If you don't want me using YOUR wireless signal, then get YOUR wireless signal out of MY house.
I have had to help plenty of people reconfigure their networks because their computers just happen to grab a neighbour's wireless signal first before their own. If you can't be bothered to take the necessary steps to make sure your signal is encrypted, then I can't be bothered to check if I'm supposed to be on it or not. It's that simple.
Whoever came up with the house analogy make an important mistake with it. Houses don't come walking down the street and suck people into the front door. Wifi effectively IS doing just that, because it is ubiquitous and very difficult to block unless you create a foil wall to block the signal past the point you were intending to use it.
I was gonna make this point as well but it looks like others have beat me to it. This has nothing to do with how awesome apple is, and everything to do with how utterly crappy everything *else* is.
I currently work as a mac tech support person. I've been using PCs for over 15 years prior to this. The difference I have found is glaring. Mac's *just work*. Problems will always happens but by and large, Apple's computers are a lightyear ahead of any pc I have ever used to date. Apple's products do their best to stay out of your way and let you get stuff done, rather than constantly having to worry about maintaining the product itself.
Hell, even when there is a worst case scenario and you have to reinstall your operating system, apple provides a special mode that will reinstall your OS from scratch while maintaining a backup of your data and applications. And this has been a part of the OS for a good decade.
That's a cop out and you know it. There are a not insubstantial number of people who DO believe that the bible is the literal word of god. Also, he mentions Judao-Christian, in other words both Jewish and Christian faiths. And for that matter, we should be also including ALL Abrahamic religions, including Islam. All contain significant populations that take their holy books as facts.
The only reason people don't include other faiths in this bag of anti-scientific nonsense is because they're not as well known so it's hard to comment.
Even if we take your 2nd point as fact, there are still plenty of people who believe what I stated above, and these people believe themselves to be 'true' Christians/Jews/Musllims/whatever and the rest of us hethen scum. And you can't tell them that they are not, because you can't prove a belief based on nothing more than hearsay.
As for #3, that's a meaningless statement. Humans have proven that they are exceptionally skilled at rationalizing anything they want. If 'many scientists' find no conflict between science and religion, then all the power to them, but the fact remains that science is based on the premise that what we observe in the world can be explained by NATURAL causes, which means God has absolutely no business in scientific discovery.
Sorry, I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
You seem to have confused free-thinkers with religious types. Last I checked, free-thinkers don't have tele-evangelists trying to convince people to give them lots of money.
And how is it Microsoft's responsibility if application vendors are incapable of following the spec? If you can't follow the API properly, and the incorrect functionality you are relying on is changed/fixed, it's your responsibility to fix your own software.
I read an interesting article way back when about how Microsoft has had to bend over backwards, replicating old bugs and inconsistencies so that existing software won't break when users upgrade. At this point, I think it's safe to say that all those efforts, combined with the other political stupidity microsoft has done (like integrating IE into the OS) is now starting to bite Microsoft in the rear. Vista is just the critical mass of all bugs piled on top of bugs on top of API changes, etc.
I think Apple had the right idea when they made OS X. Redo the whole OS, and then include the old OS in a compatibility VM. That way you get a clean start while still supporting older apps.
I can't imagine how sore your back is going to be in a few years if this is how you prefer to use a computer. You will be very hard pressed to find an ideal solution because you are trying to use the laptop in a way it was never intended.
If you want to spend long hours on your machine, then you need to use a proper desk, plain and simple. Your neck and back will thank you.
Because evolution makes a hell of a lot more sense than "God did it". Even though we haven't figured out how to predict things with it, doesn't mean it isn't valid. There is incredible amounts of evidence that indicate evolution exists. With the exception of a couple human-written storybooks and all the cockamamy ideas that those have spawned, there is NO evidence AT ALL of creationism. I'll take the one that's at least plausable, thank you very much.
That paper *was* retracted because it was wrong. The only reason he waited until now was because he had completely forgotten about it until creationists dug the thing up again.
As far as 'theories' go, gravity is also "just a theory". I'd like to see you disbelieve THAT one.
