VoIP certainly is a landline. In as much as you're not going to be taking it with you in the car, to the aiport, to the theater, to the office, to the bowling alley or to the beach.
I use about 1,000 minutes and more every month, personally. That doesn't count any time on the phone at work. If you can find me a calling plan that - counting fees and everything else - gives me at least 1,000 minutes per month to anywhere in American and Canada at any time of the day or night without a contract for $20 or less, sign my ass up.
I, for one, like when DST rolls back. I like it to get dark early in the fall. If we're going to have NINE months of daylight savings time, why even have it at all? Just move the clocks ahead forever.
I'm not one of these people who get all excited because the sun stays up longer when I get out of work. I like it to be dark by 5:00pm or 6:00pm. It has a unique feel to it rather than getting off work and still having four or five hours of daylight. And I like having it get light earlier in the morning, rather than later.
The entire point of DST is just retarded. Don't change it. GET RID OF IT. It's 2005. We have these nifty fucking things called ELECTRIC LIGHTS now. You can use them to, like, see when it's dark. It's really fucking amazing.
OH! And I know what else...! Why don't we just stop with the whole seasons thing and make it summer year round! We surely don't need seasons! And let's alter the clocks so that it's actually always some time between 9am and 5pm every hour of the day! Ooh ooh-- and we should get rid of weekends, too. Weekends cut into productivity!
Please stop treating OSX as an afterthought and make your browser as fast on OSX as it is elsewhere. Also, please try to make it fit into the OSX environment better rather than making it look like a shanty in the middle of BellAire. I've been a staunch FireFox user since the beginning, but dumped it after switching to OSX because even the non-official OSX-optimized builds lack functionality and/or speed.
I'm more concerned with my children hearing George Bush refer to a reporter as an "asshole" in public an Cheney telling someone to "go fuck himself". Hearing real life people that you're supposed to respect treating other people with such contempt and disdain in such an unprofessional manner is going to have a greater long term impact than my kid going through the detailed steps to unlock some sexual content in a videogame (that they could see on television any hour of the day anyway). Not to mention the whole, you know, president being a former alcoholic and a cokehead thing. With all of that in consideration, what my kid sees in some cartoonish videogame would be the last of my fucking concerns.
These guys are getting off with a slap on the wrist considering the erection of new laws in certain states. They easily could have gotten a stiffer penalty and possibly done some hard time. Perhaps this will convince them to pull out of the spam game, though.
Compared to previous experiences at installing linux on a desktop or laptop (which I had only done twice in the last two years, but dozens of times in the last seven or eight), I was impressed with the ease with which I completed the Ubuntu install.
Sure, it would have been nice if I didn't have to search the internet to figure out that the reason playing DVDs on linux was choppy was that I had to manually enable DMA on the CDROM (every time, even) and that to even play DVDs at all, I had to install libdvdcss. And that even after installing VLC, I can't play WMA files. And sure, it sucked that I had to go through all the "advanced" install options in all the install menus to find "vga=771" and just randomly guess that maybe that would somehow help me out. And yeah, it sucks that I'm fucked as far as 3D on the nice ATI card (so it's just a high-end 2D card) and that my builtin wireless card won't work, even though it is detected and configured and supported.
But audio just worked without any effort and the installation itself was really simple aside from those things. I don't think a novice would be able to complete the installation based on the questions it asks, but someone with a small amount of experience should have no problem.
But yes, it's still too much trouble. Wireless is kind of important these days. So is 3D accelleration. And if a user has to download the kernel source for their specific kernel version, download the ATI linux driver source, then download a third-party untrusted patch to the ATI linux driver, then set a bunch of flags, then recompile all three and restart the system with the new kernel just to be capable of running some ho-hum openGL screensavers, then things are NOT "desktop ready".
And while I'm a linux advocate and am really glad my friend wanted me to put linux on her box (which is kinda hot, if you ask me) - it's problems like this that made me switch from linux to OSX recently. Linux as come far in the last few years. And for "free", it does a really great job. But not good enough.
