It would be "Is Doubleclick on the block"? Meaning, the auction block or potentially the chopping block. "On blocks" refers to rusting cars in somebody's front yard. Jeez, is even the Slashdot editing being farmed out overseas?
uhhh, recompile the kernel and use whichever distro you choose.
Oh, and people say there isn't support out there for Linux! Look at this pearl, this gem of wisdom... "recompile the kernel". In just 3 words, this obvsiously astute Linux expert managed to confuse, irritate, AND alienate! Wow, now that's what I call real user support; a real tight community! It's a wonder why more people aren't using Linux these days.
""The Firefox full-page NYT ad campaign finished off today with an impressive $250,000 over 10 days. Impressive to say the least, and it goes to show just how much momentum Firefox has.""
Or just how badly we want to get rid of IE.
Or how much extra money that geeks in NYC have lying around.
Re:A cult? Puhleeze
on
The Cult of Mac
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
This is an obsession over a multi-national corporation. This is nothing but pure, unadulterated consumerism. Looking at Apple fanatics, I can completely understand (and partially agree with) why the Muslim world thinks that the US in particular, is full of fucked up, anti-spiritual, ultra-consumers who pray to the god of Keeping up With the Joneses. When people start putting a permanent tattoo of an advertising campaign for a company on them, it's time to start looking at our culture to figure out what went so terribly wrong.
simply because Microsoft has been using unethical and anticompetitive business tactics from the start to eliminate their competition.
But since MS's illegal tactics
So then are you a US Department of Justice Fanboy? Really, I'm so sick of Microsoft hating drones rolling out the ol "illegal" schtick because it suits them. They didn't kill anybody. They didn't hurt anybody. They played the game, and did it better than anybody else. Whether or not you like what they did is irrelevant, but throwing around the word "illegal" makes you sound like a real government shill. The same kind of person that supports anti-drug laws, strict copyright laws, patent laws, etc. So, unless you're ready to blow Ashcroft, I think that it's time to lay off the silly "illegal" stuff.
Re:PC users should read this...
on
The Cult of Mac
·
· Score: 1
This is where the culture comes in bringing in a sense of loyalty to the product you use.
Repeat after me: "A Mac is a consumer product like any other. Apple is a large, for-profit corporation." I think that Apple is probably the US's finest shining example of consumerism run horribly awry.
Well, that says to me "bad programming". The "commit" should not have been fired until the cash was dispensed. If you can't roll back a change, then more than likely, the programming was bad. I mean, I don't know squat about this situation, but that's the whole point of having transactions. If the transaction didn't complete, then the whole thing is rolled back. It's sloppy (or greedy) on the bank's part to commit a transaction, THEN spit out the money because exactly what you described can happen, and really, should never happen.
Actually, that "big joke" was already irrelevant several years ago when MS finally killed their DOS based OS's (95/98/ME). But that being said, I'm actually getting ready (today, maybe) to make a very big MS purchase because one of their products is much more reliable and robust than competing products. I'm using it for ease of use, excellent pricing, and reliability. In fact, I'm expecting this software package that I'm looking at will save me many $1,000's in 2005 alone.
Not that this means too much (apart from the annoyance factor) though, I've never lost any money due to an ATM crash - I'm pretty sure the system is designed so that the central machine does all the secure stuff, with the ATM being not much more than a calculator keypad.
Actually, this is why "real" databases like Oracle & DB2 are used. They have that nifty little "commit" and "rollback" functionality (part of ACID) that makes it incredibly unlikely that even in the event of a major event at the client, you're not going to be fubar'ed. That, and true fault tolerance (you can throw the power on a working Oracle database, and 9 times out of ten, it'll be just fine when it comes back).
"Hey, hot goth chicks like Nintendo games, how can we publicize this fact? I know, let's send them a nasty letter from our lawyers and 200,000 geeks will start to associate hot goth chicks with Nintendo."
Actually, this geek now associates "Nintendo" with "sleazebag company that I won't ever buy from again." There is no fury like that of a geek scorned.
Well, ok... let's look at non-facts, or things that can't be proven... I still don't necessarily see how the "masses" should necessarily hold any more sway than experts in the field. Without some kind of authority, there's still no way to say that the masses that do the editing in said "wiki" are more likely to be correct than an expert who has spent a good portion of his/her life studying the subject. Now, it's entirely possible that the "expert" is in fact wrong, but I would think that an expert would still pull more weight than average joe. When you have many people editing the same article, there's nothing stopping a few experts from being drowned out by the masses, especially if the masses are convinced that they are correct. If anything, I would think that a "wiki" would eventually become a large collection of "common knowledge" that may or may not be correct. I see it as being an extreme of the worst aspect of the Net... people read it online, and they're convinced that it's true, without looking at the source.