It seems to me that, with the exception of Novell, the distros signing up for this thing are all small-time distros with relatively small user bases.
I can't grok what Novell could possibly have been thinking, but it would make sense for the less popular distros to align with microsoft as they instantly become newsworthy and generate more interest.
Has there *ever* been a slashdot story on TurboLinux prior to this? If there was it certainly wasn't recently.
I think the big problem is the one word you used. "Honest". Microsoft to the computer industry is what the US is to the rest of the world.
You have no choice but to work with them because they're so damn big, but they got that way through myriad abuses that had managed to slip under the radar up till now. On the rare occasion they manage to achieve some good will, only to piss it away again by doing something even more greedy and self serving.
Microsoft has the reputation of making user-friendly but half-baked products, rife with security issues. But that pales in comparison to their hostile business practices.
A perfect example is Silverlight. It sounds like a nice competitor to Flash, especially if they do a good job of making it cross platform. But... it was released by Microsoft, so the first things you think are "Where are the bugs?" and "Once they get a foothold, are they going to keep updating the windows version and let the other versions fester?" Microsoft is synonymous with ulterior motives, and THAT is why no one gives them the time of day.
I can think of no simpler way to implement a city-wide free wifi system than a grassroots method such as this. Not only is the up front cost relatively inexpensive per user, it's distributed across thousands of people who can take part if/when they see fit, and it's much easier for individual people to maintain than a central authority.
Not only that, you would have the redundancy of having multiple choices of APs in a given area, so if one goes down for whatever reason, you can still choose another.
It's almost like the equivalent of swarm intelligence, but applied to wifi.
I'm sorry but that's the biggest crock of bull I've seen so far on this discussion. You seem to completely ignore the fact that the OS choice is usually mandated by management. What IT wants to use is irrelevant. It's *management* that chooses the OSes cause that's what THEY are used to. It's *management* that chooses the other flavours of corporate software like CRM and whatnot. The IT department is simply stuck having to deal with all the pain.
And you just stated it perfectly. IT departments are *already* dealing with all sorts of pre-existing crap. Of *course* they don't want to add to that. It's hard to keep up as it is!
I have seen this time and again. Not all IT departments are perfect, I'm sure. However based on my own personal experience, if there's a cock up somewhere I will always put my money down on it being a direct result of management, or users bypassing IT to do their own thing.
Comparing humans to animals that are not naturally social in nature is just silly.
If you're going to make that comparison, then compare OTHER animals that are ALSO social. Various species of monkeys and wolves for example. And if you look at those, you DO find that they have a primitive set of social rules that maintain social order.
And that is what morality is fundamentally about. Maintaining a productive and sustaining social order.
I have to disagree with your question as stated. You are assuming that god/faith equates to meaning, purpose, and morals, and that you have a choice between only that and being a hedonistic animal.
That is not even wrong. A better question would be "Would you rather live your life under the rules and framework that some other person came up with, or would you rather live your life according to your own heart?"
You do NOT need religion to life a productive and fulfilling life. People who think that we would be murderous self-serving monsters if we didn't have god, scare the living crap out of me. I don't want to be on the receiving end of their psychotic rampage if at some point they decide there really isn't a god.
So not only are people going to be ENCOURAGED to constantly touch and smudge my screen, but I'll have to worry about reformatting my hard drive when I take a cleaning cloth to it...
Um... all of them? It's like Real tried to out-obnoxious itself with each successive version. The very first ones were okish. But from taking over all your file associations unless you were very careful, to installing spyware and other crap, to making it almost impossible to find and download the free version, to the latest versions that have some kind of moronic messaging centre sitting in your system tray consuming resources and spitting out useless information.
And never mind the general wierdness it would do to your system, which other people have already commented on.
And yes, I know most of it is uninstallable or disable-able, but that's not the point, now is it? It shouldn't *have* to be. All the annoying stuff Real does shouldn't be there in the first place.
"Just because you can't change, or comprehend that a company can listen to customers and change, doesn't mean they won't change."
