...cuz right now some poor server admin down under has probably just roasted his eyeballs out after looking directly into the plasma ball that used to be a webserver.
For games? What rock do you live under?
Yeah, i'm still anti-windows and rah-rah go Linux and all that - but until I can play the majority of my collection of games on Linux, there is no way in hell i'm switching.
Like the original poster said, its not impossible to run Windows cleanly. A decent amount of smarts, and an honest attempt at keeping your system/anti-virus/firewall up to date, and you'll have no security problems. Its really no different than a competant admin lording over their Linux domain. Reasonably intelligent users don't have as many problems as idiots, no matter what OS they use.
That said, Windows can still be a major pain in the ass. But as much as i'd love to (try to) hop the fence, Linux just doesn't offer me what I need. Which is funny, y'know, because theres a whole friggin sea of people out there that would love to ditch Windows but won't, because Linux lacks something they need. Hopefully one day the floodgates will open, but until then, a good chunk of us will be chained to M$' ankle, just waiting for someone to come save us.
I would fear for us all if we ever attempted "world government". As a race, we're not even qualified to run a government, never mind a national one, never mind a global one.
I mean, statistically speaking, a world government would be approximately 2000 times more screwwed up than the US one, just based on the number of people it deals with. 2000 times! The US is already run by a monkey, whats 2000 times worse than a monkey!?
Y'know what'd be an interesting statistic? How many women and men actually WANTED to talk to sales people. I mean, when I go shopping, most of the time I don't want to even see a salesperson, never mind talk to them.
Them: Hi! Welcome to SuperSpecialValueMart!
Me: *grunting noise*
Them: Can I hel..
Me: No.
Them: Ok, well if you..
Me: No.
Them:...i'll be right over there
Me: *grunting noise*
I know i'm not the only guy who shops like this... and women always seem to have questions for salespeople. So maybe those statistics are just a little skewwed. Your chances of being "ignored, patronized, or offended" tend to go up when you actually speak to the salesidiots, y'know?
If you saw a platoon of lanky, pale, acne ridden zombie-creatures with calculators and rifles, backed up by a division of equally pale, huge amorphous blobs sporting over-stretched tux shirts and heavy weaponry, bearing down on you and screetching "OMFG U R LIEK GONNA B SO PWNED BITCHIZ!!!".... wouldn't you be terrified out of your mind?
Atari has already started something like that. Its over at Betatests.net. The basic idea is that you register an account, and then apply to various games to undergo beta testing. As you report bugs (though BetaTests.net) and generally be a good little tester, you gain 'points' and go up in 'rank'. The more points you have, and the higher rank you get, the more likely you are to be chosen for other tests by the developers surfing through your profile.
Unfortunatly, its off to a bit of a rocky start. For one, there are a grand total of three things to test. And one isn't even a friggin game! There was a fourth game, Unreal 2: XMP (eXpanded MultiPlayer), but that test is now closed. The game/free addon was released publicly, and the existing crew of testers are being kept onboard to test future patches. Speaking of which, we're (yeah, i'm one) in the middle of testing a patch right now.
In addition to the severe lack of games, the system doesn't even work properly. Bugs submitted through the website are generally ignored, or horribly delayed as they shuffle from Tester -> Publisher -> Developer and back. During the U2XMP test, we found it was *MUCH* faster, easier, and simpler to just use the forums to directly contact the devs. (And speaking of forums, BetaTests.net is supposed to provide forums for each test, but those were broken at the time of the XMP test too. So we wound up using a well respected fansite's forums instead). And to top it all off, due to the horribly inefficient reporting scheme, none of the developers seem to be taking (more like wasting) the time to actually give people 'points' to move up in rank.
So all in all... good concept, but excecution is decidedly more difficult. Hopefully Atari can get things turned around in short order, but the system just isn't sustainable in its current state. Maybe once Atari figures out how to plow through this mess, other publishing groups will start similar projects. And who knows, maybe someone will eventually propose a universal database of testers?
Anyways... just FYI, it does exist, albet tenuously
What you say? Article man have good writing! He say fire make bad pro... proteen... protan... bad stuff go away! If bad stuff get into cow, then cow must be burn, or man get sick too. And if man get sick, man brain not well work. Then would who understand man?!
