I have an iPad 2. I'd swap it for an Android tablet tomorrow if I could. I'm sick of Apple telling me how I can (and can't) use the product that I bought.
I have a six year old son with ADHD, and sadly I had no choice but to put him on medication. Do I like it? No, of course not. Was it the right choice? I definitely believe so. He was failing PREP. Yes... the very first year of school, and he was failing because he couldn't focus. He was also highly disruptive in class and ended up spending several hours per week in the school office. However, all the teachers love him because he's a very sweet little boy (their words, not mine). A lot of people believe that ADHD medication (such as Ritalin) is a sedative - it's not, it's a stimulant. It's equivalent to a couple of cups of strong coffee. The problem is that people with ADHD have had their brains develop such that they cannot focus on certain inputs to the exclusion of others as most people can. Try standing in the middle of a room at a party or a night club, and talk to the person with you. Most people can manage it. Someone with ADHD and no medication finds it incredibly difficult to remain focused on the conversation, because they can also hear the other conversations in the room, and the music, and the person clinking a glass together in the neighbouring kitchen. All at once, and without the inherent ability to exclude unwanted inputs. The purpose of Ritalin is to speed up the brain so that the ADHD person can get all those inputs and actually process them.
It's actually genetic. My brother has ADD too. He's a successful masseuse now because it's a single task, in a quiet room, that can keep his attention. Don't ever ask him to hold a ladder for you because he'll wander off to look at a butterfly by the time you get to the top (yep, this actually happened when he was 21).
Autism seems to be related, though they don't know how. I have an autistic child too, and that's a whole other ballgame. But just because you are lucky enough to have a "typical" brain which can't even CONCEIVE of these different mental pathways, doesn't mean that these conditions don't exist. They can't conceive of what it's like for you either. All they know is that people are incredibly intolerant of what is - to them - perfectly normal.
Having said all that, I have to be very careful of their technology input, especially since autistic minds can struggle to differentiate from what they see on TV and what is actually real. They probably watch more TV and play more computer games than they should, but to be honest that's better for them than a mother having a nervous breakdown. I am strict about what they are allowed to watch though. Most children's TV is completely out. Ben 10? Forget it. Documentaries? Go for your life. They love things like Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters. My six year old probably beat you playing Starcraft 2 last night.;) It encourages keeping track of various things and strategising.
Whereas I've had Mumps and Rubella, and the fever was worse and I felt horrible and missed school for over a week each time. 2 days, 2 weeks... my kids are immunized, thanks.
1. Okay, I have my third baby conceived through the standard biological methodology of mammals on the way to prove it. As opposed to IVF or a turkey baster. Better?;)
2. I more meant the fact that it was my third baby, but you are quite right. I know someone who had three babies, and not one of them was to the same father or even from a committed relationship.
It's not a filter, it's distilling. It's a heck of a lot purer than just filtration, which is why it's BETTER quality water than you get in your tap. Apart from the missing minerals of course. I imagine any long-term trip into space would need to take mineral supplements to add to the water.
You might want to stop drinking water then... because these systems are generally BETTER than your local water purifying plant. And THAT water has passed from farm to city... cow dung in your water anyone?
It's still software, irrelevant of the platform that it runs on. Apart from MMOs, which have an alternative revenue source, games need to be non-free. I can't blame them for making them closed source. The Samba team have seen what happens with open-source software - it's amazing how well you can obfuscate code if you want to steal it. Fortunately the Samba team got their hands on the obfuscation program, because without it they would never have won in court.
Do you really think that once they get in-house Linux experience people won't start looking at other options? You could say most of the above about Red Hat, but there are plenty of people out there who use CentOS and Red Hat are cool with that.
If you want money spent on Linux, it has to appeal to people WITH money. Which means that money has to be spent on it to ensure proper support. Which needs corporate backing. Linux would have no where near the market penetration that it does without Red Hat, SuSE (now Novell) and now Ubuntu.
Get off your high horse. The corporate world doesn't exist to donate money to nice causes. Be GLAD that someone is making money out of Linux. They are benefiting from other people's free labour, but that is a labour of love. Those people who donate their time also benefit from the investment in kernel developers by the big companies. It's a two-way street.
