1) What the hell are you talking about? Linux doesn't care at all what monitor you use. Are you meaning to say 'X windows' is wanting that info or are you meaning that "linux" wants 'my monitor's refresh rate capabilities?'
2) What distro are you using that does all of this?
3) Why has no one else asked you this?
If it pisses you off so much, don't use it.
My bad, everywhere I said Linux in that post replace it with 'Redhat 6, and X-Windows'.
Can you imagine the fireworks if you hooked up a small 14" VGA monitor to a futuristic 4096x3072 video card, set for 150 Hz of vertical refresh? If the monitor's hardware wasn't damaged, I'd think whatever analog buffers on the VGA inputs at least wouldn't be able to handle that kind of necessary bandwidth.
Most systems have safe guards for that built in already. If you do manage to set your system to a higher res@ref than it can handle it tends to fuzz out (Used to do this all the time back with Win3.1) and go absolutely bonkers. Easy solution, turn the monitor off and change the settings back blind. Or just drop to dos and do some.ini editing. Yes, if you just let it sit there and run it will damage the monitor, but I'd rather fritz my monitor for 10 seconds than be stuck with a system that refuses to work properly because I'm using a monitor it doesn't recognize....
So it knows what info to send to the video card. You can take the most gemeric settings,. personally I don't want my 21' monitor displaying 640x480 at 60 Hz, but hay thats me. Is there a GUI that doesn't need to know the specs of a monitor to perform optimally? The use of for letter words in know way helps make you're point. score 3 insightful, Bah! Humbug!
Heh, I fully expected to be marked down as flamebait....
Oh, and Dos 6 running win 3.1 worked JUST FINE without knowing what my monitor was. And if it's going to ask me what my monitor is then it should believe me when I tell it the answer. I've had linux tell me I gave it the wrong monitor info, if it knows enough to tell me the info I gave it is wrong, why doesn't it give itself the RIGHT info? It's silly. Why doesn't it default to 640x480@60 and let me tell it to run at 1600x1200@80? That would be the smart thing to do. Instead of dicking around asking me questions it doesn't like the answers to. Also, why does it get confused when there are 2 video cards in the machine? Just use the one the monitor is plugged into. Apparently it can tell the difference since it knows enough about my system to tell me my monitor info is wrong....
I just want the software to work. Isn't that the entire idea behind open source? Stuff that works? My hardware works, it performs predictably, why doesn't my software? Come on programmers, get off of your asses and do things RIGHT.
Welp, I'm not a codemonkey, but if I WERE, I'd be working on just programming things that work. Period. I guess because I'm a hardware gimp, and I hate running into software that goes bonkers with a slightly different hardware combination. But, come on, why the FUCK does linux need to know what kind of Monitor I have? Just send the bloody info to the bloody video card already... I think all you programmers should stop working on 'Newest, greatest, spiffiest' and start trying to get the existing stuff working. Things along the lines of Mozilla. But do it for all kinds of things. We need more robust software, not more interesting software!
A munition is much heavier than the arms that the 2nd ammendment allows. Munitions include shells for heavy artillery and bombs, both of which you most definately are not allowed to own.
A quick glance at the constitution reveals no such restriction.... I'd say you need to re-read it. At the moment the government regulation of nuclear missiles and rocket launchers is a violation of our second amendment rights, BUT it's one that the citizens of the US have chosen to endure the interest of not having weapons of mass destruction available quite that easily. But make no mistake, it IS a violation of the rights set down in the constitution.
Alright, I've been reading through these threads for about an hour and a half, seeing a lot of circular arguing about 'The RIAA does this to the Artists so it's OK for us to do it.' and 'The only reason Napster exists is to illegally pirate Metallica songs.' and various other silliness. I'd like to weigh in on both sides and try to clarify this issue a bit.
