Sure, I could have spent a lot more time finding solutions to all the issues that I had. And I probably would have figured them out eventually and increased my knowledge of Linux at the same time. But there comes a point where I don't have time, and a commercial solution becomes much more attractive. I would have loved to have the OSS solution in place. And in the future, when I would really want some of the MythTV-only features (like one machine doing the recording/storage, and as many front-end devices as I'd like) I'll probably come back and take another look at it.
I fully sympathise with your point of view, but here's something to keep in mind. The time and effort you invest into learning most anything on a *nix system will keep you in good stead for years to come. Moreover, that knowledge is often transferrable to other platforms or other environments, and will ultimately expand your understand of computing in general. I'd bet my last dollar that, by contrast, the sum knowledge of most Windows users, including those who have been using it since the DOS days, is a long list of trivia concerning the interface and the registry. And for those who expanded their horizons, perhaps some VB scripting.;-)
It's like the old adage: "Linux is only free if your time isn't worth anything."
Yeah, but you get back everything you put into it. And more. A better adage would be: "Hard to learn, but easy to use."
The hydrogen economy was an idea dreamed up by those with a vested interest to divert attention and money away from more promising and immediate technologies which compete with their own investments. Still, the government got to spend lots of money.
Hydrogen, or the "hydrogen economy" has been discussed and researched for years. The reason for the "advantages of hydrogen [now being] praised by journalists" is quite simply that President Bush made the subject part of one of his speeches not too long ago, and nothing to do with any recent breakthroughs on the technology, or any groundswell of public opinion in favour of it, or anything else that has a basis in the real world. The world of politics, notwithstanding.
Granted, the Office of the President is a bully pulpit, and what the Pres has to say can often carry a lot of weight, but, c'mon. The fact that journalists and others are taking their cues on a subject from a guy who has trouble forming sentences, is intellectually disinterested and proud of the fact that he doesn't read, comes from a family with a long history of ties to oil, and surrounds himself with people who similarly have a long history of ties to oil, renders the entire subject a red herring. In fact, the closes the Bush administration has come to any semblance of an energy policy was Cheney's closed-door meetings with members of the oil industry.
It's entirely possible that Bush's hydrogen speech may, inadvertently, spur research and development in hydrogen, but I'd be more inclined to believe that the subject will fall off the pages of newspapers when his term ends. At that point, we'll be looking to the new administration to take initiatives in purusing alternative energy technologies. Hopefully, those initiatives will include something more than a grand speech and tax benefits for oil and coal. Hell, we may even get a real energy policy.
In what alternate reality is Microsoft struggling for sales? It sure as heck doesn't look like this reality: MSFT: Key Statistics
In that reality of everday commerce where investors insist on increasing growth. From the linky, both revenue and earnings are a bit over 10%. Sounds fine, right? Newspapers consistently do about the same (going back as far as you want), but their investors are screaming for cost-cutting, and the general public thinks they're all in the toilet and about to go out of business.
If Microsoft, or any other company, doesn't keep pushing up the numbers of what they bring in, investors slowly move away. The more investors that leave, the more the stock goes down. The more the stock goes down, the number of investors leaving increases.
I'm waiting for Microsoft Research to come up with an elegant component
architecture that encourages code reuse, reliability and portability with
a simple interface that allows even novice users to write simple programs,
and where the focus is on data in human readable format with simple input
and output formats, and where everything is considered a tool, and there's
lots and lots of them.
Seriously, can someone point to something tangible and put into use that's
come out of Microsoft Research? The only thing that comes to my mind is
netscan, which, while
interesting, is put to use only by usenet trolls. For all their billions, and their talent, we should be trembling in anticipation of The Next Big Thing. What we do see, on the other hand, shows up on Slashdot for the audience to have fun with.
