They're pretty annoying - luckily, they're not that hard to avoid once you learn to recognize them. These kinds of links are almost always double-underlined, and often a little blurb of text will show up if you hover over them. Also, they're often plastered all over the page in a rather nonsensical manner... so, they're not too hard to spot.
I'm pretty sure this also applies to packet sniffers and such, as they wouldn't want you to reverse engineer packets sent and received by the game in order to write a private server. Either way, they're basically saying that they can collect information on you and (I'd image) terminate your account, sue you, etc. if you're running programs they don't like.
Woah, everyone take a look at this video. If that's not uncanny valley, nothing is.
Re:Great! When will it be out of beta?
on
Email Turns 34
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Hey, that's pretty cool. I'm donating some invites right now. For those who can't read French, all you have to do to donate is send your invites to donateur@invitationgmail.info - they automatically create an account for you with a random password so you can keep track of your statistics and such if you want.
Re:Great! When will it be out of beta?
on
Email Turns 34
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· Score: 1
I agree. Frankly, I hope they keep it this way. The system works. If you want a G-mail invite, it's super easy to get an invitation. At the same time, though, it's effective at keeping away spammers.
Re:Great! When will it be out of beta?
on
Email Turns 34
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· Score: 1
Er, you need to give them a cell phone number because that's how they're sending you the SMS. SMS is text messaging for cell phones...
Also, I'd like to note that there are cell phone plans for much less than $960 for two years or however much was stated by the other poster. In Canada, you can get a phone with Virgin Mobile for as little as $45 (Canadian) per year, plus the cost of the phone. No contract, either. Granted, you won't be able to do a lot of talking with it, but at that price you could use it as an answering machine/SMS inbox (incoming SMS and voicemails are free.)
That's true, but it's not really what I meant (in retrospect, I didn't phrase my assertion very well.) Hard disks themselves may be more fragile than DVDs, but the thing is, you don't handle a hard disk the same way you handle a DVD. Hard disks are generally stored in relatively safe places - inside computers, for example - so the chance that they'll get damaged isn't as high despite the fact that they're more fragile.
Personally, I've had several problems with damaged optical media whereas I can't think of any problems with damaged hard disks. Not that I think my personal experience is relevant to anyone else, but I can't really imagine what you'd be doing with a hard disk to get it damaged more easily than you'd damage a DVD... unless you're James Bond, perhaps...
To be fair, it's not "Dark Ages puritanism" - it's more like not mixing work and personal life. There are a number of ways in which sex in space could make interaction between crew members very awkward, which would in turn make the whole crew less efficient, which could be dangerous and costly. Plus, can you imagine what would happen if whatever method of birth control they're using failed? Hopefully they'd be smart enough to get permenantly sterilized before trying something like that, but if not it could be a serious problem.
That said, I don't know how they'd enforce it either.
I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I'm willing to bet that hard drives are quite a bit more reliable than optical media. Perhaps not if you go around dropping them, but under normal use...
Anyway, any reliable online media store keeps records of your purchases and allows you to download the media you've purchased multiple times. This means that if you manage to lose the media, you can always just download it again. Granted, if the company goes out of business, then you're in trouble... but it's a bit of a safegaurd, anyway.
I don't know about you, but I'd take a RAID array over a bunch of (HD-)DVDs any day. (If I could afford a RAID array.)
Thanks. In my defence, I don't having a lot of tech gear means that I'm a rich wanker... it just means that that's where I choose to spend my money. Granted, I'm not a struggling college student, but there are certainly things that I can't afford. That's what I meant, really. If you like technology, you're probably going to buy a fair bit of it once you have any capacity to do so.
Like everyone else has said, PDAs don't make good portable media devices because they're too big, don't have enough storage space, and are usually somewhat lacking in terms of battery life.
But we're all geeks here... why choose? I've got a PDA, camera phone, digital camera, laptop, and an iPod. It's a lot of gear so I obviously can't take it all everywhere... which means I do need to sacrifice certain functionality sometimes... but it also means that if I know ahead of time what I need, I can pick the device best suited for the job.