Still, my experience with this laptop install a couple days ago gives me a lot of hope for the future of linux on the desktop and laptop. Projects (like Ubuntu and others) are really doing something about usability and simplicity and trying to make things "just work" as best they can. I'm eager to see where it goes five years from now.
What cellphone can you get that provides unlimited calls to America and Canada for a flat $20/mo with no contract and overseas calls for two to four pennies per minute?
What is your credit card's three-digit CCV number?
Seriously though, I don't care if you require users to use ten pieces of personal information. They'll still choose to use the same information at 90% of the sites they deal with. And there will still be people with access to that information - whether they're administrators and customer service persons or crackers who steal their database full of customer data. The only difference is that instead of having your password and maybe credit card stolen, you'll also have thieves who have three or more pieces of personal information about you.
Thanks, but I'll keep using the ambiguous password. It's easy to find out where a person was born or when or what their maiden name is. It's a lot more difficult to guess that their password is aPh1l@m8.
Besides, I never give those "personal question" fields real information. Then I end up not only having to remember a password for each site, but a fake maiden name, birthplace, favorite team, first pet and so on. Screw that noise.
And if you're dumb enough to think that PayPal really is sending you two dozen queries about the validity of your account per day, you should just give your money away and shoot yourself in the head anyway.
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but what can paid-for linux support offer (other than blame) that a decent admin or regular geek can't get anywhere else online for free? It isn't like a Microsoft product where everything is closed and you have to rely on someone in the Gates chain to render a solution.
The only computers I ever saw in school from first grade through highschool were Macs and Commodores. Yet everyone uses Microsoft. So the idea that people will use what they are familiar with from school doesn't hold water. Since most schools didn't have Microsoft machines until at least the mid 1990s, you would then expect everyone today to be using Apple rather than Microsoft.
No kidding. They're paying through the ass for Suse when they could not only get Ubuntu for free, but get it mailed to them on a CD for free.
I love linux, but I can't imagine paying for it. For support, maybe, but . ..
Anyway, I just put together a kick ass top of the line laptop with Ubuntu on it for a friend of mine who I'm lending the laptop to for college (and it was her idea to have me install linux - not mine!). I was amazed at how slick it went. I only had the following problems:
During the install, the screen would go blank and nothing would happen. I solved this by using the following install line at the boot prompt:
linux vga=771
And while the ethernet card words, the Intel PowerPro 2200BG does not. That really sucks. It detects it. It just won't actually use it. And with the ethernet card, you still have to manually set the DNS servers - even though DHCP is configured.
And, finally, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (128MB) card support is pretty much non-existant. ATI's website says to go the manufacturer of the laptop to get their specific drivers. This is a custom laptop and not from Dell or Gateway or anything else. So while she can use GIMP, watch DVDs and videos - 3D is useless (as witnessed by trying to run a number of the many OpenGL/FireGL screensavers). There is a website out there with a guy who distributes modified/compiled ATI drivers for linux that supposedly work for the mobile card, but they require replacing the existing kernel and applying several patches and there is a distinct lack of detail on exactly what to do in what order. I could always recompile everything from scratch, but being this is just a school laptop, it isn't like she's really going to be using 3D anything much (if ever).
Anyway, my understanding is that ATI support for a desktop card is pretty decent. And package management (with synaptec) is pretty sweet. If I weren't already switching to OSX, I'd be giving Ubuntu a serious look for non-server deployments. I certainly wouldn't be looking at a "contract" with Suse. Even if I ran a school district.
I guess I must be an old person. I've had VoIP for a long time, but have only had a cell phone for two months. And I've only used four minutes on my cell phone. And it's pre-paid.
When I think of people with cellphones, I think of self-important pretentious gits who (other than for actual emergencies involving family or work) think that the world will stop if someone can't contact them before they get back home or to the office.
I don't even give my cell number out. I don't want to be talking on the phone while I'm out and about unless I absolutely need to. What a hassle. Not to mention, how unaffordable.
