If you have broadband you can upload them to a website, make a CC payment, and they will mail you prints.
I find it interesting that you assume that more people have a credit card than broadband internet access. Of course I assume that you're from the States (where CCs are common) and I'm from Germany (where CCs are something of a luxury item), so our priorities are a whole lot different...
Well, we don't know everything. Might be that the computer was somewhat old and they decided that instead of fixing something they'd replace in a couple months they'd rather replace it right away. The "other options" they researched were not really specified and might have included a new fan/PSU.
My iBook's power adapter is pretty broken (we dremel'd it open in order to fix a slack joint). Instead of replacing it I'm waiting for Leopard to get out and then I'll buy an MBP. A new power adapter would be significantly cheaper, but since the iBook is becoming obsolete upgrading makes more sense. Now if I had only told you I had an Apple laptop you'd have no way of knowing whether the upgrade was justfified (iBook or older -> MBP) or not (2.2 GHz MBP -> 2.4 GHz MBP). Just the same as with the GP.
Oh, and that bit about "attending to needs"; try to say that to your average Linux-zealot and see what kind of reaction you get.
"We already did that; it's called Ubuntu."
Really, Ubuntu _is_ pretty much everything the "Linux is not desktop-ready" prople have been asking for. It took me about ten minutes to get my semi-technical (mostly non-technical, but adept at reinstalling and reconfiguring Windows due to flaky hardware) up to speed regarding everything she needs to do, including the use of Synaptic. The only thing ahe (and I for that matter) doesn't manage to do is to get X11 to use TwinView over her monitor and her TV. For everything else, she was actually surprised at how easy everything was.
Yeah, I'd say that Ubuntu does cater to the common home user's needs. It's not 100% there for all cases, but then again, so is Windows.
Your browser doesn't handle RSS. MSIE7 handles RSS. RSS is popular. Ergo to the general public MSIE7 is superior in this regard to your browser.
XML is just plain shit designed by idiots who can't handle BNF. Bin it.
Wait, I'll tell everyone. I'm pretty sure the whole world will just stop using XML and switch to your proposed document format (you DO have a superior alternative, right?) in a week.
A pointless exercise in the extreme. Buggy rendering should be eliminated as quickly as possible and not brought back. If your site won't display then fix it.
Most websites do not fully conform to the relevant standards, ergo your browser can't display most websites the way people expect it to. Congratulations, now even most geeks will consider IE7 superior to your browser.
I agree that XML can be used to produce shit and it's used in places it shouldn't be, but that doesn't mean it's completely useless. At least a proprietary XML derivate is easier to decypher than a proprietary binary format.
Ugh. Should've previewed the text. Too much time in VBB-style boards. Let's try this again.
Well, they also write English words in katakana*, especially loanwords and pseudo-Anglicisms. Japanese has a lot of loanwords, which usually get shortened - for example the Japanese word for part-time work is "arubaito", derived from the German word for work, "Arbeit". The informal version would be "baito". And yes, the word is written with/.-unprintable characters. And yes, they do mix and match all four alphabets.
Well, they also write English words in katakana*, especially loanwords and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-eigo]pseud o-Anglicisms[/url]. Japanese has a lot of loanwords, which usually get shortened - for example the Japanese word for part-time work is "arubaito", derived from the German word for work, "Arbeit". The informal version would be "baito". And yes, the word is written with [url=http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83% AB%E3%83%90%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88]/.-unprintable characters[/url]. And yes, they do mix and match all four alphabets.
* Or hiragana. Or phonetic kanji. Or any of them, interchangably.
I'm a fairly technical user, not a tech god by any stretch of the imagination, but I know my way around. I know how to forward ports on my router, I do all my own CD rips from Grip, I can install most Windows versions without a problem, and I'm damned proficient at packages like Paint Shop Pro and the GIMP. In addition, I'm a gamer from back in the DOS/Win95 days, so concepts like editing undocumented system-critical settings (Registry hives) don't necessarily scare me.