FreeBSD-6.2 was the closest I got... If I pull out my videocard and use the onboard, it actually resumes successfully. Though the onboard video (Savag) really blows, and I haven't yet found any version of X.org that doesn't regularly crash when using that particular driver. And both the onboard nic, and my SBlive card stop working, and I have to manually reload the kernel module every time I resume... And with all of those addeniums, that's the closest I've ever gotten to getting Suspend to work (and being forced to use the onboard video is a complete show-stopper). In fact, the latest snapshot of 7.0 was actually a downgrade, and wouldn't resume from S3 at all.
Running 6.1 on several different hardware configurations and two different laptops (Thinkpad and a Toshiba). Suspend (S3) works as expected.
Maybe the lesson here is to choose your hardware more carefully? I can't comment on your existing hardware, but it's worth reminding the kids that crap hardware was probably designed to work OK with Windows. Anywhere else, the user should not expect the hardware to work, either because a) no one wanted to bother with writing a driver for it; or b) the hardware simply can't be made to work (read Winmodems). The fact that some hardware does work (or work with kludges) should be considered an accident.
As a side note, it looks like you haven't looked at/etc/rc.suspend and/etc/rc.resume. No need to manually do anything (loading kernel modules, included), when everything is scriptable with little fuss.
Jon Camfield, a writer for OLPC News and master's degree candidate in the International Science and Technology Program at George Washington University, says that once maintenance, training, Internet connectivity, and other factors are taken into account, the actual cost of each laptop rises to more than $970. This, he says, doesn't even take in to account the additional costs associated with theft, loss, or accidental damage.
To extend the reasoning, we shouldn't give food to the poor, because the cost of kitchen cabinets, cookbooks, culinary training, pots and pans, and refrigeration hasn't been adequately factored in or demonstrated as being cost-effective in a real-world test case.
We shouldn't give away free books because the cost of opthalmologists and optometrists haven't been considered, let alone the requisite infrastructure of bookshelves, bookmarks and tables and chairs and reading lamps. Also, the health risks of children carrying heavy loads to and from schools, and the economic livelihoods of book publishers may also be adversely impacted.
It's easy to say something won't work, I guess. On the other hand, I wonder wherein lies the motivation for so many people to go to so much trouble to crush something that offers nothing but endless possibilites. It's fashionable to be a cynic, but when it comes to kids, that kind of thinking should be left at the door.
I'm probably going to get all sorts of dictionary quotes but last time I checked, standard is a by-word for Norm.
You make the same mistake that Creationists make when they disingenuously use the term "theory" in its colloquial sense instead of its scientific meaning. The unfortunate effect is that the layman doesn't notice when the terms of the conversation have been redefined and wonders what the fuss is all about.
As an end user, you may not be aware of the importants of standards, or have even stopped to consider to what extent they affect your life, but consider this: most everything around you has probably been built to specification by some engineer or designer working from some standard. That's why cars drive on the same side of the road, on roads of set widths and grades, why your plumbing fits together, why you can plug a radio into an electrical outlet and can expect to get reception, and why the intarweb works the way it does. You simply can't design, build or code something without someplace from which to start and have it make sense or be functional for anyone but you. Document standards may be less tangible, but no less important.
I personally love to get away from my email at any cost.
And I'd like to get away away these people altogether. Don't know which is worse, reading emailfrom Exchange users, or reading email from people using these devices.
There are known emails and unknown emails, and those divide into the known unknown emails and the unknown unknown emails. THOSE are the ones you've got to watch out for.
Technically, we do not know that the email was *lost*, nor can we ever know.
Seeing a black sheep in the field does not prove that every sheep is black, nor that there is at least one black sheep. All you can prove is that there is at least one sheep that is black on at least one side.
Here's a hint. TFA refers to a civil case. Criminal cases are treated separately, sort of like winning a divorce case doesn't mean you get the kids; typically, you have to slug it all over again in a custody case.
On the other hand, using the above definition, it's an open question as to why this guy is still playing golf after he won his criminal case, but subsequently lost his civil case.
I think there was a 60 Minutes story on this back about a year ago, but you'd think I could find it? The following link should be good enough.
