I'm sorry, but I remember the Hubble going up, like it was yesterday. I don't remember anyone saying it would be obsolete any time soon.
If the people responsible for the telescope knew its life expectancy was going to be this short, they should have planned ahead, and done something better, like a recovery plan.
I bought a MSDN universal subscription through my student bookstore (which was actually a transaction between me and Torcomp/Studica).
So I received a box with an activation card.
I went to activate my MSDN subscription. The activation key was invalid ("in use by another user").
I expected the situation to be fixed on the first call to Microsoft -- BUT NO!
On the first call to Microsoft, they told me to pound sand: Deal with the reseller. Calling the reseller was the same: It's Microsoft's problem.
At that point, I was *already* going to file a claim with my credit card... Fortunately, I got a call back asking me to send all the documentation: The invoice, the activation card, the box. I quickly put these items in the mail, and then realized afterwards: "I have just mailed all my evidence to Microsoft!" So much for my claim with the bank...
There were some emails exchanged. The reseller asked Microsoft to fulfill the order, and copied me on the mail.
A month had passed, to the day from the day I placed the order. I called to find out the status of the order: They had received my mail, but there was some issue with the invoice. I had printed the invoice on my laserjet. Somehow, that wasn't good enough for them. WTF?
I told the rep that I had sent them everything I had, that they were obligated to fulfill my subscription, and that I wasn't going to send them anything else because I didn't HAVE anything else, and besides, the retailer had already sent them what they were asking for on my behalf.
Next day, I got a rude message on my voice mail. I wonder how many companies can afford to have rude customer service reps? Microsoft, and maybe a collection agency. I felt like I needed a lawyer by now. Anyway I insisted on another service rep, and after explaining the whole situation to the new rep, the problem got solved.
So I got what I paid for, but I had to beg, threaten, and wait long enough that I was never sure it would be delivered or that I was going to solve the problem without filing a lawsuit.
"I really dont want strong crypto keeping out of stuff that I OWN, or My CONTENT."
What's interesting to me, as a musician, is that in order for my own recordings to be free of copy protection like SCMS, I have to pay more for equipment. Some things like DAT recorders or minidisc are not really available on the consumer market at all, without copy controls. The choices are to buy pro audio gear (which raises the barrier to entry which suits the media companies), or to use a general purpose PC (best option for me, a 24 bit sound card and a fast pc turns out to be a little less expensive than a pro DAT deck).
I don't enjoy having my own music that I write and record encumbered with copy protection. It just keeps the cost of pro-quality multitrack recording high, it doesn't protect anyone except the people who sell pro-audio gear.
Even with ObjectDesktop I was still annoyed enough to keep my XFree/Gnome desktop.
ObjectDesktop/Window Blinds etc. are cool, don't get me wrong... But the annoyances of the underlying system don't go away when you use them. Yeah, they give you more control than the windows theme engine gives you... but that also makes my point for me... I gotta buy something else in order to have that, and it WON'T be installed anywhere else... Whereas my.gnome and.gtk configs go with me on my usb keychain... and I know more places that have gnome installed than Object Desktop...
Well, in my cordless mouse, clock backup, and my smoke detector I use alkalines, because the batteries last so long there that it isn't cost-effective to tie up an expensive rechargeable battery.
In my camera, if I use regular alkaline batterys it runs for maybe an hour, with the display turned on. With "energizer titanium" batterys, I get much more, but that is a very expensive option. I keep 12 NiMh's charging at all times, which is how many I am using, give or take.
If I'm going out into the field, I take real batteries. I haven't yet found a solar nimh charger.
>When people think of Microsoft, they think of >butterflies and games and multimedia
Remember when they missed the boat completely, and games, multimedia, and a consumer-oriented internet became the primary forces driving the pc market?
The decisions that MS made way back then are still being carried out. The Brontosaurus brain woke up late in 1996. The tail is still in the middle of it's morning wags from then.
You aren't seeing the big picture anyway. Why don't *I* get to decide where the minimize, maximize, and close buttons are, or even, whether windows have these buttons at all? Why don't I get to decide what they look like, and why can't I put the title bar vertically on the left side of the window? Why can't I just plug in an entirely different window management idiom besides the default one?
