Cell phones have the same effect on some folks. They appear to be oblivious to anybody else around them and start the most inane loud conversations obligatorily involving anybody within earshot.
Some people seem to take pleasure in talking to someone on the phone around complete strangers. They blather on, and sometimes if you stare at them they'll give you a little look that says, "Yeah, I'm so cool - you are helpless but to listen to me! Aren't I fascinating?"
Once I was in a bus from San Francisco airport on the way to a downtown hotel for a SANS. The guy in the seat behind me went on and on to his victim on the other end of the phone about how long the bus was taking. We got stuck in traffic, and he kept going on. He almost lost his life, the first victim of suffocation by cell phone.
My wife was along for the trip. She saved his life.
Everyone is guilty of small thinking, based on their point of view. Many people, myself included, let their emotions get in the way of the next logical step to achieving their goals. It's sometimes easy to mistake emotion for principle.
Many Windows users don't know or care that they're using Windows. They use Word, Excel, etc., which they know and care about because they had to learn how to use the programs at some point. The Internet, for many, is what you get from Internet Explorer or AOL.
They don't even know they paid for Windows. It just came with their computer - it was free-as-in-buy-one-get-one-free.
The great masses of folks don't know or care about using an operating system. In many ways, they shouldn't have to know or care.
What they do know is their interface to the operating system, which is the application. They sometimes know their desktop metaphor.
If you can get people using Mozilla instead of IE, get them using OO.o instead of MS Office, and then let them see KDE versus the bland Windows desktop, getting them to switch to Linux (or *BSD, or whatever) is a downhill battle. Especially if it's upgrade time and they have to pay for a new version of Windows.
Our feelings say not to give Microsoft anything - they're bad and will use it against us. Our principles say information wants to be Free, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. May as well play along.
So if your goal is to advance the course of Free software, stick to your principles and let it be Free. Let it go where it wants to go. If it's better than its proprietary counterpart, people will notice.
Ask yourself this: do I really think Microsoft will be helped or hurt by the presence of KDE on Windows? Will FOSS or proprietary software be helped more?
Here's a clue: has Microsoft offered to help with the port?
Well, sort of: IMAP mail readers only download the headers of messages until you select them. If you just click the Junk or Spam icon for those, away they go. Same thing with autodetected spam, of course.
Or you could just turn off HTML in email. I don't see the point of rich text in an email. At least, I've never gotten an HTML email I thought was improved by its prettied-up format or the convenience of a clickable link./. posts, OTOH, are often improved by HTML. I'm not sure why.
before I read the Fine Web Page in Google's cache, was a logic board with individual gates housed on standard lego pieces. You'd build your circuit by placing the lego pieces on a lego board.
I'm not sure how the traces between the pieces would work, but legoCAD would be fun, like those 10-in-1 electronics kits from Radio Slack.
Then it's flat top, dirty bob, coppin' a feel
Grubbin' on the livin' room floor (so sore)
Yeah, they send you off to college, try to gain a little knowledge,
But all you want to do is learn how to score
Some things never change. The rest of that is here
With every user at MS an Administrator of their own machine, it's no wonder that it's so hard to implement any other security model using Windows.
I hope some of those users are smart enough to give themselves a luser account and run under it... but wait, that doesn't work well in an enterprise using Active Directory, does it?
Maybe they have an enforced policy of using anti-spyware and anti-virus software... but Microsoft doesn't make any.
Maybe they have extensive training classes with stock options going to those who don't spread viruses (sort of like those "accident free days" campaigns you see at some companies). But wait, no one wants their stock any more...
Oh well, they're Microsoft -- they must know what they're doing.
Our (and Cornell's) affiliated hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian,
has a significantly larger leased ATM infrastructure at DS-3 and OC-3 rates interconnecting about a dozen
buildings. We were separately and collectively paying a lot for bandwidth in Manhattan.
In rural Illinois we just run cable up the Interstate or build another series of attractive microwave towers when bandwidth gets short.
The problems of running a network, and a university for that matter, in a metropolis such as New York or Chicago are completely different. We have lots of cheap space but very little infrastructure, while they have too much infrastructure and hardly any space.
We just dig a hole and lay cable; in NYC all the holes have already been taken.
