Before I get on that list myself for being a registered independent (can't trust someone who wont take sides), I better use my right to travel to get the hell out of dodge. Are there any real democracies left in the world? I'd rather not have to learn a new language. Canada is close, but that's just US-light, they'll follow up with anything we say just a few years behind. Europe is a sinking ship too, so that's out. I don't think there's anywhere left. Am I going to have to build a city at the bottom of the ocean?
Just because you have a large user base does not mean you have a large source of income. I don't know if Facebook is profitable, but I do have my suspicions that it is grossly over-valued right now. This social networking craze reminds me of a little thing that happened a few years ago. Eventually these companies are going to have to find a way to make money...ads? That's the best idea they've been able to come up with. Eventually though, someone has to buy something for that model to work, and when your user base is a group of people that signed up for a service because it was free don't be surprised when they're not so eager to pull out their credit cards (If they even have them, since, surprise MS, your users are also a bunch of high school students!). The only thing I can think of is maybe MS thinks there is some value in the data, even that I'd say is nebulous at best. This screams of "me-too!" corporate positioning. MS can obviously afford this, they probably weighed the chances of being left out of the social networking fad and losing money on this deal and considered it an acceptable risk. The only major effect it could have would be positive, obviously they can afford it.
It would be easy to monitor my own usage over the month, and gradually increase my bandwidth use until I find the tipping point. Then I'd now how much I could safely use. Some people here are saying that Verizon doesn't do any kind of throttling or restrictions maybe it wouldn't even be an issue.
I guess with all the problems with charter, at least they don't do any of that. I max out my connection (upstream at least) nearly 24/7 all month (Google says that's about 148GB) and have never been charged more or gotten so much as a warning. If I ever did get a connection with a company that limits it, I'd be sure to find out exactly how much I can safely use and get as close to that as possible every month.
I pay almost that much already for Charter high speed cable that's a fraction of those speeds. My upstream is half a meg. With 20/20 I could actually keep my BT ratios positive. I might need to buy some more HDDs though...
I doubt charter will ever improve in my area until they have some real competitors. Right now they're the only game in town if you want the fastest connection.
Well, that's not really an option RIGHT NOW. I have a lot of money already invested in my current hardware, and I need something that works with my current configurations. Compatibility with Linux is probably the last feature I consider when making hardware decisions. What I do consider is price, stability, performance (in that order). Everything else really doesn't even register at all. I'm not going to buy new hardware just to be able to use a free OS that still isn't as good as what I currently have. Wireless didn't work either, but I'm sure you'll just blame Broadcom. Vista got it working somehow, after the first boot, with zero configuration. Networking and filesharing took ZERO configuration with Vista between other vista machines and XP. The only thing that took a little bit of time was mapping a few network drives but that was just a couple clicks in explorer.
Saying, "Buy new hardware" really isn't a great strategy when you're trying to convince people to change their OS.
Thanks for the suggestion, but adding another layer of complexity and obfuscation really wouldn't help. The only solution that would work is a native windows app, and having a GUI is important too, although not critical.
Or just turn it off all together. Everyone here on slashdot is smart enough to use a computer without needing the protection of UAC. It's not in XP and despite never having used a virus scanner or security software I've never had any problems.
The only security software you need for Windows is Firefox and a brain.
I just tried out Ubuntu 7.10 on a laptop that was running Vista.
Install was quick and without error but boot time after installation was about 10 minutes, after that first one it was still 5-6. The OS would never shut down at all. Ever. After telling it to shut down it flashes a couple glitchy, corrupted command line screens and then goes black, but it was still on with the processor chugging away (making a LOT of heat). I have no idea what it is doing during that time. Sharing files with the other computers on my network still didn't work. The new ATI linux driver got Compiz running without XGL (hurray! finally...), but my 2d performance was shot to hell, scrolling this slashdot page showed horrible lag and tearing. That's where I got fed up with it and went back to windows.
I put Vista back on there, which works great and I've been really happy with it (seems like I'm the only one on Slashdot who is). Fast, stable, and everything works.
Ghost is actually very good. Saved me a lot of time and effort. Do you know of an open source solution that's as good or better (needs all the features found in Norton Ghost)?
Not when the average American is still using dial up for internet access, or doesn't even have net access AT ALL. Web apps of that size and complexity require affordable, ubiquitous and always on internet connections. When that's the reality for America, we'll talk, until then your predictions look a little silly when you see the state of things in the real world.
I've always thought it interesting that creating an artificial nose (sense of smell) has lagged so far behind the other senses. Vision, that's easy, cameras have sharper resolution than our pathetic biological eyes. Hearing, again, sensitivity of microphones has easily surpassed human ability. There's the sense of touch, but we can cheat and make sensors that detect resistance to motion, being able to feel and discern texture is harder however. Sense of smell is probably the most abstracted and subjective, so it's no wonder it's the most difficult to replicate with technology. Most of the artificial "nose" tech is just checking for the presence of certain chemicals in the air.