You're looking at the superficial annoyances of the implementation, and I'm seeing the overwhelming deficiency of the design. I'm still waiting for a version of windows that gets this, very basic thing right: I want black backgrounds and light-colored text. Sure there are themes that pretend to give you this. But the system isn't smart enough to recognize and compensate for, say, word documents or web pages that override the foreground without fixing the background. (I think this has been #1 on my annoyance list since windows 3.1!!!)
>Changing over to automobiles required throwing >away a lot of existing technology.
But it was decidedly obvious to anyone in a decision-making role that the change was necessary.
It might also be more accurate to characterize the transition from steam power to various combinations of gasoline and electric power.
If it was more obvious that Linux is an enormous improvement for any given piece of the enterprise, it wouldn't be such a sell that an article like this one is even required.
Go find the articles that illustrate how hard it was to get people to wire their factories for electric lights, abandoning gas. Find accounts of fire departments choosing to keep their horse-drawn equipment instead of fitting out Model-A trucks.
Show me the army that chose to keep iron weapons after steel became available...
If someone wants Linux to take a role that it has not already taken, that someone needs to give it a killer app or contribute some development work to make it the obvious choice. Instead, we hear about how "it" isn't easy enough, of "it" isn't ready for the desktop.
But there IS no "it". It simply isn't reasonable to pass responsibility for this system to anyone. If it lacks something you need, develop it. When that lack runs into the solid wall of Intellectual Property, blame the real culprit. When that lack is due to the actions of any single entity who is intentionally preventing you using linux for a given purpose, point the finger where it should be pointed.
Or just blame all your IT problems on linux, if it makes you feel better.
Linux doesn't care, becaue there IS not "they."
*YOU* are "they".
Re:it seems silly not to include a hard drive
on
Lindows Webstation
·
· Score: 1
>2. No matter where it is stored, it'll beat the >pants off of accessing everything from a damn CD- >ROM.
I don't know what kind of network access YOU have, but I'm afraid the access time and transfer rate on my dvd-rw drive beats any network speed I'm likely to ever have.
"Imagine earning the equivalent of US$160 every month."
Well, your want me to deal with equivalency -- You go on to say that your wage is enough to pay for housing and food. You have a girlfriend, so I imagine that wage isn't "live-in-a-box-at-the-bus-terminal" low.
So you talk about pathetic wages, but what you are really saying is you earn enough to enjoy a certain standard of living.
The lifestyle you describe costs about $12,000 a year after taxes where I live.
If a certain income level is considered a "very good wage" in a place, it must be because it is possible to live at a certain standard which is above some other standard (which also must be available in that place).
It isn't reasonable to suggest that $160.00/mo is going to be an option someplace where the basic necessities of life cost more than that (and where social programs alone would pay 4-5x that).
It's odd that people could even get the idea that something like a C64 has any kind of scarcity even, much less, "museum value."
I went looking for ONE c64, and easily acquired more c64 stuff than I have room to store. I have boxes of c64 accessories that I haven't even looked through thoroughly! I have 2 128's. A whole stack of breadboxes. Several 1702's, 1902A's, 1541's, 1571's, and box after box after box of diskettes. I have adventure games where people carefully kept all their notes. I have at least two custom-made printer interfaces. I have several complete collections of the gold box games. I don't have a lot of games on carts, but were there really that many good games on carts? I even got a nice, complete apple2 system with a couple of unusual apple monitors in one batch of stuff that was $10.
I have SOOOO much c64 stuff that it almost makes me regret saying "I want to make a c64 shrine". And my pile of c64 stuff is NOTHING compared to what the average fanatic has. And really, the funny thing is, with vice and an arnold cd, there is no need to keep ANY of it!
Seriously considering making one of the 128's into a mini-itx.
>the world would never need more than three >computers.
Well, that's liberally paraphrased, but the thing to understand is the person who said that was *right*.
He was making a practical observation about the market, and the market would have been saturated at just a handful of the computers of the day.