That said, as much as I like the concept of Windows NT, I simply will not try it any longer until I hear that a number of problems have been solved.
A) Having to manually download software/worrying that nonstandard installation routines might scatter junk all over the file system and not remove it upon deinstallation. For that matter, I don't want to have to manually download and install anything, ever. Just to make this clear, never. Come up with either something akin to Ubuntu where I run Synaptic to install everything I need, or (if you absolutely have to) make it like Mac OS X where I just drag and drop the folder.
B) Any time I'm forced to to edit the Registry by hand (without documentation, to boot), you as a developer have failed. Back 10 years ago, this may have been acceptable. In this day and age, it isn't. Furthermore, while once in a blue moon I may have to change a system-breaking internal file in Linux, in Windows it's a constant occurrence. Again, you have failed.
C) A troubleshooting guide instead of proper OS documentation does not cut it. Neither does a message board where half the time I'll be told to reinstall, 25% of the time I'll be told to run random diagnosis apps, and the other 25% of the time I'll get genuinely helpful people giving me contradictory answers. If I'm expected to jump to an alien computing environment you'd best make sure your documentation is up to snuff. Most Windows apps suck in this regard.
I'm an advanced user who's in favor of feature-rich OSes, but the bizarre, arcane, and technical details I have to jump through to achieve the same things that are comparatively simple in Mac OS X or Linux make Windows a deal breaker. You will never, ever, become successful on the server until idiocy like this is exorcised from the OS.
Cool, where can I get my 100.00% reliable NTFS read/write support for FUSE? By the way, are we talking NTFS v3.0, NTVS v3.1 (XP/2003) or NTVS v3.1 (Vista)?
I'd like Apple to include ext2 support in OS X - ext2 actually has bigger chances of being the new FAT32, running out of the box on Linux and having an IFS for Windows NT4/2k/XP/2k3. NTFS is a moving target and utterly proprietary, making it an extremely bad choice for a generic file system - after all you don't want a disk formatted with Vista to not work properly when put into a 2000 or Linux box because that pretty much defeats the use of a generic FS.
Alternatively, UDF might be the thing - all major OSes more or less read it and with packet writing it can be used like a regular FS. The downside is that most OSes prefer leaving packet writing to third-party drivers and stuff like VAT and sparing don't work well with most OSes.
But of course there's a difference between normalizing the sound on a per-track basis and compressing everything to OMG 120% MAXIMUM VOLUME!!1 If song A is much quieter than song B then please, do compress song A and/or make song B quieter to meet a certain loudness, but don't compress everything you play to hell.
Of course that still amounts to "let's forget about making money for a while", so I don't expect aanything to change...
But you forget about awesome games like X-Com: Interceptor and X-Com: Enforcer, which serve the very important role of making X-Com: Apocalypse games look much, much better in comparison.
"no false positives" Okay, do you mean 100% accuracy, 100% of the time? Or do you mean something less than that?
"prevents the flow of copyrighted digital files from legal Internet services", wouldn't that be a "false positive" if it is "legal" and yet is still prevented from flowing?
"No false positives" is satisfied by not filtering anything. Bing, no false positives. Preventing the flow becomes trivial once you have overwritten the CD and DVD drivers with 0x90 and throttled bandwidth to all media services to 0.1 kbps (which is not filtering).
I really want you to bash me for this. Really, I do. Go ahead. This is NOT reverse psychology. Really not!
When I tried to install Linux on my home computer it didn't work and when I wrote to the LKML that they're all gay assmonkeys who should die of AIDS they told me to go away. The Linux community is so rude!Q1
Linux is so bad because you can't install modern hardware like my acoustic coupler for the C64. Also the user interface is ugly because it doesn't look exactly like Windows XP, which is blue, which is good. Also, there are literally no games whatsoever for Linux, especially not from companies like id Software. Man, would I like to play Quake 4 on Linux! Also, my self-written VB6 password manager doesn't work under Linux because Linux isn't good enough to run VB6. Also, on my 486 notebook Linux takes more than five minutes to boot! And I have to use the command line when I want to do simple stuff like copy the boot sector!1 Linux isn't ready for the desktop because only Windows is and that has always been true ever wince there were computers and possibly even before that!.