Called the Cooper Sling. Kind of interesting. At the time of the story, the military was apparently "still investigating" how well it worked, even soldiers were already buying them themselves.
Personally I would prefer a PIX over a linux firewall.
Well, if you can afford it, and don't mind learning IOS, great. Reading the replies thus far, it seems the home-user would prefer something else, although that something else seems to include everything but the kitchen sink.
Maybe it's me, but my idea of firewall is something that I manage over a serial cable that isn't doing anything else but handling traffic, and perhaps logging to an external box. A web server, DNS, DHCP, ClamAV, SquidGuard, etc. etc. etc., might be handy, but those are standard network services and belong elsewhere.
Seems like a good enough book, though. My vote is still with pf on a *BSD system. The pf FAQ is as well-written as any book, and the examples provided should allow even the novice user to be up and running in minutes. Pick up a Soekris box and Bob's yer uncle.
It's funny how people can take offense to replies to a communual bulletin board.
No offense whatsoever. I hope there was none taken.
I can see where you find it annoying the the above post is not formated into paragraphs, but really... is it that hard to read[?]
Perhaps it isn't hard to read, but imposing a logical structure on what one writes helps the reader to make sense of what he or she is reading, doncha think? Given that this is a written medium, it wouldn't hurt for those participating to make at least a minimal effort to format, spell-check, preview, etc. their posts, and not use up everybody's not-so-communal screen real estate unecessarily.
The Wiki article should be a good read for anybody.
Funny ha ha, yes, but has anyone noticed that many science-fiction movies of recent years have included as a plot device one of the characters embedded with some sort of implant (in the brain, under the skin, etc.) or added to some common item (clothing, watch, pen, etc.) that was carried around? I recently watched Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate on cable and it occurred to me that such a scenario doesn't have to involve a conspiracy of the highest order to be successful or involve a high-concept goal; unwitting or passive acceptance would work just fine, and the goal can be mundane but similarly insidious.
My guess is that monitoring technologies in various forms will increasingly become part of our daily lives. RFID chips, for example, seem destined to be everywhere, and while it's up to each of us to be as vigilant as the article's poster, the future will play out as a constant game of catch-up and workarounds for the select few in the know. Computers are part of our daily lives but knowledge of them is superficial at best. Should we expect the average person to have an inkling of how other technologies that come in smaller packages work?
There are lots of desert areas that I'm sure could be used for energy generation, at least it would be better than polluting our way to global death.
Exactly!
We need to stop polluting our environment and cure ourselves, once and for all, of our addiction to oil, and remove all the social and geopolitical problems that it causes. I propose we set up a solar infrastructure somewhere in the world where there's lots of empty desert, and have some big company build it for us because every knows private industry can always do things cheaper and more efficiently than some bloated government bureaucracy.
Maybe we can do this somewhere in the Middle East and... oh, wait...
Whatever I might think of the technical and design features of MS software it does get the job done not to mention it's extreme ubiquity means that knowing how to use windows is a more useful skill than knowing how to use some random other interface.
So you're suggesting that the under-developed world should similarly spawn generations of clueless lusers who "know" the interface (to the degree any interface today is substantively different from another) and measure their knowledge in terms of how fast they can can click and point, or memorising what, by default, is listed on the menus?
Hopefully more companies start taking a long term view of things and donating their products to the third world to prepare for when they become consumers.
Indeed. So the goal of the potent learning tool [designed so that] the emerging world can leapfrog decades of development--immediately transforming the content and quality of their children's learning is to enable them to become consumers? Dunno about you, but I tend to be optimistic when it comes to kids, and trust in the belief that, given the chance, they could grow up to become anything. My guess is that if you asked a randomly-selected child targetted by this program what they want to be when they grow up, they might say something like astronaut, or scientist. Aspiring to become an office drone, or a consumer, happens only at a later age, when you've forgotten your own potential or settled for something less.
