dune is STILL a tremendously valuable franchise. We paid a lot of money for it and can't let it go to waste. What ELSE can we do with it?
5)
Westwood gets experimental. They take their upcoming real-time strategy game, change two of the faction names to Atradies and Harkonen, toss in a poorly done sandworm that does nothing but eat your units, toss on the Dune II name, and call it good.
6)
Dune II is a suprising sucess. Now, RTS it *THE* thing to do!!! It soon spawns C&C and Red Alert... which bring in phat money for many years.
7)
Dune is STILL a tremendously valuable franchise. What ELSE can we do with it?
8)
Along comes the marketdroid. "EVERYONE in gameing now associates the name Dune with RTS" he says. And indeed, few people remember that the first Dune RTS was actually Dune II. The original Dune is long banished to the dusty attics of people's minds. Quoth the marketdroid: "NO ONE will accept another Dune game as anything EXCEPT an RTS!"
9)
Westwood releases "Emperor: Battle for Dune"... their latest realtime strategy game.
Yeah... no open relay on my end... tho IIRC by keeping that old sendmail around I open myself to some nasty security holes (performance OTOH is a non-issue, as I'm the only one on THAT box).
In reality, it doesn't concern me too much, as I rarely have that box do mail at all. I only kick sendmail on when I travel out of town.
I just set all my other mail accounts to forward to various addresses on that box when I leave town. That way, all my mail is in one place and I can just check it with pine. Plus, I don't have to deal with a mess of different pop and imap configs and finding a fast enough connection for the webmails. Any arbitray 56K box + ssh will do.
>There is no system of checks and balances to make
>sure that mistakes like this do not occur, nor is
>there any recourse for someone to take if they do
>not believe they fit the classification of
>spammer and have nevertheless been blacklisted.
Bull. There most definately *IS*.
A) Yes, I agree that above.net dropping www packets as well as mial packets from spam IPs is excessive, and goes beyond what should be MAPS' mission... HOWEVER... above.net makes NO secret whatsoever that they use the RBL in this way. Don't like it? Then don't get your bandwidth from above.net. I don't.
B) The RBL for mail only... don't like it?
1)
# vi sendmail.cf
2)
Find, and comment out the line containing:
FEATURE(rbl)
(yes, I know I should upgrade to 8.10 instead of lingering in 8.9 land... sue me)
3)
:wq
4)
/etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail restart
Voila... in less than thirty seconds, I can open my systems up to all the spam in the RBL hall of shame. And you know what? No one's would stop me. It's not as though MAPS has its own swat team that would burst through my door ten seconds later and force me at gunpoint to reenable the RBL in sendmail.cf.
>On a different note (and I don't remember if I
>read this in a book, or a newspaper) don't some
>of the government agencies use minutely different
>wording for documents they hand out, so they can
>try to track leaks?
You read that in a Tom Clancy novel. I'm not entirely sure which one tho... Most of them (except Red Storm Rising) are a set of interconnecting sequels, prequels, and spinoffs.
The idea you describe was invented by his "Jack Ryan" character; and was a primary way "Ryan" distinguished himself early on and became a rising star in the CIA.
>"average" user who just happens to be unlucky
>enough to have a 1996-era Mac
The only people I know who still use five YEAR old computers, Macintosh or otherwise, are people like myself who can't bear to throw away an obsolete, but otherwise functional box.
They put Linux on them, and stick them in a closet to route mail, IP masq, or serve files.
Hardly the pursuit of your "Average" user, who'll bitch, moan and complain to tech support if word on windoze 2k doesn't load and open a file in under twenty seconds, if they can't load some flash or shockwave webpage 'cause their computer's too slow, or if their quake framerate drops below 60fps.
Except for the fact that spammers are actively trying to make filtering illegal.
Or have you missed all the stories on slashdot of late wrt spammers sueing MAPS and the like?