Of course, don't forget to only put the wifi 911 nodes in affluent neighborhoods. No sense putting them into areas with high crime that you don't intend to respond to.
Yeah... because enjoyment pays the mortgage bill, health insurance, car payment and puts food on the table.
I'm so tired of these namby pamby touchy-feely types acting like it's okay to just barely etch out a living as long as you enjoy it. I'm sure it means a hell of a lot to your kids that daddy enjoys what he does for a living while they're wearing down hand-me-down clothes from two decades before and your wife is stealing toilet paper from her work because you have to scrimp and save to "enjoy" your job.
Find something you're good at and exploit the fuck out of it. Whether you "enjoy" it or not is completely irrelavant.
Yes, because someone wants to buy a website, pay the website creator for it, continue paying them to continue working on it, leave all creative control and decisions to that person... all out of the goodness of their own heart. No ulterior motives at all. No intention to reap money from it or commercialize it.
See. You're maybe missing the point. Doing it and getting paid doesn't make it right to turn your membership into a bunch of money-giving sheep.
I used to think LiveJournal was the shithole of the internet. How I've realized it's more like the taint. MySpace is more like the shithole. I think it's hilarious that all the douchebags that create these "look at me and how cool I am!" pages filled with a thousand animations and background sounds and wav files and ridiculous background images and pretentions photos of themselves and their "friends" are now going to be contributing to the pockets of Rupert Murdoch.
That it made half a billion dollars just goes to show that you don't need a brilliant idea to become rich on the internet. You just need to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Christ, I can't believe the hamster dance site didn't sell for ten billion dollars, since every git in the world got off on it.
More importantly, whatever happened to building and running a website or internet/computer service for the enjoyment of it? It seems like everyone (including slashdot) just build up websites, attract lots of people and then sell it off. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, but... WHY?!
I've been offered significant amounts of cash (not millions though) to sell my auction site which I've operated for more than six years. Could I take the money, give up the site and go buy a house with it? Sure. But I don't run the site for money. I dont' charge anything for the site. I don't make anything from the site. And I'm not about to sell the community out for some cash to a bunch of people who will commercialize it (because why would you pay a bunch of money for a site unless you were going to commercialize it?).
It's depressing that the internet has just become a cashcow of half-assed ideas. Do it for the love or don't do it at all.
And before you start flaming about how good the outsourced software really is, please give an example, and explain why it's good. All I have seen was useless crap, just like the stuff produced by big faceless corporations over here - unsurprisingly.
I think you might have missed the tongue in my cheek.;)
This study is stupid. All it shows is that most women THINK they control the Tivo. Just like MOST women probably will tell people they bring home the bacon, they do all the house repairs, they do all the work, they blah blah blah.
Whether they really do or just think they do are two completely different things.
Yeah, if you live in bumfuck Egypt, milk might cost $2.68, but any place up and down the west coast will run you at least $3.00 if you're lucky and god only knows what it is on the east coast.
You know.. On the coasts. Where most of the population lives.
The type of people who show up at church on Sunday and the type of people that sit and watch Benny Hinn (or that annoying red haired lady, or the grey haired guy with the fat purple-haired wife) for hours are rarely the same type of people.
If you're telling me that most of that 80% from your highschool also goes home and watches Benny Hinn slap people in the face with coats to cure their cancer and that fat purple-haired old lady sing about jesus, then I seriously fear for the future of our country.
Yeah, but in another 10 years she'll be too old and face-lifted (and boob-lifted) for anyone to be interested. Why does she have to be hot OR in good films? She should be hot IN good films.
I mean, really, in another decade I'll be wanting to put my hot grits on a petrified Hermione Granger.:P
Slashdot Mirror
VoIP certainly is a landline. In as much as you're not going to be taking it with you in the car, to the aiport, to the theater, to the office, to the bowling alley or to the beach.