Sorry to sound so critical, but your argument has taken Teach a Man to Fish, and reduced it to Teach a Man to Recognise a Fish, and then reduced even further to Teach a Man How to Buy a Fish with his Credit Card. Computers are an increasingly large part of our daily lives. Maybe we should be encouraging people to actually learn something about them and the world they're creating around us, to say nothing of what else is freely available? Or at least give them the opportunity.
As for the article, I'm not surprised, but that doesn't mean I'm any less disturbed by a monopoly with a living history of crushing anything and everything that threatens its bottom line becoming involved with a project that offers freedom and knowledge. Then, again, that monopoly is chaired by a philanthropist, so now worries, right?
No, they haven't! Most businesses have been using MS Word for one decade -- before that, they used WordPerfect. They actually switched due to a large effort on Microsoft's part to make Word read WordPerfect's format really well, while also being better software than WordPerfect. Software using OpenDocument could do the same thing, especially since it's actually a standard.
Actually, it's arguably less than that. The changeover started to happen around the time Win95 was introduced and accelerated as it became widespread, but many large corporations held off for several years. I wouldn't be surprised if any number of firms (particularly law firms) are still using WP.
Companies have switched office software before; they can do so again.
The fact that that got modded up is proof that slashdot is in the the throes of groupthink. I don't run windows, I use Linux at work. I'm not a "microsoft shill" but the groupthink on this site is getting REALLY old. Want a story accepted? Just go on a psuedo-intellectual rant that contains the words "open source", bash Microsoft, or mention the RIAA. Guess what, the world of technology is MUCH wider than that, and most of the stories on slashdot have little to no real consequence. But stories of real consequence rarely to never actually get discussed at slashdot because they don't conform to the groupthink.
Pop Quiz.
Which of the following is an example of Group Think.
a) The Irish like to drink; b) Black people can dance; c) German automobiles are well engineered; or d) Microsoft has issues.
Bitching and moaning about Microsoft may be a favourite (and legitimate, IMHO) pasttime on Slashdot (it is called/. and not \.), but I think you'd be hard pressed to categorise the behaviour as Group Think. Microsoft is a big target, and an easy target. Their user base is large enough that any arbitrarily selected opinion will be shared by a large number. Put another way, there's a decade worth of jokes out there. So laugh. They're funny, even if we've heard them a few times.
As for the validity or accuracy of certain statements, well, this is Slashdot, innit? The Completely Wrong, the Vaguely Wrong and the Ill-informed have all been known to share the page with the Interesting, Informative, and Insightful. The moderation system might sort things out or it might not, but reading too much into all this is like looking for conspiracies where none exist. It's like being a Republican in power and finding yourself offended that the press dares to question or criticise, or wondering why people just like to throw rocks once in a while.
Recently, I was trying to chat up a very attractive girl. I mentioned in our harried conversation (she was at work) that I enjoyed reading but hadn't been to the bookstore in ages, blah blah. She told me that she, too, loved to read, and promised to bring in some of her favourites for me. Great, I thought! This could be the start of something interesting.
A few days later I stop in to see her and she smiles and points to a small bag 'o books in the corner. How sweet, right? Well, inside the bag were 4 were Dan Brown novels. Cervantes I wasn't expecting, but Dan Brown? I tried reading one of them (maybe I was wrong about him), but the absence of any writing talent in combination with an absurd plot reminded so much of high school that all I could was groan and put the book back in the bag with the others.
Haven't been back to see her since. It's been a month, but I wonder whether that's not long enough.
I thought that he was just using the wonderful British colloquial phrase for 'thanks', oh and no I didn't mod him.
Even funnier is that anyone accustomed to using tar (dump, instead of tar, gets my vote) isn't in the habit of performing "system recovery" in the sense that the question was originally posed, and there is no "need-to-have-software" that isn't already available.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, I could have spent a lot more time finding solutions to all the issues that I had. And I probably would have figured them out eventually and increased my knowledge of Linux at the same time. But there comes a point where I don't have time, and a commercial solution becomes much more attractive. I would have loved to have the OSS solution in place. And in the future, when I would really want some of the MythTV-only features (like one machine doing the recording/storage, and as many front-end devices as I'd like) I'll probably come back and take another look at it.
