The beauty of VoIP for home is that if you already have a cable modem you can finally ditch that landline, thus saving you $40 a month or so. Not to mention that land line is getting pretty useless when most people are also sporting cell phones.
>Education, Healthcare, Emergency services
Saving $40 a month is almost $500 a year which goes a long way towards paying off hefty healthcare bills and credit cards to make up for our lack of services.
Re:Maybe they can get rid of the tryptophan
on
Thanksgiving Bits
·
· Score: 1
Einstein wasnt a vegetarian, he just gave out pithy quotes after being famous. Its more than a bit hypocritical, but I believe he meant well.
He's like this bigger than life figure people projec t their pet causes on. His famous "god does not play dice" quote was an expression of his refusal to believe the randomness of QM. In every office cubicle in the world its a "Even Einstein was really religious and he was a smart guy" sign.
This is true, we subsidize the heartland (or red states) so much that international competition for agribusiness from the US is futile. The hammer of the free market should fall on them as well, its fallen on me and my industry and my own small business.
Globalization is out of the bag, except for farmers.
That's an interesting question. For a long while now I've had the idea to put in a barcode reader into every phone/pda and then use some kind of wan connection (or synch when you get home) to get more info on the competitor's prices and information about the company like if they have been involved in any major anti-trust suits, who they donate political money to, the safety ratings of their products, who they are owned by, etc.
It would really empower the consumber and could be used for a lot of neat tricks. Say I scan at Best Buy and I let Circuit City know I'm going to buy this widget. Well, they might want to offer me 10% off right then and there if I drive over there. Or perhaps BB and CC will get into a bidding war over my dollars. Now that's power.
Not to mention you could do lookups for used goods. A used book as just as good as a new one, etc. Of course there are some things you want new, but it would be nice to scan the item and then be on the phone with a dude who is selling that item in your neighborhood.
> Verizon does not provide DSL to my area without me getting at least a basic landline.
Who does? Most DSL systems require a working phone line. Call speakeasy and see what they can offer you. Nothing. You need a phone line for typical DSL offerings.
I've found the opposite to be true and I've done tech support in a variety of atmospheres. Once "spyware" became a common word and we were able to talk about it, I have yet to hear anyone say "Yeah, I love the GAIN suite of helper apps." What I have heard is stuff like "I dont even know what that is, it just appeared one day." Sometimes I hear some pissed off outrage when they find out all those delays and crashes theyve been dealing with were caused by these semi-stealth installed programs and their privacy has been violated the whole time.
I think I met one dude who didn't care then the spyware kept multiplying. Afterall these vendors don't care about their customers, in fact they are hostile to thme, so why not abuse the system and turn that one downloaded app into more installs during an "update."
On top if it, a lot of these apps append the sig line in your mail client and professionally its makes the users who use email for work look bad. It makes them look stupid and incompetent. This kind of thing embrasses them quite a bit, and rightly so. A client is going to see a email full of multicolor characters with 4 links to GAIN and think, 'This guy is a moron.'
>Especially when you step outside the parochial echochamber
And once you step out of your "people are stupid/ignorant and dont deserve disclosure" stage you'll understand.
I am very glad both socially (people deserve disclosure and a legalese 10 page EULA isnt) and personally (Im sick of fixing computers) that spyware/adware is the kiss of death and now in the same league as spam and other scams.
What's the incentive? Picasa manages photos much better than other free-ish windows tools. Keyhole blows terra way. At the time, the google toolbar was the best pop-up blocker, etc. Its kinda qauint now with Firefox and SP2. Not to mention its spyware (unless you opt for the non-spyware version).
I don't see how you can go from handy apps, to throwing out the entire OS (and perhaps the PC). To get into the OS game effectively you also have to play the hardware game and even then you gotta fight all those MS-only contracts and deal with a much smaller software library. Its not worth it. Windows may end up a 'natural' monopoly for home users, unless theres a big shift to OSX like the Firefox shift we're seeing. Frankly, Linux isnt going to cut it with technophones.