Yeah, and it only took them to version ELEVEN to figure out that people hated having their computers being commandeered. What's your apology for the other 10 versions of crap they put out until now? The first couple versions weren't bad, but then they got obnoxious real fast and I've also avoided them since.
You don't have the luxury of being snide when the company in question has been VERY resistant to changing a universally condemned practice. I'll wait maybe another version or two and see if Real is able to maintain this newfound idea of etiquette before I consider going back to them. I suppose you have no qualms about Sony products either, despite worldwide recalls of exploding batteries, repeated attempts at installing rootkits on users machines, and various other obnoxious behaviours? Anyone who is willing to say "Oh it's ok now they've learned their lesson!" is just willfully naive.
I wasn't though. My old XT *didn't* have a hard drive. It was only a year or two later that we shelled out a grand for a modem and a whopping 40MB drive that the sales person assured me I would never be able to fill up.
Looking at the graphs on the first page of the article, it seems like the AAK firmware has some kind of performance cap on it. When you get to ~80 on the horizonal scale, the curves between the two graphs appear to sync up again.
So does this mean they they've put some kind of speed governor on their hard drives, or am I totally misinterpreting the results?
While I get your point, there's one thing that seems like a catch 22 to me. How do you know how crappy the CD is until you've listened to it? If you're lucky you can borrow a copy from a friend and listen to it. If not, then you have to pays your money and takes yer chances. And then you have to put up with the hassle of returning the thing, assuming that the store even takes returns.
Um... Yeah? You have a home computer. Unless you are running a server or doing something that REQUIRES incoming connections, then damn straight you block them all. Are you saying that you would PREFER to have random people on the internet poking at your machine?
Slashdot Mirror
Your argument has to go both ways.
If you don't want me using YOUR wireless signal, then get YOUR wireless signal out of MY house.
I have had to help plenty of people reconfigure their networks because their computers just happen to grab a neighbour's wireless signal first before their own. If you can't be bothered to take the necessary steps to make sure your signal is encrypted, then I can't be bothered to check if I'm supposed to be on it or not. It's that simple.
Whoever came up with the house analogy make an important mistake with it. Houses don't come walking down the street and suck people into the front door. Wifi effectively IS doing just that, because it is ubiquitous and very difficult to block unless you create a foil wall to block the signal past the point you were intending to use it.
I was gonna make this point as well but it looks like others have beat me to it. This has nothing to do with how awesome apple is, and everything to do with how utterly crappy everything *else* is.
I currently work as a mac tech support person. I've been using PCs for over 15 years prior to this. The difference I have found is glaring. Mac's *just work*. Problems will always happens but by and large, Apple's computers are a lightyear ahead of any pc I have ever used to date. Apple's products do their best to stay out of your way and let you get stuff done, rather than constantly having to worry about maintaining the product itself.
Hell, even when there is a worst case scenario and you have to reinstall your operating system, apple provides a special mode that will reinstall your OS from scratch while maintaining a backup of your data and applications. And this has been a part of the OS for a good decade.
Microsoft, why *arn't* you listening?
That's a cop out and you know it. There are a not insubstantial number of people who DO believe that the bible is the literal word of god. Also, he mentions Judao-Christian, in other words both Jewish and Christian faiths. And for that matter, we should be also including ALL Abrahamic religions, including Islam. All contain significant populations that take their holy books as facts.
The only reason people don't include other faiths in this bag of anti-scientific nonsense is because they're not as well known so it's hard to comment.
Even if we take your 2nd point as fact, there are still plenty of people who believe what I stated above, and these people believe themselves to be 'true' Christians/Jews/Musllims/whatever and the rest of us hethen scum. And you can't tell them that they are not, because you can't prove a belief based on nothing more than hearsay.
As for #3, that's a meaningless statement. Humans have proven that they are exceptionally skilled at rationalizing anything they want. If 'many scientists' find no conflict between science and religion, then all the power to them, but the fact remains that science is based on the premise that what we observe in the world can be explained by NATURAL causes, which means God has absolutely no business in scientific discovery.