;-)
I fully sympathise with your point of view, but here's something to keep in mind. The time and effort you invest into learning most anything on a *nix system will keep you in good stead for years to come. Moreover, that knowledge is often transferrable to other platforms or other environments, and will ultimately expand your understand of computing in general. I'd bet my last dollar that, by contrast, the sum knowledge of most Windows users, including those who have been using it since the DOS days, is a long list of trivia concerning the interface and the registry. And for those who expanded their horizons, perhaps some VB scripting.
It's like the old adage: "Linux is only free if your time isn't worth anything."
Yeah, but you get back everything you put into it. And more. A better adage would be: "Hard to learn, but easy to use."
Enjoy.
Top Ten Reasons For Being a Serb
The hydrogen economy was an idea dreamed up by those with a vested interest to divert attention and money away from more promising and immediate technologies which compete with their own investments. Still, the government got to spend lots of money.
Hydrogen, or the "hydrogen economy" has been discussed and researched for years. The reason for the "advantages of hydrogen [now being] praised by journalists" is quite simply that President Bush made the subject part of one of his speeches not too long ago, and nothing to do with any recent breakthroughs on the technology, or any groundswell of public opinion in favour of it, or anything else that has a basis in the real world. The world of politics, notwithstanding.
Granted, the Office of the President is a bully pulpit, and what the Pres has to say can often carry a lot of weight, but, c'mon. The fact that journalists and others are taking their cues on a subject from a guy who has trouble forming sentences, is intellectually disinterested and proud of the fact that he doesn't read, comes from a family with a long history of ties to oil, and surrounds himself with people who similarly have a long history of ties to oil, renders the entire subject a red herring. In fact, the closes the Bush administration has come to any semblance of an energy policy was Cheney's closed-door meetings with members of the oil industry.
It's entirely possible that Bush's hydrogen speech may, inadvertently, spur research and development in hydrogen, but I'd be more inclined to believe that the subject will fall off the pages of newspapers when his term ends. At that point, we'll be looking to the new administration to take initiatives in purusing alternative energy technologies. Hopefully, those initiatives will include something more than a grand speech and tax benefits for oil and coal. Hell, we may even get a real energy policy.
People are lazy. People are stupid. People do stupid and lazy things.
...
That about covers it.
You know
Nah, never mind.
In what alternate reality is Microsoft struggling for sales? It sure as heck doesn't look like this reality: MSFT: Key Statistics
In that reality of everday commerce where investors insist on increasing growth. From the linky, both revenue and earnings are a bit over 10%. Sounds fine, right? Newspapers consistently do about the same (going back as far as you want), but their investors are screaming for cost-cutting, and the general public thinks they're all in the toilet and about to go out of business.
If Microsoft, or any other company, doesn't keep pushing up the numbers of what they bring in, investors slowly move away. The more investors that leave, the more the stock goes down. The more the stock goes down, the number of investors leaving increases.
I'm waiting for Microsoft Research to come up with an elegant component architecture that encourages code reuse, reliability and portability with a simple interface that allows even novice users to write simple programs, and where the focus is on data in human readable format with simple input and output formats, and where everything is considered a tool, and there's lots and lots of them.
Oh, wait ...
Seriously, can someone point to something tangible and put into use that's come out of Microsoft Research? The only thing that comes to my mind is netscan, which, while interesting, is put to use only by usenet trolls. For all their billions, and their talent, we should be trembling in anticipation of The Next Big Thing. What we do see, on the other hand, shows up on Slashdot for the audience to have fun with.
FreeBSD-6.2 was the closest I got... If I pull out my videocard and use the onboard, it actually resumes successfully. Though the onboard video (Savag) really blows, and I haven't yet found any version of X.org that doesn't regularly crash when using that particular driver. And both the onboard nic, and my SBlive card stop working, and I have to manually reload the kernel module every time I resume... And with all of those addeniums, that's the closest I've ever gotten to getting Suspend to work (and being forced to use the onboard video is a complete show-stopper). In fact, the latest snapshot of 7.0 was actually a downgrade, and wouldn't resume from S3 at all.