That said, there are incentives out there google and others can monopolize on. For instance, MS Office is expensive and now harder to pirate. Google could get in the Office game with OpenOffice or one of those web-based Office suites. Or maybe they can start small by working with Abiword (grammar checker anyone?) and pushing it out with a google brand.
Personaly, I'm guessing google will aim for iLife-like apps for Windows as MS keeps failing to deliver anything worthwhile/affordable. Hell, I wouldnt be surprised to hear about a google "garage band" clone tomorrow.
Mac is the way to go. I mean, there are a lot of "so I installed debian for them" posts here but what about when they call about dependencies or command line help? The Apple product is almost foolproof, there are apple stores, the devices just work, etc. Not perfect but its a step towards "the computer as appliace" concept which the industry will have to fully embrace eventually.
All of my "lets install linux for a change" experiments resulted in the same amount of phone calls, if not more with the added "Why can't I install quickbooks on here!" Its great for minimal Kiosk-type users, but they are few and far between.
Ad block extension is good too or a modified hosts file. Not being hit with ads and being unable to even load spyware sites goes a long way towards usability and "uncrapping" PCs.
As a Tivo owner I have a special perspective on commercials.
When Im forced to use a "hostile television" I notice a few things:
1. THe SAME commercial gets played over and over. I was watching the Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle live and saw the same truck commercial five or six times. Same with the rest. So skipping something you've seen is hardly costing anyone money.
2. Commercials have zero information quantity. That is to say they are all emotion and no logic. Whats the MPG of that truck? What is its safety ratings? I dunno, all I know is a busty woman is leaning on it on a backdrop of some colorado mountain scene with a flag somewhere on the screen. Or as Dr. Rappielle says "It appeals to the reptilian brain." I'm not a reptile and I like making informed consumer decisions (usually).
I guess the term "victim" here is what is being debated. A market shift to different modes of operation isn't victimizing its the future! Its why we have free markets. So companies can adapt. The old advertisers will be replaced with the new.
>Who do you think owns Iraqi oil? Try the government and people of Iraq.
The same way we "own" the airwaves. The elitist policy makers decide who gets what and if you don't understand how there will be selective pro-American contracts then you really have not been paying attention. Hell, the administration even admits it wont give any contracts to most of Europe because they wouldnt send their young men off to die. Luckily, in the US we have Fox News telling us Saddam has nukes with no fact checking and an apathetic populace ready to send off our military into a quagmire.
Its not profit, its just that Disney can't go post-modern without some other company forcing them to.
These sincere movies lifted from fairy tales have simply been done and it takes a special group to re-create memes this sticky. Their asexual mouse mascot has a negative IQ and absolutely nothing funny, self-referential, etc about it.
>Actually, Windows is simply very volitile when it comes to upgrading to any service pack.
Yep. These chronic complainers probably never did a SP update on an NT machine and dont know what real SP related issues are. I think this shows the age and bias of your typical slashdot reader.
At the end of the day MS did right. People were complaining about a lack of firewall, pop-up blocker, changes to activex, buffer overruns, etc. MS delivered and made its OS safer for non-techies.
There's no pleasing certain people, especially when they have an agenda in pushing bsd, linux, osx, etc.
The irony is that the article (and photos) look like crap on the sidekick because of the sk's problems with frames. Nothing like one word per sentance and photos that load off screen, if at all.
What about high resolution displays with teeny tiny fonts? I see a lot of people buying the newest LCDs and have a default setting at 1280 or higher. They usually dont know or care to increase font size. Reading tiny fonts like that all day can't be good for your eyes.
> doesn't buy you personal artistic talent. Leave it to someone who has it.
Oh please, art like everything else is a skill. Learn technique and practice. Rinse and repeat. Don't get too full of yourselves, artists. I'm almost completely self-taught at illustration and guitar and I always tell people talent is a myth. Talent is what pretentious types (and marketers) use to sell product.