Why more dimensions are better
on
3D User Interfaces
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's not an either-or situation: X can be made to look 3D.
I'd like an X window manager that let me grab the edge of a window and turn it, so it looked like it was facing to the left, right, up, or down, depending on which direction I turned it. You would still see the window, and it would still respond to events, but it would look compressed in the dimension you pushed it.
Another 3D-like effect would be to move "away" from a group of windows, as zooming out to 10,000 feet, so the group of running apps looked like an icon. You could have little clusters of apps running in various spots, some close, some far away. Think of it as a unified destop switcher. There are lots of possibilities there.
I'm better at the vision thing than the doing thing, unfortunately.
I have the ubiquitous 1.3Mp, compact-flash, USB 1.0 model. I got it on sale a couple of years ago, and take pictures maybe two or three times a year, usually in a batch of 50 or so.
Until someone can tell me why I should upgrade when my simple needs are already met, I'll stick with the devil I know.
Re:MSRP doesn't matter
on
Router Wars
·
· Score: 1
Obviously high-end routers aren't sold for MSRP, except by accident. I'm interested in the difference between MSRP and street price, and between yesterday's prices and today's.
Computing the price delta and extrapolating to the slope of its curve, then using that in conjunction with market share statistics gives a reasonable construction for where a product is going.
A little introverted on the details
on
Router Wars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The JUNOS software that ran on Juniper routers was more reliant than some of the problems with Cisco's Internet Operating System (IOS) software.
Read I did that sentence four times and then afterwards I cannot image the idea of what it means to be it.
(I think I know what he meant, that because of problems with IOS, JUNOS was more reliable, but I'm not in tune with the router market so I can't be sure. But to continue, in English:)
The analysis of market gains and new product comparisons is useless without prices: what are the MSRP and street prices for the various models? Where do the prices look like they're going for the various models? What a manufacturer is doing with its prices would tell me a lot about their strategy and how competitive they really think their products are.
The intent of copyright is to encourage progress in the arts and sciences by extending to creators of a work the right to control its distribution. This is no different today than it was in times past.
There was no way to physically control copying of a book 200 years ago. No one really cared whether their copy of a book was from the rightful publisher, unless the spelling were bad or something.
Your logic is accurate, but it misses the point completely because you're fighting a straw argument. Copyright is not intended merely to pay people for work they've created. It's intended encourage people to produce works in the hopes that they may profit, and to support them while they are producing more.
In the classic example, Daniel Webster supported his family for 20 years on the proceeds from his speller while he compiled his famous dictionary. In publishing a dictionary, he inspired and aided countless writers and publishers. Probably you and I would not be reading/. were it not for those two works; in fact, they were so important to the early American educational system that without them we might not be reading English.
But forget money for a second and think about Free software. Suppose it were no longer against the law to copy people's creative work however you wanted. Why, you could download a bunch of source code and put your own name on it. Wow, the AC Compiler. AC Linux. AC UNIX. AC Office.Org. And so on.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what. Would *you* write something for someone else to claim? I wouldn't.
And the musicians whose songs you think you have a right to copy would quit recording and get real jobs. Authors would quit writing, sculptors would no longer sculpt, except in their spare time away from those meaningful jobs at Kroger and General Electric.
And the world would be a gray, dull, unamusing place.
Copying without due recompense eventually hurts us all.
It should also show you that there have always been nerds.
Hang in there, guys. One day you'll do something cool like take a picture of total devastation.
You'll be famous for 15 minutes, chicks will be drawn, you'll be tricked into marrying one, and then years later when she asks if you'd mind if she went out with her friends from work you can say, "Well... ok, have fun, you deserve it."
... impact windmills have upon migratory bird populations can be devastating.... unsightly...
Proving once and for all that nothing is perfect. Man has been altering ecosystems ever since we noticed we could eat the moving things, too.
If windmills kill birds in California so people can live longer in Arizona, I don't see the difficulty. The danger to birds is nothing like the danger to salmon from damming spawning streams, or even to miners from breathing coal dust.
I think you need to adjust your perspective a bit. People are more important than birds. Mechanical hazards like a big moving fan blade are much more environmentally friendly than belching smokestacks, or even than whitewater rapids turned into reservoirs.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people seem to take pleasure in talking to someone on the phone around complete strangers. They blather on, and sometimes if you stare at them they'll give you a little look that says, "Yeah, I'm so cool - you are helpless but to listen to me! Aren't I fascinating?"