Uh, yeah, I know Linux is a kernel. This argument isn't about semantics. We're talking about where Linux stands as a desktop operating system and where it could be going. Would you prefer if I had said GNU/Linux? Honestly, get over it.
Anyway, my argument still applies. If you look at Windows systems, Bob and Joe and Sue all have the same basic system under the hood. You can say that it's bloated, slow, unstable... whatever. It's more or less the same, even between different versions of Windows. However, if Bob and Joe and Sue are running Linux, there's a pretty good chance that each one of them has a slightly different version of the kernel to suit their own needs, plus they've all probably got different modules installed, etc etc etc. That's great for servers where you need the highest performance you can possibly get without any bloat, but it makes things much more complicated than a desktop should need to be. The lack of standardization throughout the operating system and all of its applications makes it great for specialization but less than great for general use.
Oh, and by the way, if you want to show me a good window manager, go ahead. I haven't found one yet.
It's kind of a stupid law suit, but at the same time, I'm glad to see it. Maybe Apple will finally fix the iPod's all-around poor design. It looks pretty for a couple seconds, but once you take it out of the box, it gets scratched almost instantly and everything seems to stick to it. And would a removable battery be so hard? Eh, oh well. Next time I buy an MP3 player, it won't be an iPod, unless they fix some of the design issues.
It's possible, but I would not be surprised if that was indeed written by a fourteen year old. I'll admit that there are a lot of... well, stupid kids... but, conversely, there are a number of adolescents who are completely capable of sound logic, as well as proper grammar and spelling.
Jack Thompson, by contrast, repeatedly makes himself look as if he's under the age of ten.
Doesn't really surprise me. PA isn't quite as big as Slashdot, but it's big enough that it's been known to have its own Slashdot effect... except that they call it "wanging." (ie. We wanged that server.)
I've heard this all before despite the fact that I try to pay no attention to it. People can complain all they want, but it won't change anything...
The fact is that Linux - as it is right now - is not going anywhere in the desktop market. Linux is awesome for servers. I love it. I wouldn't dream of using Windows for running a server, and trying to network Windows machines without at least one Linux box to keep it altogether is about as much fun as, say, trying to have sex with an ant nest. But Linux just doesn't work well as a desktop operating system right now.
I love the power, control and security Linux gives me for certain tasks. But when I want to sit down and watch a movie or listen to some music, chat with friends or play games, I don't want to worry about whether or not I'm going to have to install (read: compile) a new piece of software, update my device drivers, or edit config files. I'm fully capable of doing so, but why bother? It's just not worth it. I use Windows for that kind of stuff. Believe it or not, my XP boxes are speedy, virus and spyware free, and I can't even remember the last time I got BSOD'd.
There are still many, many things that need to be changed before Linux has a chance as a desktop. The GUI is pretty bad (neither KDE or Gnome are very good, and X is worse), but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The fundamental design principles of Linux make it a poor desktop operating system (excluding as a development platform; it excels there too.) Too much control, not enough automation. It's the same reason Windows is horrible as a server - it wasn't designed to be one. Too much automation, not enough control. So, making Linux viable for the desktop is a lot of work.
Frankly, I'm not even sure it's possible to make Linux work as a desktop OS. I mean, it's theoretically possible to take Linux and change it enough that the average user could use it, but would it still be Linux? I certainly don't think it would be Linux as we think of it today.
Eh, it doesn't bother me, anyway. I just plan to keep doing what I'm doing - Linux for servers; Windows for desktops.
LinuxQuestions.org is a pretty good site for help with Linux... you won't always get the answer you're looking for, though. The people are mostly friendly, but not always.
Wikipedia is, in every sense of the phrase, "open source." Thus, it's like any other open source project - there's a lot of good stuff there, but there can also be a lot of crap. Pointing that out, however, will often get you flamed. The ideals associated with these kinds of projects are often so strong as to be a hindrance. Just last night on Slashdot I read a comment along the lines of "Anyone who tries to monetize an open source application deserves to be put up against the wall and shot." How is that sort of attitude beneficial to open source? It's the same thing with Wikipedia.