Icon design, for instance, follows some very simple rules. HCI follows rules also. Put in the practice time and you'll see noticable results. Saying "I'm not the artsy type" is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Unless you're getting into fine art then there's really nothing to it other than some elbow grease.
Of course any relic found off the coast of the mediterranean will be picked up by the press and others as "Atlantis." The new agers (and sometimes some smart person you know) will rant and rave about time machines, solar lasers, etc. Its really sad to see so-called educated people buy into any conspiracy theory. The same was (and still is) true with the mythological Noah's ark. In the 70s there was no shortage of articles on how some relic found somewhere was the "true ark" and no shortage of clergy men to claim it is real. Now the "ark" supposedly is on top of some mountain somewhere.
These are the fruits of an anti-intellectual culture. Of a culture with a weak media. Of a culture that is religious and anti-skeptic.
This all reminds me of the intro to Sagan's 'Demon Haunted World' where he tells a cabbie he's a scientist and the cabbie's questions are all related to press-driven pseudoscience like Uri Geller, UFOs, time machines, etc. IIRC, Sagan had nothing to say as he didn't know where to start with someone so full of disinformation. This is a pretty good parable for a good part of the the world. Where to even begin when Nostradamus is ranked up there with Einstein and people think Archaeologists are after Atlantian magic machines while the press feeds them the same credulous crap everyday?
This is a good ruling and its a shame there arent more (or any?) like it in the US. Its this "lawless assumption" that lets spyware writers get away with what they do. Like "pay us 19.95 to secure your computer, now we'll open your CD tray for you! Look!" That's trespassing and extortion.
The harassment issue is a serious one and the less petty vindictive fuckers out there using email or the web to smear someone the better.
> Well, if you were Google, wouldn't you also help out everything that might decrease IE's userbase?
Google has no issue with IE.
IE only toolbar.
IE only desktop search.
Why would they? They dont care HOW you connect to their service, they care that you do. And going on a limb and asking people to switch browsers is a classic barrier of entry. They didn't get 75% of the market share by telling IE users to switch, they did it by writing IE add-ons like the toolbar.
> I find that y and z were either something trivial that a quick change in the preferences could have fixed
But this is true of any product. People aren't terribly logical and manufactuters have to accept that or they will disappear from the market. I mean, why do so many people drive an SUV. Its not because they off-road, but because emotionally it serves them to be in a big, high off the road, truck. Why do people go love to skin things? Because eye-candy affects us in a big way, thus the ugly NS-era Mozilla skin turns off a lot of people and FireFox's more modern skin turns on a lot of people. Or how its hard to find a non-avante garde skinned Windows app nowadays. Or an app that isn't skinnable.
How about politics? How many times have you heard "I dont like this guys stand on insert_minor_issue_ here, so I'm voting for the other guy." Even if the other guy supports many other things the person hates. It's called hot button voting.
How about OS's? Ever criticize (fairly) the problems Linux has to a zealot? Its a religious "argument."
How about religion itself?
How about strong brands like the iPod?
How about strong brands like googe? If MS pioneered the never expiring tracking cookie then redmond would have been nuked from orbit by now. Google does it and suddenly the brand-loyal throw their privacy values out the window and shout "So what? Get used it to!"
Slashdot Mirror
The beauty of VoIP for home is that if you already have a cable modem you can finally ditch that landline, thus saving you $40 a month or so. Not to mention that land line is getting pretty useless when most people are also sporting cell phones.
>Education, Healthcare, Emergency services
Saving $40 a month is almost $500 a year which goes a long way towards paying off hefty healthcare bills and credit cards to make up for our lack of services.
This is a debunked myth.
Einstein wasnt a vegetarian, he just gave out pithy quotes after being famous. Its more than a bit hypocritical, but I believe he meant well.
