Lastly, if you can't see the vendor lock-in (and other problems) created by the situations you described then you really need to think a bit harder (Hint: Imagine if you were handicapped). Your inability to empathize with others in a different situation from yours is really quite sad.
If I were handicapped and working for a business that only had OpenOffice I would bring it to the attention of my employer and they would either purchase Office for me. There are laws that protect against things like that.
Just get a countertop water distiller and you'll be set. Distilled water is so much better tasting
I'd have to agree with that afterall. My parents had one growing up. We calculated the electrical cost of running the distiller and it ended up being pennies per gallon, rather than dollars per 20 ounce. My appartment has really good tap, though, and we wouldn't have room for a distiller on our one countertop anyhow;)
I find it funny that many people seem to be pointing at the fact that Microsoft Office will have an ODF plugin and that those disabled people should just use that. This only affirms the fact that Microsoft Office is a superior product to all of its competitors
I don't every think anyone said OO.o, Abiword or it's ilk were better. MS Office is by far the better product. However, as someone who doesn't have an accessibility issues and doesn't use much from office other than MS Word and PowerPoint and really doesn't use any advanced features from either, OO.o is more than Good Enough (TM) and my pocket book thanks the FOSS community.
Saying "oh, disabled people can just stick to Word" leaves the disabled community in practically the same situation as before, except that now there's a higher chance that they'll encounter machines with some word-processor other than MS Word installed on it.
Bullocks. Utter bullocks. "A higher chance that they'll encounter machines with some word-processors other than MS word" doesn't matter. I've used MS word for years, and do you know how many screen readers and brail devices I had operational on my computer? NONE.
At our school we have a special computer lab for those who need the extra accessibility applications. Even though we have Word installed on the whole campus, those with special needs can't use 98% of the campus computers; the screen readers and brail hardware are not present. (This is necessary because the accesability apps don't work until the user is logged in, and we require students type a username and password on the rest of campus.)
Now, if we were to switch to OpenOffice, which I don't forsee, and we had that plugin for Word to allow ODF support we could have Office in the accessibility lab and OpenOffice everywhere else. That would be a significant cost savings. 15 or 20 copies of Word vs 300.
The same is true for businesses. Susie with special needs will need a copy of Word and the business will have to pay the extra cost. However, the rest of the staff can freely use OpenOffice or whatever the hell else. I don't see any vendor lock in.
However, I don't think that's the crux of the problem. People with disabilites are more concerned that ODF incorporate handling for text readers and such from the outset and not have to be bludgeoned into doing it later.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm pretty sure it's not the format causing the problem but the applications. ODF doesn't support disibilities any better than DOC does. However, Microsoft Word supports disibility add-ins MUCH better than OpenOffice. Don't confuse the format with the application. The screen readers, etc interface with MS Word, not with the documents themselves.
If OpenOffice had better support for disibility programs, then fine. If MS Word had support for ODF, then also fine; people with disabilities could use MS Word and read/write ODF. If another office product came about with superb support for disibilities and also handled ODF natively, then also fine. The plugin handles ODF support for Word, which is in the "fine" category.
I know, it doesn't fit the requirements capture (being tasteless) but I would highly recommend water. Tap, preferably because it's cheap, but bottled is good too. If you can get used to it you'll save a bundle and it's a lot healther (and generally more refreshing.)
Otherwise, my favorite beverage is milk, but that's not very convienient.
I am a bit confused, they will cancel the test if there is bad weather? It's a spacesuit, it shouldn't be affected by bad weather
Well first off, I only skimmed the article, but I have a classmate working on part of the project at NDSU here. My first thought, though, is that it's a space suit... it doesn't rain in space, it just has to withstand the pressure and the occasional impact by high volecity objects. It also doesn't rain water on Mars, but with the atmosphere there could be something similar to look out for, I don't know. That brings me to my second thought.
This is a very early prototype. The last line in the article even says that the project isn't nessicarly to create a final project, but to "train the new generation of space studies students." Really they just have to show the fundamental goals are reachable within the budget requirements for an individual suit, but it doesn't have to be finished and polished. Making it waterproof is relatively easy compared to some of the other design requirements, I'm sure. Regardless, you don't go build a prototype for a parachute and immediately jump out of an airplane; you test the materials strengths, etc first and then gradually put it into conditions that may harm it, even if those conditions are expected, normal circumstances.