First of all, anyone arguing that the Artist should have control over their work should be AGAINST the RIAA. As it stands now the RIAA can order a band NOT to distribute music that the band created. And they MUST comply or face legal action. This does NOT mean that it is ok for us to all download full CDs of their music. But it does mean that the RIAA needs to be adjusted or done away with. Right now Artists make very little money from CD sales. They make 0 money from napster downloads. I suggest the following business model to make everyone happy. A Napsterlike service which charges a fee of 20$ a month for unlimited downloads. The service keeps track of which bands get downloaded and how much and awards them accordingly with a percentage of the whole. Say the service retains 5% of all profit garnered from the business. The other 95% is divided amongst the contributing artists in proportion to the percentage of downloads they have recieved out of the whole. If Metallica got 28% of all downloads for the month they get 28% of all profit. I specify profit because the system overhead will take up some of the income and that has to be adjusted for. But with 300,000 users paying 20$ a month That's a lot of cash, even divided among 1000+ bands. There could even be incrimental accounts like 10$ a month for 100MB of downloads or something of the sort. I realize that this is abusable by small bands that can redownload their own music 4 million times, but that can be solved technologically. The business model is still sound. And it leaves a place for the RIAA (promoting bands) and for CDs. It leaves room for a band to release 1 or 2 songs to the Napsterlike service as a promo for their CD, and many many things like that. In fact... I probably shouldn't be posting this, I should be calling Napster and the RIAA and see how much I can get for the idea....
E-mail administrators?! HAH!! The guy that admins our Exchange box was a Customer Service call guy up until 2 months ago, they just sort of dumped it on him and he had to learn how to use it in 2 days. He's still figuring stuff out, I help him when I can, but until this happened neither of us had worked with an Exchange Server before. Our company is too cheap to hire someone that knows what they are doing, so we end up scurrying around for days trying to solve problems that would take an experienced person 15 minutes.... Ain't work grand?
Someone in our company got this one this morning. Luckily she had the good sense to call me because of the 20 or so e-mails sent around about NOT OPENING attachements. So I talked her into deleting it without opening it. YAY! Hopefully none of the higher ups will get one, they are dumb enough to open it without thinking about it... Sigh...
Unfortunately, none of those question have anything to do with the matter at hand.
The fact of the matter is that Slashdot's servers contain copyrighted material. The copyright holder asked that it be removed. Your response seems to be, "well, you suck, and should never have copyrighted it in the first place. Nyahh!"
The point is that they did copyright it. Slashdot is in the wrong.
Here's my question: Is this going to be Slashdot's official policy? That you will never remove copyrighted material if the copyright holder asks you to? Or is this a special rule only for Microsoft?
Let me show you what is happening here:
Corporation A is handing out free booklets on the street corner, but you have to write your name in a little form to get their booklet.
Civilian Group B is handing out the exact same free booklets after signing up for 1 or 2 and using a photocopier to produce the rest.
The ONLY difference between the two situations is that Corporation A doesn't get those names.
Corporation A demands that Civil Group B stop passing out free booklets which are the same as their free booklets. Civil Group B laughs their asses off as their lawyer sends a well written and relevant reply.
Now then, If you Copyright something, then give it out for free to anyone who asks, and try to complain when someone ELSE gives it out for free then you are going to get laughed out of court.
Or until someone sniffs their router password and blows away their routing configuration....
If by sniff you mean write down while working there. That was an ex-employee, disgruntled and whatnot, that had access to the information. Not a technical exploit, but a social one.
Why aren't you guys setup with Above.net instead? They are an entirely BETTER organization. AND they let you do pretty much anything you want with your setup and will keep it humming along for eternity or until your check bounces.
When I pull the two pages up side by side Slashdot text is almost twice the size of Zeldman's. But I'm running IE in a larger than normal font size. The text I'm tying right now is half the size of the text of the message I'm replying to above it, this text would be inconvenient. However once I post the message it goes back to the way I like it.
2. Smart but angry people who love to flame at the slightest opportunity.
This one is me. I don't care if it is a trick, My LORD man, get that crap off of the web before you blind some innocent passerby or hopelessly corrupt millions who go to the site to get a glimpse of 'How it should be done'.
then why the fack don't you, this guy, although a don't agree with all his stuff, is a designer's point of view, "real" designers do it from a practical point of view, there's a difference
This guy is a 'designer' the same way John Carmack is a Ballet Dancer. Which is to say he isn't. Anyone who uses BRIGHT ORANGE backgrounds with tiny black text had damned well better be color blind to excuse themself. Gawd, maybe the site would be ok if not for the COMPLETELY UNREADABLE color scheme and font size.... The opening page can be forgiven since I'm on a fast connection, the progress bar hi-jacking is annoying as hell, but I could still live with it, but that color scheme is straight from HELL and needs to go back there.