That said, I think Wikipedia's quite good. I haven't run across any really bad articles that I can think of off the top of my head. I don't usually use it for research, though, as I've often got textbooks on whatever I'm researching...
I can already feel the "Redundant" moderation, but I'll post this anyway... some McDonaldses already offer free wifi. And not DS-only wifi, either, I'm talking 802.11b (I don't know if there's a difference, but last I seemed to recall hearing something about the DS' wireless protocol being different than 802.11 - although I'm fairly sure that it's also compatible with 802.11, so perhaps that's just for ad-hoc? I really know nothing about the DS, so nevermind.)
Anyway, not all of them have it, but a few MCDs in my area offer free wifi. Last I was there, no access code was required. It was actually invaluable at the time - I was out of town and had no access to the internet, but I wanted to do some Geocaching. However, I hadn't thought to bring maps. Anyway, long story short, I was able to use my PDA to get some maps wirelessly thanks to McDonalds' wifi.
Either, really. It can be pronounced and spelled either aluminum or aluminium. Typically, Americans and Canadians pronounce and spell it "aluminum." I can't speak for other countries...
Here's the history behind the difference (from the Wikipedia article):
In 1808, Humphry Davy originally proposed the name alumium while trying to isolate the new metal electrolytically from the mineral alumina. In 1812 he changed the name to aluminum to match its Latin root. The same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, objected to aluminum, and proposed the name aluminium.
"Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound. (Q. Review VIII. 72, 1812. Cited in OED.)"
This had the advantage of conforming to the -ium suffix precedent set by other newly discovered elements of the period: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy had isolated himself). Nevertheless, -um spellings for elements were not unknown at the time: platinum, which had been known to Europeans since the 16th century, molybdenum, which was discovered in 1778, and tantalum, which was discovered in 1802, all have spellings ending in -um. For the thirty years following its discovery, both the -um and -ium endings were used interchangeably in the scientific literature.
Curiously, the United States adopted the -ium for most of the 19th century with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. However Charles Martin Hall selected the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new efficient electrolytic method for the production of aluminium, four years after he had patented the process in 1888. Although this spelling may have been an accident, Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America, even though the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913 continued to use the -ium version.
In 1926, the American Chemical Society officially decided to use aluminum in its publications, and American dictionaries typically label the spelling aluminium as a British variant.
Slashdot Mirror
They're pretty annoying - luckily, they're not that hard to avoid once you learn to recognize them. These kinds of links are almost always double-underlined, and often a little blurb of text will show up if you hover over them. Also, they're often plastered all over the page in a rather nonsensical manner... so, they're not too hard to spot.
I'm pretty sure this also applies to packet sniffers and such, as they wouldn't want you to reverse engineer packets sent and received by the game in order to write a private server. Either way, they're basically saying that they can collect information on you and (I'd image) terminate your account, sue you, etc. if you're running programs they don't like.
Woah, everyone take a look at this video. If that's not uncanny valley, nothing is.
Hey, that's pretty cool. I'm donating some invites right now. For those who can't read French, all you have to do to donate is send your invites to donateur@invitationgmail.info - they automatically create an account for you with a random password so you can keep track of your statistics and such if you want.
I agree. Frankly, I hope they keep it this way. The system works. If you want a G-mail invite, it's super easy to get an invitation. At the same time, though, it's effective at keeping away spammers.
Er, you need to give them a cell phone number because that's how they're sending you the SMS. SMS is text messaging for cell phones...
Also, I'd like to note that there are cell phone plans for much less than $960 for two years or however much was stated by the other poster. In Canada, you can get a phone with Virgin Mobile for as little as $45 (Canadian) per year, plus the cost of the phone. No contract, either. Granted, you won't be able to do a lot of talking with it, but at that price you could use it as an answering machine/SMS inbox (incoming SMS and voicemails are free.)
