Since Verizon are assholes like many other corporate giants who pass out useless CD's like candy, perhaps there could be a little more noob friendly way to get on the Internet. One that might take the form of a troubleshooting wizard in Ubuntu to point out that the user might just need to set a couple things in the router for it all to work. I think an animated penguin saying "It looks like you're trying to access the internet" would be a little much , but something that could help a noob along.
Airheads should be able to get online, seriously. I place the blame squarely on Verizon and Dell. Verizon for encouraging people that they need their stupid fucking CD and Dell for brushing her off.
We Slashdotters know that Linux is powerful enough for Wizards. It is very close to being easy enough for Airheads. It can be both.
It's possible and we (Linux geeks) should aspire to making it better and easier to use than Windows. Now if we could get corporations like Verizon, ATT, Time Warner and Cox to offer the very simple information the noobs need, we would be that much closer.
It's that fucking CD they pass out. ATT gave me one years ago, I was one of the first adopters of DSL in my area. If I had just set my router, which I eventually figured out, I would have been fine. But customer support at ATT kept insisting that they didn't support Linux. I actually had to go to the library to figure out how to get it working. I was new to Linux, and the distros back then (7-8 yrs ago) were much less polished. Even though I consider myself pretty smart, it took quite a while and a lot of work to get online.
"Sad but true"?. This was a lazily executed piece of wishy washy emotionalism. Let these companies show their real faces over time, and we then we can judge. MS has such a large catalog of infamy that it would take any Google or Apple out there decades to catch up. Gates and Ballmer aren't going to slow down one bit.
A couple of months ago, before my 2 ghz XP box went kaput, I would have judged this Wal Mart offering as anemic.
The backstory:
Trash in our neighborhood is picked up early Friday. I was out for a 'round the block smoke-walk late one Thu night and came upon an old HP Vectra VL on the curb with the other trash. I thought "what the hell and loaded the heavy PC and keyboard onto my shoulder. When I got home, I plugged it in and found it to be a 333 mhz box with Win98, and it worked. I played around with it a little and then put it in hallway, where it became the favorite perch of Ernie (my cat).
A couple of months later the HD and mobo fried on my 2ghz XP box. I had everything replicated and backed up on a USB drive, so I saved my data. I put Ubuntu on the Vectra and it runs great for a machine with such out of date specs. Of course it is slower and less reponsive than my original PC, but there are some functions (changing the desktop resolution, for example) that are considerably snappier even on the outdated equipment.
I have installed Linux/X on several machines through the years but the latest install from Ubuntu (7.04, now 7.1) was by far the smoothest. If I hadn't lost my XP box, I wouldn't have appreciated what can be accomplished on an older system with better software.
Wal Mart is evil, but I might just have to go over to the dark side and grab that $200 PC.
Journalism requires money to pay for bandwidth and salaries for reporters, editors etc. Although many aspects of DRM are problematic, especially with entertainment, some balance must be achieved between the need of news gathering organizations' need to create revenue and the public's access to good journalism. Paper advertising (how the NYT and others fund much of their web production), foundation funding / individual contributions (think PBS) and taxes (BBC) can only go so far. I anticipate a lot of dogmatic rejection of reasonable advertising schemes in this thread. I think it is detrimental to solving the larger question of how we will get decent coverage of world news in the long run.
At the root of it all is that we extol having instead of being. Preening moralists grandstand about other people's business, i.e. gay marriage, instead of holding themselves to their own moral codes. These dimestore demagogues are driven by their own emptiness, guilt and greed.
Political and religious leaders, media figures, CEO's and celebrities reap huge rewards while oiling the gears of an economic machine that grinds down the poor, the hard working poor and increasingly the middle class. They smile for the cameras and perpetuate the myth.
Who you know or what family you came from, or how rich your family is seen to be vastly more important than being competent or ethical.
Structurally, schools are way too large. Gigantism has long been an American obsession, but it is not the way to make teens feel like they are a part of something worthwhile, and do not offer a safe haven for growing and learning.
Teachers are not honored in our culture. In addition they are often saddled with parental responsibilities when unparented students are foisted on them.
Consumerism, pushed down our throats from birth is the true American religion. Newscasters are just now drooling over the upcoming post-Thanksgiving spree. Buying, having, wanting and getting make for a deeply unsatisfying moral code, especially for a young mind coming to terms with adulthood.
Check out http://emperorlinux.com/ for a lot of options for pre-installed Linux on your laptop. You can order a notebook with dual-boot and they list all the devices etc. that are available to your Linux environment.
I loved this stuff when I first tried it in CA, now they have it here in OH. Look for the large white can. Excess sugar brings me down, but I can handle the small sugared can of Redbull, which is OK. Monster has a diet version which peps me up just as well as the Rockstar, but has a strange floral taste. The Diet Rockstar is just very tangy. For me, not an evening drink though, they really work too well and interfere with sleep.
I'm beginning to shun theatres based on the unavoidable, loud commercials that play during the 20 minutes before the previews start and the six dollar popcorn. 2 tickets + 1 popcorn + 2 sodas ~= 10 movie rentals, and i can pause the dvd when i get up to go to the bathroom.
It is the idiotic single use zoning laws that are everywhere in force that are to blame. New urbanism design principles will do a lot more to solve the commuting quandary than outlandish robot cars.
Who will bring the Yucca Mountain to Mohammad?
on
Port-A-Nuke
·
· Score: 1
It's insane to create more reactors when we haven't conclusively figured out what to do with the waste.
Reactor selling is extremely lucrative if the millenia of waste containment isn't factored in. Let our mutated progeny pay for it, I guess.