/etc/rc.suspend and /etc/rc.resume. No need to manually do anything (loading kernel modules, included), when everything is scriptable with little fuss.
Running 6.1 on several different hardware configurations and two different laptops (Thinkpad and a Toshiba). Suspend (S3) works as expected.
Maybe the lesson here is to choose your hardware more carefully? I can't comment on your existing hardware, but it's worth reminding the kids that crap hardware was probably designed to work OK with Windows. Anywhere else, the user should not expect the hardware to work, either because a) no one wanted to bother with writing a driver for it; or b) the hardware simply can't be made to work (read Winmodems). The fact that some hardware does work (or work with kludges) should be considered an accident.
As a side note, it looks like you haven't looked at
Jon Camfield, a writer for OLPC News and master's degree candidate in the International Science and Technology Program at George Washington University, says that once maintenance, training, Internet connectivity, and other factors are taken into account, the actual cost of each laptop rises to more than $970. This, he says, doesn't even take in to account the additional costs associated with theft, loss, or accidental damage.
To extend the reasoning, we shouldn't give food to the poor, because the cost of kitchen cabinets, cookbooks, culinary training, pots and pans, and refrigeration hasn't been adequately factored in or demonstrated as being cost-effective in a real-world test case.
We shouldn't give away free books because the cost of opthalmologists and optometrists haven't been considered, let alone the requisite infrastructure of bookshelves, bookmarks and tables and chairs and reading lamps. Also, the health risks of children carrying heavy loads to and from schools, and the economic livelihoods of book publishers may also be adversely impacted.
It's easy to say something won't work, I guess. On the other hand, I wonder wherein lies the motivation for so many people to go to so much trouble to crush something that offers nothing but endless possibilites. It's fashionable to be a cynic, but when it comes to kids, that kind of thinking should be left at the door.
I'm probably going to get all sorts of dictionary quotes but last time I checked, standard is a by-word for Norm.
You make the same mistake that Creationists make when they disingenuously use the term "theory" in its colloquial sense instead of its scientific meaning. The unfortunate effect is that the layman doesn't notice when the terms of the conversation have been redefined and wonders what the fuss is all about.
As an end user, you may not be aware of the importants of standards, or have even stopped to consider to what extent they affect your life, but consider this: most everything around you has probably been built to specification by some engineer or designer working from some standard. That's why cars drive on the same side of the road, on roads of set widths and grades, why your plumbing fits together, why you can plug a radio into an electrical outlet and can expect to get reception, and why the intarweb works the way it does. You simply can't design, build or code something without someplace from which to start and have it make sense or be functional for anyone but you. Document standards may be less tangible, but no less important.
There are known emails and unknown emails, and those divide into the known unknown emails and the unknown unknown emails. THOSE are the ones you've got to watch out for.
Sniff.
Pure poetry.
Why not use dilithium, instead?
Technically, we do not know that the email was *lost*, nor can we ever know.
Seeing a black sheep in the field does not prove that every sheep is black, nor that there is at least one black sheep. All you can prove is that there is at least one sheep that is black on at least one side.
Donald Rumsfeld, is that you?
"Normal" people go to jail.....
Here's a hint. TFA refers to a civil case. Criminal cases are treated separately, sort of like winning a divorce case doesn't mean you get the kids; typically, you have to slug it all over again in a custody case.
Criminal law (also known as penal law) is the body of statutory and common law that deals with crime and the legal punishment of criminal offenses. There are four theories of criminal justice: punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. It is believed that imposing sanctions for the crime, society can achieve justice and a peaceable social order. This differs from civil law in that civil actions are disputes between two parties that are not of significant public concern.
On the other hand, using the above definition, it's an open question as to why this guy is still playing golf after he won his criminal case, but subsequently lost his civil case.