This all sounds well and good, but given NASA's recent track record, I'm wary of getting over-excited. Up to the 90s, NASA's exploits and feats of engineering have amazed us again and again, producing exploits like The Apollo 13 rescue and interplanetary probes which have continued operating long past their planned life.
However, in recent years, NASA has been in the news more often for bad reasons than for good. It would be interesting to find out why this has occurred. Potential causes include reduction in funding, increasing pressure to deliver results, and a brain-drain towards the private sector.
In the post-Cold War era, with private companies beginning to plan exploitation of space, perhaps NASA's mission needs to be re-examined.
Compare and Contrast:
NASA spending on one space probe circa 1975, 2 billion US.
NASA spending on one space probe circe 1999, 180 million US.
Do you see the difference there? Do you see how many of these things we can throw into space without really giving a shit if they work perfectly or not? If 2 out of 10 work we're doin' good! Yeesh. Quit bitchin' at NASA, they are trying to do this stuff on what amounts to peanuts in the world of space exploration. The bloody military spends 15 billion a year buying scrap metal to throw at other places on our own planet....
This guys website ranks among the top 10 ugliest sites I've ever seen. I hope to god someone kills him before anyone else adopts his complete lack of design skills. I suppose it would be forgiveable if he were color blind and used a giant magnifying lense to browse his site. Why are we asking this guy for advice again? I could pull a better design out of my ass.
Re:Gun Registration? (Score:1) by ambiguous reference on 11:37 AM May 13th, 2000 EST (#524) (User Info) Um, where will the criminals get their guns when they are not for sale any more? I don't think the criminals are going to manufacture their own. Other countries? Most others have stricter gun laws than we do. Sure some will be brought in, but you won't have them turning up in the hands of every hot headed teenager or delusional drunk like you do now.
This is hopelessly wrong. Criminals are at this moment turning out high quality fully automatic weapons in machine shops. There is now way you can stop criminals from obtaining firearms. They are already building them on their own. We are past the point of restricting the gun ownership of criminals. At very best we could disarm the entire law abiding civilian population and cut down the percentage of violent crimes by a fraction while increasing the numbers of muggings, breakins, rapes, etc... by a few hundred percent.
Welp, at the company where I work, I am THE sole support person. I support around 200 machines and about 350 users of those machines. All of them want to install software from home, change all the settings, abuse and mutilate the system. Constantly I'm running to someone's desk so they can tell me that their 'URGENT!!!!' problem was that they resized the desktop and now it's too big/small/sideways/wrong color/wrong font/wrong font size/etc.... I need about 9 more of me to keep up with these idiots. My suggestion is a 1 to 20 ratio of Support to Users. But if that's not feasible (As it usually isn't) my ratio should be fine. I'm almost never behind unless a real disaster happens.
I wrote a reply to this yesterday, but my connection was all screwy so it got lost. So here I go again:
This is helping. Even if it is only reposting on Slashdot. I am used the text of one of the messages they dislike to express my outrage at their request. That turns it directly into a form of free speech. Hopefully that will help if it does go to court. Because MS now has to request that my posts be removed as well, or Slashdot can simply point to mine and say 'Look, he posted the same link and they don't want us to remove his post.' And then if Microsoft presses the issue it can be clearly demonstrated that my use of this post: May I claim John Doe #1... (Score:1) by BlueUnderwear on 05:17 PM May 2nd, 2000 EST (#253) (User Info) ... for This puppy. It's the kerbspec file unzipped and without the legal boilerplate.
is most definately me excersising my right to speak. It sickens me that Microsot would try to prevent people from linking to a standard that they allow anyone to download. It's obscene. If they want people to use it then let them use it. Throw the idiotic EULA away and deal with it.
I've been waiting for this to happen for a LONG time. I vote for a refusal to edit the posts or remove. And furthermore I vote that all of us users start appending those posts to our new posts like this:
May I claim John Doe #1... (Score:1) by BlueUnderwear on 05:17 PM May 2nd, 2000 EST (#253) (User Info) ... for This puppy. It's the kerbspec file unzipped and without the legal boilerplate.