While his appearance doesn't invalidate or cheapen in ANY way the work he has done in his long career, it doesn't help the image of his movement as viewed by people outside of it. Like it or not, the reality of the world we live in is, people who get to make policy decisions and distribute the money and resources do judge you partly on your appearance. Stallmann has been successful in spite of his unconventional attitude to social norms by the power and merits of his vision and principles, but you have to wonder if things might have been different--maybe in just a few instances--if he met the rest of the world somewhere in the middle on the other stuff.
I meant no disrespect to the man, but that doesn't mean I agree with all the decisions he's made.
Too bad he doesn't care about his cause enough to project an aura of professionalism and courtesy. There are certain expectations when you're a GUEST speaker in a professional setting, an academic setting.
They'd have one more customer, me, if their OS actually was a viable alternative to windows. One of my main requirements is that it must work on my existing hardware. Linux and Vista (Say it isn't so! Someone who actually LIKES vista!? *GASP*) are able to do this. OSX can't, so it's a non-starter.
Good for relying information that is a binary state, or at most a few degrees of complexity, but how did they get the information on what signal matches to what command? That had to be transmitted somehow too. What if they needed to change the signal because the codes were compromised?
That's a well known tactic for discovering the source of leaks of sensitive information; been in use long before computers. Hell it probably predates movable type! It didn't have a specific name until Clancy wrote Patriot Games. Google, "canary trap".
My biology teacher in high school (California public school system), openly mocked creationism and intelligent design almost daily. ID and creationism were never even mentioned unless he was ridiculing them, and the students who believed in it (yes, we had some). Having an atheist teacher with tenure helped a lot.
And so, if you don't give it to the ESRB, or something very similar, then the job will fall into the laps of the politicians. Nobody wants that. Are you forgetting the third, and best option? No body rates the games. Then we can all stop pretending this farcical moral crusade to categorize games into neat little slots with appropriate age groups was anything but wholesale censorship.
But it is doing stuff. It's using that extra, unused memory to cache stuff that you're likely to need access to quickly. It's just superfetch doing its job. Unused memory is wasted memory. If you suddenly start doing something that requires all that memory, Vista relinquishes it and lets that app/game have it. Vista itself isn't using half your memory, it's caching your web browser, start menu, documents folder, and other things so that they open quicker. You can even turn off superfetch if you want to, it's a service.
Slashdot Mirror
Before I get on that list myself for being a registered independent (can't trust someone who wont take sides), I better use my right to travel to get the hell out of dodge. Are there any real democracies left in the world? I'd rather not have to learn a new language. Canada is close, but that's just US-light, they'll follow up with anything we say just a few years behind. Europe is a sinking ship too, so that's out. I don't think there's anywhere left. Am I going to have to build a city at the bottom of the ocean?
Just add everyone, then implement a whitelist instead. We can issue travel papers and everything, it'll be great.
Just because you have a large user base does not mean you have a large source of income. I don't know if Facebook is profitable, but I do have my suspicions that it is grossly over-valued right now. This social networking craze reminds me of a little thing that happened a few years ago. Eventually these companies are going to have to find a way to make money...ads? That's the best idea they've been able to come up with. Eventually though, someone has to buy something for that model to work, and when your user base is a group of people that signed up for a service because it was free don't be surprised when they're not so eager to pull out their credit cards (If they even have them, since, surprise MS, your users are also a bunch of high school students!). The only thing I can think of is maybe MS thinks there is some value in the data, even that I'd say is nebulous at best. This screams of "me-too!" corporate positioning. MS can obviously afford this, they probably weighed the chances of being left out of the social networking fad and losing money on this deal and considered it an acceptable risk. The only major effect it could have would be positive, obviously they can afford it.
It would be easy to monitor my own usage over the month, and gradually increase my bandwidth use until I find the tipping point. Then I'd now how much I could safely use. Some people here are saying that Verizon doesn't do any kind of throttling or restrictions maybe it wouldn't even be an issue.
And I agree with the rest of what you said, I just hate that platitude.
I guess with all the problems with charter, at least they don't do any of that. I max out my connection (upstream at least) nearly 24/7 all month (Google says that's about 148GB) and have never been charged more or gotten so much as a warning. If I ever did get a connection with a company that limits it, I'd be sure to find out exactly how much I can safely use and get as close to that as possible every month.
I pay almost that much already for Charter high speed cable that's a fraction of those speeds. My upstream is half a meg. With 20/20 I could actually keep my BT ratios positive. I might need to buy some more HDDs though...
I doubt charter will ever improve in my area until they have some real competitors. Right now they're the only game in town if you want the fastest connection.