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Since Verizon are assholes like many other corporate giants who pass out useless CD's like candy, perhaps there could be a little more noob friendly way to get on the Internet. One that might take the form of a troubleshooting wizard in Ubuntu to point out that the user might just need to set a couple things in the router for it all to work. I think an animated penguin saying "It looks like you're trying to access the internet" would be a little much , but something that could help a noob along.
Airheads should be able to get online, seriously. I place the blame squarely on Verizon and Dell. Verizon for encouraging people that they need their stupid fucking CD and Dell for brushing her off. We Slashdotters know that Linux is powerful enough for Wizards. It is very close to being easy enough for Airheads. It can be both.
It's possible and we (Linux geeks) should aspire to making it better and easier to use than Windows. Now if we could get corporations like Verizon, ATT, Time Warner and Cox to offer the very simple information the noobs need, we would be that much closer.
It's that fucking CD they pass out. ATT gave me one years ago, I was one of the first adopters of DSL in my area. If I had just set my router, which I eventually figured out, I would have been fine. But customer support at ATT kept insisting that they didn't support Linux. I actually had to go to the library to figure out how to get it working. I was new to Linux, and the distros back then (7-8 yrs ago) were much less polished. Even though I consider myself pretty smart, it took quite a while and a lot of work to get online.
That would make as much sense as blaming the game.
"Sad but true"?. This was a lazily executed piece of wishy washy emotionalism. Let these companies show their real faces over time, and we then we can judge. MS has such a large catalog of infamy that it would take any Google or Apple out there decades to catch up. Gates and Ballmer aren't going to slow down one bit.
A couple of months ago, before my 2 ghz XP box went kaput, I would have judged this Wal Mart offering as anemic.
The backstory:
Trash in our neighborhood is picked up early Friday. I was out for a 'round the block smoke-walk late one Thu night and came upon an old HP Vectra VL on the curb with the other trash. I thought "what the hell and loaded the heavy PC and keyboard onto my shoulder. When I got home, I plugged it in and found it to be a 333 mhz box with Win98, and it worked. I played around with it a little and then put it in hallway, where it became the favorite perch of Ernie (my cat).
A couple of months later the HD and mobo fried on my 2ghz XP box. I had everything replicated and backed up on a USB drive, so I saved my data. I put Ubuntu on the Vectra and it runs great for a machine with such out of date specs. Of course it is slower and less reponsive than my original PC, but there are some functions (changing the desktop resolution, for example) that are considerably snappier even on the outdated equipment.
I have installed Linux/X on several machines through the years but the latest install from Ubuntu (7.04, now 7.1) was by far the smoothest. If I hadn't lost my XP box, I wouldn't have appreciated what can be accomplished on an older system with better software.
Wal Mart is evil, but I might just have to go over to the dark side and grab that $200 PC.
Journalism requires money to pay for bandwidth and salaries for reporters, editors etc. Although many aspects of DRM are problematic, especially with entertainment, some balance must be achieved between the need of news gathering organizations' need to create revenue and the public's access to good journalism. Paper advertising (how the NYT and others fund much of their web production), foundation funding / individual contributions (think PBS) and taxes (BBC) can only go so far. I anticipate a lot of dogmatic rejection of reasonable advertising schemes in this thread. I think it is detrimental to solving the larger question of how we will get decent coverage of world news in the long run.
It worked for me... I got over $1k for a domain I wasn't using. They were expedient and fair, offering a reliable escrow service and good marketing.
The system is just a symptom of our culture.
At the root of it all is that we extol having instead of being. Preening moralists grandstand about other people's business, i.e. gay marriage, instead of holding themselves to their own moral codes. These dimestore demagogues are driven by their own emptiness, guilt and greed.
Political and religious leaders, media figures, CEO's and celebrities reap huge rewards while oiling the gears of an economic machine that grinds down the poor, the hard working poor and increasingly the middle class. They smile for the cameras and perpetuate the myth.
Who you know or what family you came from, or how rich your family is seen to be vastly more important than being competent or ethical.
Structurally, schools are way too large. Gigantism has long been an American obsession, but it is not the way to make teens feel like they are a part of something worthwhile, and do not offer a safe haven for growing and learning.
Teachers are not honored in our culture. In addition they are often saddled with parental responsibilities when unparented students are foisted on them.
Consumerism, pushed down our throats from birth is the true American religion. Newscasters are just now drooling over the upcoming post-Thanksgiving spree. Buying, having, wanting and getting make for a deeply unsatisfying moral code, especially for a young mind coming to terms with adulthood.
Check out http://emperorlinux.com/ for a lot of options for pre-installed Linux on your laptop. You can order a notebook with dual-boot and they list all the devices etc. that are available to your Linux environment.
I loved this stuff when I first tried it in CA, now they have it here in OH. Look for the large white can. Excess sugar brings me down, but I can handle the small sugared can of Redbull, which is OK. Monster has a diet version which peps me up just as well as the Rockstar, but has a strange floral taste. The Diet Rockstar is just very tangy. For me, not an evening drink though, they really work too well and interfere with sleep.
I'm beginning to shun theatres based on the unavoidable, loud commercials that play during the 20 minutes before the previews start and the six dollar popcorn. 2 tickets + 1 popcorn + 2 sodas ~= 10 movie rentals, and i can pause the dvd when i get up to go to the bathroom.
About commuting to/from subdivisions:
It is the idiotic single use zoning laws that are everywhere in force that are to blame. New urbanism design principles will do a lot more to solve the commuting quandary than outlandish robot cars.
It's insane to create more reactors when we haven't conclusively figured out what to do with the waste. Reactor selling is extremely lucrative if the millenia of waste containment isn't factored in. Let our mutated progeny pay for it, I guess.