If you check out 'Behind the Music' on VH1 for a lot of bands, including TLC, you will find out that they make pretty much dirt from CD sales. TLC made $.50 per CD, divided among the 3 group members. And they had to pay all of their own production costs. So they sold 5 million CDs and were broke.
From much of the conversation, I gather many people don't read science fiction older than circa 1980. Grab a few science fiction magazines of the fifties and read those. Even stories by the the grand masters, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov. What you'll find is a whole heap of stuff that seems utterly ridiculous, obviously silly and never would have happened, with maybe one or two things that are close to somewhat right. Everyone talks about Clarke's prediction of the satellite, forgetting that he wrote a whole hell of a lot, and that's about the sum total of accurate predictions. This is no offense to those guys. They wrote great stuff still worth reading. But it wasn't particularly predictive, nor was it meant to be.
That's what these people are doing. They are taking the non-predictive Sci-Fi and looking at it to find ideas about what they might want to try to work on. We don't have personal Anti-Grav, right? Well, damnit that's one hell of a great idea though! Why don't we start work to figure that out? We don't have matter replicators, but dmanit, that's one hell of a great idea though! See? The whole point is not to say 'Sci-Fi writers predicted we would come up with this' but to say 'This Sci-Fi writer thought of this, let's see if we can make it happen.'
495000 seconds to download all those pirated MP3's.
Your calculations also assumed that every user could match their full download speed. That just ain't so. So, multiply that time by about 10 and you have the actual time, then add 10% for the actual search time on that many files. So our new total is About 1800 days. That's 5 years.... Hrrmmm.... Hasn't napster only been around for about 8 months?
Slashdot Mirror
Hi. I'm really curious about a few things.
1) What the hell are you talking about? Linux doesn't care at all what monitor you use. Are you meaning to say 'X windows' is wanting that info or are you meaning that "linux" wants 'my monitor's refresh rate capabilities?'
2) What distro are you using that does all of this?
3) Why has no one else asked you this?
If it pisses you off so much, don't use it.
My bad, everywhere I said Linux in that post replace it with 'Redhat 6, and X-Windows'.
Linux works fine, X-windows is a piece of shit.
And Redhat's installer is crap.
I apologize for not being clearer.
Kintanon
Can you imagine the fireworks if you hooked up a small 14" VGA monitor to a futuristic 4096x3072 video card, set for 150 Hz of vertical refresh? If the monitor's hardware wasn't damaged, I'd think whatever analog buffers on the VGA inputs at least wouldn't be able to handle that kind of necessary bandwidth.
.ini editing. Yes, if you just let it sit there and run it will damage the monitor, but I'd rather fritz my monitor for 10 seconds than be stuck with a system that refuses to work properly because I'm using a monitor it doesn't recognize....
Most systems have safe guards for that built in already. If you do manage to set your system to a higher res@ref than it can handle it tends to fuzz out (Used to do this all the time back with Win3.1) and go absolutely bonkers. Easy solution, turn the monitor off and change the settings back blind. Or just drop to dos and do some
Kintanon
So it knows what info to send to the video card. You can take the most gemeric settings,. personally I don't want my 21' monitor displaying 640x480 at 60 Hz, but hay thats me. Is there a GUI that doesn't need to know the specs of a monitor to perform optimally?
The use of for letter words in know way helps make you're point.
score 3 insightful, Bah! Humbug!
Heh, I fully expected to be marked down as flamebait....
Oh, and Dos 6 running win 3.1 worked JUST FINE without knowing what my monitor was.
And if it's going to ask me what my monitor is then it should believe me when I tell it the answer. I've had linux tell me I gave it the wrong monitor info, if it knows enough to tell me the info I gave it is wrong, why doesn't it give itself the RIGHT info? It's silly.
Why doesn't it default to 640x480@60 and let me tell it to run at 1600x1200@80? That would be the smart thing to do. Instead of dicking around asking me questions it doesn't like the answers to.
Also, why does it get confused when there are 2 video cards in the machine? Just use the one the monitor is plugged into. Apparently it can tell the difference since it knows enough about my system to tell me my monitor info is wrong....
I just want the software to work. Isn't that the entire idea behind open source? Stuff that works?