For the final disclaimer, my friend is an electrical engineering student working on the health monitoring system. That said, I know little of the design requirements or stage of the project beyond the little I know of what my friend is doing. I've never seen the suit, just some sensors and circuit boards.
Finally, congratulations John, you guys made slashdot!
Sortof, but what actually defines the ratings is very different. The actual ratings are similar, where E matches with G and T match with PG/PG-13 and R matches with M, but like the grandparent to my first post said, in a PG-13 movie you can have partial nudity (topless women) but not in a T game, and that I agree that that seems kind of strange.
I've read the ratings for video games, and especially of late, they seem much more strict than movies. I don't think that should be the case, regardless of having two seperate groups creating the guidelines.
They're not the same organization, not controlled by the same people, not rating the same media, nothin'. They don't necessarily have the same leadership or employees.
No, but you'd think that since video game ratings came later they would have based them somewhat off of the other ratings systems that existed at the time, namely the movie ratings system.
No, no it isn't really, and I stopped buying it for my self. He's been using Norton Products since the 80s though, and is convinced he needs them. All they do really is add 3-5 minutes to his boot time...
Right, but in order to convince users that updates are worthwhile you need visible differentiation
No, that's almost true for commercial software, but for free software all you need is a bigger number and people will think they need it. Especially if the FireFox update manager says you need to update.
Actually, it turns out that's not even true for commercial software. My Dad gets the newest version of Norton System Works every time he sees it on the shelf and then pisses and moans because of the great utilities and features this new version now lacks, even though his old version was working just fine and all he really needed was a new subscription/upgrade for the AntiVirus.
Make the number bigger and people will buy. Why do you think Microsoft went towards using year numbers rather than versions? Years are four digits. That's huge.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to go so far as to offer incentives to users who click the ads on a regular basis (IE: You click 10 ads and get one page view ad-free).
Great idea. "Help me commit click fraud and get my account banned and I'll give you one page view ad-free!!" You'll get far with that.
3. Set the IDE driver to the generic driver. 4. Move the drive image to another system (swap hard drives, clone the drive with Ghost, whatever). 5. Boot up, install drivers for new system. 6. Move image to previous system. 7. Set for system-specific IDE driver. 8. Repeat steps 3-7 for each type of system.
My experience has always been that moving an image to a new motherboard without sysprepping often causes BSODs. I'm assuming step 3 is the trick. Can you elaborate on this? (Is it just "Update Driver" and then choose "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller"?? or is it something different?)
Chainmail gains tremendous strength by flattening the two ends of a ring together with a hammer, than drilling and riveting the joint, as good smiths have done for years. An adjustable spiral would not only be difficult and time consuming to adjust, but much weaker both through the lack of riveted chinks and weakness added by adjusting the spirals (like bending a paperclip back and forth).
You'd be better of with seperate overlapping sheets of mail head to the body with leather straps. Maybe not as good as a single solid piece, but it would be modular like the grandparent suggested without sacrafising the integrity of the individual components.
I second Unattended. It takes some time to setup, but it's worth it.
I also like your origional idea to include installers on the WinXP CD. We have a WinXP cd that installs antivirus and some other apps after windows installs. We also made a DVD that installs Office and a whole sweet of applications when it's done. Look at the documentation on the Unattended website to learn how to generate answer files for almost any installer shield. Repackaging is the devil.
Otherwise, I've found that Norton Ghost and other imaging utilities work great, even across varied hardware provided you use Microsoft's sysprep utility. Most of our images are spread across slightly varied hardware. We just have a c:\drivers folder that contains the *.inf and supporting files for all of the hardware we need. Reference that in the sysprep.inf and you're good to go. You can even specify that a program runs on the reboot after sysprep's mini-installer, allowing you to do last minute cleanup, such as running a script to rename the machine, install printers based on location (subnet) etc.
That's not a Dell-specific problem. Name a major computer vendor that doesn't do that. HP, Gateway, Dell... it's all the same. Personally, I still like Dell's support and warrenty plans and have had great luck calling their support number, but for myself, I'd always build, so it's rather egal.