I think there was a 60 Minutes story on this back about a year ago, but you'd think I could find it? The following link should be good enough.
Called the Cooper Sling. Kind of interesting. At the time of the story, the military was apparently "still investigating" how well it worked, even soldiers were already buying them themselves.
Personally I would prefer a PIX over a linux firewall.
Well, if you can afford it, and don't mind learning IOS, great. Reading the replies thus far, it seems the home-user would prefer something else, although that something else seems to include everything but the kitchen sink.
Maybe it's me, but my idea of firewall is something that I manage over a serial cable that isn't doing anything else but handling traffic, and perhaps logging to an external box. A web server, DNS, DHCP, ClamAV, SquidGuard, etc. etc. etc., might be handy, but those are standard network services and belong elsewhere.
Seems like a good enough book, though. My vote is still with pf on a *BSD system. The pf FAQ is as well-written as any book, and the examples provided should allow even the novice user to be up and running in minutes. Pick up a Soekris box and Bob's yer uncle.
It's funny how people can take offense to replies to a communual bulletin board.
No offense whatsoever. I hope there was none taken.
I can see where you find it annoying the the above post is not formated into paragraphs, but really... is it that hard to read[?]
Perhaps it isn't hard to read, but imposing a logical structure on what one writes helps the reader to make sense of what he or she is reading, doncha think? Given that this is a written medium, it wouldn't hurt for those participating to make at least a minimal effort to format, spell-check, preview, etc. their posts, and not use up everybody's not-so-communal screen real estate unecessarily.
The Wiki article should be a good read for anybody.
This might help, or at least be informative
Just wrap the card in Tin foil.
Funny ha ha, yes, but has anyone noticed that many science-fiction movies of recent years have included as a plot device one of the characters embedded with some sort of implant (in the brain, under the skin, etc.) or added to some common item (clothing, watch, pen, etc.) that was carried around? I recently watched Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate on cable and it occurred to me that such a scenario doesn't have to involve a conspiracy of the highest order to be successful or involve a high-concept goal; unwitting or passive acceptance would work just fine, and the goal can be mundane but similarly insidious.
My guess is that monitoring technologies in various forms will increasingly become part of our daily lives. RFID chips, for example, seem destined to be everywhere, and while it's up to each of us to be as vigilant as the article's poster, the future will play out as a constant game of catch-up and workarounds for the select few in the know. Computers are part of our daily lives but knowledge of them is superficial at best. Should we expect the average person to have an inkling of how other technologies that come in smaller packages work?
Have you scanned yourself, lately?
There are lots of desert areas that I'm sure could be used for energy generation, at least it would be better than polluting our way to global death.
... oh, wait ...
Exactly!
We need to stop polluting our environment and cure ourselves, once and for all, of our addiction to oil, and remove all the social and geopolitical problems that it causes. I propose we set up a solar infrastructure somewhere in the world where there's lots of empty desert, and have some big company build it for us because every knows private industry can always do things cheaper and more efficiently than some bloated government bureaucracy.
Maybe we can do this somewhere in the Middle East and
Whatever I might think of the technical and design features of MS software it does get the job done not to mention it's extreme ubiquity means that knowing how to use windows is a more useful skill than knowing how to use some random other interface.
So you're suggesting that the under-developed world should similarly spawn generations of clueless lusers who "know" the interface (to the degree any interface today is substantively different from another) and measure their knowledge in terms of how fast they can can click and point, or memorising what, by default, is listed on the menus?
Hopefully more companies start taking a long term view of things and donating their products to the third world to prepare for when they become consumers.
Indeed. So the goal of the potent learning tool [designed so that] the emerging world can leapfrog decades of development--immediately transforming the content and quality of their children's learning is to enable them to become consumers? Dunno about you, but I tend to be optimistic when it comes to kids, and trust in the belief that, given the chance, they could grow up to become anything. My guess is that if you asked a randomly-selected child targetted by this program what they want to be when they grow up, they might say something like astronaut, or scientist. Aspiring to become an office drone, or a consumer, happens only at a later age, when you've forgotten your own potential or settled for something less.