Yeah... I'm perfectly capable of writeing regexs to get rid of my own spam, installing filters, mulitple inboxes; or enableing MAPS in my sendmail.cf..... or disableing all/doing none of the above. But some of the more malignant spammers are useing the courts to try and make efforts to block them illegal.
I say, if they're going to weasel their way through the legal system to try to force us to receive their junk bits; we should bloody well fight back in kind, and do our best to land the trash in prison.
>I guess since those are "just words" it's OK to
>ignore the fact that they are derogatory.
The word "fag" is only a derogatory slur in the United States. In the UK, "fag" is a slang term for a cigarrete.
(as to weather or not you find public smoking obnoxious, that's a totally different discussion)
A fair chunk of other political correctness is bunk outside the US as well. For instance, you wouldn't call a subject of Her Majesty, who just happens to be black, an "african american". Because, as he will be quick to tell you, he is neither african, nor american.
Slashdot Mirror
> everyone is a fucking idiot.
Nope. It's NOT the result of some random and arbitrary opinion of some miscelaneous yahoo at Apple. It's the result of Jef Raskin's research on human interfaces when he was at Xerox PARC.
You about know Xerox PARC, Right? The place that invented the GUI, and inspired Apple, in the first place. And Raskin's research there showed that even the PARC researchers routinely had difficulty with the original three-button mouse. They regularly made mouse-button errors, causing Raskin to actually do the research, and develop a superior alternative. And remember, we're not talking about "joe blow at CompUSA" here. PARC was filled with computer scientists and PhDs. And even THEY routinely had those mouse button errors.
From the article I linked:
Apple is not ALL smoke and mirrors, contrary to what the MS drones would have you believe. They're one of the VERY few computer companies out there that actually bothers to do human interface research. Try reading the "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" sometime. They're the result of a LOT of research in human factors; rathar than some random programmer deciding on his own how he'd like the interface to work THIS time.
cya,
john
> The F-14 was designed on PowerMacs...
Very impressive indeed.
Even MORE impressive, considering that the F-14 was designed years before Apple even existed; and more than a DECADE before the Macintosh was created.
I wonder how Steve pulled THAT one off?
cya,
john
Do you have a link to the article/interview/whatever where Gosling said that? I'd really like to read more on his impressions of OS X.
thanks
cya,
john
I didn't know that little tidbit about the congressional record.
But I think the point here, is that if you catch their original remarks on cspan, and hit the record button on your VCR, the congressman does NOT get to barge into your house and edit the tape, ala 1984, to reflect his NEW version of what he said.
cya,
john
There was a story about these in The Guardian a while back.
Actually, The City didn't pay for them, and The City doesn't pay to maintain them. All SF does is allow free use of the real estate they occupy.
That French company maintains them free of charge to the city in exchange for the take from the coin box, and the right to sell advretising on the sides.
There are plans to add about 20 more. But the reason there are tens instead of hundreds is not money... the program pays for itself. The reason is that people in most parts of the city don't WANT them.
They are something of an eyesore in the first place. And SF, in general, doesn't take well to new advretising popping up where it wasn't before. Remember the flap about IBM's "Peack Love and Linux" sidewalk art?
Imagine the reaction to hundreds of new billboards masquerading as toilets.
cya,
john
>seeing your G3-600 perform like a 486-33
I'm pretty sure Virtural PC does a bit better than THAT.
But did you even read the top level post?
>>>DOS games from ten years ago. Utilities from
>>>five years ago.
For those purposes, a 486/33 would be more than adequate. Hell, IIRC, in 1992 a 486/33 would have been quite the badass machine.
cya,
john
He swears up and down by Digidesign's ProTools. 'Says not to bother with anything else, as no one will ever take you seriously otherwise. (Kind of like no one will take anyone who claims to do graphics work seriously unless they know Photoshop, I guess)
Caught me by suprise, it did. I had always thought that ProTools was just a really high-end chunk of software. But, turns out it is a hardware/software combo package.