It's because it's not Windows. After my GF had endless troubles with some reinstall-resistant Windows issue corrupting VFAT partitions I installed Ubuntu on her computer (with her consent, even!) - primarily to free the DVD burner so we could save all important data before mkfsing all VFAT partitions and secondarily as a reliable fallback system in case of further Windows trouble. I even set up applications for pretty much everything she regularly does (Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, xchat and Skype), configured her webcam and almost got X to work with DualView.
Two days later I get an IM. She reinstalled Windows (which she was supposed to do; I would have walked her through reinstalling GRUB) and when the MBR behaved in an unexpected way her first reaction was to wipe the partition table and set up two VFAT partitions for Windows, citing "I have more experience with Windows" as a reason.
Lesson learned: Even if Linux does everything like Windows and even uses the same applications and requires much less hassle some people are still going to use Windows simply because it's Windows.
Since apparently some humor-impaired editor didn't get it I'm going to explain the joke: The GP claimed that dupes don't happen to/. subscribers, calling what they see the "paid version" of/.. I then asked for a torrent of said version, which of course doesn't make sense since/. is a web application and you can't torrent subscriptions.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have broadband you can upload them to a website, make a CC payment, and they will mail you prints.
I find it interesting that you assume that more people have a credit card than broadband internet access. Of course I assume that you're from the States (where CCs are common) and I'm from Germany (where CCs are something of a luxury item), so our priorities are a whole lot different...
Well, we don't know everything. Might be that the computer was somewhat old and they decided that instead of fixing something they'd replace in a couple months they'd rather replace it right away. The "other options" they researched were not really specified and might have included a new fan/PSU.
My iBook's power adapter is pretty broken (we dremel'd it open in order to fix a slack joint). Instead of replacing it I'm waiting for Leopard to get out and then I'll buy an MBP. A new power adapter would be significantly cheaper, but since the iBook is becoming obsolete upgrading makes more sense. Now if I had only told you I had an Apple laptop you'd have no way of knowing whether the upgrade was justfified (iBook or older -> MBP) or not (2.2 GHz MBP -> 2.4 GHz MBP). Just the same as with the GP.
Oh, and that bit about "attending to needs"; try to say that to your average Linux-zealot and see what kind of reaction you get.
"We already did that; it's called Ubuntu."
Really, Ubuntu _is_ pretty much everything the "Linux is not desktop-ready" prople have been asking for. It took me about ten minutes to get my semi-technical (mostly non-technical, but adept at reinstalling and reconfiguring Windows due to flaky hardware) up to speed regarding everything she needs to do, including the use of Synaptic. The only thing ahe (and I for that matter) doesn't manage to do is to get X11 to use TwinView over her monitor and her TV. For everything else, she was actually surprised at how easy everything was.
Yeah, I'd say that Ubuntu does cater to the common home user's needs. It's not 100% there for all cases, but then again, so is Windows.
Currently, some applications run under Vista. Vista SP1 will fix that, if XP SP2 is any indication.
The only question is whether that version manages to be even uglier than Vista or not...
RSS is a joke
Your browser doesn't handle RSS. MSIE7 handles RSS. RSS is popular. Ergo to the general public MSIE7 is superior in this regard to your browser.
XML is just plain shit designed by idiots who can't handle BNF. Bin it.
Wait, I'll tell everyone. I'm pretty sure the whole world will just stop using XML and switch to your proposed document format (you DO have a superior alternative, right?) in a week.