He's like this bigger than life figure people projec t their pet causes on. His famous "god does not play dice" quote was an expression of his refusal to believe the randomness of QM. In every office cubicle in the world its a "Even Einstein was really religious and he was a smart guy" sign.
This is true, we subsidize the heartland (or red states) so much that international competition for agribusiness from the US is futile. The hammer of the free market should fall on them as well, its fallen on me and my industry and my own small business.
Globalization is out of the bag, except for farmers.
>installed the latest service pack 4.
You might as well have blessed it with the wave of your hand.
You must visit windows update to get the post SP4 patches or the very least enable auto-update.
You probably got all this stuff from the lsass and rpc vulnerabilities which SP4 does not address.
That's an interesting question. For a long while now I've had the idea to put in a barcode reader into every phone/pda and then use some kind of wan connection (or synch when you get home) to get more info on the competitor's prices and information about the company like if they have been involved in any major anti-trust suits, who they donate political money to, the safety ratings of their products, who they are owned by, etc.
It would really empower the consumber and could be used for a lot of neat tricks. Say I scan at Best Buy and I let Circuit City know I'm going to buy this widget. Well, they might want to offer me 10% off right then and there if I drive over there. Or perhaps BB and CC will get into a bidding war over my dollars. Now that's power.
Not to mention you could do lookups for used goods. A used book as just as good as a new one, etc. Of course there are some things you want new, but it would be nice to scan the item and then be on the phone with a dude who is selling that item in your neighborhood.
"Tivo remote? Sure I got three. Ten bucks"
"I'm coming over!"
> Verizon does not provide DSL to my area without me getting at least a basic landline.
Who does? Most DSL systems require a working phone line. Call speakeasy and see what they can offer you. Nothing. You need a phone line for typical DSL offerings.
I've found the opposite to be true and I've done tech support in a variety of atmospheres. Once "spyware" became a common word and we were able to talk about it, I have yet to hear anyone say "Yeah, I love the GAIN suite of helper apps." What I have heard is stuff like "I dont even know what that is, it just appeared one day." Sometimes I hear some pissed off outrage when they find out all those delays and crashes theyve been dealing with were caused by these semi-stealth installed programs and their privacy has been violated the whole time.
I think I met one dude who didn't care then the spyware kept multiplying. Afterall these vendors don't care about their customers, in fact they are hostile to thme, so why not abuse the system and turn that one downloaded app into more installs during an "update."
On top if it, a lot of these apps append the sig line in your mail client and professionally its makes the users who use email for work look bad. It makes them look stupid and incompetent. This kind of thing embrasses them quite a bit, and rightly so. A client is going to see a email full of multicolor characters with 4 links to GAIN and think, 'This guy is a moron.'
>Especially when you step outside the parochial echochamber
And once you step out of your "people are stupid/ignorant and dont deserve disclosure" stage you'll understand.
I am very glad both socially (people deserve disclosure and a legalese 10 page EULA isnt) and personally (Im sick of fixing computers) that spyware/adware is the kiss of death and now in the same league as spam and other scams.
What's the incentive? Picasa manages photos much better than other free-ish windows tools. Keyhole blows terra way. At the time, the google toolbar was the best pop-up blocker, etc. Its kinda qauint now with Firefox and SP2. Not to mention its spyware (unless you opt for the non-spyware version).
I don't see how you can go from handy apps, to throwing out the entire OS (and perhaps the PC). To get into the OS game effectively you also have to play the hardware game and even then you gotta fight all those MS-only contracts and deal with a much smaller software library. Its not worth it. Windows may end up a 'natural' monopoly for home users, unless theres a big shift to OSX like the Firefox shift we're seeing. Frankly, Linux isnt going to cut it with technophones.
That said, there are incentives out there google and others can monopolize on. For instance, MS Office is expensive and now harder to pirate. Google could get in the Office game with OpenOffice or one of those web-based Office suites. Or maybe they can start small by working with Abiword (grammar checker anyone?) and pushing it out with a google brand.
