Shit compression algorithms work only once, at the factory where it is forced into bags by magical and undocumented processes that happen at the quantum level. The factory is owned and operated by entities outside our Universe who have refused repeated inquiries about this process.
Shit is incompressible once out of the bag. You can never put it back in, hence one definition of a blivet which is "10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag" equating to a 2:1 compression ratio at the factory.
People have tried to put shit back in the bag once it has been let out. Einstein, and Bose thought they got close to a theoretical compression, which they called a Bose-Einstein-Shit condensate, but they failed to take into account dark energy, which is an opposing force that tends to spread shit everywhere.
When Edwin Hubble discovered the expanding universe through red shifts, he exclaimed "Holy Shit!" and "What is this shit?" not knowing at the time that shit is the actual source of the dark energy speeding the expansion.
Minkowski described "shit cones" describing the causality of shit.
Stephen Hawking, in his famous paper proved through Feynman-Shit diagrams that black holes evaporate because they "lose their shit."
At the macro level, sometimes this is also measured in worm cans. Worms eat shit, which is probably why they too are incompressible once out of the can.
These people worship cows and statues with elephant heads and statues of effeminate guys with six arms
Ganesha (the guy with the elephant head) is way cool. I prefer his style to the Zombie Jesus that the evangelical Christians push. What would probably curdle the milk in the evangelicals' coffee is that Ganesha is the patron of the arts, sciences, and letters, and the deva (god with a small g) of wisdom and intellect.
You know, a guy who if human, would appeal to the Slashdot crowd..
Keeping a little statue of Ganesha next to the servers at work is not necessarily a bad thing.
It's written in the Indian Constitution that people not only have the right to pursue the sciences, but have a duty to do so for the whole of society, under Article 51 A.
To wit: Article 51A(h) To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;
He's charged, but the charge won't stick even with a drunken lawyer.
He is roaming around free, because the police and the judge know the charge is bogus and a waste of everyone's time, but to do nothing would cause riots among the derp-infested.
Right now there is something of a balance between the powers that have nuclear weapons today. Iran's unpredictable nature and history of supporting terrorists poses a risk to the balance.
There is a solution to this.
Make it crystal clear and publicly, in no uncertain terms, that a nuclear detonation by a hostile country in any country allied with us or even merely friendly to us, or in our own country, the US, will be met with corresponding or superior-in-number nuclear detonations in their country.
In short, bring back MAD.
You want to play with the big boys and play with big boy toys? Play by the big boy rules or stfu and gtfo.
"MicroCenter is not going to help if BestBuy is gone. A quick glance on microcenter.com shows they have 23 stores. If BestBuy were gone, there would be no other consumer electronics stores near me."
>False dichotomy. There can be multiple causes for their monetary losses.
I was responding to his claim that it was returns that was the cause of "billions in losses"
Billions, really? Just how many people were doing returns? We're talking about 1.7 billion in losses for the past year. I'm pointing out that his claim is ridiculous.
>My sig
Deal with it or foe me. You can put a -6 on me and never see me again.
and they are literally losing Billions to a pretty damn widespread abuse of their extremely friendly return policy
Citation needed. Citation needed to prove that bad management practices are not the real cause of the 1.7 billion dollar loss.
That being said there are a lot of people who are going to legitimately miss them if they do go out of business
They earned the epithet "Worst Buy" through customer abuse and stupid sales practices. So much of what has happened is self inflicted. Do you remember when they fired all their knowledgeable long-term floor sales staff because they were "too expensive?" Go ahead, walk into any Best Buy and try to find a sales clerk that actually knows what he/she is selling and isn't trying to be a bullshit artist. They are few and far between.
Return customers (not customers that return things) are a business' bread and butter. Best Buy went on the "quick cash now" binge to "satisfy investors" while ignoring the long term implications of pissing off the customers. Sure, people are using online retailers. They wouldn't if the brick&mortar service didn't outright suck.