A pointless exercise in the extreme. Buggy rendering should be eliminated as quickly as possible and not brought back. If your site won't display then fix it.
Most websites do not fully conform to the relevant standards, ergo your browser can't display most websites the way people expect it to. Congratulations, now even most geeks will consider IE7 superior to your browser.
I agree that XML can be used to produce shit and it's used in places it shouldn't be, but that doesn't mean it's completely useless. At least a proprietary XML derivate is easier to decypher than a proprietary binary format.
Ugh. Should've previewed the text. Too much time in VBB-style boards. Let's try this again.
/.-unprintable characters. And yes, they do mix and match all four alphabets.
Well, they also write English words in katakana*, especially loanwords and pseudo-Anglicisms. Japanese has a lot of loanwords, which usually get shortened - for example the Japanese word for part-time work is "arubaito", derived from the German word for work, "Arbeit". The informal version would be "baito". And yes, the word is written with
Well, they also write English words in katakana*, especially loanwords and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-eigo]pseud o-Anglicisms[/url]. Japanese has a lot of loanwords, which usually get shortened - for example the Japanese word for part-time work is "arubaito", derived from the German word for work, "Arbeit". The informal version would be "baito". And yes, the word is written with [url=http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83% AB%E3%83%90%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88]/.-unprintable characters[/url]. And yes, they do mix and match all four alphabets.
* Or hiragana. Or phonetic kanji. Or any of them, interchangably.
I really gotta save my answer to that guy so I can have a reccurring counter-troll...
I'm a fairly technical user, not a tech god by any stretch of the imagination, but I know my way around. I know how to forward ports on my router, I do all my own CD rips from Grip, I can install most Windows versions without a problem, and I'm damned proficient at packages like Paint Shop Pro and the GIMP. In addition, I'm a gamer from back in the DOS/Win95 days, so concepts like editing undocumented system-critical settings (Registry hives) don't necessarily scare me.
That said, as much as I like the concept of Windows NT, I simply will not try it any longer until I hear that a number of problems have been solved.
A) Having to manually download software/worrying that nonstandard installation routines might scatter junk all over the file system and not remove it upon deinstallation. For that matter, I don't want to have to manually download and install anything, ever. Just to make this clear, never. Come up with either something akin to Ubuntu where I run Synaptic to install everything I need, or (if you absolutely have to) make it like Mac OS X where I just drag and drop the folder.
B) Any time I'm forced to to edit the Registry by hand (without documentation, to boot), you as a developer have failed. Back 10 years ago, this may have been acceptable. In this day and age, it isn't. Furthermore, while once in a blue moon I may have to change a system-breaking internal file in Linux, in Windows it's a constant occurrence. Again, you have failed.
C) A troubleshooting guide instead of proper OS documentation does not cut it. Neither does a message board where half the time I'll be told to reinstall, 25% of the time I'll be told to run random diagnosis apps, and the other 25% of the time I'll get genuinely helpful people giving me contradictory answers. If I'm expected to jump to an alien computing environment you'd best make sure your documentation is up to snuff. Most Windows apps suck in this regard.
I'm an advanced user who's in favor of feature-rich OSes, but the bizarre, arcane, and technical details I have to jump through to achieve the same things that are comparatively simple in Mac OS X or Linux make Windows a deal breaker. You will never, ever, become successful on the server until idiocy like this is exorcised from the OS.
I think Slashdot needs to rethink its opinions on certain animals.
So, does that mean I can submit my genome to Worse Than Failure?
Cool, where can I get my 100.00% reliable NTFS read/write support for FUSE? By the way, are we talking NTFS v3.0, NTVS v3.1 (XP/2003) or NTVS v3.1 (Vista)?
I'd like Apple to include ext2 support in OS X - ext2 actually has bigger chances of being the new FAT32, running out of the box on Linux and having an IFS for Windows NT4/2k/XP/2k3. NTFS is a moving target and utterly proprietary, making it an extremely bad choice for a generic file system - after all you don't want a disk formatted with Vista to not work properly when put into a 2000 or Linux box because that pretty much defeats the use of a generic FS.