My hardware works, it performs predictably, why doesn't my software? Come on programmers, get off of your asses and do things RIGHT.
Kintanon
Welp, I'm not a codemonkey, but if I WERE, I'd be working on just programming things that work. Period. I guess because I'm a hardware gimp, and I hate running into software that goes bonkers with a slightly different hardware combination.
But, come on, why the FUCK does linux need to know what kind of Monitor I have? Just send the bloody info to the bloody video card already...
I think all you programmers should stop working on 'Newest, greatest, spiffiest' and start trying to get the existing stuff working. Things along the lines of Mozilla. But do it for all kinds of things. We need more robust software, not more interesting software!
Kintanon
bzzt.
A munition is much heavier than the arms that the 2nd ammendment allows. Munitions include shells for heavy artillery and bombs, both of which you most definately are not allowed to own.
A quick glance at the constitution reveals no such restriction....
I'd say you need to re-read it. At the moment the government regulation of nuclear missiles and rocket launchers is a violation of our second amendment rights, BUT it's one that the citizens of the US have chosen to endure the interest of not having weapons of mass destruction available quite that easily. But make no mistake, it IS a violation of the rights set down in the constitution.
Kintanon
Alright, I've been reading through these threads for about an hour and a half, seeing a lot of circular arguing about 'The RIAA does this to the Artists so it's OK for us to do it.' and 'The only reason Napster exists is to illegally pirate Metallica songs.' and various other silliness. I'd like to weigh in on both sides and try to clarify this issue a bit.
First of all, anyone arguing that the Artist should have control over their work should be AGAINST the RIAA. As it stands now the RIAA can order a band NOT to distribute music that the band created. And they MUST comply or face legal action. This does NOT mean that it is ok for us to all download full CDs of their music. But it does mean that the RIAA needs to be adjusted or done away with.
Right now Artists make very little money from CD sales. They make 0 money from napster downloads. I suggest the following business model to make everyone happy.
A Napsterlike service which charges a fee of 20$ a month for unlimited downloads. The service keeps track of which bands get downloaded and how much and awards them accordingly with a percentage of the whole. Say the service retains 5% of all profit garnered from the business. The other 95% is divided amongst the contributing artists in proportion to the percentage of downloads they have recieved out of the whole. If Metallica got 28% of all downloads for the month they get 28% of all profit.
I specify profit because the system overhead will take up some of the income and that has to be adjusted for. But with 300,000 users paying 20$ a month That's a lot of cash, even divided among 1000+ bands.
There could even be incrimental accounts like 10$ a month for 100MB of downloads or something of the sort.
I realize that this is abusable by small bands that can redownload their own music 4 million times, but that can be solved technologically. The business model is still sound. And it leaves a place for the RIAA (promoting bands) and for CDs. It leaves room for a band to release 1 or 2 songs to the Napsterlike service as a promo for their CD, and many many things like that.
In fact... I probably shouldn't be posting this, I should be calling Napster and the RIAA and see how much I can get for the idea....
Kintanon
Moderate this guy up. He seems to be the only one to have read the article before spewing ignorant hyperbole
Yeah, he spewed his ignorant hyperbole AFTER reading the article!
Kintanon
E-mail administrators?! HAH!! The guy that admins our Exchange box was a Customer Service call guy up until 2 months ago, they just sort of dumped it on him and he had to learn how to use it in 2 days. He's still figuring stuff out, I help him when I can, but until this happened neither of us had worked with an Exchange Server before. Our company is too cheap to hire someone that knows what they are doing, so we end up scurrying around for days trying to solve problems that would take an experienced person 15 minutes....
Ain't work grand?
Kintanon
Someone in our company got this one this morning.
Luckily she had the good sense to call me because of the 20 or so e-mails sent around about NOT OPENING attachements. So I talked her into deleting it without opening it. YAY! Hopefully none of the higher ups will get one, they are dumb enough to open it without thinking about it...
Sigh...
Kintanon
Unfortunately, none of those question have anything to do with the matter at hand.
The fact of the matter is that Slashdot's servers contain copyrighted material. The copyright holder asked that it be removed. Your response seems to be, "well, you suck, and should never have copyrighted it in the first place. Nyahh!"
The point is that they did copyright it. Slashdot is in the wrong.