Well, that's not really an option RIGHT NOW. I have a lot of money already invested in my current hardware, and I need something that works with my current configurations. Compatibility with Linux is probably the last feature I consider when making hardware decisions. What I do consider is price, stability, performance (in that order). Everything else really doesn't even register at all. I'm not going to buy new hardware just to be able to use a free OS that still isn't as good as what I currently have. Wireless didn't work either, but I'm sure you'll just blame Broadcom. Vista got it working somehow, after the first boot, with zero configuration. Networking and filesharing took ZERO configuration with Vista between other vista machines and XP. The only thing that took a little bit of time was mapping a few network drives but that was just a couple clicks in explorer.
Saying, "Buy new hardware" really isn't a great strategy when you're trying to convince people to change their OS.
Thanks for the suggestion, but adding another layer of complexity and obfuscation really wouldn't help. The only solution that would work is a native windows app, and having a GUI is important too, although not critical.
Or just turn it off all together. Everyone here on slashdot is smart enough to use a computer without needing the protection of UAC. It's not in XP and despite never having used a virus scanner or security software I've never had any problems.
The only security software you need for Windows is Firefox and a brain.
I just tried out Ubuntu 7.10 on a laptop that was running Vista.
Install was quick and without error but boot time after installation was about 10 minutes, after that first one it was still 5-6. The OS would never shut down at all. Ever. After telling it to shut down it flashes a couple glitchy, corrupted command line screens and then goes black, but it was still on with the processor chugging away (making a LOT of heat). I have no idea what it is doing during that time. Sharing files with the other computers on my network still didn't work. The new ATI linux driver got Compiz running without XGL (hurray! finally...), but my 2d performance was shot to hell, scrolling this slashdot page showed horrible lag and tearing. That's where I got fed up with it and went back to windows.
I put Vista back on there, which works great and I've been really happy with it (seems like I'm the only one on Slashdot who is). Fast, stable, and everything works.
See you again with 8.04
Has to work inside of Windows on an automatic schedule; that means no booting off a Linux live CD.
Ghost is actually very good. Saved me a lot of time and effort. Do you know of an open source solution that's as good or better (needs all the features found in Norton Ghost)?
Not when the average American is still using dial up for internet access, or doesn't even have net access AT ALL. Web apps of that size and complexity require affordable, ubiquitous and always on internet connections. When that's the reality for America, we'll talk, until then your predictions look a little silly when you see the state of things in the real world.
I've always thought it interesting that creating an artificial nose (sense of smell) has lagged so far behind the other senses. Vision, that's easy, cameras have sharper resolution than our pathetic biological eyes. Hearing, again, sensitivity of microphones has easily surpassed human ability. There's the sense of touch, but we can cheat and make sensors that detect resistance to motion, being able to feel and discern texture is harder however. Sense of smell is probably the most abstracted and subjective, so it's no wonder it's the most difficult to replicate with technology. Most of the artificial "nose" tech is just checking for the presence of certain chemicals in the air.
You realize you can't sage threads on slashdot, right?
While his appearance doesn't invalidate or cheapen in ANY way the work he has done in his long career, it doesn't help the image of his movement as viewed by people outside of it. Like it or not, the reality of the world we live in is, people who get to make policy decisions and distribute the money and resources do judge you partly on your appearance. Stallmann has been successful in spite of his unconventional attitude to social norms by the power and merits of his vision and principles, but you have to wonder if things might have been different--maybe in just a few instances--if he met the rest of the world somewhere in the middle on the other stuff.
I meant no disrespect to the man, but that doesn't mean I agree with all the decisions he's made.
Too bad he doesn't care about his cause enough to project an aura of professionalism and courtesy. There are certain expectations when you're a GUEST speaker in a professional setting, an academic setting.
They'd have one more customer, me, if their OS actually was a viable alternative to windows. One of my main requirements is that it must work on my existing hardware. Linux and Vista (Say it isn't so! Someone who actually LIKES vista!? *GASP*) are able to do this. OSX can't, so it's a non-starter.
Good for relying information that is a binary state, or at most a few degrees of complexity, but how did they get the information on what signal matches to what command? That had to be transmitted somehow too. What if they needed to change the signal because the codes were compromised?
That's a well known tactic for discovering the source of leaks of sensitive information; been in use long before computers. Hell it probably predates movable type! It didn't have a specific name until Clancy wrote Patriot Games. Google, "canary trap".
My biology teacher in high school (California public school system), openly mocked creationism and intelligent design almost daily. ID and creationism were never even mentioned unless he was ridiculing them, and the students who believed in it (yes, we had some). Having an atheist teacher with tenure helped a lot.
Can I still write on it?
But it is doing stuff. It's using that extra, unused memory to cache stuff that you're likely to need access to quickly. It's just superfetch doing its job. Unused memory is wasted memory. If you suddenly start doing something that requires all that memory, Vista relinquishes it and lets that app/game have it. Vista itself isn't using half your memory, it's caching your web browser, start menu, documents folder, and other things so that they open quicker. You can even turn off superfetch if you want to, it's a service.