Alternatively, UDF might be the thing - all major OSes more or less read it and with packet writing it can be used like a regular FS. The downside is that most OSes prefer leaving packet writing to third-party drivers and stuff like VAT and sparing don't work well with most OSes.
Overrated: For when your ego can't handle the chance of someone metamodding your Troll.
Of course Google is evil. They're publicly traded.
There already is a breed of humans like that. They're called "Americans", with the substance being Budweiser. ;)
But of course there's a difference between normalizing the sound on a per-track basis and compressing everything to OMG 120% MAXIMUM VOLUME!!1 If song A is much quieter than song B then please, do compress song A and/or make song B quieter to meet a certain loudness, but don't compress everything you play to hell.
Of course that still amounts to "let's forget about making money for a while", so I don't expect aanything to change...
But you forget about awesome games like X-Com: Interceptor and X-Com: Enforcer, which serve the very important role of making X-Com: Apocalypse games look much, much better in comparison.
Hippies use OS X? Hippies wrote the GNU tools. We Mac users obviously are Beatniks.
"no false positives" Okay, do you mean 100% accuracy, 100% of the time? Or do you mean something less than that?
"prevents the flow of copyrighted digital files from legal Internet services", wouldn't that be a "false positive" if it is "legal" and yet is still prevented from flowing?
"No false positives" is satisfied by not filtering anything. Bing, no false positives. Preventing the flow becomes trivial once you have overwritten the CD and DVD drivers with 0x90 and throttled bandwidth to all media services to 0.1 kbps (which is not filtering).
"War" is better. It allows them to randomly send perceived filesharers to Gitmo.
I really want you to bash me for this. Really, I do. Go ahead. This is NOT reverse psychology. Really not!
When I tried to install Linux on my home computer it didn't work and when I wrote to the LKML that they're all gay assmonkeys who should die of AIDS they told me to go away. The Linux community is so rude!Q1
Linux is so bad because you can't install modern hardware like my acoustic coupler for the C64. Also the user interface is ugly because it doesn't look exactly like Windows XP, which is blue, which is good. Also, there are literally no games whatsoever for Linux, especially not from companies like id Software. Man, would I like to play Quake 4 on Linux! Also, my self-written VB6 password manager doesn't work under Linux because Linux isn't good enough to run VB6. Also, on my 486 notebook Linux takes more than five minutes to boot! And I have to use the command line when I want to do simple stuff like copy the boot sector!1 Linux isn't ready for the desktop because only Windows is and that has always been true ever wince there were computers and possibly even before that!.
Now please bash me because I am so great.
It's because it's not Windows. After my GF had endless troubles with some reinstall-resistant Windows issue corrupting VFAT partitions I installed Ubuntu on her computer (with her consent, even!) - primarily to free the DVD burner so we could save all important data before mkfsing all VFAT partitions and secondarily as a reliable fallback system in case of further Windows trouble. I even set up applications for pretty much everything she regularly does (Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, xchat and Skype), configured her webcam and almost got X to work with DualView.
Two days later I get an IM. She reinstalled Windows (which she was supposed to do; I would have walked her through reinstalling GRUB) and when the MBR behaved in an unexpected way her first reaction was to wipe the partition table and set up two VFAT partitions for Windows, citing "I have more experience with Windows" as a reason.
Lesson learned: Even if Linux does everything like Windows and even uses the same applications and requires much less hassle some people are still going to use Windows simply because it's Windows.
Since apparently some humor-impaired editor didn't get it I'm going to explain the joke: The GP claimed that dupes don't happen to /. subscribers, calling what they see the "paid version" of /.. I then asked for a torrent of said version, which of course doesn't make sense since /. is a web application and you can't torrent subscriptions.
Link to torrent?