I use about 1,000 minutes and more every month, personally. That doesn't count any time on the phone at work. If you can find me a calling plan that - counting fees and everything else - gives me at least 1,000 minutes per month to anywhere in American and Canada at any time of the day or night without a contract for $20 or less, sign my ass up.
WHY?!
I, for one, like when DST rolls back. I like it to get dark early in the fall. If we're going to have NINE months of daylight savings time, why even have it at all? Just move the clocks ahead forever.
I'm not one of these people who get all excited because the sun stays up longer when I get out of work. I like it to be dark by 5:00pm or 6:00pm. It has a unique feel to it rather than getting off work and still having four or five hours of daylight. And I like having it get light earlier in the morning, rather than later.
The entire point of DST is just retarded. Don't change it. GET RID OF IT. It's 2005. We have these nifty fucking things called ELECTRIC LIGHTS now. You can use them to, like, see when it's dark. It's really fucking amazing.
OH! And I know what else...! Why don't we just stop with the whole seasons thing and make it summer year round! We surely don't need seasons! And let's alter the clocks so that it's actually always some time between 9am and 5pm every hour of the day! Ooh ooh-- and we should get rid of weekends, too. Weekends cut into productivity!
Dear Mozilla Developers,
Please stop treating OSX as an afterthought and make your browser as fast on OSX as it is elsewhere. Also, please try to make it fit into the OSX environment better rather than making it look like a shanty in the middle of BellAire. I've been a staunch FireFox user since the beginning, but dumped it after switching to OSX because even the non-official OSX-optimized builds lack functionality and/or speed.
Thank you.
I'm more concerned with my children hearing George Bush refer to a reporter as an "asshole" in public an Cheney telling someone to "go fuck himself". Hearing real life people that you're supposed to respect treating other people with such contempt and disdain in such an unprofessional manner is going to have a greater long term impact than my kid going through the detailed steps to unlock some sexual content in a videogame (that they could see on television any hour of the day anyway). Not to mention the whole, you know, president being a former alcoholic and a cokehead thing. With all of that in consideration, what my kid sees in some cartoonish videogame would be the last of my fucking concerns.
These guys are getting off with a slap on the wrist considering the erection of new laws in certain states. They easily could have gotten a stiffer penalty and possibly done some hard time. Perhaps this will convince them to pull out of the spam game, though.
Compared to previous experiences at installing linux on a desktop or laptop (which I had only done twice in the last two years, but dozens of times in the last seven or eight), I was impressed with the ease with which I completed the Ubuntu install.
Sure, it would have been nice if I didn't have to search the internet to figure out that the reason playing DVDs on linux was choppy was that I had to manually enable DMA on the CDROM (every time, even) and that to even play DVDs at all, I had to install libdvdcss. And that even after installing VLC, I can't play WMA files. And sure, it sucked that I had to go through all the "advanced" install options in all the install menus to find "vga=771" and just randomly guess that maybe that would somehow help me out. And yeah, it sucks that I'm fucked as far as 3D on the nice ATI card (so it's just a high-end 2D card) and that my builtin wireless card won't work, even though it is detected and configured and supported.
But audio just worked without any effort and the installation itself was really simple aside from those things. I don't think a novice would be able to complete the installation based on the questions it asks, but someone with a small amount of experience should have no problem.
But yes, it's still too much trouble. Wireless is kind of important these days. So is 3D accelleration. And if a user has to download the kernel source for their specific kernel version, download the ATI linux driver source, then download a third-party untrusted patch to the ATI linux driver, then set a bunch of flags, then recompile all three and restart the system with the new kernel just to be capable of running some ho-hum openGL screensavers, then things are NOT "desktop ready".
And while I'm a linux advocate and am really glad my friend wanted me to put linux on her box (which is kinda hot, if you ask me) - it's problems like this that made me switch from linux to OSX recently. Linux as come far in the last few years. And for "free", it does a really great job. But not good enough.
Still, my experience with this laptop install a couple days ago gives me a lot of hope for the future of linux on the desktop and laptop. Projects (like Ubuntu and others) are really doing something about usability and simplicity and trying to make things "just work" as best they can. I'm eager to see where it goes five years from now.