Sorry, I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
You seem to have confused free-thinkers with religious types. Last I checked, free-thinkers don't have tele-evangelists trying to convince people to give them lots of money.
And how is it Microsoft's responsibility if application vendors are incapable of following the spec? If you can't follow the API properly, and the incorrect functionality you are relying on is changed/fixed, it's your responsibility to fix your own software.
I read an interesting article way back when about how Microsoft has had to bend over backwards, replicating old bugs and inconsistencies so that existing software won't break when users upgrade. At this point, I think it's safe to say that all those efforts, combined with the other political stupidity microsoft has done (like integrating IE into the OS) is now starting to bite Microsoft in the rear. Vista is just the critical mass of all bugs piled on top of bugs on top of API changes, etc.
I think Apple had the right idea when they made OS X. Redo the whole OS, and then include the old OS in a compatibility VM. That way you get a clean start while still supporting older apps.
I can't imagine how sore your back is going to be in a few years if this is how you prefer to use a computer. You will be very hard pressed to find an ideal solution because you are trying to use the laptop in a way it was never intended.
If you want to spend long hours on your machine, then you need to use a proper desk, plain and simple. Your neck and back will thank you.
Because evolution makes a hell of a lot more sense than "God did it". Even though we haven't figured out how to predict things with it, doesn't mean it isn't valid. There is incredible amounts of evidence that indicate evolution exists. With the exception of a couple human-written storybooks and all the cockamamy ideas that those have spawned, there is NO evidence AT ALL of creationism. I'll take the one that's at least plausable, thank you very much.
That paper *was* retracted because it was wrong. The only reason he waited until now was because he had completely forgotten about it until creationists dug the thing up again.
As far as 'theories' go, gravity is also "just a theory". I'd like to see you disbelieve THAT one.
My bad. I stand corrected.
It seems to me that, with the exception of Novell, the distros signing up for this thing are all small-time distros with relatively small user bases.
I can't grok what Novell could possibly have been thinking, but it would make sense for the less popular distros to align with microsoft as they instantly become newsworthy and generate more interest.
Has there *ever* been a slashdot story on TurboLinux prior to this? If there was it certainly wasn't recently.
I think the big problem is the one word you used. "Honest". Microsoft to the computer industry is what the US is to the rest of the world.
You have no choice but to work with them because they're so damn big, but they got that way through myriad abuses that had managed to slip under the radar up till now. On the rare occasion they manage to achieve some good will, only to piss it away again by doing something even more greedy and self serving.
Microsoft has the reputation of making user-friendly but half-baked products, rife with security issues. But that pales in comparison to their hostile business practices.
A perfect example is Silverlight. It sounds like a nice competitor to Flash, especially if they do a good job of making it cross platform. But... it was released by Microsoft, so the first things you think are "Where are the bugs?" and "Once they get a foothold, are they going to keep updating the windows version and let the other versions fester?" Microsoft is synonymous with ulterior motives, and THAT is why no one gives them the time of day.
I can think of no simpler way to implement a city-wide free wifi system than a grassroots method such as this. Not only is the up front cost relatively inexpensive per user, it's distributed across thousands of people who can take part if/when they see fit, and it's much easier for individual people to maintain than a central authority.
Not only that, you would have the redundancy of having multiple choices of APs in a given area, so if one goes down for whatever reason, you can still choose another.
It's almost like the equivalent of swarm intelligence, but applied to wifi.
I read the entry, but it doesn't say what the circuit *provides*. How do you make use of such a circuit?
I'm sorry but that's the biggest crock of bull I've seen so far on this discussion. You seem to completely ignore the fact that the OS choice is usually mandated by management. What IT wants to use is irrelevant. It's *management* that chooses the OSes cause that's what THEY are used to. It's *management* that chooses the other flavours of corporate software like CRM and whatnot. The IT department is simply stuck having to deal with all the pain.
And you just stated it perfectly. IT departments are *already* dealing with all sorts of pre-existing crap. Of *course* they don't want to add to that. It's hard to keep up as it is!