Personaly, I'm guessing google will aim for iLife-like apps for Windows as MS keeps failing to deliver anything worthwhile/affordable. Hell, I wouldnt be surprised to hear about a google "garage band" clone tomorrow.
>Isn't it great that that dictatorship spent itself into bankruptcy?
On a completely unrelated note Bush just signed a bill putting the US 800 BILLION in debt.
1.0PR had a javascript pop-up crash bug that drove me crazy. 1.0 fixed that.
Some things to consider:
1. How did you install 1.0? Did you do an overwrite? If so, do a clean install.
2. What extensions are you using? Have you disabled the extension version check?
>On one of the machines, using the 'self update' feature caused Firefox to crash in middle of the upgrade
When was this? Do you have DNS/network/firewall issues which could be causing this?
Lastly, to get some real answers from the experts people should asking here.
Mac is the way to go. I mean, there are a lot of "so I installed debian for them" posts here but what about when they call about dependencies or command line help? The Apple product is almost foolproof, there are apple stores, the devices just work, etc. Not perfect but its a step towards "the computer as appliace" concept which the industry will have to fully embrace eventually.
All of my "lets install linux for a change" experiments resulted in the same amount of phone calls, if not more with the added "Why can't I install quickbooks on here!" Its great for minimal Kiosk-type users, but they are few and far between.
Ad block extension is good too or a modified hosts file. Not being hit with ads and being unable to even load spyware sites goes a long way towards usability and "uncrapping" PCs.
As a Tivo owner I have a special perspective on commercials.
When Im forced to use a "hostile television" I notice a few things:
1. THe SAME commercial gets played over and over. I was watching the Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle live and saw the same truck commercial five or six times. Same with the rest. So skipping something you've seen is hardly costing anyone money.
2. Commercials have zero information quantity. That is to say they are all emotion and no logic. Whats the MPG of that truck? What is its safety ratings? I dunno, all I know is a busty woman is leaning on it on a backdrop of some colorado mountain scene with a flag somewhere on the screen. Or as Dr. Rappielle says "It appeals to the reptilian brain." I'm not a reptile and I like making informed consumer decisions (usually).
I guess the term "victim" here is what is being debated. A market shift to different modes of operation isn't victimizing its the future! Its why we have free markets. So companies can adapt. The old advertisers will be replaced with the new.
>Who do you think owns Iraqi oil? Try the government and people of Iraq.
The same way we "own" the airwaves. The elitist policy makers decide who gets what and if you don't understand how there will be selective pro-American contracts then you really have not been paying attention. Hell, the administration even admits it wont give any contracts to most of Europe because they wouldnt send their young men off to die. Luckily, in the US we have Fox News telling us Saddam has nukes with no fact checking and an apathetic populace ready to send off our military into a quagmire.
Idiots, indeed!
Its not profit, its just that Disney can't go post-modern without some other company forcing them to.
These sincere movies lifted from fairy tales have simply been done and it takes a special group to re-create memes this sticky. Their asexual mouse mascot has a negative IQ and absolutely nothing funny, self-referential, etc about it.
Audiences have changed, disney hasn't.
>Actually, Windows is simply very volitile when it comes to upgrading to any service pack.
Yep. These chronic complainers probably never did a SP update on an NT machine and dont know what real SP related issues are. I think this shows the age and bias of your typical slashdot reader.
At the end of the day MS did right. People were complaining about a lack of firewall, pop-up blocker, changes to activex, buffer overruns, etc. MS delivered and made its OS safer for non-techies.
There's no pleasing certain people, especially when they have an agenda in pushing bsd, linux, osx, etc.
The irony is that the article (and photos) look like crap on the sidekick because of the sk's problems with frames. Nothing like one word per sentance and photos that load off screen, if at all.
Maybe she can make it all better...
