Why is it every single person who uses.ogg files has to tell every single person, every chance they get? No-one's impressed. In fact, most people probably feel sorry for you not being able to play them on any real hardware, like iPods, etc. without re-encoding.
Generally, once I have a file in digital format, converting it to analogue and copying it real-time only to re-encode it digitally is the last thing I want to do:)
Umm... how is that insightful? People want MP3s with them. They don't want to be at the mercy of their local radio stations, clearchannel/public/whatever.
Also, if you ever go somewhere without a signal, you'll want your MP3s.
It's like suggesting people get rid of DVD players and PVRs, as they should be able to rely on TV to get all their televisual needs:)
You're saying that making assumptions about a group of things based on information and past behaviour is an inherently flawed and useless technique? That it'll be right on a purely statistical level? I hate to disagree, but I will;)
Are you seriously saying you think slashdot is a balanced community, where all ideas are pushed forward with the same amount of objectivity and enthusiasm? One word. Microsoft. You'll find about an 80%/20% split on that one. That's based on the sheer number of people posting massivly unobjective posts about windows et. al.
Your analogy of the US president is flawed beyond belief. We're talking about slashdot here, a very vocal group of open source developers and their groupies. Saying they're split 50/50 about every single issue under the sun is just naive:)
Sorry if any of this sounds rude, but finding someone who thinks the way you do about these things is slightly off-putting;)
Are they going to start a database of everyone who works in a fast-food restaurant next?? I don't see why they'd want to do this - they already HAVE this information, just not held by them. All it takes is a tiny bit of collation, and you have it already. Of course, that would be governed by laws about who has a right to see what, I'm sure... I think I just answered my own question.
I agree with you on nearly everything you wrote there, except about the Iranian student. Why investigate him? The US is investigating Iran, and its equipment there. Investigating an Iranian student in the US is just ridiculous. Where would it end? You'd have to investigate every single foreign scientist on US soil, finding that 99.999999% of them just want to feed their families.
I thought America was all about freedom and justice. Assuming someone is hostile to you because of their nationality isn't about freedom or justice. What a joke.
Not to mention the unscrupulous dealings with foreign nations with regards to sharing technology. When NASA and the Brits were racing to make a supersonic plane, the Brits figured out various key features required by the airframe, and agreed to share them with NASA, getting their research in return. Guess what? NASA took the information, made the X1, and gave NOTHING back. Again, in WW2, the US forces stole the V2s allotted to other allies, and stole their allotments of scientists. The US demands people play by the rules when it helps them, and pisses all over the rules when they get in the way.
For that reason alone, when America gets involved in anyones' business, be it for good reasons or bad, people don't trust them. It would be different if America didn't abuse the trust of other nations.
No, the music/video/broadcast agencies own the content you have stored on your machine. It's that simple. You are allowed to watch the video, but its copyright is still held by the studio/channel. MythTV, and indeed anything else that doesn't control the media, lets you circumvent their wishes, and their license.
It's funny that if someone violated the GPL on/., all hell would break loose, yet people like you call for violating copyright law, and think yourselves heroes? Double standards? Here? Never.
Oh, and Windows MCE is a muuuuch nicer interface than mythtv. Most people out there want their home systems using software at least at version 1.0. Call them weird.
Fucking grow up. Jesus. No, MCE is not a joke. It does what every open-source PVR suite tries to do, with support for EVERY tuner out there, EVERY graphics card, EVERY sound card, and applications to play EVERY sort of media available. Of course, if you'd rather have a crippled machine that can't do everything it can, that you have to set up yourself, etc., then yes it's crap. If you want a machine you can just plug in and use straight away without reading anything, it's perfect.
Linux zealots like you give every other computer user a bad name. Try being objective.
Yes, you can do it more cheaply than this PC, but you'll end up with what you pay for. This is an all-in-one, preconfigured, powerful media centre. What you propose has to be assembled by hand, using Linux and a whole host of 3rd party applications/hardware you have to collect and install yourself.
Just because something is cheaper doesn't make it better:)
So your PC will crash during quiet parts from excessive heat?:) Is that good? It's like having a car that steers in a straight line when your favourite tune comes on the radio - great for you to chair-dance to, but crap for keeping you and your car in tact.
If you read that again, you'll see it says "final confrontation between Gandalf and Sauroman [sic]", meaning the final confrontation between those two, not necessarily between either of those two and anyone/anything else, meaning someone doesn't have to die.
"flamebait" - of course. I thought it was a fair point... lots of Americans don't know the difference between Austria and Australia. Before the Sydney Olympics, the Sydney Tourist Board got calls about the Vienna Boys' Choir, etc., from Americans confusing the two countries.