People in Canada don't have "less money", there are just fewer stupidly-rich gazillionaires around here. There are less dirt-poor people too. We're simply less extreme than the US.
We tend to be more cautious with our spending too. Part of that is cultural, part of it is economical (price fluctuations w/ the CND dollar). So we're not as inclined to blow $400 on a stupid cell phone with a shitty "deal" (the irony of that word is sickening).
Personally, I think cell phones are rip offs. They're overpriced and under supported novelty item/status symbols. The industry has a *LONG* way to go before they can convince me to even try one out. But hey, thats their loss.
Would this be anything like one of Micro$ofts famous "undocumented features"?
Now theres a nightmare and a half. Imagine if God was like Bill Gates! AHHHH!!!!!!!
Ok ok, calm down... take your pill, think happy thoughts... happy thoughts... now go to your warm place... ahhhhhhhh.
Oh no no, you misunderstand. I put "Troll" in quotes because I didn't agree with the mod. But I see now you have your 5 funny points, so all is right in the/. world.
I doubt you could even tell me (without looking) what the current advertisment on your Slashdot page is for.
OSDN Personals.
That damned cute Brunette always catches my eye. Or maybe she's a Redhead? Wasn't really paying attention. Either way, she's in between the article and the comments, so I always seem to notice that one.
You're right though. Normally I wouldn't have the foggiest idea what they were trying to sell me. Nor would I ca- Ooh! Binary clock!
There's also an alternative Quicktime player, I believe, made by the same person. They've both very nice, small, no-BS programs for watching the appropriate media. Two thumbs up.
PS: Interested? Just google for "Quicktime Alternative" or "RealPlayer Alternative". You can often find both programs at the same site.
So what you're saying is that a small space rock the size of grain of rice could have smacked into the Beagle and start it rotating over 6 days until it was pointed backwards on entry.
Well that sucks. I guess they won't ever find it if the Beagle 2 is technically now a gas.
There's been some debate over the "right side CPU cooler" on weather or not it really works, or if you're just cooling the socket mounted sensor. No one's really sure how accurate/effective it is. It probably can't hurt though, if you're willng to take a hacksaw to your case.
Oh, and for the record, you can get decent cooling without resorting to "OMG-is-that-a-jet-engine-in-your-case" 120mm monster fans. Personally, I have a Vantec Aeroflow on my Barton 2500 (running as a 3200, eg: 200x11), and it idles around 32C, and peaks at about 39C under load. Nice and quiet too! Come to think of it, I have 9 fans in my case (3 in, 3 out, 3 internal), and she's just a whisper.
Guys, guys, guys - its called a whitelist! Most bayesian filters I know of have one (mine does anyways), so a spellchecking filter could just hook into the same whitelist. Then you could talk shop with your programming buddies all you wanted.:)
Multiple languages might be a challange though. You could always keep more than one dictionary around... the problem would be in identifying the incoming mail's primary language. I don't know if its possible to do that through code though.
Oh well. I'm a unilingual non-programmer who doesn't know any AOLers. What do I care?;)
Ok, this is probably a dumb question, but why the hell doesn't anyone make a spell checking spam filter? Just set it to junk any incoming email with more than x% spelling mistakes, and voila! All y,o.ur.,. r,a.,n.d,.om.,,. p,.u,.nc,.tu,at,i.on and |33t 5p34k is fucked. Combine it with a regular spam filter, and you're set! It'd also have the added bonus of keeping idiots who can't spell worth crap out of your inbox. And since it would work off a dictionary (preferably the same one as your outgoing spell checker, if equipped), you could always add whatever names, phrases, and abbreviations you wanted, while still keeping the "0MG L1EK MAK UR P3N0R 9 INCHZ LONGR!!" crap out of your inbox. Surely we have the ability to create something like this. So where is it?
Slashdot Mirror
...cuz right now some poor server admin down under has probably just roasted his eyeballs out after looking directly into the plasma ball that used to be a webserver.
Hmmm... what about a small company with, say, indemnification backing from a heavy hitter like IBM, Novell, etc?
The size of their cahones wouldn't be such an issue with someone like the Big Blue Machine in their corner.
Think it would work?
Oh SWEET!