There are electronics retailers that don't suck. One is MicroCenter. You can walk in, talk to knowledgeable sales people, get what you want for a decent price (sometimes cheaper than Newegg), and not hard sold on hundred-dollar HDMI cables and extended warrantees. And I find myself continuing to go back there. Repeatedly.
Best Buy *can* turn the ship around, but they have to abandon the practices that got them to this point to do so. Most businesses in this situation can't or won't because few in upper management are willing to accept the fact they fucked up.
"We made a decision over the weekend that while the presidential race for us is over, and I will suspend my campaign effective today, we are not done fighting.'"
Fighting for what? Against the ideals of your own Church that basically came out and said that universal health care is a right? That evolution is just fine? That women don't have to be barefoot and in the kitchen? That the world is older than 6000 years? That social justice is a good idea?
But in Juan Williams' full sentence, at the very least least he was excusing bigotry. How can you excuse it if you are not one yourself?
>read the rest of your post >get to end >read this
I feel sorry for you. You are missing so very much.
I don't need your insults.
Also, this stormfront shit in/. scares the fuck out of me, and it's not just here. It's in other places where it never used to show up, or if it did, it was greeted with derision.
It's just like "I don't want to offend, but.." to which the person goes to say something offensive, or when someone says "It's not about the money" when it's actually all about the money. People do this all the time and once you spot it, it's pretty difficult to ignore.
It's twice the price of a top end Mac Mini, a SFF computer that has similar enough specs that if you bump the Apple to the same specs, it's/still/ 500 bucks cheaper.
Just... no.
And it's not like you're getting an Amiga OS. You're getting Fuduntu with an emulator and a really gawd-awful skin.
I have 3D acceleration in WinFLP, but I don't have any applications that use it.
3D acceleration does not work in seamless mode with VirtualBox on Linux. Fullscreen only. Obviously stuff that relies on DX11 is right out if you're using Linux as a host OS. And besides, there is no DX11 for WinFLP anyway.
I don't know what happens if you use Windows as the host.
The Xen kernels do not have 3D acceleration at all and there is no support from ATI, Nvidia, or Intel for it even as proprietary drivers. No 3D in the Xen host and none in the client OS.
This is why you run a virtual machine and load up whatever software and OS you want from the old days.
It can be tricky, though. Because some of the really old stuff doesn't even expect a hard disk. I unpacked a.zip install of PFS Pro Write on to the "c:" drive in a DOS VM and it/demanded/ that I install to a drive location other than the install drive. Because the developers assumed the destination was a floppy, even with a c: drive letter.
Old software, all the games you missed playing over the years, etc. Load up a VM in a current computer. Install the legacy OS, boot it when you get all nostalgic or need to read really old files, and put it away when you're done. No need for separate hardware. DOS, Windows of all flavors, Linux, BSD, Solaris, OSX if you have an Intel processor, etc., can all be loaded in virtual machines. No need for a separate computer.
And when you're done, just close the VM and go on with your other business.
My favorite Windows for virtual machines is Windows FLP. It's like a pre-stripped XP. I tried 2k, but I wound up ripping DLLs from XP to put into 2k anyway. The same with NT4, which I needed to get DLLs from 2k and XP to just install Opera.
DRDOS 7.03 is out there for free download too. Unfortunately Windows 3.11 says that FreeDOS is "incompatible" and will refuse to run (wrong version). Hrmph. It also helps to have a serial mouse and serial port available for things like DesqView/X which demands an actual serial mouse.
My virtual machine software of choice is VirtualBox. There are others out there, like Xen, KVM, VMWare, Parallels (macintosh). Try them.
As for Win98, giving it any more RAM will be futile anyway. It maxes out at 512MB of addressable RAM. Windows 95 maxes out at 64.
My point is that by mastering "high level" skills, involving use of our machines as tools, we are cutting ourselves off from the gritty reality of the levels that are the foundations of those skills.