The new Merom-based products (Conroe is the desktop version) were *NOT* designed from the ground up.... The major micro-architectural features that defined the P6 are still present in Merom. The P4 architecture (may it rest in peace) was a brand new architecture -- Merom is not.
I think you've confused "designed from the ground up" with "threw out everything they knew and started over." The latter is what they didn't do, and the former means step back and decide the best way to organize the processor to meet our goal (multicored, fast, backward-compatible processors). Obviously they're still going to use x87 compatible FPUs and the like, and if those individual components are working fine then they won't be redesigned individually, just reconnected differently, which is key. The alternative is retrofitting, which is what the PentiumM was; some changes were made to the bus, but more or less features were just added.
Redesigning the bus means that the set of microinstructions had been completely re-written. (That is, the set of 1s and 0s and assembly command expands to to control access to the internal databusses, issue load and execute instructions to adders, the fpu, etc) and that is a very big task. I would call this a redesign.
If you're calling Merom a simple evolutionary step because it contains the same "major micro-architectural features that defined the P6" then you have to say the same for Netburst. You can't however, because neburst went pipeline crazy and Merom has made major changes to the internal data-busses. It's not as much about the individual features or components, it's about the interconnection of the components and the number of major components. Merom is more like PentiumM than it is like P4, but I wouldn't say it's a direct decendant of either.
It's not obvious from the article, but you can find it elsewhere on the internet (such as Intel's comment that the Core microarchitecture will provide 20% boost over CoreDuo). It is hinted at in the article with the following quote (emphasis mine).
If you've been hanging around here for a while, you may have heard us referring to Core Duo by its code name, Yonah, long before Intel decided to give it a somewhat confusing official name.... In the case of the Core Duo, those CPU cores are massaged and tweaked versions of the Pentium M processor, familiar as part of Intel's Centrino mobile platform.
The new core microarchitecture, if you read the Ars Technica article in the previousl/. posting linked, was designed from the ground up and is similar to PentiumM in many respects, but is much more different than the CoreSolo and CoreDuo are.
On both my Ubuntu box at home and Gentoo servers at work, logging in as a user and then issueing "su" (or "sudo su") causes the environment variables to be the same as if I logged in as root directly, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Generally, I use sudo, even if I have a lot of commands to do. I feel it's a better idea as every command I enter is in just one log. Anything I do with "sudo" is in the system log while anything I do with su is in/root/.bash_history, which of course, is more volatile. For logging purposes, especially if there are many administrators who have access to the server, sudo is just more organized, there's just one place to turn if things aren't working, plus you can identify the individual.
Get a programmable keyboard and program a key to macro "sudo " for you or even "[Up][Home]sudo [Enter]" if you have trouble with the extra 5 characters you occasionally need. Or us an alias like s=sudo if your cheap. I recommend the keyboard. (You can even put your password on CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+F12 to make things easier)
They want a full gui. This is supposed to be easy to use for school children, not command line based.
The article wasn't even about him calling linux fat, it's just a comment he happened to make. All it means is they can't use any of the major GUI distros as is right now, they'll have to customize it. (Note: They had to do that anyway. The hardware specs aren't very average.)
This will cost about $20 a month (based on there other pricing settings)
From the first sentence:
San Francisco on Wednesday chose the high-tech team of Google and EarthLink to bring free, wireless Internet access to virtually everyone in the city, possibly by the end of the year.
(emphasis mine).
Further down in the article:
For its part, Google, in Mountain View, intends to provide the free, so-called Wi-Fi access. The service it proposes would be faster than dial-up but slower than a typical broadband connection.
In its joint bid, Earthlink plans to offer speedier access, but for a fee. No price has been set, but EarthLink plans to charge around $20 a month in other cities where it is negotiating Wi-Fi contracts, including in Philadelphia and Anaheim.
Google gives free wifi, or you can upgrade the service by paying Earthlink $20/month or so (hasn't been set) if you want a faster connection.
There's no excuse for not even reading the first sentence of an article that isn't slashdotted. That includes moderators.
Most likely if you sued, they would prove it isn't copyright infringement, but the DMCA is written in such a way that you are basically guilty once accused until proven innocent and nobody has the money to spend attempting a lawsuit for something like ingame accounts.
