Fair enough, if care for you machine and keep free from malware then yes it will probalby run faster. The point though is that jonny six pack doesn't understand what a processor is let alone the concept of malware.
By giving them a really simple set of check boxes they can just look down and see if their machine _should_ be able to play the game or not. There is no need for them to learn what a MHz is or how it's defferent from MB etc etc. This could easily take some of the fear out of buying a PC.
They saved the real reason it would succeed until the end. Piles and piles of cash. M$ would all but give the console away to make sure that it succeeded and that is the reason it will do well. People will have $10 worth of anything that is free.
Perhaps the rest of the PC industry could counter this rise of the console by designing a standard PC spec for gaming. First create a few simple categories. I suggest "PC Gaming Machine 2005 Level 1, 2 and 3". In each category spec out three of four machines (eg one amd with a nvidia, one intel with nvidia, etc) built with decent components. Level 1 machines have top of the range components, level 2 is where most people will be, level 3 is entry gaming. The games publishers could just test their game against these machines specs and get a tick in the "PC Gaming Machine 2005 Level 2 Compatible" (or whatever) box.
Simple, understandable and doesn't need to cost the Earth.
Good plan. Right up to the point where they find the computer you have been hiding. While you average copper probably couldn't find his rear end with both hands I would like to think that the ones dealing specifically with computer crimes would at least figure that one out.
While I can understand why America (well some American politicians) wants to hold on to the governance of the Internet I think it's about time it was handed over to a multi-nation body (maybe the UN maybe a separate entity completely).
While the Internet was largely academic and US focused it made sense for it to be run from the US but it quite simply isn't like that any more. The Internet is world wide and some non-US countries have a huge amount of money riding on the Internet. In some cases democracy itself is partially dependent on the Internet.
There is not shame in passing the Internet over to a multi-national body. In fact America could have won quite a bit of respect from the rest of the world and shown it's maturity by handing over control with little fuss and complaint. Instead America has come across as a little child that won't let anyone else play with their toy. I am sure that most of the world would have been happy with America continuing to run the Internet as long as there was a set of procedures for them to veto unwanted changes. America could have had it's cake and eaten it.
There is one thing that is certain. The Internet will not be run by America alone for much longer. One way or another at least some of the power will be removed from American hands. The choice America has to make is simply how much power they want to keep.
There are some really good ideas there. In particular I hadn't thought of ISP DSL bundles almost forcing people to use IE. I should have as I have switched numerous such machines over to using FF.
It's certainly possible. I am just really supprised by the size of the gap. Yes America is a little more technically advanced (broadband is more widespread for instance) but I don't think that difference is great enough to account for the radically different uptake levels. Perhaps it is a cultural thing but I struggle to believe that as well since the two groups of people are more alike than they are different.
No honestly it really does. Bleed bleed bleed that's all my heart does does simply because they are unable to see beyond the bottom line.
It would seem that publishers are finally waking up to the fact that their dead tree editions aren't what everyone wants and aren't necessarly the best way to present the data. For a long while now you have been able to get scanned books but the effort of scanning them restricts the number. I can't wait for the day when we have properly searchable e-books in mass (along with a decent reader). I forsee that the effort and pain required to drag the publishing industry into the electronic age is going to be 1000 times greater than that required to drag the film and music industry into it.
...how much can we trust those figures? Not a lot I would say. In particular I find the 3* as much FireFox usage in the US compared to the UK disturbing. I would expect the two nations to have roughly the same uptake rate since they are braodly similar. I would also expect other European nations to have a slightly high uptake rate (as has been shown in other result). Perhaps the figure is absolute rather than per 1000 people or maybe there is some error in their recording which causes people browsing from unknown countries to get lumped in with America. Either way without an explanation it casts doubt, in my eye, on the validity of the results.
Simple you provide a set of guidelines, perhaps backed up by examples, that define misuse. For instance phrase it thus:
Any action that deliberately sets out to damage, render unavailable or diminish in capability any computer system.
It would be quite easy to prove that sending 3,000,000 emails to your ex-employer, especially in a short span of time, would fall foul of that law. Yes, you have to prove intent but you would have to do that anyway. Accidents wouldn't fall foul of this law but a clause for negligence could be added. The problem is that a law thus phrased would require interpretation by the jury which is something most Governments seem loath to allow them to do. The upside is that this law would be good for the foreseeable future and would probably cover most new crimes. I suppose the problem is that if we had high level laws and a true trial by jury the Govenment would rapidly lose one of it's basic functions - to make more laws.