And it has an "LE" version, much like Adobe has the low end Photoshop, for novice users. And the LE version costs about that $500 you mentioned.
cya,
john
I know exactly where they are; exactly why everybody else's tech support blows chunks.
All of the good tech support people work at either Oracle or IBM.
My at my first job out of college, part of our project involved Oracle running on this big IBM beheamoth. By virtue of being the most junior engineer in the group, I got the added assignment of being the guy to call support whenever something went wrong.
My previous experiences with tech support people were with the likes of microsoft:
"It's not out fault. Talk to $applicationVendor or $hardwareVendor"
or
"Maybe we'll get around to fixing it in the next service pack. Get it when we get around to releasing, and install. Until then, fuck off and die"
So it was with a bit of dread that I prepared to call Oracle support that one day, when it actually MATTERED, and I was working on production hardware, rathar than dicking around on my home boxen.
Calling Oracle support would run more along the lines of:
"Good afternoon sir, Oracle support center"
"Ah, yes, hello sir, could you please read us the number from your purchase order?"
"Thank you sir, could you please describe the problem?"
(At this point, I described the problem, to CLUEFUL tech people who did NOT try to get me to go through any FSCK-ing "support call scripts"!)
"Thank you sir, could you please <execute some commands>, and read the results back to us?" (sometimes, it was email the results back to them, but you get the point)
Before long, one of three things would happen:
1)
"Okay sir, this is your problem, and this is how you fix it:" (and fix the problem, it did)
2)
"I'm sorry sir, we can't fix this over the phone, we'll have someone on-site in four hours." (And have someone on site in four hours, they did)
or, as happened twice:
3)
"I'm sorry sir, but that is a problem on the hardware side. If you call Mr. XXX at the IBM support center, and tell him $this, and $this2, and $this3; he'll have you fixed right up"
(And calling IBM's support people resulted in a similarly EXCELLENT tech support experience, with an equally fast response time.)
Now, I have no idea how the support offered by the varoius Linux vendors measures up. Whenever *I* have needed linux help, I've used newsgroups, or any of a number of gurus among my friends.
But since IBM in now a Linux vendor, I know of ONE place where you can get badass Linux tech support. Certianly more support than you'll EVER get from those (un)trained monkeys in redmond.
cya,
john
>Use public transportation again because it solves
>the mid-range travel problem of getting to/from the
>bus terminal/train station
I'll hold off on THAT judgement until I see the thing up close. From looking at the pictures, IT looks rathar large and unwieldy. I'd be quite unpopular, were I to take one on to the bus with me.
Taking one onto a BART should be okay tho... So long as the train is not TOO crowded.
cya
john
>sometimes you have to let other countries
>solve their own problems. It's called
>soveriegnty.
Yes, well the problem begins when those other countries begin to export their problems to other countries.
Socialism, as defined by it's creator, is supposed to be spread through the violent overthrow of other governments.
See, for example, china's conquest of Tibet, and their continual sabre-ratteling towards Taiwan. I beleive socialist forces were also on the verge of defeat in the Korean war, until china sent its owh troops in to prop up north korea.
cya,
john
Sheila Broflovski:
Just remember what the MPAA says: Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words!
cya,
john
>Also the american telcos didn't manage to attract
>younger people with customized offerings (here
>74% of the 12-19 years olds have cell phones.
>They produce a large share of the telcos's
>revenue.).
Heh... you can blame the war on (some) drugs for that one.
Well, things MAY have changed since I graduated high school, but given the pigheaded stubbornness and vindictiveness of administrative and law enforcement types, I doubt it.
Anyway, when I was in high school, the "powers that be" had decreed that only drug dealers and users carried either pagers or cell phones. Thus, in the name of the holy crusade against (some) drugs, any student caught with either was subject to a five-day (minimum) suspension.