A person making a business plan for the next fiscal year doesn't need to worry about a technological revolution that may take place over the next decade or half century.
Re:The internet the big corporation way
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
>The internet is the voice of the people
But it's only the voice of the people who have access to things like electricity, telecommunications infrastructure, etc.
It falls short of being of much value to all the people who don't have those thing (refrigeration, plumbing, surplus food, literacy... much less home computers and cable modems...)
Well, it would eventually get to a point where it's practical, and the you find out that geeks and hippies aren't so different from the business people and politicians that plague us today. Greed sets in. Human nature takes over. A strategy might buy some time, but we'd end up at the same place sooner or later.
>... the valuation of the company over the >individual. People like Larry Ellison and Bill >Gates and pretty much every other CEO in the >tech industry are getting richer
Ellison and Gates are individuals -- I think your comment makes a stronger case for the valuation of the individual over the company. Just not the individual you had in mind.
I believe what you are really trying to argue is the valuation of the common good over the individual. One theory or another about redistribution of wealth...
Thanks, and my apologies. It hasn't been THAT long since I checked the sound card matrix. These cards have been in the red forever. I have a Layla20 and I've been hoping for Alsa support for years.
Sure. How about a list of which exact cards to buy. I thought I was done, when the first linksys card I bought worked. The next card, which was the exact same product from the same shelf at the same store, had a completely different chipset.
It was as if linksys found out their cards worked with linux and fixed that problem.
When I worked in litigation, it was very common to burn documents even though we had paper shredders.
In those days, you could smoke in offices, etc., so it just didn't seem all that strange to see one of the lawyers burning a piece of paper in a wastebasket. The reprographics department had an incinerator for big disposal jobs. And a heavy duty drill press instead of a hole punch, but that's another story.
Slashdot Mirror
They should have planned ahead.
I'm sorry, but I remember the Hubble going up,
like it was yesterday. I don't remember anyone saying it would be obsolete any time soon.
If the people responsible for the telescope knew its life expectancy was going to be this short, they should have planned ahead, and done something better, like a recovery plan.
I bought a MSDN universal subscription through my student bookstore (which was actually a transaction between me and Torcomp/Studica).
So I received a box with an activation card.
I went to activate my MSDN subscription. The activation key was invalid ("in use by another user").
I expected the situation to be fixed on the first call to Microsoft -- BUT NO!
On the first call to Microsoft, they told me to pound sand: Deal with the reseller. Calling the reseller was the same: It's Microsoft's problem.
At that point, I was *already* going to file a claim with my credit card... Fortunately, I got a call back asking me to send all the documentation: The invoice, the activation card, the box. I quickly put these items in the mail, and then realized afterwards: "I have just mailed all my evidence to Microsoft!" So much for my claim with the bank...
There were some emails exchanged. The reseller asked Microsoft to fulfill the order, and copied me on the mail.
A month had passed, to the day from the day I placed the order. I called to find out the status of the order: They had received my mail, but there was some issue with the invoice. I had printed the invoice on my laserjet. Somehow, that wasn't good enough for them. WTF?
I told the rep that I had sent them everything I had, that they were obligated to fulfill my subscription, and that I wasn't going to send them anything else because I didn't HAVE anything else, and besides, the retailer had already sent them what they were asking for on my behalf.
Next day, I got a rude message on my voice mail. I wonder how many companies can afford to have rude customer service reps? Microsoft, and maybe a collection agency. I felt like I needed a lawyer by now. Anyway I insisted on another service rep, and after explaining the whole situation to the new rep, the problem got solved.
So I got what I paid for, but I had to beg, threaten, and wait long enough that I was never sure it would be delivered or that I was going to solve the problem without filing a lawsuit.
"I really dont want strong crypto keeping out of stuff that I OWN, or My CONTENT."
What's interesting to me, as a musician, is that in order for my own recordings to be free of copy protection like SCMS, I have to pay more for equipment. Some things like DAT recorders or minidisc are not really available on the consumer market at all, without copy controls. The choices are to buy pro audio gear (which raises the barrier to entry which suits the media companies), or to use a general purpose PC (best option for me, a 24 bit sound card and a fast pc turns out to be a little less expensive than a pro DAT deck).