What about high resolution displays with teeny tiny fonts? I see a lot of people buying the newest LCDs and have a default setting at 1280 or higher. They usually dont know or care to increase font size. Reading tiny fonts like that all day can't be good for your eyes.
> doesn't buy you personal artistic talent. Leave it to someone who has it.
Oh please, art like everything else is a skill. Learn technique and practice. Rinse and repeat. Don't get too full of yourselves, artists. I'm almost completely self-taught at illustration and guitar and I always tell people talent is a myth. Talent is what pretentious types (and marketers) use to sell product.
Icon design, for instance, follows some very simple rules. HCI follows rules also. Put in the practice time and you'll see noticable results. Saying "I'm not the artsy type" is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Unless you're getting into fine art then there's really nothing to it other than some elbow grease.
>(cf. Current Science 86(9):1256-60 (10 May 2004))
What's that? A citation? The grandparent would consider you part of this "academic mafia/freemason conspiracy!"
Of course any relic found off the coast of the mediterranean will be picked up by the press and others as "Atlantis." The new agers (and sometimes some smart person you know) will rant and rave about time machines, solar lasers, etc. Its really sad to see so-called educated people buy into any conspiracy theory. The same was (and still is) true with the mythological Noah's ark. In the 70s there was no shortage of articles on how some relic found somewhere was the "true ark" and no shortage of clergy men to claim it is real. Now the "ark" supposedly is on top of some mountain somewhere.
These are the fruits of an anti-intellectual culture. Of a culture with a weak media. Of a culture that is religious and anti-skeptic.
This all reminds me of the intro to Sagan's 'Demon Haunted World' where he tells a cabbie he's a scientist and the cabbie's questions are all related to press-driven pseudoscience like Uri Geller, UFOs, time machines, etc. IIRC, Sagan had nothing to say as he didn't know where to start with someone so full of disinformation. This is a pretty good parable for a good part of the the world. Where to even begin when Nostradamus is ranked up there with Einstein and people think Archaeologists are after Atlantian magic machines while the press feeds them the same credulous crap everyday?
This is a good ruling and its a shame there arent more (or any?) like it in the US. Its this "lawless assumption" that lets spyware writers get away with what they do. Like "pay us 19.95 to secure your computer, now we'll open your CD tray for you! Look!" That's trespassing and extortion.
The harassment issue is a serious one and the less petty vindictive fuckers out there using email or the web to smear someone the better.
> Well, if you were Google, wouldn't you also help out everything that might decrease IE's userbase?
Google has no issue with IE.
IE only toolbar.
IE only desktop search.
Why would they? They dont care HOW you connect to their service, they care that you do. And going on a limb and asking people to switch browsers is a classic barrier of entry. They didn't get 75% of the market share by telling IE users to switch, they did it by writing IE add-ons like the toolbar.
> I find that y and z were either something trivial that a quick change in the preferences could have fixed
But this is true of any product. People aren't terribly logical and manufactuters have to accept that or they will disappear from the market. I mean, why do so many people drive an SUV. Its not because they off-road, but because emotionally it serves them to be in a big, high off the road, truck. Why do people go love to skin things? Because eye-candy affects us in a big way, thus the ugly NS-era Mozilla skin turns off a lot of people and FireFox's more modern skin turns on a lot of people. Or how its hard to find a non-avante garde skinned Windows app nowadays. Or an app that isn't skinnable.
How about politics? How many times have you heard "I dont like this guys stand on insert_minor_issue_ here, so I'm voting for the other guy." Even if the other guy supports many other things the person hates. It's called hot button voting.
How about OS's? Ever criticize (fairly) the problems Linux has to a zealot? Its a religious "argument."
How about religion itself?
How about strong brands like the iPod?
How about strong brands like googe? If MS pioneered the never expiring tracking cookie then redmond would have been nuked from orbit by now. Google does it and suddenly the brand-loyal throw their privacy values out the window and shout "So what? Get used it to!"