Of course, chances are the mod was an American with poor geography;)
This has been bugging me since I first came to/. (I signed up in '99 first, then lost my account details). Mass hypocrisy on this damned site. If linux does something, it's automatically cool. If Microsoft does the exact same thing to the exact same people in the exact same way, it's some attempt to subvert the cause of open source, and for microsoft to eat our kids.
Someone comes on here making assumptions about Windows is greeted as a hero, yet someone making the same assumptions about linux is branded an asshat. Am I the only objective person on this fucking board? I thought we were supposed to at least be mildly intelligent, able to see something for what it is. Apparently not.
Anyway, flosofl, thanks:)
Re:Why the Democrats lost the election
on
Buggy Voting Machines
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Hahaha! Your points would come across a lot more succinctly if you knew the difference between Austria and Australia. Are you American, perchance?:)
Of course - the questions still exist. Questions about an election mean questions about the result. If you love democracy more than mere party politics, as all true Americans should, then your question is not only offensive, but stupid.:)
And you know the machine isn't just showing you one candidate, and recording the vote for another? The recount is meaningless if fraud isn't detected.
Re:Swiss Internet voting built on two-factor authe
on
Buggy Voting Machines
·
· Score: 1
Yes, but when you intercept the card, the intended recipient will realise their card isn't coming to them. The authorities can then nullify the vote cast by that card, and issue a new one. You can effectively remove fraudulent votes AFTER they've been cast, or deny fraudulent voters access before they can be fraudulent.
Sure, it's not "foolproof", but you'd need a concerted effort to commit election fraud. I think America should look towards this sort of methodology.
As for the paper trail, I guess they could mail out a physical record, or give you two pieces of information - your chosen candidate (for sake of simplicity), and a hash of your number, the candidate's number, and a secret string. You can then resubmit that hash to the auditors if they need to see it, and your vote can be authenticated. Of course, no-one can take that hash to see which way you voted, as unless they know your voter ID and the secret string, the hash is meaningless. or something.:)
Unless the voting process is trustworthy, you simply don't know if 61m people voted for Bush or not - that's the problem. The whole result is in doubt. That's not democracy. Until you can PROVE 61m people voted for Bush, I can just say "but, 350,000,000,000,000 people voted for Kerry! I have it written on a post-it here! It must be true!" - both have exactly the same weight without proof: none.
It's like having a broken speedometer in your car, that's sometimes right and sometimes wrong. You wonder if you're speeding, but the needle says "50". By your logic, you accept the speedo's output, and think nothing of it. You might be going 50 or you might not be. The speedo offers NO insight into your speed at all.
I can't believe you're talking about voter registration being the big issue. You DID read about the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of votes that were made up, right? That wasn't a grassroots 537 doing its piece, but a concerted organised fraud effort. Of course, it favoured your boy, so you think nothing of it.
That's the real outrage here - even Republicans who stand up for democracy aren't challenging it, solely because their fave won. Utterly pathetic. This last election was a horrible day for democracy around the world. The self-proclaimed leaders of the free world wiped their collective asses on it.
As for your statements about requesting IDs, if there was a law saying Blockbuster employees can't demand an ID, there would be a big problem. As it is, there are laws against voter intimidation, and lots of republican-appointed election helpers still did it. I'm sure you have a great answer for that one, so I'll keep tuned;)
If we have the means at our disposal to instantly kill someone with zero effort, we will kill a LOT more people. Sharp rocks and spiked clubs can't be used in a moment's lapse of reason - they require premeditation or a very long fit of rage. Sure, we'll still want to kill each other once in a while, but we won't be able to do so that easily. It also applies to suicides (check out US's suicide rate compared to other developed countries). Once people can't kill each other so easy, we can work on the anger thing.:)
What's wrong with the wizards?:) It asks you a series of questions, progressing through different scripts, to sort out/implement something. I've never once thought of them as troublesome.
Lacklustre sleep support? Eh? My notebooks work fine with XP. It can sleep/hibernate/suspend/power off fine, recovering perfectly. I can't even remember that being an issue since 2000.
Lack of consistency between apps? Well, sure there are no documents to my knowledge outlining it, but as Microsoft releases their GUI control libraries to developers, we can all make apps with microsoft's toolbars, status bars, insert-latest-graphical-control-here.
So many alerts? What do you mean "alert"s? Message boxes? You get maybe one an hour, and it's pertinent information, relating to something you're doing. Is your speedometer in your car bad for telling you the speed? Nope:)
Preference dialogs with 15 tabs? the closest I've seen is in user settings in an active directory, and seeing as they're added on a modular basis, is hardly a fair criticism of an OS. I could write a shitty app for OSX and claim the exact same thing:)
What animals/paperclips? You turn them off the first time you see them, and never see them again. For some people, don't forget, they're actually useful. When you outgrow them, you disable them. Saying they're inherently bad in themselves is like saying training wheels for bikes are crappy, as you can ride one without them.