Does this mean that, when Darl and co. are found guilty of being lying bastards, that someone gets to kick him in the ass with a boot?
Now thats something i'd pay $699 for!
For games? What rock do you live under?
Yeah, i'm still anti-windows and rah-rah go Linux and all that - but until I can play the majority of my collection of games on Linux, there is no way in hell i'm switching.
Like the original poster said, its not impossible to run Windows cleanly. A decent amount of smarts, and an honest attempt at keeping your system/anti-virus/firewall up to date, and you'll have no security problems. Its really no different than a competant admin lording over their Linux domain. Reasonably intelligent users don't have as many problems as idiots, no matter what OS they use.
That said, Windows can still be a major pain in the ass. But as much as i'd love to (try to) hop the fence, Linux just doesn't offer me what I need. Which is funny, y'know, because theres a whole friggin sea of people out there that would love to ditch Windows but won't, because Linux lacks something they need. Hopefully one day the floodgates will open, but until then, a good chunk of us will be chained to M$' ankle, just waiting for someone to come save us.
...since yesterday, apparently. Good to see Grisoft keeping AVG up to date.
Oh, and they've got a little blurb on the virus too.
I would fear for us all if we ever attempted "world government". As a race, we're not even qualified to run a government, never mind a national one, never mind a global one.
I mean, statistically speaking, a world government would be approximately 2000 times more screwwed up than the US one, just based on the number of people it deals with. 2000 times! The US is already run by a monkey, whats 2000 times worse than a monkey!?
Y'know what'd be an interesting statistic? How many women and men actually WANTED to talk to sales people. I mean, when I go shopping, most of the time I don't want to even see a salesperson, never mind talk to them.
...i'll be right over there
Them: Hi! Welcome to SuperSpecialValueMart!
Me: *grunting noise*
Them: Can I hel..
Me: No.
Them: Ok, well if you..
Me: No.
Them:
Me: *grunting noise*
I know i'm not the only guy who shops like this... and women always seem to have questions for salespeople. So maybe those statistics are just a little skewwed. Your chances of being "ignored, patronized, or offended" tend to go up when you actually speak to the salesidiots, y'know?
If you saw a platoon of lanky, pale, acne ridden zombie-creatures with calculators and rifles, backed up by a division of equally pale, huge amorphous blobs sporting over-stretched tux shirts and heavy weaponry, bearing down on you and screetching "OMFG U R LIEK GONNA B SO PWNED BITCHIZ!!!".... wouldn't you be terrified out of your mind?
I know I would.
Extensions fscking rule.
/me waves his mouse around like a magic wand and zipps off to another website
Amen to that.
Glass flows, and most people consider it a solid :)
Atari has already started something like that. Its over at Betatests.net. The basic idea is that you register an account, and then apply to various games to undergo beta testing. As you report bugs (though BetaTests.net) and generally be a good little tester, you gain 'points' and go up in 'rank'. The more points you have, and the higher rank you get, the more likely you are to be chosen for other tests by the developers surfing through your profile.
Unfortunatly, its off to a bit of a rocky start. For one, there are a grand total of three things to test. And one isn't even a friggin game! There was a fourth game, Unreal 2: XMP (eXpanded MultiPlayer), but that test is now closed. The game/free addon was released publicly, and the existing crew of testers are being kept onboard to test future patches. Speaking of which, we're (yeah, i'm one) in the middle of testing a patch right now.
In addition to the severe lack of games, the system doesn't even work properly. Bugs submitted through the website are generally ignored, or horribly delayed as they shuffle from Tester -> Publisher -> Developer and back. During the U2XMP test, we found it was *MUCH* faster, easier, and simpler to just use the forums to directly contact the devs. (And speaking of forums, BetaTests.net is supposed to provide forums for each test, but those were broken at the time of the XMP test too. So we wound up using a well respected fansite's forums instead). And to top it all off, due to the horribly inefficient reporting scheme, none of the developers seem to be taking (more like wasting) the time to actually give people 'points' to move up in rank.
So all in all... good concept, but excecution is decidedly more difficult. Hopefully Atari can get things turned around in short order, but the system just isn't sustainable in its current state. Maybe once Atari figures out how to plow through this mess, other publishing groups will start similar projects. And who knows, maybe someone will eventually propose a universal database of testers?