Cheaper than landlines?! Are you insane?!
What cellphone can you get that provides unlimited calls to America and Canada for a flat $20/mo with no contract and overseas calls for two to four pennies per minute?
And those three personal questions will be:
What is your credit card number?
What is your credit card's expiration date?
What is your credit card's three-digit CCV number?
Seriously though, I don't care if you require users to use ten pieces of personal information. They'll still choose to use the same information at 90% of the sites they deal with. And there will still be people with access to that information - whether they're administrators and customer service persons or crackers who steal their database full of customer data. The only difference is that instead of having your password and maybe credit card stolen, you'll also have thieves who have three or more pieces of personal information about you.
Thanks, but I'll keep using the ambiguous password. It's easy to find out where a person was born or when or what their maiden name is. It's a lot more difficult to guess that their password is aPh1l@m8.
Besides, I never give those "personal question" fields real information. Then I end up not only having to remember a password for each site, but a fake maiden name, birthplace, favorite team, first pet and so on. Screw that noise.
And if you're dumb enough to think that PayPal really is sending you two dozen queries about the validity of your account per day, you should just give your money away and shoot yourself in the head anyway.
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but what can paid-for linux support offer (other than blame) that a decent admin or regular geek can't get anywhere else online for free? It isn't like a Microsoft product where everything is closed and you have to rely on someone in the Gates chain to render a solution.
The only computers I ever saw in school from first grade through highschool were Macs and Commodores. Yet everyone uses Microsoft. So the idea that people will use what they are familiar with from school doesn't hold water. Since most schools didn't have Microsoft machines until at least the mid 1990s, you would then expect everyone today to be using Apple rather than Microsoft.
No kidding. They're paying through the ass for Suse when they could not only get Ubuntu for free, but get it mailed to them on a CD for free.
.
I love linux, but I can't imagine paying for it. For support, maybe, but . .
Anyway, I just put together a kick ass top of the line laptop with Ubuntu on it for a friend of mine who I'm lending the laptop to for college (and it was her idea to have me install linux - not mine!). I was amazed at how slick it went. I only had the following problems:
During the install, the screen would go blank and nothing would happen. I solved this by using the following install line at the boot prompt:
linux vga=771
And while the ethernet card words, the Intel PowerPro 2200BG does not. That really sucks. It detects it. It just won't actually use it. And with the ethernet card, you still have to manually set the DNS servers - even though DHCP is configured.
And, finally, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (128MB) card support is pretty much non-existant. ATI's website says to go the manufacturer of the laptop to get their specific drivers. This is a custom laptop and not from Dell or Gateway or anything else. So while she can use GIMP, watch DVDs and videos - 3D is useless (as witnessed by trying to run a number of the many OpenGL/FireGL screensavers). There is a website out there with a guy who distributes modified/compiled ATI drivers for linux that supposedly work for the mobile card, but they require replacing the existing kernel and applying several patches and there is a distinct lack of detail on exactly what to do in what order. I could always recompile everything from scratch, but being this is just a school laptop, it isn't like she's really going to be using 3D anything much (if ever).
Anyway, my understanding is that ATI support for a desktop card is pretty decent. And package management (with synaptec) is pretty sweet. If I weren't already switching to OSX, I'd be giving Ubuntu a serious look for non-server deployments. I certainly wouldn't be looking at a "contract" with Suse. Even if I ran a school district.
And you, sir, must hand over your humor and sarcasm cards.
I guess I must be an old person. I've had VoIP for a long time, but have only had a cell phone for two months. And I've only used four minutes on my cell phone. And it's pre-paid.
When I think of people with cellphones, I think of self-important pretentious gits who (other than for actual emergencies involving family or work) think that the world will stop if someone can't contact them before they get back home or to the office.
I don't even give my cell number out. I don't want to be talking on the phone while I'm out and about unless I absolutely need to. What a hassle. Not to mention, how unaffordable.