I disagree. I refuse to buy something I can't sample first (e.g. I don't buy clothes off the internet, unless I can return them if I don't like them). You can't return a CD once opened, in case you ripped it. So how do I know if I like the music? It's not reasonable to spend an hour in the store listening to the whole thing. So I might download and listen to it. If I like it, great, I'll buy it. If I don't like it then I don't want it anyway, so I'll delete it (and yes, I have deleted every piece of illegally downloaded music once I determined I didn't want it).
The sole exception to the rule above is if I cannot buy it. If it's not distributed in such a way that it is possible for me to purchase it then I might keep it. I don't see how you have to be a guilt-ridden Catholic to want to reward someone who provides you with a service (the enjoyment of music, for example).
A better example would be if they set up a direct debit with your details. Credit is NOT your money. It's the bank's money. The bank is responsible for the payments, and then they go after you to get it back. So in the case above, the employee is stealing from the bank, not from you. Which makes it entirely the bank's problem. All you have to do is state that you didn't make those purchases and reasonably demonstrate that to be true.
I enjoyed physics more at High School, but demonstrated a much stronger aptitude for Chemistry. I also really enjoyed the humanities subjects, but didn't see a job at the end of them that interested me. My school score would have easily allowed me into medicine or law.
I got 6 weeks into a physics degree before I realised that University-level physics is HARD... for me. I dropped out and since I was also taking a programming subject ended up switching to IT. In hindsight I should have done something like pharmacy or medicine (or maybe even law, it fascinates me since learning more about it). So what you are really good at should be considered despite what you THINK you want to do. But nor should your niece be pushed into anything specific. Is she a people person? Analytical skills are valuable all over the place - maybe she would fit well into a legal or medical degree, where the ability to think critically about something applies.
I knew that too, and I'm *not* gay. I have my third baby on the way to prove it. I *am* taken though, obviously.:)
Maybe the war pre-first-contact wasn't a world war... I don't think they ever actually called it WW3 did they?
Must also add, it was supposed to be Voyager VI that become V'ger (and the link that made them Borg, as alluded to above, is non-Canon). Nomad turned up in TOS, but the whale probe was alien.
It's patents that are affecting innovation, not copyright! Copyright stops people from copying things exactly. Patents stop people from copying ideas. Software patents in particular last way too long - by the time they are out of patent they are practically useless.
*yawn* You've made assumptions about what would happen. Try looking at a few countries where it exists. Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect. But in Australia we have a choice. Private health insurance is subsidized and the private hospitals are much nicer, and if you have a high income you get hit with a hefty levy for Medicare if you're not on private health insurance. Those who can afford to pay do so, whether they want to or not.
I made three phone calls when I fell pregnant. One obstetrician was booked out, the other two were available. I got into my hospital of choice. It works beautifully. Our public system is underfunded, but at least it exists.
I disagree, but I think they messed up in *how* they bundled it. Home Basic is just stupid... take away the Vista "pretties" and you get a lot of people wondering why they bothered paying for Vista at all. But most people don't need Media Center and Terminal Apps built in, so most people *don't* need all the features of Ultimate (we do, unfortunately).
I think they need three levels. Standard, Home Server and Ultimate. Home Server should be configured as a media center and file server. Standard should be a gaming/workstation platform. Ultimate should do both, plus maybe some advanced features if they want to wring more $$ out of IT professionals who need all the top VPN/remote access functionality by forcing them to get Ultimate. *Maybe* have an 'Enterprise' edition which is tightly coupled to Active Directory/SUS/etc and *only* comes with volume licensing. Eliminate volume licensing except for the Enterprise version, and bang they only have ONE product to support in big corporations. That's potentially a good thing for everyone (except Linux/Mac users!).
Then of course you need Windows Server and its various incarnations. I don't manage a large enough Windows network (mostly Linux/Mac in this branch) to have an informed opinion on those. Oh, yeah, this is Slashdot... informed opinions be damned;)
In Australia businesses have the option of passing that on to consumers. So prices aren't *necessarily* more expensive. Depends on where you shop. The big department stores which have set prices don't charge extra for credit cards. (Aldi does.)
I like my rebate card, because I never pay interest on it and it's free with my home loan. But it's not for everyone.
Worst-case scenario, they can move to a country that actually cares about its citizens and provides decent free health care. And if they're not planning to commit a crime then they probably don't care about being on a DNA database.
Let's get over the paranoia, people... the amount of data your average kid puts on Facebook is enough to impersonate them.