Here's my question: Is this going to be Slashdot's official policy? That you will never remove copyrighted material if the copyright holder asks you to? Or is this a special rule only for Microsoft?
Let me show you what is happening here:
Corporation A is handing out free booklets on the street corner, but you have to write your name in a little form to get their booklet.
Civilian Group B is handing out the exact same free booklets after signing up for 1 or 2 and using a photocopier to produce the rest.
The ONLY difference between the two situations is that Corporation A doesn't get those names.
Corporation A demands that Civil Group B stop passing out free booklets which are the same as their free booklets. Civil Group B laughs their asses off as their lawyer sends a well written and relevant reply.
Now then, If you Copyright something, then give it out for free to anyone who asks, and try to complain when someone ELSE gives it out for free then you are going to get laughed out of court.
Kintanon
Or until someone sniffs their router password and blows away their routing configuration....
If by sniff you mean write down while working there. That was an ex-employee, disgruntled and whatnot, that had access to the information. Not a technical exploit, but a social one.
Kintanon
Why aren't you guys setup with Above.net instead? They are an entirely BETTER organization. AND they let you do pretty much anything you want with your setup and will keep it humming along for eternity or until your check bounces.
Kintanon
When I pull the two pages up side by side Slashdot text is almost twice the size of Zeldman's. But I'm running IE in a larger than normal font size. The text I'm tying right now is half the size of the text of the message I'm replying to above it, this text would be inconvenient. However once I post the message it goes back to the way I like it.
Kintanon
I'm using Win95 and IE 5.
It's too small for convenient reading running at 1024x768 on a 17in monitor.
Kintanon
2. Smart but angry people who love to flame at the slightest opportunity.
This one is me.
I don't care if it is a trick, My LORD man, get that crap off of the web before you blind some innocent passerby or hopelessly corrupt millions who go to the site to get a glimpse of 'How it should be done'.
Kintanon
then why the fack don't you, this guy, although a don't agree with all his stuff, is a designer's point of view, "real" designers do it from a practical point of view, there's a difference
This guy is a 'designer' the same way John Carmack is a Ballet Dancer. Which is to say he isn't. Anyone who uses BRIGHT ORANGE backgrounds with tiny black text had damned well better be color blind to excuse themself. Gawd, maybe the site would be ok if not for the COMPLETELY UNREADABLE color scheme and font size....
The opening page can be forgiven since I'm on a fast connection, the progress bar hi-jacking is annoying as hell, but I could still live with it, but that color scheme is straight from HELL and needs to go back there.
Kintanon
This all sounds well and good, but given NASA's recent track record, I'm wary of getting over-excited.
Up to the 90s, NASA's exploits and feats of engineering have amazed us again and again, producing exploits like The Apollo 13 rescue and interplanetary probes which have continued operating long past their planned life.
However, in recent years, NASA has been in the news more often for bad reasons than for good. It would be interesting to find out why this has occurred. Potential causes include reduction in funding, increasing pressure to deliver results, and a brain-drain towards the private sector.
In the post-Cold War era, with private companies beginning to plan exploitation of space, perhaps NASA's mission needs to be re-examined.
Compare and Contrast:
NASA spending on one space probe circa 1975, 2 billion US.
NASA spending on one space probe circe 1999, 180 million US.
Do you see the difference there? Do you see how many of these things we can throw into space without really giving a shit if they work perfectly or not? If 2 out of 10 work we're doin' good! Yeesh. Quit bitchin' at NASA, they are trying to do this stuff on what amounts to peanuts in the world of space exploration. The bloody military spends 15 billion a year buying scrap metal to throw at other places on our own planet....
Kintanon
This guys website ranks among the top 10 ugliest sites I've ever seen. I hope to god someone kills him before anyone else adopts his complete lack of design skills.
I suppose it would be forgiveable if he were color blind and used a giant magnifying lense to browse his site.
Why are we asking this guy for advice again? I could pull a better design out of my ass.
Kintanon
Re:Gun Registration? (Score:1)
by ambiguous reference on 11:37 AM May 13th, 2000 EST (#524)
(User Info)
Um, where will the criminals get their guns when they are not for sale any more? I don't think the criminals are going to manufacture their own. Other countries? Most others have stricter gun laws than we do. Sure some will be brought in, but you won't have them turning up in the hands of every hot headed teenager or delusional drunk like you do now.