Once I was in a bus from San Francisco airport on the way to a downtown hotel for a SANS. The guy in the seat behind me went on and on to his victim on the other end of the phone about how long the bus was taking. We got stuck in traffic, and he kept going on. He almost lost his life, the first victim of suffocation by cell phone.
My wife was along for the trip. She saved his life.
"Honey, have you seen my PDA?"
Everyone is guilty of small thinking, based on their point of view. Many people, myself included, let their emotions get in the way of the next logical step to achieving their goals. It's sometimes easy to mistake emotion for principle.
Many Windows users don't know or care that they're using Windows. They use Word, Excel, etc., which they know and care about because they had to learn how to use the programs at some point. The Internet, for many, is what you get from Internet Explorer or AOL.
They don't even know they paid for Windows. It just came with their computer - it was free-as-in-buy-one-get-one-free.
The great masses of folks don't know or care about using an operating system. In many ways, they shouldn't have to know or care.
What they do know is their interface to the operating system, which is the application. They sometimes know their desktop metaphor.
If you can get people using Mozilla instead of IE, get them using OO.o instead of MS Office, and then let them see KDE versus the bland Windows desktop, getting them to switch to Linux (or *BSD, or whatever) is a downhill battle. Especially if it's upgrade time and they have to pay for a new version of Windows.
Our feelings say not to give Microsoft anything - they're bad and will use it against us. Our principles say information wants to be Free, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. May as well play along.
So if your goal is to advance the course of Free software, stick to your principles and let it be Free. Let it go where it wants to go. If it's better than its proprietary counterpart, people will notice.
Ask yourself this: do I really think Microsoft will be helped or hurt by the presence of KDE on Windows? Will FOSS or proprietary software be helped more?
Here's a clue: has Microsoft offered to help with the port?
Well, sort of: IMAP mail readers only download the headers of messages until you select them. If you just click the Junk or Spam icon for those, away they go. Same thing with autodetected spam, of course.
/. posts, OTOH, are often improved by HTML. I'm not sure why.
Or you could just turn off HTML in email. I don't see the point of rich text in an email. At least, I've never gotten an HTML email I thought was improved by its prettied-up format or the convenience of a clickable link.
before I read the Fine Web Page in Google's cache, was a logic board with individual gates housed on standard lego pieces. You'd build your circuit by placing the lego pieces on a lego board.
I'm not sure how the traces between the pieces would work, but legoCAD would be fun, like those 10-in-1 electronics kits from Radio Slack.
>hat does Fujitsu make that is broken?
Hard drives that grind and blow smoke, mostly. I guess I've just always thought of them as a second-quality manufacturer.
Plus, I'm sorry, their name is just funny to say.
Fujitsu will make something that works.
>14% gain Wow, nice.
Some things never change. The rest of that is here
Thank you ... you're very kind ... thank, you, really, this is embarassing, folks ... thank you.
With every user at MS an Administrator of their own machine, it's no wonder that it's so hard to implement any other security model using Windows.
... but wait, that doesn't work well in an enterprise using Active Directory, does it?
... but Microsoft doesn't make any.
...
I hope some of those users are smart enough to give themselves a luser account and run under it
Maybe they have an enforced policy of using anti-spyware and anti-virus software
Maybe they have extensive training classes with stock options going to those who don't spread viruses (sort of like those "accident free days" campaigns you see at some companies). But wait, no one wants their stock any more
Oh well, they're Microsoft -- they must know what they're doing.
Nudge, nudge, know what I mean, say no more!
Man: Well, I mean like,... you've SLEPT, with a lady...
Squire: Yes...
Man: What's it like?
Use preview button.
In rural Illinois we just run cable up the Interstate or build another series of attractive microwave towers when bandwidth gets short.
The problems of running a network, and a university for that matter, in a metropolis such as New York or Chicago are completely different. We have lots of cheap space but very little infrastructure, while they have too much infrastructure and hardly any space.
We just dig a hole and lay cable; in NYC all the holes have already been taken.
It's not an either-or situation: X can be made to look 3D.