I have seen this time and again. Not all IT departments are perfect, I'm sure. However based on my own personal experience, if there's a cock up somewhere I will always put my money down on it being a direct result of management, or users bypassing IT to do their own thing.
What morals do strawmen have?
Comparing humans to animals that are not naturally social in nature is just silly.
If you're going to make that comparison, then compare OTHER animals that are ALSO social. Various species of monkeys and wolves for example. And if you look at those, you DO find that they have a primitive set of social rules that maintain social order.
And that is what morality is fundamentally about. Maintaining a productive and sustaining social order.
I have to disagree with your question as stated. You are assuming that god/faith equates to meaning, purpose, and morals, and that you have a choice between only that and being a hedonistic animal. That is not even wrong. A better question would be "Would you rather live your life under the rules and framework that some other person came up with, or would you rather live your life according to your own heart?" You do NOT need religion to life a productive and fulfilling life. People who think that we would be murderous self-serving monsters if we didn't have god, scare the living crap out of me. I don't want to be on the receiving end of their psychotic rampage if at some point they decide there really isn't a god.
So not only are people going to be ENCOURAGED to constantly touch and smudge my screen, but I'll have to worry about reformatting my hard drive when I take a cleaning cloth to it...
Um... all of them? It's like Real tried to out-obnoxious itself with each successive version. The very first ones were okish. But from taking over all your file associations unless you were very careful, to installing spyware and other crap, to making it almost impossible to find and download the free version, to the latest versions that have some kind of moronic messaging centre sitting in your system tray consuming resources and spitting out useless information.
And never mind the general wierdness it would do to your system, which other people have already commented on.
And yes, I know most of it is uninstallable or disable-able, but that's not the point, now is it? It shouldn't *have* to be. All the annoying stuff Real does shouldn't be there in the first place.
"Just because you can't change, or comprehend that a company can listen to customers and change, doesn't mean they won't change."
Yeah, and it only took them to version ELEVEN to figure out that people hated having their computers being commandeered. What's your apology for the other 10 versions of crap they put out until now? The first couple versions weren't bad, but then they got obnoxious real fast and I've also avoided them since.
You don't have the luxury of being snide when the company in question has been VERY resistant to changing a universally condemned practice. I'll wait maybe another version or two and see if Real is able to maintain this newfound idea of etiquette before I consider going back to them. I suppose you have no qualms about Sony products either, despite worldwide recalls of exploding batteries, repeated attempts at installing rootkits on users machines, and various other obnoxious behaviours? Anyone who is willing to say "Oh it's ok now they've learned their lesson!" is just willfully naive.
I wasn't though. My old XT *didn't* have a hard drive. It was only a year or two later that we shelled out a grand for a modem and a whopping 40MB drive that the sales person assured me I would never be able to fill up.
Looking at the graphs on the first page of the article, it seems like the AAK firmware has some kind of performance cap on it. When you get to ~80 on the horizonal scale, the curves between the two graphs appear to sync up again.
So does this mean they they've put some kind of speed governor on their hard drives, or am I totally misinterpreting the results?
More like, flexible like a rubber glove. Now where's the lube....
Whoa... you had a hard drive?
I didn't even get that much. I had two floppy drives and that's it.
Cue the "luxury" jokes in 3...2...1...
Actually it DID used to be 2. But Y2K games got such an onslaught of angry calls that they upped it to 5.
I still say the whole thing stinks. What happens if/when they go out of business? Ha ha to you! You can't play the game no more!
That is NOT acceptable.
While I get your point, there's one thing that seems like a catch 22 to me. How do you know how crappy the CD is until you've listened to it? If you're lucky you can borrow a copy from a friend and listen to it. If not, then you have to pays your money and takes yer chances. And then you have to put up with the hassle of returning the thing, assuming that the store even takes returns.
I can't tell if you're being a troll or clueless.
Um... Yeah? You have a home computer. Unless you are running a server or doing something that REQUIRES incoming connections, then damn straight you block them all. Are you saying that you would PREFER to have random people on the internet poking at your machine?