Biggest question on everyone's mind: who honestly thought that that excerpt gives a good idea of what the article is about?
That's true, but it's not really what I meant (in retrospect, I didn't phrase my assertion very well.) Hard disks themselves may be more fragile than DVDs, but the thing is, you don't handle a hard disk the same way you handle a DVD. Hard disks are generally stored in relatively safe places - inside computers, for example - so the chance that they'll get damaged isn't as high despite the fact that they're more fragile.
Personally, I've had several problems with damaged optical media whereas I can't think of any problems with damaged hard disks. Not that I think my personal experience is relevant to anyone else, but I can't really imagine what you'd be doing with a hard disk to get it damaged more easily than you'd damage a DVD... unless you're James Bond, perhaps...
If you kids don't stop having sex I'll turn this ship around!
To be fair, it's not "Dark Ages puritanism" - it's more like not mixing work and personal life. There are a number of ways in which sex in space could make interaction between crew members very awkward, which would in turn make the whole crew less efficient, which could be dangerous and costly. Plus, can you imagine what would happen if whatever method of birth control they're using failed? Hopefully they'd be smart enough to get permenantly sterilized before trying something like that, but if not it could be a serious problem.
That said, I don't know how they'd enforce it either.
I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I'm willing to bet that hard drives are quite a bit more reliable than optical media. Perhaps not if you go around dropping them, but under normal use...
Anyway, any reliable online media store keeps records of your purchases and allows you to download the media you've purchased multiple times. This means that if you manage to lose the media, you can always just download it again. Granted, if the company goes out of business, then you're in trouble... but it's a bit of a safegaurd, anyway.
I don't know about you, but I'd take a RAID array over a bunch of (HD-)DVDs any day. (If I could afford a RAID array.)
Thanks. In my defence, I don't having a lot of tech gear means that I'm a rich wanker... it just means that that's where I choose to spend my money. Granted, I'm not a struggling college student, but there are certainly things that I can't afford. That's what I meant, really. If you like technology, you're probably going to buy a fair bit of it once you have any capacity to do so.
Number six isn't morally wrong if you're stealing from WalMart! ;)
Like everyone else has said, PDAs don't make good portable media devices because they're too big, don't have enough storage space, and are usually somewhat lacking in terms of battery life.
But we're all geeks here... why choose? I've got a PDA, camera phone, digital camera, laptop, and an iPod. It's a lot of gear so I obviously can't take it all everywhere... which means I do need to sacrifice certain functionality sometimes... but it also means that if I know ahead of time what I need, I can pick the device best suited for the job.
Uh, yeah, I know Linux is a kernel. This argument isn't about semantics. We're talking about where Linux stands as a desktop operating system and where it could be going. Would you prefer if I had said GNU/Linux? Honestly, get over it.
Anyway, my argument still applies. If you look at Windows systems, Bob and Joe and Sue all have the same basic system under the hood. You can say that it's bloated, slow, unstable... whatever. It's more or less the same, even between different versions of Windows. However, if Bob and Joe and Sue are running Linux, there's a pretty good chance that each one of them has a slightly different version of the kernel to suit their own needs, plus they've all probably got different modules installed, etc etc etc. That's great for servers where you need the highest performance you can possibly get without any bloat, but it makes things much more complicated than a desktop should need to be. The lack of standardization throughout the operating system and all of its applications makes it great for specialization but less than great for general use.
Oh, and by the way, if you want to show me a good window manager, go ahead. I haven't found one yet.
It's kind of a stupid law suit, but at the same time, I'm glad to see it. Maybe Apple will finally fix the iPod's all-around poor design. It looks pretty for a couple seconds, but once you take it out of the box, it gets scratched almost instantly and everything seems to stick to it. And would a removable battery be so hard? Eh, oh well. Next time I buy an MP3 player, it won't be an iPod, unless they fix some of the design issues.