Sorry to sound so critical, but your argument has taken Teach a Man to Fish, and reduced it to Teach a Man to Recognise a Fish, and then reduced even further to Teach a Man How to Buy a Fish with his Credit Card. Computers are an increasingly large part of our daily lives. Maybe we should be encouraging people to actually learn something about them and the world they're creating around us, to say nothing of what else is freely available? Or at least give them the opportunity.
As for the article, I'm not surprised, but that doesn't mean I'm any less disturbed by a monopoly with a living history of crushing anything and everything that threatens its bottom line becoming involved with a project that offers freedom and knowledge. Then, again, that monopoly is chaired by a philanthropist, so now worries, right?
No, they haven't! Most businesses have been using MS Word for one decade -- before that, they used WordPerfect. They actually switched due to a large effort on Microsoft's part to make Word read WordPerfect's format really well, while also being better software than WordPerfect. Software using OpenDocument could do the same thing, especially since it's actually a standard.
Actually, it's arguably less than that. The changeover started to happen around the time Win95 was introduced and accelerated as it became widespread, but many large corporations held off for several years. I wouldn't be surprised if any number of firms (particularly law firms) are still using WP.
Companies have switched office software before; they can do so again.
Let's hope so.
The fact that that got modded up is proof that slashdot is in the the throes of groupthink. I don't run windows, I use Linux at work. I'm not a "microsoft shill" but the groupthink on this site is getting REALLY old. Want a story accepted? Just go on a psuedo-intellectual rant that contains the words "open source", bash Microsoft, or mention the RIAA. Guess what, the world of technology is MUCH wider than that, and most of the stories on slashdot have little to no real consequence. But stories of real consequence rarely to never actually get discussed at slashdot because they don't conform to the groupthink.
/. and not \.), but I think you'd be hard pressed to categorise the behaviour as Group Think. Microsoft is a big target, and an easy target. Their user base is large enough that any arbitrarily selected opinion will be shared by a large number. Put another way, there's a decade worth of jokes out there. So laugh. They're funny, even if we've heard them a few times.
Pop Quiz.
Which of the following is an example of Group Think.
a) The Irish like to drink;
b) Black people can dance;
c) German automobiles are well engineered; or
d) Microsoft has issues.
Bitching and moaning about Microsoft may be a favourite (and legitimate, IMHO) pasttime on Slashdot (it is called
As for the validity or accuracy of certain statements, well, this is Slashdot, innit? The Completely Wrong, the Vaguely Wrong and the Ill-informed have all been known to share the page with the Interesting, Informative, and Insightful. The moderation system might sort things out or it might not, but reading too much into all this is like looking for conspiracies where none exist. It's like being a Republican in power and finding yourself offended that the press dares to question or criticise, or wondering why people just like to throw rocks once in a while.
He has good novels?
LOL. True story:
Recently, I was trying to chat up a very attractive girl. I mentioned in our harried conversation (she was at work) that I enjoyed reading but hadn't been to the bookstore in ages, blah blah. She told me that she, too, loved to read, and promised to bring in some of her favourites for me. Great, I thought! This could be the start of something interesting.
A few days later I stop in to see her and she smiles and points to a small bag 'o books in the corner. How sweet, right? Well, inside the bag were 4 were Dan Brown novels. Cervantes I wasn't expecting, but Dan Brown? I tried reading one of them (maybe I was wrong about him), but the absence of any writing talent in combination with an absurd plot reminded so much of high school that all I could was groan and put the book back in the bag with the others.
Haven't been back to see her since. It's been a month, but I wonder whether that's not long enough.
I thought that he was just using the wonderful British colloquial phrase for 'thanks', oh and no I didn't mod him.
Even funnier is that anyone accustomed to using tar (dump, instead of tar, gets my vote) isn't in the habit of performing "system recovery" in the sense that the question was originally posed, and there is no "need-to-have-software" that isn't already available.