No, it wouldn't. A microkernel loads modules into the kernel space. You're talking about running in user space. So when an application makes a system call, the kernel has to translate it to the FUSE layer into user space. So there's an extra layer consuming time. On top of that, kernel space isn't generally swapped out, but user space can be. Obviously it should never happen, but wouldn't it suck if your disk driver was swapped out?
Also, ZFS (like ReiserFS) handles its metadata differently from ext3, so you have to translate the differences between the virtual file system and ZFS. This is why writes are significantly slower. Reads are not so bad. The NFS penalty would be huge. See http://www.linux.com/feature/138452
Lets just go full tilt into asshatteriness: Make it a capital crime to have an insecure pc operating in your house or under your control. That will ensure it all stops... right?
You might be on to something here... but instead of a capital crime of the consumer, make it affect the ISP. If someone's is *detectably* (i.e. they don't have a decent firewall) running a computer that is easily compromised, limit their internet link to the ISP's personal network. All HTTP requests go to the same webpage with the following (translated into marketing-speak of course): "You are an idiot. Fix your computer."
The counter to this of course is that in representative democracy vote-buying is the most important thing. Which means that things that are good for the country overall, but unpopular, are a lot less likely to happen around election time. You can argue of course that if it's unpopular it's not good for the country, and that's a valid argument. But when massive amounts of money are spent on vocal minority groups to buy votes, I don't see how that's representative of the majority at all. Which isn't to say that I don't believe money should be spent on minorities... just that it's sometimes out of proportion to their needs relative to the needs of others. If you weren't afraid of being voted out you'd be a lot more likely to make the tough decisions.
The perfect nation would be a benevolent dictatorship... unfortunately you are quite right about that enlightened, virtuous leader. EVERYONE has an agenda.
Lots of IP lawyers are against DMCA, etc. They actually understand what it means to consumers. Some IP law makes sense, so you do need IP lawyers. Lawyers aren't ALL evil you know.;)
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I have an iPad 2. I'd swap it for an Android tablet tomorrow if I could. I'm sick of Apple telling me how I can (and can't) use the product that I bought.
I support the above post.
I have a six year old son with ADHD, and sadly I had no choice but to put him on medication. Do I like it? No, of course not. Was it the right choice? I definitely believe so. He was failing PREP. Yes ... the very first year of school, and he was failing because he couldn't focus. He was also highly disruptive in class and ended up spending several hours per week in the school office. However, all the teachers love him because he's a very sweet little boy (their words, not mine). A lot of people believe that ADHD medication (such as Ritalin) is a sedative - it's not, it's a stimulant. It's equivalent to a couple of cups of strong coffee. The problem is that people with ADHD have had their brains develop such that they cannot focus on certain inputs to the exclusion of others as most people can. Try standing in the middle of a room at a party or a night club, and talk to the person with you. Most people can manage it. Someone with ADHD and no medication finds it incredibly difficult to remain focused on the conversation, because they can also hear the other conversations in the room, and the music, and the person clinking a glass together in the neighbouring kitchen. All at once, and without the inherent ability to exclude unwanted inputs. The purpose of Ritalin is to speed up the brain so that the ADHD person can get all those inputs and actually process them.
It's actually genetic. My brother has ADD too. He's a successful masseuse now because it's a single task, in a quiet room, that can keep his attention. Don't ever ask him to hold a ladder for you because he'll wander off to look at a butterfly by the time you get to the top (yep, this actually happened when he was 21).
Autism seems to be related, though they don't know how. I have an autistic child too, and that's a whole other ballgame. But just because you are lucky enough to have a "typical" brain which can't even CONCEIVE of these different mental pathways, doesn't mean that these conditions don't exist. They can't conceive of what it's like for you either. All they know is that people are incredibly intolerant of what is - to them - perfectly normal.
Having said all that, I have to be very careful of their technology input, especially since autistic minds can struggle to differentiate from what they see on TV and what is actually real. They probably watch more TV and play more computer games than they should, but to be honest that's better for them than a mother having a nervous breakdown. I am strict about what they are allowed to watch though. Most children's TV is completely out. Ben 10? Forget it. Documentaries? Go for your life. They love things like Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters. My six year old probably beat you playing Starcraft 2 last night. ;) It encourages keeping track of various things and strategising.
There's also a huge following of Rugby in Australia, and there's nothing wussy about that!