This isn't a trademark issue, though. The DMCA protects copyright. Blizzard can't use the DMCA to protect their Trademarks, so from that simple fact we shouldn't even be discussing trademark.
Regardless, this clearly falls under Nominative Use of Blizzard's trademark. Since nobody is selling a competing product using "Warcraft" in it's title, but is instead selling a product that speaks about one of Blizzard's products by name, this is absolutely ok. Nominative Use is very clearly defined for trademarks, and this is why Blizzard has tried to hit them undercopyright, because they have no case under trademark but the DMCA can be used in a "Shoot first and ask questions later" manner.
Slashdot Mirror
Lastly, if you can't see the vendor lock-in (and other problems) created by the situations you described then you really need to think a bit harder (Hint: Imagine if you were handicapped). Your inability to empathize with others in a different situation from yours is really quite sad.
If I were handicapped and working for a business that only had OpenOffice I would bring it to the attention of my employer and they would either purchase Office for me. There are laws that protect against things like that.
Just get a countertop water distiller and you'll be set. Distilled water is so much better tasting
;)
I'd have to agree with that afterall. My parents had one growing up. We calculated the electrical cost of running the distiller and it ended up being pennies per gallon, rather than dollars per 20 ounce. My appartment has really good tap, though, and we wouldn't have room for a distiller on our one countertop anyhow
I find it funny that many people seem to be pointing at the fact that Microsoft Office will have an ODF plugin and that those disabled people should just use that. This only affirms the fact that Microsoft Office is a superior product to all of its competitors
I don't every think anyone said OO.o, Abiword or it's ilk were better. MS Office is by far the better product. However, as someone who doesn't have an accessibility issues and doesn't use much from office other than MS Word and PowerPoint and really doesn't use any advanced features from either, OO.o is more than Good Enough (TM) and my pocket book thanks the FOSS community.
Saying "oh, disabled people can just stick to Word" leaves the disabled community in practically the same situation as before, except that now there's a higher chance that they'll encounter machines with some word-processor other than MS Word installed on it.
Bullocks. Utter bullocks. "A higher chance that they'll encounter machines with some word-processors other than MS word" doesn't matter. I've used MS word for years, and do you know how many screen readers and brail devices I had operational on my computer? NONE.
At our school we have a special computer lab for those who need the extra accessibility applications. Even though we have Word installed on the whole campus, those with special needs can't use 98% of the campus computers; the screen readers and brail hardware are not present. (This is necessary because the accesability apps don't work until the user is logged in, and we require students type a username and password on the rest of campus.)
Now, if we were to switch to OpenOffice, which I don't forsee, and we had that plugin for Word to allow ODF support we could have Office in the accessibility lab and OpenOffice everywhere else. That would be a significant cost savings. 15 or 20 copies of Word vs 300.
The same is true for businesses. Susie with special needs will need a copy of Word and the business will have to pay the extra cost. However, the rest of the staff can freely use OpenOffice or whatever the hell else. I don't see any vendor lock in.
However, I don't think that's the crux of the problem. People with disabilites are more concerned that ODF incorporate handling for text readers and such from the outset and not have to be bludgeoned into doing it later.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm pretty sure it's not the format causing the problem but the applications. ODF doesn't support disibilities any better than DOC does. However, Microsoft Word supports disibility add-ins MUCH better than OpenOffice. Don't confuse the format with the application. The screen readers, etc interface with MS Word, not with the documents themselves.
If OpenOffice had better support for disibility programs, then fine. If MS Word had support for ODF, then also fine; people with disabilities could use MS Word and read/write ODF. If another office product came about with superb support for disibilities and also handled ODF natively, then also fine. The plugin handles ODF support for Word, which is in the "fine" category.
I know, it doesn't fit the requirements capture (being tasteless) but I would highly recommend water. Tap, preferably because it's cheap, but bottled is good too. If you can get used to it you'll save a bundle and it's a lot healther (and generally more refreshing.)
Otherwise, my favorite beverage is milk, but that's not very convienient.