There is nothing, whatsoever, preventing people getting into the nitty gritty of their machines except knowledge, and in the case of Microsoft, money (the dev kit for OSX is free, iirc).
With Linux, everything is there, including documentation. When I used to buy SuSE boxed sets, it came with 2 well-written manuals - a user's guide and an admin guide. They were the best written manuals I have ever come across. Compare and contrast this to what the typical Windows user gets in his retail Windows box.
Back in the old days, I'm sure you can remember the big ol' 3-ring binder manuals that used to come with DOS. Somewhere around Windows 95 or later editions of 3.1, someone at Microsoft decided that manuals were superfluous.
Because having to read things just confuses people.
Or something.
Thus the vast majority of Windows users across this entire planet never even got the opportunity to become educated in using a computer in a safe way. And they pay for it in myriad ways, not just monetary.
Slashdot Mirror
The bag comes in many forms.
You've never heard of a shitbird being put back from whence he came, true? Well there you go, more evidence of the incompressibility of shit.
--
BMO
Shit compression algorithms work only once, at the factory where it is forced into bags by magical and undocumented processes that happen at the quantum level. The factory is owned and operated by entities outside our Universe who have refused repeated inquiries about this process.
Shit is incompressible once out of the bag. You can never put it back in, hence one definition of a blivet which is "10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag" equating to a 2:1 compression ratio at the factory.
People have tried to put shit back in the bag once it has been let out. Einstein, and Bose thought they got close to a theoretical compression, which they called a Bose-Einstein-Shit condensate, but they failed to take into account dark energy, which is an opposing force that tends to spread shit everywhere.
When Edwin Hubble discovered the expanding universe through red shifts, he exclaimed "Holy Shit!" and "What is this shit?" not knowing at the time that shit is the actual source of the dark energy speeding the expansion.
Minkowski described "shit cones" describing the causality of shit.
Stephen Hawking, in his famous paper proved through Feynman-Shit diagrams that black holes evaporate because they "lose their shit."
At the macro level, sometimes this is also measured in worm cans. Worms eat shit, which is probably why they too are incompressible once out of the can.
--
BMO
>185,000
How exactly did they come up with that number?
I can see the meeting now.
"Guys...
guys.
Guys listen
I have the best ide...
guys listen
I have the best idea ever
Guys...
We'll tie....
Guys
DOLLARS
We'll tie the DOLLARS
guys, listen here...
We'll tie the DOLLARS to the speed of PACKETS in MILES PER SECOND.
--
BMO
It's Europe, so it will have to be a Metric Shitload, which is itself different from the Imperial Shitload, which is 1.125 American Shitloads
--
BMO
These people worship cows and statues with elephant heads and statues of effeminate guys with six arms
Ganesha (the guy with the elephant head) is way cool. I prefer his style to the Zombie Jesus that the evangelical Christians push. What would probably curdle the milk in the evangelicals' coffee is that Ganesha is the patron of the arts, sciences, and letters, and the deva (god with a small g) of wisdom and intellect.
You know, a guy who if human, would appeal to the Slashdot crowd..
Keeping a little statue of Ganesha next to the servers at work is not necessarily a bad thing.
--
BMO
The charge is entirely unconstitutional.
It's written in the Indian Constitution that people not only have the right to pursue the sciences, but have a duty to do so for the whole of society, under Article 51 A.
To wit: Article 51A(h) To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;
He's charged, but the charge won't stick even with a drunken lawyer.
He is roaming around free, because the police and the judge know the charge is bogus and a waste of everyone's time, but to do nothing would cause riots among the derp-infested.
--
BMO
Right now there is something of a balance between the powers that have nuclear weapons today. Iran's unpredictable nature and history of supporting terrorists poses a risk to the balance.
There is a solution to this.
Make it crystal clear and publicly, in no uncertain terms, that a nuclear detonation by a hostile country in any country allied with us or even merely friendly to us, or in our own country, the US, will be met with corresponding or superior-in-number nuclear detonations in their country.