I don't enjoy having my own music that I write and record encumbered with copy protection. It just keeps the cost of pro-quality multitrack recording high, it doesn't protect anyone except the people who sell pro-audio gear.
Even with ObjectDesktop I was still annoyed enough to keep my XFree/Gnome desktop.
.gnome and .gtk configs go with me on my usb keychain... and I know more places that have gnome installed than Object Desktop...
ObjectDesktop/Window Blinds etc. are cool, don't get me wrong... But the annoyances of the underlying system don't go away when you use them. Yeah, they give you more control than the windows theme engine gives you... but that also makes my point for me... I gotta buy something else in order to have that, and it WON'T be installed anywhere else... Whereas my
Lots of posts recommend a "good charger", but they stop short of brand and model number.
Well, in my cordless mouse, clock backup, and my smoke detector I use alkalines, because the batteries last so long there that it isn't cost-effective to tie up an expensive rechargeable battery.
In my camera, if I use regular alkaline batterys it runs for maybe an hour, with the display turned on. With "energizer titanium" batterys, I get much more, but that is a very expensive option. I keep 12 NiMh's charging at all times, which is how many I am using, give or take.
If I'm going out into the field, I take real batteries. I haven't yet found a solar nimh charger.
>When people think of Microsoft, they think of
>butterflies and games and multimedia
Remember when they missed the boat completely, and games, multimedia, and a consumer-oriented internet became the primary forces driving the pc market?
The decisions that MS made way back then are still being carried out. The Brontosaurus brain woke up late in 1996. The tail is still in the middle of it's morning wags from then.
You aren't seeing the big picture anyway.
Why don't *I* get to decide where the minimize, maximize, and close buttons are, or even, whether windows have these buttons at all? Why don't I get to decide what they look like, and why can't I put the title bar vertically on the left side of the window? Why can't I just plug in an entirely different window management idiom besides the default one?
You're looking at the superficial annoyances of the implementation, and I'm seeing the overwhelming deficiency of the design. I'm still waiting for a version of windows that gets this, very basic thing right: I want black backgrounds and light-colored text. Sure there are themes that pretend to give you this. But the system isn't smart enough to recognize and compensate for, say, word documents or web pages that override the foreground without fixing the background. (I think this has been #1 on my annoyance list since windows 3.1!!!)
>Changing over to automobiles required throwing
>away a lot of existing technology.
But it was decidedly obvious to anyone in a decision-making role that the change was necessary.
It might also be more accurate to characterize the transition from steam power to various combinations of gasoline and electric power.
If it was more obvious that Linux is an enormous improvement for any given piece of the enterprise, it wouldn't be such a sell that an article like this one is even required.
Go find the articles that illustrate how hard it was to get people to wire their factories for electric lights, abandoning gas. Find accounts of fire departments choosing to keep their horse-drawn equipment instead of fitting out Model-A trucks.
Show me the army that chose to keep iron weapons after steel became available...
If someone wants Linux to take a role that it has not already taken, that someone needs to give it a killer app or contribute some development work to make it the obvious choice. Instead, we hear about how "it" isn't easy enough, of "it" isn't ready for the desktop.
But there IS no "it". It simply isn't reasonable to pass responsibility for this system to anyone.
If it lacks something you need, develop it. When that lack runs into the solid wall of Intellectual Property, blame the real culprit. When that lack is due to the actions of any single entity who is intentionally preventing you using linux for a given purpose, point the finger where it should be pointed.
Or just blame all your IT problems on linux, if it makes you feel better.
Linux doesn't care, becaue there IS not "they."
*YOU* are "they".
>2. No matter where it is stored, it'll beat the
>pants off of accessing everything from a damn CD-
>ROM.
I don't know what kind of network access YOU have, but I'm afraid the access time and transfer rate on my dvd-rw drive beats any network speed I'm likely to ever have.
Dude, the professor could ALWAYS fix the boat. He wanted to stay on the island as long as ginger and maryann were there.
Why not just shove it into a bit higher orbit?