I'd like an X window manager that let me grab the edge of a window and turn it, so it looked like it was facing to the left, right, up, or down, depending on which direction I turned it. You would still see the window, and it would still respond to events, but it would look compressed in the dimension you pushed it.
Another 3D-like effect would be to move "away" from a group of windows, as zooming out to 10,000 feet, so the group of running apps looked like an icon. You could have little clusters of apps running in various spots, some close, some far away. Think of it as a unified destop switcher. There are lots of possibilities there.
I'm better at the vision thing than the doing thing, unfortunately.
may be the one you already own.
I have the ubiquitous 1.3Mp, compact-flash, USB 1.0 model. I got it on sale a couple of years ago, and take pictures maybe two or three times a year, usually in a batch of 50 or so.
Until someone can tell me why I should upgrade when my simple needs are already met, I'll stick with the devil I know.
Obviously high-end routers aren't sold for MSRP, except by accident. I'm interested in the difference between MSRP and street price, and between yesterday's prices and today's.
Computing the price delta and extrapolating to the slope of its curve, then using that in conjunction with market share statistics gives a reasonable construction for where a product is going.
Read I did that sentence four times and then afterwards I cannot image the idea of what it means to be it.
(I think I know what he meant, that because of problems with IOS, JUNOS was more reliable, but I'm not in tune with the router market so I can't be sure. But to continue, in English:)
The analysis of market gains and new product comparisons is useless without prices: what are the MSRP and street prices for the various models? Where do the prices look like they're going for the various models? What a manufacturer is doing with its prices would tell me a lot about their strategy and how competitive they really think their products are.
Copying hurts everyone, only just a little.
The intent of copyright is to encourage progress in the arts and sciences by extending to creators of a work the right to control its distribution. This is no different today than it was in times past.
There was no way to physically control copying of a book 200 years ago. No one really cared whether their copy of a book was from the rightful publisher, unless the spelling were bad or something.
Your logic is accurate, but it misses the point completely because you're fighting a straw argument. Copyright is not intended merely to pay people for work they've created. It's intended encourage people to produce works in the hopes that they may profit, and to support them while they are producing more.
In the classic example, Daniel Webster supported his family for 20 years on the proceeds from his speller while he compiled his famous dictionary. In publishing a dictionary, he inspired and aided countless writers and publishers. Probably you and I would not be reading /. were it not for those two works; in fact, they were so important to the early American educational system that without them we might not be reading English.
But forget money for a second and think about Free software. Suppose it were no longer against the law to copy people's creative work however you wanted. Why, you could download a bunch of source code and put your own name on it. Wow, the AC Compiler. AC Linux. AC UNIX. AC Office.Org. And so on.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what. Would *you* write something for someone else to claim? I wouldn't.
And the musicians whose songs you think you have a right to copy would quit recording and get real jobs. Authors would quit writing, sculptors would no longer sculpt, except in their spare time away from those meaningful jobs at Kroger and General Electric.
And the world would be a gray, dull, unamusing place.
Copying without due recompense eventually hurts us all.
Bears are smart, you insensitive clod!
But seriously, I view anything people do with wrenches as magical.
It's so bad that when I go to a mechanic and they ask, "So, how big an engine's in that thing?", I hold my hands about two feet apart.
>she's a pro
And we don't report a dime.
It should also show you that there have always been nerds.
... ok, have fun, you deserve it."
/.
Hang in there, guys. One day you'll do something cool like take a picture of total devastation.
You'll be famous for 15 minutes, chicks will be drawn, you'll be tricked into marrying one, and then years later when she asks if you'd mind if she went out with her friends from work you can say, "Well
Then you can be like me, free at last to read
Proving once and for all that nothing is perfect. Man has been altering ecosystems ever since we noticed we could eat the moving things, too.
If windmills kill birds in California so people can live longer in Arizona, I don't see the difficulty. The danger to birds is nothing like the danger to salmon from damming spawning streams, or even to miners from breathing coal dust.
I think you need to adjust your perspective a bit. People are more important than birds. Mechanical hazards like a big moving fan blade are much more environmentally friendly than belching smokestacks, or even than whitewater rapids turned into reservoirs.
>WW himself
Right you are. But they signed the contract >-].
I was just needing a way to solve all of my problems at once.