Assuming this is you I think it might be a physical impossibility to knock-you-up in the classic sense of the phrase - unless of course you are the yellow one in the picture.
I admit that the people often seem to be inconsistent in their views and desires but that isn't an excuse to just ignore them. The Government should try and educate the people and show them all the options that they have. Fair enough they should point to the one they like the most / think is the best but that shouldn't mean they can get away with rubbishing / not talking about other options. Perhaps if this process had been gone through when the Government was first thinking about building nuclear power plants we wouldn't have built them.
Don't get me wrong I don't have anything against nuclear power per se but we knew that there would be very long term problems with storage before we built the plants. The problems were played down and brushed under the carpet no doubt while some people got very rich. Those rich people have no doubt done a bunk now with their money leaving us to pick up the tab for the disposal. There is no way I accept the argument that they thought they would be able to find a cheap solution within the life of the plant. High level waste needs containing for 10000+ years!
Personally I think we should just blast it (high level waste) into space. Glassify if seal it in a foot thick layer of toughend steel and blast the whole lot into the middle of no where. Hell you could even crash it into the moon so that you have it for the future should we ever find a use for it. Yes there are risks involved at launch time but just make a container that can survice the worst accident. It's got to be better than sticking it in a bloody huge hole in the ground and hoping it doesn't leak.
WTF. Why do we need to reduce the downlaod size of OO? 80MB is tiny for a fully featured office suite. How big is the office install? A quick search for an office torrent will show it weighing in at 1GB+ I am sure and people are happy to download that. I wouldn't be supprised if most of the 80MB is graphics and other such material. If you want it to look nice there isn't a lot you can do about that. Rather than make it a smaller download why don't they focus on making it faster and more stable. Oh and of course properly finishing the features that are already present.
Perhaps the public won't be able to bring technical expertise to teh table but they are, at the end of the day, the people that are bank rolling the project so don't you think they should have a say? Government is supposed to be answerable to the people. Yes we should give them the power to make most decisions without consulting us (the people) but large projects like this that have long term implications should include the views of the people. Much like a Government shouldn't wage war on another state without first consulting the people and providing evidence that it is necessary.
I agree. I can't help feeling this is a newspaper looking for news in something that is really quite innocent. In fact, what would they prefer? Perhaps that the public isn't consulted at all which is, after all, the opposite of what they seem to be having a go at. I'm sure that they would complain about that as well.
As totally incompetent and corrupt as the Government seem to be most of the time I think even they would draw the line at letting the WI design a nuclear waste storage facility. For sure there are problems with the current process as is evidenced by scientists and engineers leaving in droves but surely that is the news story. It's ironic that one of the later stories is about newspapers having a rough time of it. Perhaps if they produced some decent stories people would still read them.
...lever Postgres from my cold dead fingers before I give it up. Well, that or pay me to switch:o).
I don't doubt for one minute this free version of Oracle will be just as hard to maintain and use as the non-free version so why would anyone developing a small application use it over Postgres or MySQL?
I can't believe you have been modded insightful! Funny maybe. If you were meaning to point out that the punters are fully aware of the contract before they sign it then yes that is the case and that one part is similar to signing a contract with an electricity company. To draw an analogy between software production and electricity production though is just bizarre. Software production is more like clothes production - you wouldn't rent your clothes would you?
I spent a full year as a PhD student doing basically nothing but grinding up and heating mixtures of various metal oxide powders to make fuel cell components. That has got to be the most boring job ever. The lab didn't even have a window to look out of.
...not likely. There is no way on Earth they will give up this power to control the market. In fact, there is no way anyone will ever give up any power unless a) it is taken from them (usually by force) or b) they can replace it with another power that is equal or stronger. The best that we can hope for is that the law will for the most part go uninforced because it is basically unworkable or unjust.
This is obviously a Martian invasion plan. First they submit a story to/. that doesn't contain the timezone which confuses us a bit. Then they choose a time zone that plenty of people don't know (judging by the other comments). Then, and this is the one that really convinced me it's an invasion, they make sure that the conversion from the given timezone to to the ones used in Europe is as difficult as possible (most of Europe switches from daylight savings time to standard time on that night). This is a cunning ploy to keep us on the back foot while they get their ships of death in place. It should be evidence enough for any one.
To arms, the Martians are coming.
P.S. There are some dubious looking bumps in the sand on Mars. I think they might be hiding WMDs!
Slashdot Mirror
Fair enough, if care for you machine and keep free from malware then yes it will probalby run faster. The point though is that jonny six pack doesn't understand what a processor is let alone the concept of malware.