"Imagine earning the equivalent of US$160 every month."
Well, your want me to deal with equivalency -- You go on to say that your wage is enough to pay for housing and food. You have a girlfriend, so I imagine that wage isn't "live-in-a-box-at-the-bus-terminal" low.
So you talk about pathetic wages, but what you are really saying is you earn enough to enjoy a certain standard of living.
The lifestyle you describe costs about $12,000 a year after taxes where I live.
If a certain income level is considered a "very good wage" in a place, it must be because it is possible to live at a certain standard which is above some other standard (which also must be available in that place).
It isn't reasonable to suggest that $160.00/mo is going to be an option someplace where the basic necessities of life cost more than that (and where social programs alone would pay 4-5x that).
>a severe administrative punishment.
Does anybody else picuture John Rico being flogged?
You could say that about the internet today. But do any of the good neighbors refuse to connect to the bad ones?
It's odd that people could even get the idea that something like a C64 has any kind of scarcity even, much less, "museum value."
I went looking for ONE c64, and easily acquired more c64 stuff than I have room to store. I have boxes of c64 accessories that I haven't even looked through thoroughly! I have 2 128's. A whole stack of breadboxes. Several 1702's, 1902A's, 1541's, 1571's, and box after box after box of diskettes. I have adventure games where people carefully kept all their notes. I have at least two custom-made printer interfaces. I have several complete collections of the gold box games. I don't have a lot of games on carts, but were there really that many good games on carts?
I even got a nice, complete apple2 system with a couple of unusual apple monitors in one batch of stuff that was $10.
I have SOOOO much c64 stuff that it almost makes me regret saying "I want to make a c64 shrine".
And my pile of c64 stuff is NOTHING compared to what the average fanatic has. And really, the funny thing is, with vice and an arnold cd, there is no need to keep ANY of it!
Seriously considering making one of the 128's into a mini-itx.
>the world would never need more than three
>computers.
Well, that's liberally paraphrased, but the thing to understand is the person who said that was *right*.
He was making a practical observation about the market, and the market would have been saturated at just a handful of the computers of the day.
A person making a business plan for the next fiscal year doesn't need to worry about a technological revolution that may take place over the next decade or half century.
>The internet is the voice of the people
But it's only the voice of the people who have access to things like electricity, telecommunications infrastructure, etc.
It falls short of being of much value to all the people who don't have those thing (refrigeration, plumbing, surplus food, literacy... much less home computers and cable modems...)
Well, it would eventually get to a point where it's practical, and the you find out that geeks and hippies aren't so different from the business people and politicians that plague us today. Greed sets in. Human nature takes over. A strategy might buy some time, but we'd end up at the same place sooner or later.
>... the valuation of the company over the
>individual. People like Larry Ellison and Bill
>Gates and pretty much every other CEO in the
>tech industry are getting richer
Ellison and Gates are individuals -- I think your comment makes a stronger case for the valuation of the individual over the company. Just not the individual you had in mind.
I believe what you are really trying to argue is the valuation of the common good over the individual. One theory or another about redistribution of wealth...
Thanks, and my apologies.
It hasn't been THAT long since I checked the sound card matrix. These cards have been in the red forever. I have a Layla20 and I've been hoping for Alsa support for years.
Sure. How about a list of which exact cards to buy. I thought I was done, when the first linksys card I bought worked. The next card, which was the exact same product from the same shelf at the same store, had a completely different chipset.
It was as if linksys found out their cards worked with linux and fixed that problem.
"To hell with the manufacturers not helping us, we'll make it work anyways"
So where are the drivers for Turtle Beach Santa Cruz or Echo Layla?
>However, look at any airline accident in the
>last ten years or so.
A disturbing trend seems to be pilot error: "Controlled flight into terrain."
When I worked in litigation, it was very common to burn documents even though we had paper shredders.
In those days, you could smoke in offices, etc., so it just didn't seem all that strange to see one of the lawyers burning a piece of paper in a wastebasket. The reprographics department had an incinerator for big disposal jobs. And a heavy duty drill press instead of a hole punch, but that's another story.