Hey, it's Asimo! Now THAT is hot. Wait, he's got two huge holes in his head! Creepy...
It's possible, but I would not be surprised if that was indeed written by a fourteen year old. I'll admit that there are a lot of... well, stupid kids... but, conversely, there are a number of adolescents who are completely capable of sound logic, as well as proper grammar and spelling.
Jack Thompson, by contrast, repeatedly makes himself look as if he's under the age of ten.
Doesn't really surprise me. PA isn't quite as big as Slashdot, but it's big enough that it's been known to have its own Slashdot effect... except that they call it "wanging." (ie. We wanged that server.)
I've heard this all before despite the fact that I try to pay no attention to it. People can complain all they want, but it won't change anything...
The fact is that Linux - as it is right now - is not going anywhere in the desktop market. Linux is awesome for servers. I love it. I wouldn't dream of using Windows for running a server, and trying to network Windows machines without at least one Linux box to keep it altogether is about as much fun as, say, trying to have sex with an ant nest. But Linux just doesn't work well as a desktop operating system right now.
I love the power, control and security Linux gives me for certain tasks. But when I want to sit down and watch a movie or listen to some music, chat with friends or play games, I don't want to worry about whether or not I'm going to have to install (read: compile) a new piece of software, update my device drivers, or edit config files. I'm fully capable of doing so, but why bother? It's just not worth it. I use Windows for that kind of stuff. Believe it or not, my XP boxes are speedy, virus and spyware free, and I can't even remember the last time I got BSOD'd.
There are still many, many things that need to be changed before Linux has a chance as a desktop. The GUI is pretty bad (neither KDE or Gnome are very good, and X is worse), but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The fundamental design principles of Linux make it a poor desktop operating system (excluding as a development platform; it excels there too.) Too much control, not enough automation. It's the same reason Windows is horrible as a server - it wasn't designed to be one. Too much automation, not enough control. So, making Linux viable for the desktop is a lot of work.
Frankly, I'm not even sure it's possible to make Linux work as a desktop OS. I mean, it's theoretically possible to take Linux and change it enough that the average user could use it, but would it still be Linux? I certainly don't think it would be Linux as we think of it today.
Eh, it doesn't bother me, anyway. I just plan to keep doing what I'm doing - Linux for servers; Windows for desktops.
LinuxQuestions.org is a pretty good site for help with Linux... you won't always get the answer you're looking for, though. The people are mostly friendly, but not always.
Wikipedia is, in every sense of the phrase, "open source." Thus, it's like any other open source project - there's a lot of good stuff there, but there can also be a lot of crap. Pointing that out, however, will often get you flamed. The ideals associated with these kinds of projects are often so strong as to be a hindrance. Just last night on Slashdot I read a comment along the lines of "Anyone who tries to monetize an open source application deserves to be put up against the wall and shot." How is that sort of attitude beneficial to open source? It's the same thing with Wikipedia.
That said, I think Wikipedia's quite good. I haven't run across any really bad articles that I can think of off the top of my head. I don't usually use it for research, though, as I've often got textbooks on whatever I'm researching...
It's not cheap, but any of the current high-end Windows Mobile PDAs can do that, and they've got VGA resolution, too.
I can already feel the "Redundant" moderation, but I'll post this anyway... some McDonaldses already offer free wifi. And not DS-only wifi, either, I'm talking 802.11b (I don't know if there's a difference, but last I seemed to recall hearing something about the DS' wireless protocol being different than 802.11 - although I'm fairly sure that it's also compatible with 802.11, so perhaps that's just for ad-hoc? I really know nothing about the DS, so nevermind.)
Anyway, not all of them have it, but a few MCDs in my area offer free wifi. Last I was there, no access code was required. It was actually invaluable at the time - I was out of town and had no access to the internet, but I wanted to do some Geocaching. However, I hadn't thought to bring maps. Anyway, long story short, I was able to use my PDA to get some maps wirelessly thanks to McDonalds' wifi.
Here's the history behind the difference (from the Wikipedia article):