Of course, don't forget to only put the wifi 911 nodes in affluent neighborhoods. No sense putting them into areas with high crime that you don't intend to respond to.
Yeah... because enjoyment pays the mortgage bill, health insurance, car payment and puts food on the table.
I'm so tired of these namby pamby touchy-feely types acting like it's okay to just barely etch out a living as long as you enjoy it. I'm sure it means a hell of a lot to your kids that daddy enjoys what he does for a living while they're wearing down hand-me-down clothes from two decades before and your wife is stealing toilet paper from her work because you have to scrimp and save to "enjoy" your job.
Find something you're good at and exploit the fuck out of it. Whether you "enjoy" it or not is completely irrelavant.
Outlook-using geek
That's it. Turn in your fucking geek card. Now. There's the door. Get going and don't ever come back here.
Yes, because someone wants to buy a website, pay the website creator for it, continue paying them to continue working on it, leave all creative control and decisions to that person... all out of the goodness of their own heart. No ulterior motives at all. No intention to reap money from it or commercialize it.
See. You're maybe missing the point. Doing it and getting paid doesn't make it right to turn your membership into a bunch of money-giving sheep.
I used to think LiveJournal was the shithole of the internet. How I've realized it's more like the taint. MySpace is more like the shithole. I think it's hilarious that all the douchebags that create these "look at me and how cool I am!" pages filled with a thousand animations and background sounds and wav files and ridiculous background images and pretentions photos of themselves and their "friends" are now going to be contributing to the pockets of Rupert Murdoch.
That it made half a billion dollars just goes to show that you don't need a brilliant idea to become rich on the internet. You just need to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Christ, I can't believe the hamster dance site didn't sell for ten billion dollars, since every git in the world got off on it.
More importantly, whatever happened to building and running a website or internet/computer service for the enjoyment of it? It seems like everyone (including slashdot) just build up websites, attract lots of people and then sell it off. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, but... WHY?!
I've been offered significant amounts of cash (not millions though) to sell my auction site which I've operated for more than six years. Could I take the money, give up the site and go buy a house with it? Sure. But I don't run the site for money. I dont' charge anything for the site. I don't make anything from the site. And I'm not about to sell the community out for some cash to a bunch of people who will commercialize it (because why would you pay a bunch of money for a site unless you were going to commercialize it?).
It's depressing that the internet has just become a cashcow of half-assed ideas. Do it for the love or don't do it at all.
These space agencies wouldn't have such horrible budget crunches if they would just cut the pork from their space programs.
And before you start flaming about how good the outsourced software really is, please give an example, and explain why it's good. All I have seen was useless crap, just like the stuff produced by big faceless corporations over here - unsurprisingly.
;)
I think you might have missed the tongue in my cheek.
This study is stupid. All it shows is that most women THINK they control the Tivo. Just like MOST women probably will tell people they bring home the bacon, they do all the house repairs, they do all the work, they blah blah blah.
Whether they really do or just think they do are two completely different things.
Yeah, if you live in bumfuck Egypt, milk might cost $2.68, but any place up and down the west coast will run you at least $3.00 if you're lucky and god only knows what it is on the east coast.
You know.. On the coasts. Where most of the population lives.
The type of people who show up at church on Sunday and the type of people that sit and watch Benny Hinn (or that annoying red haired lady, or the grey haired guy with the fat purple-haired wife) for hours are rarely the same type of people.
If you're telling me that most of that 80% from your highschool also goes home and watches Benny Hinn slap people in the face with coats to cure their cancer and that fat purple-haired old lady sing about jesus, then I seriously fear for the future of our country.
And that was the entire point of my brief post.
If you had read it.
Duh.
Yeah, but in another 10 years she'll be too old and face-lifted (and boob-lifted) for anyone to be interested. Why does she have to be hot OR in good films? She should be hot IN good films.
:P
I mean, really, in another decade I'll be wanting to put my hot grits on a petrified Hermione Granger.