Whereas I've had Mumps and Rubella, and the fever was worse and I felt horrible and missed school for over a week each time. 2 days, 2 weeks ... my kids are immunized, thanks.
1. Okay, I have my third baby conceived through the standard biological methodology of mammals on the way to prove it. As opposed to IVF or a turkey baster. Better? ;)
2. I more meant the fact that it was my third baby, but you are quite right. I know someone who had three babies, and not one of them was to the same father or even from a committed relationship.
It's not a filter, it's distilling. It's a heck of a lot purer than just filtration, which is why it's BETTER quality water than you get in your tap. Apart from the missing minerals of course. I imagine any long-term trip into space would need to take mineral supplements to add to the water.
You might want to stop drinking water then ... because these systems are generally BETTER than your local water purifying plant. And THAT water has passed from farm to city ... cow dung in your water anyone?
It's still software, irrelevant of the platform that it runs on. Apart from MMOs, which have an alternative revenue source, games need to be non-free. I can't blame them for making them closed source. The Samba team have seen what happens with open-source software - it's amazing how well you can obfuscate code if you want to steal it. Fortunately the Samba team got their hands on the obfuscation program, because without it they would never have won in court.
Do you really think that once they get in-house Linux experience people won't start looking at other options? You could say most of the above about Red Hat, but there are plenty of people out there who use CentOS and Red Hat are cool with that.
If you want money spent on Linux, it has to appeal to people WITH money. Which means that money has to be spent on it to ensure proper support. Which needs corporate backing. Linux would have no where near the market penetration that it does without Red Hat, SuSE (now Novell) and now Ubuntu.
Get off your high horse. The corporate world doesn't exist to donate money to nice causes. Be GLAD that someone is making money out of Linux. They are benefiting from other people's free labour, but that is a labour of love. Those people who donate their time also benefit from the investment in kernel developers by the big companies. It's a two-way street.
I disagree. I refuse to buy something I can't sample first (e.g. I don't buy clothes off the internet, unless I can return them if I don't like them). You can't return a CD once opened, in case you ripped it. So how do I know if I like the music? It's not reasonable to spend an hour in the store listening to the whole thing. So I might download and listen to it. If I like it, great, I'll buy it. If I don't like it then I don't want it anyway, so I'll delete it (and yes, I have deleted every piece of illegally downloaded music once I determined I didn't want it).
The sole exception to the rule above is if I cannot buy it. If it's not distributed in such a way that it is possible for me to purchase it then I might keep it. I don't see how you have to be a guilt-ridden Catholic to want to reward someone who provides you with a service (the enjoyment of music, for example).
A better example would be if they set up a direct debit with your details. Credit is NOT your money. It's the bank's money. The bank is responsible for the payments, and then they go after you to get it back. So in the case above, the employee is stealing from the bank, not from you. Which makes it entirely the bank's problem. All you have to do is state that you didn't make those purchases and reasonably demonstrate that to be true.
I enjoyed physics more at High School, but demonstrated a much stronger aptitude for Chemistry. I also really enjoyed the humanities subjects, but didn't see a job at the end of them that interested me. My school score would have easily allowed me into medicine or law.
I got 6 weeks into a physics degree before I realised that University-level physics is HARD ... for me. I dropped out and since I was also taking a programming subject ended up switching to IT. In hindsight I should have done something like pharmacy or medicine (or maybe even law, it fascinates me since learning more about it). So what you are really good at should be considered despite what you THINK you want to do. But nor should your niece be pushed into anything specific. Is she a people person? Analytical skills are valuable all over the place - maybe she would fit well into a legal or medical degree, where the ability to think critically about something applies.
I knew that too, and I'm *not* gay. I have my third baby on the way to prove it. I *am* taken though, obviously. :)
Maybe the war pre-first-contact wasn't a world war ... I don't think they ever actually called it WW3 did they?
Must also add, it was supposed to be Voyager VI that become V'ger (and the link that made them Borg, as alluded to above, is non-Canon). Nomad turned up in TOS, but the whale probe was alien.
It's patents that are affecting innovation, not copyright! Copyright stops people from copying things exactly. Patents stop people from copying ideas. Software patents in particular last way too long - by the time they are out of patent they are practically useless.
And if it's the neighbour's kid retrieving his ball, you've committed murder. Congratulations.