In short, bring back MAD.
You want to play with the big boys and play with big boy toys? Play by the big boy rules or stfu and gtfo.
--
BMO
>Disclaimer: There would be a time where this joke would be obvious.
It's not a joke anymore.
--
BMO
Oh, ok, then that makes sense.
I stand corrected.
"Pay people peanuts and all you get are monkeys"
--
BMO
"MicroCenter is not going to help if BestBuy is gone. A quick glance on microcenter.com shows they have 23 stores. If BestBuy were gone, there would be no other consumer electronics stores near me."
Boo. Hoo.
Why do you hate the free market?
--
BMO
>False dichotomy. There can be multiple causes for their monetary losses.
I was responding to his claim that it was returns that was the cause of "billions in losses"
Billions, really? Just how many people were doing returns? We're talking about 1.7 billion in losses for the past year. I'm pointing out that his claim is ridiculous.
>My sig
Deal with it or foe me. You can put a -6 on me and never see me again.
Stop whining.
--
BMO
and they are literally losing Billions to a pretty damn widespread abuse of their extremely friendly return policy
Citation needed. Citation needed to prove that bad management practices are not the real cause of the 1.7 billion dollar loss.
That being said there are a lot of people who are going to legitimately miss them if they do go out of business
They earned the epithet "Worst Buy" through customer abuse and stupid sales practices. So much of what has happened is self inflicted. Do you remember when they fired all their knowledgeable long-term floor sales staff because they were "too expensive?" Go ahead, walk into any Best Buy and try to find a sales clerk that actually knows what he/she is selling and isn't trying to be a bullshit artist. They are few and far between.
Return customers (not customers that return things) are a business' bread and butter. Best Buy went on the "quick cash now" binge to "satisfy investors" while ignoring the long term implications of pissing off the customers. Sure, people are using online retailers. They wouldn't if the brick&mortar service didn't outright suck.
There are electronics retailers that don't suck. One is MicroCenter. You can walk in, talk to knowledgeable sales people, get what you want for a decent price (sometimes cheaper than Newegg), and not hard sold on hundred-dollar HDMI cables and extended warrantees. And I find myself continuing to go back there. Repeatedly.
Best Buy *can* turn the ship around, but they have to abandon the practices that got them to this point to do so. Most businesses in this situation can't or won't because few in upper management are willing to accept the fact they fucked up.
--
BMO
Fighting for what? Against the ideals of your own Church that basically came out and said that universal health care is a right? That evolution is just fine? That women don't have to be barefoot and in the kitchen? That the world is older than 6000 years? That social justice is a good idea?
Keep fuckin' that chicken, Rick.
--
BMO
I saw your other message referencing jesse jackson, and I have to point out that you yourself are a racist prick.
Bye.
--
BMO
Oh look, an argument from 1996.
Do you know exactly how dumb you are?
--
Bmo
But in Juan Williams' full sentence, at the very least least he was excusing bigotry. How can you excuse it if you are not one yourself?
>read the rest of your post
>get to end
>read this
I feel sorry for you. You are missing so very much.
I don't need your insults.
Also, this stormfront shit in /. scares the fuck out of me, and it's not just here. It's in other places where it never used to show up, or if it did, it was greeted with derision.
--
BMO
When someone starts a statement with:
"I'm not a bigot." it means you are
It's just like "I don't want to offend, but.." to which the person goes to say something offensive, or when someone says "It's not about the money" when it's actually all about the money. People do this all the time and once you spot it, it's pretty difficult to ignore.
--
BMO
Did you price that so-called "Amiga"?
It's twice the price of a top end Mac Mini, a SFF computer that has similar enough specs that if you bump the Apple to the same specs, it's /still/ 500 bucks cheaper.
Just... no.
And it's not like you're getting an Amiga OS. You're getting Fuduntu with an emulator and a really gawd-awful skin.
--
BMO
According to the article, the start-up is accused of non-literal copying.