I am a bit confused, they will cancel the test if there is bad weather? It's a spacesuit, it shouldn't be affected by bad weather
Well first off, I only skimmed the article, but I have a classmate working on part of the project at NDSU here. My first thought, though, is that it's a space suit... it doesn't rain in space, it just has to withstand the pressure and the occasional impact by high volecity objects. It also doesn't rain water on Mars, but with the atmosphere there could be something similar to look out for, I don't know. That brings me to my second thought.
This is a very early prototype. The last line in the article even says that the project isn't nessicarly to create a final project, but to "train the new generation of space studies students." Really they just have to show the fundamental goals are reachable within the budget requirements for an individual suit, but it doesn't have to be finished and polished. Making it waterproof is relatively easy compared to some of the other design requirements, I'm sure. Regardless, you don't go build a prototype for a parachute and immediately jump out of an airplane; you test the materials strengths, etc first and then gradually put it into conditions that may harm it, even if those conditions are expected, normal circumstances.
For the final disclaimer, my friend is an electrical engineering student working on the health monitoring system. That said, I know little of the design requirements or stage of the project beyond the little I know of what my friend is doing. I've never seen the suit, just some sensors and circuit boards.
Finally, congratulations John, you guys made slashdot!
Sortof, but what actually defines the ratings is very different. The actual ratings are similar, where E matches with G and T match with PG/PG-13 and R matches with M, but like the grandparent to my first post said, in a PG-13 movie you can have partial nudity (topless women) but not in a T game, and that I agree that that seems kind of strange.
I've read the ratings for video games, and especially of late, they seem much more strict than movies. I don't think that should be the case, regardless of having two seperate groups creating the guidelines.
They're not the same organization, not controlled by the same people, not rating the same media, nothin'. They don't necessarily have the same leadership or employees.
No, but you'd think that since video game ratings came later they would have based them somewhat off of the other ratings systems that existed at the time, namely the movie ratings system.
Is Norton system works still useful?
No, no it isn't really, and I stopped buying it for my self. He's been using Norton Products since the 80s though, and is convinced he needs them. All they do really is add 3-5 minutes to his boot time...
Right, but in order to convince users that updates are worthwhile you need visible differentiation
No, that's almost true for commercial software, but for free software all you need is a bigger number and people will think they need it. Especially if the FireFox update manager says you need to update.
Actually, it turns out that's not even true for commercial software. My Dad gets the newest version of Norton System Works every time he sees it on the shelf and then pisses and moans because of the great utilities and features this new version now lacks, even though his old version was working just fine and all he really needed was a new subscription/upgrade for the AntiVirus.
Make the number bigger and people will buy. Why do you think Microsoft went towards using year numbers rather than versions? Years are four digits. That's huge.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to go so far as to offer incentives to users who click the ads on a regular basis (IE: You click 10 ads and get one page view ad-free).
Great idea. "Help me commit click fraud and get my account banned and I'll give you one page view ad-free!!" You'll get far with that.
3. Set the IDE driver to the generic driver.
4. Move the drive image to another system (swap hard drives, clone the drive with Ghost, whatever).
5. Boot up, install drivers for new system.
6. Move image to previous system.
7. Set for system-specific IDE driver.
8. Repeat steps 3-7 for each type of system.
My experience has always been that moving an image to a new motherboard without sysprepping often causes BSODs. I'm assuming step 3 is the trick. Can you elaborate on this? (Is it just "Update Driver" and then choose "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller"?? or is it something different?)
Chainmail gains tremendous strength by flattening the two ends of a ring together with a hammer, than drilling and riveting the joint, as good smiths have done for years. An adjustable spiral would not only be difficult and time consuming to adjust, but much weaker both through the lack of riveted chinks and weakness added by adjusting the spirals (like bending a paperclip back and forth).
You'd be better of with seperate overlapping sheets of mail head to the body with leather straps. Maybe not as good as a single solid piece, but it would be modular like the grandparent suggested without sacrafising the integrity of the individual components.
I second Unattended. It takes some time to setup, but it's worth it.
I also like your origional idea to include installers on the WinXP CD. We have a WinXP cd that installs antivirus and some other apps after windows installs. We also made a DVD that installs Office and a whole sweet of applications when it's done. Look at the documentation on the Unattended website to learn how to generate answer files for almost any installer shield. Repackaging is the devil.