Well, for me, menus in windows makes much more sense than menus in one place on OSX. To me, the menu bar at the top isn't associated with any specific application. Having it change in/out for each app selected is disturbing.
All of these are purely matters of opinion. Arguing them is pointless.
PS - imagine if there was an OS where you didn't have to read the "minimum requirements" before buying hardware/software/games; Wouldn't that be nice?:)
This is what really burns my biscuit. "I think it was easier than it would have been if I had tried to install Win XP... but... I've never tried it". If you've never tried it, SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT. Christ! Can you talk to your boss like that? Never try something, but tell him that it's crappy? He's not going to like you for it.
For your knowledge, yes, you'd probably need drivers, but as every single piece of hardware out there supports Windows, the drivers will be on the CD you got with it, unless it's an older card, in which case XP will support it without a seperate disc. Set up? No. Windows has built-in zero configuration WLAN setup service, so you do NOTHING. You don't have to wonder what "eth0" or "eth1" means, what default routes are, or even what a routing table is. You just plug it in.
I HAVE done wireless setups in Linux and Windows, and Window is the easiest by far, all because of one thing. Windows automatically updates routing tables more intelligently than Linux does, which is great for the home user. Not so great if you're setting up a router. On Linux, as you said, it still wants to route everything through eth0 even if it isn't connected.
Please, for the love of god, only talk about things you know about. Otherwise, it's spouting endless FUD about things you're ignorant about, which is something I thought really pissed pro-linux people off.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it every single person who uses .ogg files has to tell every single person, every chance they get? No-one's impressed. In fact, most people probably feel sorry for you not being able to play them on any real hardware, like iPods, etc. without re-encoding.
Generally, once I have a file in digital format, converting it to analogue and copying it real-time only to re-encode it digitally is the last thing I want to do :)
Also, if you ever go somewhere without a signal, you'll want your MP3s.
It's like suggesting people get rid of DVD players and PVRs, as they should be able to rely on TV to get all their televisual needs :)
Are you seriously saying you think slashdot is a balanced community, where all ideas are pushed forward with the same amount of objectivity and enthusiasm? One word. Microsoft. You'll find about an 80%/20% split on that one. That's based on the sheer number of people posting massivly unobjective posts about windows et. al.
Your analogy of the US president is flawed beyond belief. We're talking about slashdot here, a very vocal group of open source developers and their groupies. Saying they're split 50/50 about every single issue under the sun is just naive :)
Sorry if any of this sounds rude, but finding someone who thinks the way you do about these things is slightly off-putting ;)
Are they going to start a database of everyone who works in a fast-food restaurant next?? I don't see why they'd want to do this - they already HAVE this information, just not held by them. All it takes is a tiny bit of collation, and you have it already. Of course, that would be governed by laws about who has a right to see what, I'm sure... I think I just answered my own question.
I thought America was all about freedom and justice. Assuming someone is hostile to you because of their nationality isn't about freedom or justice. What a joke.
For that reason alone, when America gets involved in anyones' business, be it for good reasons or bad, people don't trust them. It would be different if America didn't abuse the trust of other nations.
What the FUCK?? Land of the free my arse. Is America going to let that happen???
It's funny that if someone violated the GPL on /., all hell would break loose, yet people like you call for violating copyright law, and think yourselves heroes? Double standards? Here? Never.
Oh, and Windows MCE is a muuuuch nicer interface than mythtv. Most people out there want their home systems using software at least at version 1.0. Call them weird.
Linux zealots like you give every other computer user a bad name. Try being objective.
No.
Just because something is cheaper doesn't make it better :)
So your PC will crash during quiet parts from excessive heat? :) Is that good? It's like having a car that steers in a straight line when your favourite tune comes on the radio - great for you to chair-dance to, but crap for keeping you and your car in tact.
If you read that again, you'll see it says "final confrontation between Gandalf and Sauroman [sic]", meaning the final confrontation between those two, not necessarily between either of those two and anyone/anything else, meaning someone doesn't have to die.
Of course, chances are the mod was an American with poor geography ;)
Do you mean "compile the entire installation from source"?
This has been bugging me since I first came to /. (I signed up in '99 first, then lost my account details). Mass hypocrisy on this damned site. If linux does something, it's automatically cool. If Microsoft does the exact same thing to the exact same people in the exact same way, it's some attempt to subvert the cause of open source, and for microsoft to eat our kids.
Someone comes on here making assumptions about Windows is greeted as a hero, yet someone making the same assumptions about linux is branded an asshat. Am I the only objective person on this fucking board? I thought we were supposed to at least be mildly intelligent, able to see something for what it is. Apparently not.