This is hopelessly wrong. Criminals are at this moment turning out high quality fully automatic weapons in machine shops. There is now way you can stop criminals from obtaining firearms. They are already building them on their own. We are past the point of restricting the gun ownership of criminals. At very best we could disarm the entire law abiding civilian population and cut down the percentage of violent crimes by a fraction while increasing the numbers of muggings, breakins, rapes, etc... by a few hundred percent.
Kintanon
Welp, at the company where I work, I am THE sole support person. I support around 200 machines and about 350 users of those machines. All of them want to install software from home, change all the settings, abuse and mutilate the system. Constantly I'm running to someone's desk so they can tell me that their 'URGENT!!!!' problem was that they resized the desktop and now it's too big/small/sideways/wrong color/wrong font/wrong font size/etc.... I need about 9 more of me to keep up with these idiots. My suggestion is a 1 to 20 ratio of Support to Users. But if that's not feasible (As it usually isn't) my ratio should be fine. I'm almost never behind unless a real disaster happens.
Kintanon
I wrote a reply to this yesterday, but my connection was all screwy so it got lost. So here I go again:
... (Score:1)
This is helping. Even if it is only reposting on Slashdot. I am used the text of one of the messages they dislike to express my outrage at their request. That turns it directly into a form of free speech. Hopefully that will help if it does go to court. Because MS now has to request that my posts be removed as well, or Slashdot can simply point to mine and say 'Look, he posted the same link and they don't want us to remove his post.' And then if Microsoft presses the issue it can be clearly demonstrated that my use of this post:
May I claim John Doe #1
by BlueUnderwear on 05:17 PM May 2nd, 2000 EST (#253)
(User Info)
... for This puppy. It's the kerbspec file unzipped and without the legal boilerplate.
is most definately me excersising my right to speak. It sickens me that Microsot would try to prevent people from linking to a standard that they allow anyone to download. It's obscene. If they want people to use it then let them use it. Throw the idiotic EULA away and deal with it.
Kintanon
I've been waiting for this to happen for a LONG time. I vote for a refusal to edit the posts or remove. And furthermore I vote that all of us users start appending those posts to our new posts like this:
... (Score:1)
May I claim John Doe #1
by BlueUnderwear on 05:17 PM May 2nd, 2000 EST (#253)
(User Info)
... for This puppy. It's the kerbspec file unzipped and without the legal boilerplate.
Kintanon
If you check out 'Behind the Music' on VH1 for a lot of bands, including TLC, you will find out that they make pretty much dirt from CD sales. TLC made $.50 per CD, divided among the 3 group members. And they had to pay all of their own production costs. So they sold 5 million CDs and were broke.
Kintanon
From much of the conversation, I gather many people don't read science fiction older than circa 1980. Grab a few science fiction magazines of the fifties and read those. Even stories by the the grand masters, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov. What you'll find is a whole heap of stuff that seems utterly ridiculous, obviously silly and never would have happened, with maybe one or two things that are close to somewhat right. Everyone talks about Clarke's prediction of the satellite, forgetting that he wrote a whole hell of a lot, and that's about the sum total of accurate predictions. This is no offense to those guys. They wrote great stuff still worth reading. But it wasn't particularly predictive, nor was it meant to be.
That's what these people are doing. They are taking the non-predictive Sci-Fi and looking at it to find ideas about what they might want to try to work on. We don't have personal Anti-Grav, right? Well, damnit that's one hell of a great idea though! Why don't we start work to figure that out? We don't have matter replicators, but dmanit, that's one hell of a great idea though!
See? The whole point is not to say 'Sci-Fi writers predicted we would come up with this' but to say 'This Sci-Fi writer thought of this, let's see if we can make it happen.'
Kintanon
495000 seconds to download all those pirated MP3's.
Your calculations also assumed that every user could match their full download speed. That just ain't so. So, multiply that time by about 10 and you have the actual time, then add 10% for the actual search time on that many files.
So our new total is About 1800 days. That's 5 years.... Hrrmmm.... Hasn't napster only been around for about 8 months?
Kintanon