By giving them a really simple set of check boxes they can just look down and see if their machine _should_ be able to play the game or not. There is no need for them to learn what a MHz is or how it's defferent from MB etc etc. This could easily take some of the fear out of buying a PC.
They saved the real reason it would succeed until the end. Piles and piles of cash. M$ would all but give the console away to make sure that it succeeded and that is the reason it will do well. People will have $10 worth of anything that is free.
Perhaps the rest of the PC industry could counter this rise of the console by designing a standard PC spec for gaming. First create a few simple categories. I suggest "PC Gaming Machine 2005 Level 1, 2 and 3". In each category spec out three of four machines (eg one amd with a nvidia, one intel with nvidia, etc) built with decent components. Level 1 machines have top of the range components, level 2 is where most people will be, level 3 is entry gaming. The games publishers could just test their game against these machines specs and get a tick in the "PC Gaming Machine 2005 Level 2 Compatible" (or whatever) box.
Simple, understandable and doesn't need to cost the Earth.
Good plan. Right up to the point where they find the computer you have been hiding. While you average copper probably couldn't find his rear end with both hands I would like to think that the ones dealing specifically with computer crimes would at least figure that one out.
I'm not sure which is scarier. The fact that you know this and tell people or that you have been modded insightful. Perhaps I should post anonymously.
While I can understand why America (well some American politicians) wants to hold on to the governance of the Internet I think it's about time it was handed over to a multi-nation body (maybe the UN maybe a separate entity completely).
While the Internet was largely academic and US focused it made sense for it to be run from the US but it quite simply isn't like that any more. The Internet is world wide and some non-US countries have a huge amount of money riding on the Internet. In some cases democracy itself is partially dependent on the Internet.
There is not shame in passing the Internet over to a multi-national body. In fact America could have won quite a bit of respect from the rest of the world and shown it's maturity by handing over control with little fuss and complaint. Instead America has come across as a little child that won't let anyone else play with their toy. I am sure that most of the world would have been happy with America continuing to run the Internet as long as there was a set of procedures for them to veto unwanted changes. America could have had it's cake and eaten it.
There is one thing that is certain. The Internet will not be run by America alone for much longer. One way or another at least some of the power will be removed from American hands. The choice America has to make is simply how much power they want to keep.
Yeah, I have always thought I could probably make a lot of money out of snake oil but I just can't bring myself to sell it.
There are some really good ideas there. In particular I hadn't thought of ISP DSL bundles almost forcing people to use IE. I should have as I have switched numerous such machines over to using FF.
It's certainly possible. I am just really supprised by the size of the gap. Yes America is a little more technically advanced (broadband is more widespread for instance) but I don't think that difference is great enough to account for the radically different uptake levels. Perhaps it is a cultural thing but I struggle to believe that as well since the two groups of people are more alike than they are different.
No honestly it really does. Bleed bleed bleed that's all my heart does does simply because they are unable to see beyond the bottom line.
It would seem that publishers are finally waking up to the fact that their dead tree editions aren't what everyone wants and aren't necessarly the best way to present the data. For a long while now you have been able to get scanned books but the effort of scanning them restricts the number. I can't wait for the day when we have properly searchable e-books in mass (along with a decent reader). I forsee that the effort and pain required to drag the publishing industry into the electronic age is going to be 1000 times greater than that required to drag the film and music industry into it.
...how much can we trust those figures? Not a lot I would say. In particular I find the 3* as much FireFox usage in the US compared to the UK disturbing. I would expect the two nations to have roughly the same uptake rate since they are braodly similar. I would also expect other European nations to have a slightly high uptake rate (as has been shown in other result). Perhaps the figure is absolute rather than per 1000 people or maybe there is some error in their recording which causes people browsing from unknown countries to get lumped in with America. Either way without an explanation it casts doubt, in my eye, on the validity of the results.
Simple you provide a set of guidelines, perhaps backed up by examples, that define misuse. For instance phrase it thus:
It would be quite easy to prove that sending 3,000,000 emails to your ex-employer, especially in a short span of time, would fall foul of that law. Yes, you have to prove intent but you would have to do that anyway. Accidents wouldn't fall foul of this law but a clause for negligence could be added. The problem is that a law thus phrased would require interpretation by the jury which is something most Governments seem loath to allow them to do. The upside is that this law would be good for the foreseeable future and would probably cover most new crimes. I suppose the problem is that if we had high level laws and a true trial by jury the Govenment would rapidly lose one of it's basic functions - to make more laws.
Isn't that kind of the point?