Kinda slows down adoption in that demographic when the petty tyrants that lord over them ban the technology from a good half of their waking hours.
cya,
john
>one button is better
How about the people who INVENTED it? Jef Raskin, originator of the Macintosh product, was often a visiting academic and consultant at PARC and joined Apple. He had done useability studies which demonstrated that NORMAL people (the target market for the "for the rest of us" Macintosh) found a ONE button mouse easier to use than the original Xerox mice (which had THREE buttons. Remember, not EVERYONE in the world has a PhD in CS. Hell, even people at PARC (plenty of PhDs there.. and plenty of human interface experts as well) and Raskin HIMSELF had mouse button errors, as he describes here.
Myself, I don't have Raskin's expertise, nor have I done any "useability studies". But I worked tech support and helldesk jobs when I was in college. And *I* can sure tell you the anguish of getting a call from someone who didn't understand "left-click" vs. "right-click", and trying to explain the difference.
cya,
john
It's a USB keyboard. So it SHOULD work. But, as others have said, the eject, volumes, and mute keys go beyond the "basic" USB spec. So expect them to act funky. I've NO idea how command and option will map.
2)
Just buy one from Frys. Try it out. If it doesn't work, you can easily take advantage of their liberal return policy, and... uh... not too bright employees, to get your money back.
Easy enough.
cya,
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
True enough, but it's not as if it matters... Try a quick game of mad libs...
Take any statement, article, or press release by those people. Do a search and replace...
RIAA/Metallica/MPAA...
They're all interchangable
Rosen/Lars/Valenti...
They're all interchangable
SDMI hack/Napster/DeCSS...
They're all interchangable.
Do the substitutions. They're all equally vile and redundant entities, fronted by equally small-minded, pitiful drones. And they're all equally fearful and resentful of the new generation and the new technology that is leaving their pathetic selves behind.
We are the future; not them.
cya,
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>paying attention to the motherland. The
>Confederate Flag is being banned all over the
>southern states.
Nothing of the kind is happening in the south.
What is happening is anti-racism and equal rights groups are BOYCOTTING (or threatening to do so) the tourism industries of those more primitave states whose GOVERNMENTS endorse the confederacy.
In some cases, said governments have bowed to economic pressure (or the threat therof) and removed the PUBLIC endorsement from the confederate flag.
But NOWHERE is there a law stopping any given bigoted, hatemongering redneck from displaying the confederate flag, or the swasika, or whatever, on his own, PRIVATE property.
The equivelent would be if the city of, say, Bonn, were to adopt the swastika as it's city seal and display it above public buildings. Then, after a public outcry, and watching the tourist dollars dry up, realise that GOVERNMENT endorsement of racial hatred is a BAD idea, and remove the swastika from PUBLIC buildings, but still allow individual bigots identify themselves as such.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
I dunno what happened to that program. I think I may have read an article about the bounty being recinded and gates admitting that it was a bad idea in the first place.... or I could just be remembering a weblog discussion...
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Westwood aquires the computer game rights to the Dune franchise.
2)
Well, great, this is a tremendously valuable property... tons of SciFi fans'll buy it on name alone. But just WHAT kind of game do we make out of it???
3)
Westwood releases Dune... a first-person-ish pseudo-adventure game. It is absolutely resounding in its mediocrity... tons of SciFi fans do NOT buy it on name alone.
4)
Well, Dune is STILL a tremendously valuable franchise. We paid a lot of money for it and can't let it go to waste. What ELSE can we do with it?
5)
Westwood gets experimental. They take their upcoming real-time strategy game, change two of the faction names to Atradies and Harkonen, toss in a poorly done sandworm that does nothing but eat your units, toss on the Dune II name, and call it good.
6)
Dune II is a suprising sucess. Now, RTS it *THE* thing to do!!! It soon spawns C&C and Red Alert... which bring in phat money for many years.
7)
Dune is STILL a tremendously valuable franchise. What ELSE can we do with it?