Anyway, flosofl, thanks :)
Hahaha! Your points would come across a lot more succinctly if you knew the difference between Austria and Australia. Are you American, perchance? :)
Of course - the questions still exist. Questions about an election mean questions about the result. If you love democracy more than mere party politics, as all true Americans should, then your question is not only offensive, but stupid. :)
And you know the machine isn't just showing you one candidate, and recording the vote for another? The recount is meaningless if fraud isn't detected.
Sure, it's not "foolproof", but you'd need a concerted effort to commit election fraud. I think America should look towards this sort of methodology.
As for the paper trail, I guess they could mail out a physical record, or give you two pieces of information - your chosen candidate (for sake of simplicity), and a hash of your number, the candidate's number, and a secret string. You can then resubmit that hash to the auditors if they need to see it, and your vote can be authenticated. Of course, no-one can take that hash to see which way you voted, as unless they know your voter ID and the secret string, the hash is meaningless. or something. :)
It's like having a broken speedometer in your car, that's sometimes right and sometimes wrong. You wonder if you're speeding, but the needle says "50". By your logic, you accept the speedo's output, and think nothing of it. You might be going 50 or you might not be. The speedo offers NO insight into your speed at all.
I can't believe you're talking about voter registration being the big issue. You DID read about the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of votes that were made up, right? That wasn't a grassroots 537 doing its piece, but a concerted organised fraud effort. Of course, it favoured your boy, so you think nothing of it.
That's the real outrage here - even Republicans who stand up for democracy aren't challenging it, solely because their fave won. Utterly pathetic. This last election was a horrible day for democracy around the world. The self-proclaimed leaders of the free world wiped their collective asses on it.
As for your statements about requesting IDs, if there was a law saying Blockbuster employees can't demand an ID, there would be a big problem. As it is, there are laws against voter intimidation, and lots of republican-appointed election helpers still did it. I'm sure you have a great answer for that one, so I'll keep tuned ;)
If we have the means at our disposal to instantly kill someone with zero effort, we will kill a LOT more people. Sharp rocks and spiked clubs can't be used in a moment's lapse of reason - they require premeditation or a very long fit of rage. Sure, we'll still want to kill each other once in a while, but we won't be able to do so that easily. It also applies to suicides (check out US's suicide rate compared to other developed countries). Once people can't kill each other so easy, we can work on the anger thing. :)
Lacklustre sleep support? Eh? My notebooks work fine with XP. It can sleep/hibernate/suspend/power off fine, recovering perfectly. I can't even remember that being an issue since 2000.
Lack of consistency between apps? Well, sure there are no documents to my knowledge outlining it, but as Microsoft releases their GUI control libraries to developers, we can all make apps with microsoft's toolbars, status bars, insert-latest-graphical-control-here.
So many alerts? What do you mean "alert"s? Message boxes? You get maybe one an hour, and it's pertinent information, relating to something you're doing. Is your speedometer in your car bad for telling you the speed? Nope :)
Preference dialogs with 15 tabs? the closest I've seen is in user settings in an active directory, and seeing as they're added on a modular basis, is hardly a fair criticism of an OS. I could write a shitty app for OSX and claim the exact same thing :)
What animals/paperclips? You turn them off the first time you see them, and never see them again. For some people, don't forget, they're actually useful. When you outgrow them, you disable them. Saying they're inherently bad in themselves is like saying training wheels for bikes are crappy, as you can ride one without them.
Well, for me, menus in windows makes much more sense than menus in one place on OSX. To me, the menu bar at the top isn't associated with any specific application. Having it change in/out for each app selected is disturbing.
All of these are purely matters of opinion. Arguing them is pointless.
PS - imagine if there was an OS where you didn't have to read the "minimum requirements" before buying hardware/software/games; Wouldn't that be nice? :)
For your knowledge, yes, you'd probably need drivers, but as every single piece of hardware out there supports Windows, the drivers will be on the CD you got with it, unless it's an older card, in which case XP will support it without a seperate disc. Set up? No. Windows has built-in zero configuration WLAN setup service, so you do NOTHING. You don't have to wonder what "eth0" or "eth1" means, what default routes are, or even what a routing table is. You just plug it in.
I HAVE done wireless setups in Linux and Windows, and Window is the easiest by far, all because of one thing. Windows automatically updates routing tables more intelligently than Linux does, which is great for the home user. Not so great if you're setting up a router. On Linux, as you said, it still wants to route everything through eth0 even if it isn't connected.
Please, for the love of god, only talk about things you know about. Otherwise, it's spouting endless FUD about things you're ignorant about, which is something I thought really pissed pro-linux people off.