Assuming this is you I think it might be a physical impossibility to knock-you-up in the classic sense of the phrase - unless of course you are the yellow one in the picture.
People have been getting their copy of windows of the Internet for ages. Yet again MS is just copying rather than innovating.
I admit that the people often seem to be inconsistent in their views and desires but that isn't an excuse to just ignore them. The Government should try and educate the people and show them all the options that they have. Fair enough they should point to the one they like the most / think is the best but that shouldn't mean they can get away with rubbishing / not talking about other options. Perhaps if this process had been gone through when the Government was first thinking about building nuclear power plants we wouldn't have built them.
Don't get me wrong I don't have anything against nuclear power per se but we knew that there would be very long term problems with storage before we built the plants. The problems were played down and brushed under the carpet no doubt while some people got very rich. Those rich people have no doubt done a bunk now with their money leaving us to pick up the tab for the disposal. There is no way I accept the argument that they thought they would be able to find a cheap solution within the life of the plant. High level waste needs containing for 10000+ years!
Personally I think we should just blast it (high level waste) into space. Glassify if seal it in a foot thick layer of toughend steel and blast the whole lot into the middle of no where. Hell you could even crash it into the moon so that you have it for the future should we ever find a use for it. Yes there are risks involved at launch time but just make a container that can survice the worst accident. It's got to be better than sticking it in a bloody huge hole in the ground and hoping it doesn't leak.
WTF. Why do we need to reduce the downlaod size of OO? 80MB is tiny for a fully featured office suite. How big is the office install? A quick search for an office torrent will show it weighing in at 1GB+ I am sure and people are happy to download that. I wouldn't be supprised if most of the 80MB is graphics and other such material. If you want it to look nice there isn't a lot you can do about that. Rather than make it a smaller download why don't they focus on making it faster and more stable. Oh and of course properly finishing the features that are already present.
Perhaps the public won't be able to bring technical expertise to teh table but they are, at the end of the day, the people that are bank rolling the project so don't you think they should have a say? Government is supposed to be answerable to the people. Yes we should give them the power to make most decisions without consulting us (the people) but large projects like this that have long term implications should include the views of the people. Much like a Government shouldn't wage war on another state without first consulting the people and providing evidence that it is necessary.
I agree. I can't help feeling this is a newspaper looking for news in something that is really quite innocent. In fact, what would they prefer? Perhaps that the public isn't consulted at all which is, after all, the opposite of what they seem to be having a go at. I'm sure that they would complain about that as well.
As totally incompetent and corrupt as the Government seem to be most of the time I think even they would draw the line at letting the WI design a nuclear waste storage facility. For sure there are problems with the current process as is evidenced by scientists and engineers leaving in droves but surely that is the news story. It's ironic that one of the later stories is about newspapers having a rough time of it. Perhaps if they produced some decent stories people would still read them.
...lever Postgres from my cold dead fingers before I give it up. Well, that or pay me to switch :o).
I don't doubt for one minute this free version of Oracle will be just as hard to maintain and use as the non-free version so why would anyone developing a small application use it over Postgres or MySQL?
I can't believe you have been modded insightful! Funny maybe. If you were meaning to point out that the punters are fully aware of the contract before they sign it then yes that is the case and that one part is similar to signing a contract with an electricity company. To draw an analogy between software production and electricity production though is just bizarre. Software production is more like clothes production - you wouldn't rent your clothes would you?
I gave up work!
Honestly it's the best thing I ever did. I recommend it to anyone that doesn't like working.
I spent a full year as a PhD student doing basically nothing but grinding up and heating mixtures of various metal oxide powders to make fuel cell components. That has got to be the most boring job ever. The lab didn't even have a window to look out of.
Not very quietly it would seem.
...not likely. There is no way on Earth they will give up this power to control the market. In fact, there is no way anyone will ever give up any power unless a) it is taken from them (usually by force) or b) they can replace it with another power that is equal or stronger. The best that we can hope for is that the law will for the most part go uninforced because it is basically unworkable or unjust.
This is obviously a Martian invasion plan. First they submit a story to /. that doesn't contain the timezone which confuses us a bit. Then they choose a time zone that plenty of people don't know (judging by the other comments). Then, and this is the one that really convinced me it's an invasion, they make sure that the conversion from the given timezone to to the ones used in Europe is as difficult as possible (most of Europe switches from daylight savings time to standard time on that night). This is a cunning ploy to keep us on the back foot while they get their ships of death in place. It should be evidence enough for any one.
To arms, the Martians are coming.
P.S. There are some dubious looking bumps in the sand on Mars. I think they might be hiding WMDs!