Otherwise, I've found that Norton Ghost and other imaging utilities work great, even across varied hardware provided you use Microsoft's sysprep utility. Most of our images are spread across slightly varied hardware. We just have a c:\drivers folder that contains the *.inf and supporting files for all of the hardware we need. Reference that in the sysprep.inf and you're good to go. You can even specify that a program runs on the reboot after sysprep's mini-installer, allowing you to do last minute cleanup, such as running a script to rename the machine, install printers based on location (subnet) etc.
That's not a Dell-specific problem. Name a major computer vendor that doesn't do that. HP, Gateway, Dell... it's all the same. Personally, I still like Dell's support and warrenty plans and have had great luck calling their support number, but for myself, I'd always build, so it's rather egal.
The new Merom-based products (Conroe is the desktop version) were *NOT* designed from the ground up. ... The major micro-architectural features that defined the P6 are still present in Merom. The P4 architecture (may it rest in peace) was a brand new architecture -- Merom is not.
I think you've confused "designed from the ground up" with "threw out everything they knew and started over." The latter is what they didn't do, and the former means step back and decide the best way to organize the processor to meet our goal (multicored, fast, backward-compatible processors). Obviously they're still going to use x87 compatible FPUs and the like, and if those individual components are working fine then they won't be redesigned individually, just reconnected differently, which is key. The alternative is retrofitting, which is what the PentiumM was; some changes were made to the bus, but more or less features were just added.
Redesigning the bus means that the set of microinstructions had been completely re-written. (That is, the set of 1s and 0s and assembly command expands to to control access to the internal databusses, issue load and execute instructions to adders, the fpu, etc) and that is a very big task. I would call this a redesign.
If you're calling Merom a simple evolutionary step because it contains the same "major micro-architectural features that defined the P6" then you have to say the same for Netburst. You can't however, because neburst went pipeline crazy and Merom has made major changes to the internal data-busses. It's not as much about the individual features or components, it's about the interconnection of the components and the number of major components. Merom is more like PentiumM than it is like P4, but I wouldn't say it's a direct decendant of either.
Have some Kool-Aid.
The new core microarchitecture, if you read the Ars Technica article in the previousl
Doesn't look like it does it, though.
Generally, I use sudo, even if I have a lot of commands to do. I feel it's a better idea as every command I enter is in just one log. Anything I do with "sudo" is in the system log while anything I do with su is in
Get a programmable keyboard and program a key to macro "sudo " for you or even "[Up][Home]sudo [Enter]" if you have trouble with the extra 5 characters you occasionally need. Or us an alias like s=sudo if your cheap. I recommend the keyboard. (You can even put your password on CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+F12 to make things easier)
I hope you're a troll, rather than an ignorant nay-sayer....
Nope, just ignorant. Guess I didn't do my research. I thought DSL was that distro that ran off a floppy, but I guess that was something else entirely.
They want a full gui. This is supposed to be easy to use for school children, not command line based.
The article wasn't even about him calling linux fat, it's just a comment he happened to make. All it means is they can't use any of the major GUI distros as is right now, they'll have to customize it. (Note: They had to do that anyway. The hardware specs aren't very average.)
From the first sentence:
(emphasis mine).
Further down in the article:
Google gives free wifi, or you can upgrade the service by paying Earthlink $20/month or so (hasn't been set) if you want a faster connection.
There's no excuse for not even reading the first sentence of an article that isn't slashdotted. That includes moderators.
Most likely if you sued, they would prove it isn't copyright infringement, but the DMCA is written in such a way that you are basically guilty once accused until proven innocent and nobody has the money to spend attempting a lawsuit for something like ingame accounts.
This isn't a trademark issue, though. The DMCA protects copyright. Blizzard can't use the DMCA to protect their Trademarks, so from that simple fact we shouldn't even be discussing trademark.
Regardless, this clearly falls under Nominative Use of Blizzard's trademark. Since nobody is selling a competing product using "Warcraft" in it's title, but is instead selling a product that speaks about one of Blizzard's products by name, this is absolutely ok. Nominative Use is very clearly defined for trademarks, and this is why Blizzard has tried to hit them undercopyright, because they have no case under trademark but the DMCA can be used in a "Shoot first and ask questions later" manner.