*yawn* You've made assumptions about what would happen. Try looking at a few countries where it exists. Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect. But in Australia we have a choice. Private health insurance is subsidized and the private hospitals are much nicer, and if you have a high income you get hit with a hefty levy for Medicare if you're not on private health insurance. Those who can afford to pay do so, whether they want to or not.
I made three phone calls when I fell pregnant. One obstetrician was booked out, the other two were available. I got into my hospital of choice. It works beautifully. Our public system is underfunded, but at least it exists.
I disagree, but I think they messed up in *how* they bundled it. Home Basic is just stupid ... take away the Vista "pretties" and you get a lot of people wondering why they bothered paying for Vista at all. But most people don't need Media Center and Terminal Apps built in, so most people *don't* need all the features of Ultimate (we do, unfortunately).
I think they need three levels. Standard, Home Server and Ultimate. Home Server should be configured as a media center and file server. Standard should be a gaming/workstation platform. Ultimate should do both, plus maybe some advanced features if they want to wring more $$ out of IT professionals who need all the top VPN/remote access functionality by forcing them to get Ultimate. *Maybe* have an 'Enterprise' edition which is tightly coupled to Active Directory/SUS/etc and *only* comes with volume licensing. Eliminate volume licensing except for the Enterprise version, and bang they only have ONE product to support in big corporations. That's potentially a good thing for everyone (except Linux/Mac users!).
Then of course you need Windows Server and its various incarnations. I don't manage a large enough Windows network (mostly Linux/Mac in this branch) to have an informed opinion on those. Oh, yeah, this is Slashdot ... informed opinions be damned ;)
In Australia businesses have the option of passing that on to consumers. So prices aren't *necessarily* more expensive. Depends on where you shop. The big department stores which have set prices don't charge extra for credit cards. (Aldi does.)
I like my rebate card, because I never pay interest on it and it's free with my home loan. But it's not for everyone.
Worst-case scenario, they can move to a country that actually cares about its citizens and provides decent free health care. And if they're not planning to commit a crime then they probably don't care about being on a DNA database.
Let's get over the paranoia, people ... the amount of data your average kid puts on Facebook is enough to impersonate them.
No, it wouldn't. A microkernel loads modules into the kernel space. You're talking about running in user space. So when an application makes a system call, the kernel has to translate it to the FUSE layer into user space. So there's an extra layer consuming time. On top of that, kernel space isn't generally swapped out, but user space can be. Obviously it should never happen, but wouldn't it suck if your disk driver was swapped out?
See the diagram at the bottom of this page: http://fuse.sourceforge.net/
Also, ZFS (like ReiserFS) handles its metadata differently from ext3, so you have to translate the differences between the virtual file system and ZFS. This is why writes are significantly slower. Reads are not so bad. The NFS penalty would be huge. See http://www.linux.com/feature/138452
Lets just go full tilt into asshatteriness: Make it a capital crime to have an insecure pc operating in your house or under your control. That will ensure it all stops... right?
You might be on to something here ... but instead of a capital crime of the consumer, make it affect the ISP. If someone's is *detectably* (i.e. they don't have a decent firewall) running a computer that is easily compromised, limit their internet link to the ISP's personal network. All HTTP requests go to the same webpage with the following (translated into marketing-speak of course): "You are an idiot. Fix your computer."
The counter to this of course is that in representative democracy vote-buying is the most important thing. Which means that things that are good for the country overall, but unpopular, are a lot less likely to happen around election time. You can argue of course that if it's unpopular it's not good for the country, and that's a valid argument. But when massive amounts of money are spent on vocal minority groups to buy votes, I don't see how that's representative of the majority at all. Which isn't to say that I don't believe money should be spent on minorities ... just that it's sometimes out of proportion to their needs relative to the needs of others. If you weren't afraid of being voted out you'd be a lot more likely to make the tough decisions.
The perfect nation would be a benevolent dictatorship ... unfortunately you are quite right about that enlightened, virtuous leader. EVERYONE has an agenda.
Thanks. That'll teach me not to edit after my first preview - it didn't show up until I hit submit.
Lots of IP lawyers are against DMCA, etc. They actually understand what it means to consumers. Some IP law makes sense, so you do need IP lawyers. Lawyers aren't ALL evil you know. ;)
Bring on unassignable copyright!
The ability to assign copyright to a corporation is what started this whole mess...