But this is not copyright infringement. SCO tried this in their lawsuit and got laughed at.
Next they'll be claiming that "negative know-how" is copyright infringement too.
Seems to me that we need to start enforcing the crime of barratry again.
--
BMO
ooh, neat, thanks.
I've forgotten so much about DOS.
--
BMO
I have 3D acceleration in WinFLP, but I don't have any applications that use it.
3D acceleration does not work in seamless mode with VirtualBox on Linux. Fullscreen only. Obviously stuff that relies on DX11 is right out if you're using Linux as a host OS. And besides, there is no DX11 for WinFLP anyway.
I don't know what happens if you use Windows as the host.
The Xen kernels do not have 3D acceleration at all and there is no support from ATI, Nvidia, or Intel for it even as proprietary drivers. No 3D in the Xen host and none in the client OS.
--
BMO
Actually, 3.1 and 3.11 ran on PCDOS, DRDOS, and OS/2 and DesqView/X. Possibly Phar Lap, but I never got a chance to use that.
I think it's just Microsoft being dicks back then.
--
BMO
It's Ubuntu with FVWM as the window manager.
Yeah, it's ugly. There is no way to make FVWM pretty, except for FVWM-Crystal, but that particular fvwmrc has its own issues.
--
BMO
>old software and old OSes.
This is why you run a virtual machine and load up whatever software and OS you want from the old days.
It can be tricky, though. Because some of the really old stuff doesn't even expect a hard disk. I unpacked a .zip install of PFS Pro Write on to the "c:" drive in a DOS VM and it /demanded/ that I install to a drive location other than the install drive. Because the developers assumed the destination was a floppy, even with a c: drive letter.
Old software, all the games you missed playing over the years, etc. Load up a VM in a current computer. Install the legacy OS, boot it when you get all nostalgic or need to read really old files, and put it away when you're done. No need for separate hardware. DOS, Windows of all flavors, Linux, BSD, Solaris, OSX if you have an Intel processor, etc., can all be loaded in virtual machines. No need for a separate computer.
And when you're done, just close the VM and go on with your other business.
My favorite Windows for virtual machines is Windows FLP. It's like a pre-stripped XP. I tried 2k, but I wound up ripping DLLs from XP to put into 2k anyway. The same with NT4, which I needed to get DLLs from 2k and XP to just install Opera.
DRDOS 7.03 is out there for free download too. Unfortunately Windows 3.11 says that FreeDOS is "incompatible" and will refuse to run (wrong version). Hrmph. It also helps to have a serial mouse and serial port available for things like DesqView/X which demands an actual serial mouse.
My virtual machine software of choice is VirtualBox. There are others out there, like Xen, KVM, VMWare, Parallels (macintosh). Try them.
As for Win98, giving it any more RAM will be futile anyway. It maxes out at 512MB of addressable RAM. Windows 95 maxes out at 64.
A snapshot I took once to demonstrate the power of virtual machines: http://ompldr.org/vYXgzcA
--
BMO
My point is that by mastering "high level" skills, involving use of our machines as tools, we are cutting ourselves off from the gritty reality of the levels that are the foundations of those skills.
There is nothing, whatsoever, preventing people getting into the nitty gritty of their machines except knowledge, and in the case of Microsoft, money (the dev kit for OSX is free, iirc).
With Linux, everything is there, including documentation. When I used to buy SuSE boxed sets, it came with 2 well-written manuals - a user's guide and an admin guide. They were the best written manuals I have ever come across. Compare and contrast this to what the typical Windows user gets in his retail Windows box.
Back in the old days, I'm sure you can remember the big ol' 3-ring binder manuals that used to come with DOS. Somewhere around Windows 95 or later editions of 3.1, someone at Microsoft decided that manuals were superfluous.
Because having to read things just confuses people.
Or something.
Thus the vast majority of Windows users across this entire planet never even got the opportunity to become educated in using a computer in a safe way. And they pay for it in myriad ways, not just monetary.
--
BMO