Anyways... just FYI, it does exist, albet tenuously
What you say? Article man have good writing! He say fire make bad pro... proteen... protan... bad stuff go away! If bad stuff get into cow, then cow must be burn, or man get sick too. And if man get sick, man brain not well work. Then would who understand man?!
People in Canada don't have "less money", there are just fewer stupidly-rich gazillionaires around here. There are less dirt-poor people too. We're simply less extreme than the US.
We tend to be more cautious with our spending too. Part of that is cultural, part of it is economical (price fluctuations w/ the CND dollar). So we're not as inclined to blow $400 on a stupid cell phone with a shitty "deal" (the irony of that word is sickening).
Personally, I think cell phones are rip offs. They're overpriced and under supported novelty item/status symbols. The industry has a *LONG* way to go before they can convince me to even try one out. But hey, thats their loss.
Would this be anything like one of Micro$ofts famous "undocumented features"?
Now theres a nightmare and a half. Imagine if God was like Bill Gates! AHHHH!!!!!!!
Ok ok, calm down... take your pill, think happy thoughts... happy thoughts... now go to your warm place... ahhhhhhhh.
Oh no no, you misunderstand. I put "Troll" in quotes because I didn't agree with the mod. But I see now you have your 5 funny points, so all is right in the /. world.
Y'know, for a "troll" comment, that was pretty fucking funny. :P
Dues Ex 3: The MP3 Wars
??
I doubt you could even tell me (without looking) what the current advertisment on your Slashdot page is for.
OSDN Personals.
That damned cute Brunette always catches my eye. Or maybe she's a Redhead? Wasn't really paying attention. Either way, she's in between the article and the comments, so I always seem to notice that one.
You're right though. Normally I wouldn't have the foggiest idea what they were trying to sell me. Nor would I ca- Ooh! Binary clock!
There's also an alternative Quicktime player, I believe, made by the same person. They've both very nice, small, no-BS programs for watching the appropriate media. Two thumbs up.
PS: Interested? Just google for "Quicktime Alternative" or "RealPlayer Alternative". You can often find both programs at the same site.
So what you're saying is that a small space rock the size of grain of rice could have smacked into the Beagle and start it rotating over 6 days until it was pointed backwards on entry.
Well that sucks. I guess they won't ever find it if the Beagle 2 is technically now a gas.
-no text
There's been some debate over the "right side CPU cooler" on weather or not it really works, or if you're just cooling the socket mounted sensor. No one's really sure how accurate/effective it is. It probably can't hurt though, if you're willng to take a hacksaw to your case.
Oh, and for the record, you can get decent cooling without resorting to "OMG-is-that-a-jet-engine-in-your-case" 120mm monster fans. Personally, I have a Vantec Aeroflow on my Barton 2500 (running as a 3200, eg: 200x11), and it idles around 32C, and peaks at about 39C under load. Nice and quiet too! Come to think of it, I have 9 fans in my case (3 in, 3 out, 3 internal), and she's just a whisper.
Probably 10,000 times the cost too.
Guys, guys, guys - its called a whitelist! Most bayesian filters I know of have one (mine does anyways), so a spellchecking filter could just hook into the same whitelist. Then you could talk shop with your programming buddies all you wanted. :)
;)
Multiple languages might be a challange though. You could always keep more than one dictionary around... the problem would be in identifying the incoming mail's primary language. I don't know if its possible to do that through code though.
Oh well. I'm a unilingual non-programmer who doesn't know any AOLers. What do I care?
Ok, this is probably a dumb question, but why the hell doesn't anyone make a spell checking spam filter? Just set it to junk any incoming email with more than x% spelling mistakes, and voila! All y,o.ur.,. r,a.,n.d,.om.,,. p,.u,.nc,.tu,at,i.on and |33t 5p34k is fucked. Combine it with a regular spam filter, and you're set!
It'd also have the added bonus of keeping idiots who can't spell worth crap out of your inbox. And since it would work off a dictionary (preferably the same one as your outgoing spell checker, if equipped), you could always add whatever names, phrases, and abbreviations you wanted, while still keeping the "0MG L1EK MAK UR P3N0R 9 INCHZ LONGR!!" crap out of your inbox.
Surely we have the ability to create something like this. So where is it?