8)
Along comes the marketdroid. "EVERYONE in gameing now associates the name Dune with RTS" he says. And indeed, few people remember that the first Dune RTS was actually Dune II. The original Dune is long banished to the dusty attics of people's minds. Quoth the marketdroid: "NO ONE will accept another Dune game as anything EXCEPT an RTS!"
9)
Westwood releases "Emperor: Battle for Dune"... their latest realtime strategy game.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>Have you made sure you're not an open relay?
Yeah... no open relay on my end... tho IIRC by keeping that old sendmail around I open myself to some nasty security holes (performance OTOH is a non-issue, as I'm the only one on THAT box).
In reality, it doesn't concern me too much, as I rarely have that box do mail at all. I only kick sendmail on when I travel out of town.
I just set all my other mail accounts to forward to various addresses on that box when I leave town. That way, all my mail is in one place and I can just check it with pine. Plus, I don't have to deal with a mess of different pop and imap configs and finding a fast enough connection for the webmails. Any arbitray 56K box + ssh will do.
cya
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>sure that mistakes like this do not occur, nor is
>there any recourse for someone to take if they do
>not believe they fit the classification of
>spammer and have nevertheless been blacklisted.
Bull. There most definately *IS*.
A) Yes, I agree that above.net dropping www packets as well as mial packets from spam IPs is excessive, and goes beyond what should be MAPS' mission... HOWEVER... above.net makes NO secret whatsoever that they use the RBL in this way. Don't like it? Then don't get your bandwidth from above.net. I don't.
B) The RBL for mail only... don't like it?
1)
# vi sendmail.cf
2)
Find, and comment out the line containing:
FEATURE(rbl)
(yes, I know I should upgrade to 8.10 instead of lingering in 8.9 land... sue me)
3)
:wq
4)
/etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail restart
Voila... in less than thirty seconds, I can open my systems up to all the spam in the RBL hall of shame. And you know what? No one's would stop me. It's not as though MAPS has its own swat team that would burst through my door ten seconds later and force me at gunpoint to reenable the RBL in sendmail.cf.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>read this in a book, or a newspaper) don't some
>of the government agencies use minutely different
>wording for documents they hand out, so they can
>try to track leaks?
You read that in a Tom Clancy novel. I'm not entirely sure which one tho... Most of them (except Red Storm Rising) are a set of interconnecting sequels, prequels, and spinoffs.
The idea you describe was invented by his "Jack Ryan" character; and was a primary way "Ryan" distinguished himself early on and became a rising star in the CIA.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>enough to have a 1996-era Mac
The only people I know who still use five YEAR old computers, Macintosh or otherwise, are people like myself who can't bear to throw away an obsolete, but otherwise functional box.
They put Linux on them, and stick them in a closet to route mail, IP masq, or serve files.
Hardly the pursuit of your "Average" user, who'll bitch, moan and complain to tech support if word on windoze 2k doesn't load and open a file in under twenty seconds, if they can't load some flash or shockwave webpage 'cause their computer's too slow, or if their quake framerate drops below 60fps.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Or have you missed all the stories on slashdot of late wrt spammers sueing MAPS and the like?
Yeah... I'm perfectly capable of writeing regexs to get rid of my own spam, installing filters, mulitple inboxes; or enableing MAPS in my sendmail.cf
I say, if they're going to weasel their way through the legal system to try to force us to receive their junk bits; we should bloody well fight back in kind, and do our best to land the trash in prison.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>ignore the fact that they are derogatory.
The word "fag" is only a derogatory slur in the United States. In the UK, "fag" is a slang term for a cigarrete.
(as to weather or not you find public smoking obnoxious, that's a totally different discussion)
A fair chunk of other political correctness is bunk outside the US as well. For instance, you wouldn't call a subject of Her Majesty, who just happens to be black, an "african american". Because, as he will be quick to tell you, he is neither african, nor american.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
0001-01-01 00:00:00
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if