Case in point... I had a customer come in a week ago looking for vegetarian cat food. I told her that we don't sell it because cats are carnivores... they'd get sick and possibly die if force fed a vegetarian diet. She told me that she read it at "somethingaboutveggiecats.com", so it MUST be true. She insisted. She's also wrong. That whole web site (if it exists) is wrong. All of the people who write for that web site are wrong. I don't care how many people believe it, the fact is that cats are carnivores (because research by experts have established this fact), and a vegetarian diet is not healthy for them. But because she read it online, and there's a following of people attempting to force feed their cats vegetarian diets, she assumes it's true, even though I have spent the past several years researching and talking to people (experts and lay people) about pet nutrition. I've heard countless stories, and have more experience than most people ever will in this admittedly uninteresting subject. The same thing will happen with a "wiki". The end product will be a dumping ground for what people think is true, with little to no regard for the real truth (or what is most likely to be true).
Or those people are 1000 idiots. With traditional sources of information (books, magazines, scientific journals), you know who is writing it, so you can determine whether or not the information is valuable. Call me nuts, but if one MIT professor disagreed with 1000 people on his topic, I'd listen to the MIT professor.
All a Wiki is going to do is to perpetuate bad science. Science is not a democratic process. People don't get together to decide what the facts are. You don't "vote" on facts. Either it is or it isn't. Facts have nothing to do with consensus, which is ultimately why the "Wiki" idea is a bad one.
Purely entertainment and geek culture. In no way would I trust random Slashdot posts to provide real information. Hell, half the time, the articles themselves are wrong or complete and utter bullshit! You don't go to a circus to learn stuff, and Slashdot makes a circus look like an institute of higher learning by comparison.
I vote for "Common sense" and a good understanding of how information technolgies work - past and present.
"Common sense" doesn't cover advanced science, and in some cases, even basic science. "Common sense" also doesn't take into account new discoveries/inventions.
Case in point. I have a pet supply shop. The vast majority of people and veterinarians *think* that they understand animal nutrition, when in reality, they don't. The whole "science" of veterinary nutrition is driven by commercial interests at the university level. There are only a few people who have studied the science and know the facts. 1000 people may *think* that they know the facts, but without doing real research, they have no way of knowing what is true. In reality, a few people have the credibility to address such a topic, because the "masses" are simply wrong.
Want proof? Go to several local veterinarians. Count how many carry "Science Diet" by Hills. Ask the vets why they carry it. They'll tell you because it's the best food, which in turn, they also tell their customers. In reality, this is completely false. But a Wiki would agree with the veterinarians and the public on this.
A Wiki allows no room for dissent, which is how all great discoveries came about: dissent. All a Wiki is good for continuing to expand "public knowledge", with little regard for its correctness. And if a new idea were to come around that is contrary to popular opinion, it's going to get drowned out by ignorance. Quite honestly, I don't even understand how this theory is supposed to be good. I'm not going to trust random anonymous person to explain particle physics from me. I'm only going to accept that information from somebody that I know is knowledgeable on the subject.
These sites are driven by the users themselves, and are able to gather astonishing amounts of high quality information.
And isn't that the problem? There's no way of KNOWING if the information is good quality or not. Just because the majority believes something, in no way makes it real. If "Wikis" were the source of information hundreds of years ago, we'd all still think that the world is flat, Earth was created in 7 days, and that black people are inferior. "Majority rules" is not a way to determine whether or not information is valid. I'd rather read something by one intelligent person with credentials than something written by 1000 idiots.
I don't understand this whole PayPal thing. PayPal has repeatedly and maliciously (from what I remember) messed around with their customers' funds, they're expensive as hell, and it's very amateurish. 1. Why would ANYBODY use PayPal and more importantly 2. Why would ANYBODY give money to a company that only had PayPal as an acceptable payment method? It's very simple: if you want to buy a service from a company that only accepts PayPal: don't. It's gonna be either a scam or a tiny, fly-by-night company. Any legitimate business can accept credit cards. It's very easy to do (and much much smarter from a business perspective). And to all of those people who are convinced that PayPal is perfectly acceptable, just PayPal me $20 and I'll send you a great penis extender...
Yes, you're a moron. TCO means "total cost of ownership". In the "total cost of ownership" of any kind of server, $142 is infitesimally small compared to training and setup costs. No offense, but you can't even troll very well. You sound like some kid looking at a '69 Mustang for his first car, saying "$5,000 is cheaper than a new Honda Civic", all the while, compeltely ignoring the fact that maintenance, gas, lost time with breakdowns, and insurance is going to make that '69 Mustang a hell of a lot more expensive than a Civic.
So, when was the last time you saw a Civic, or any other family car that kids like to dress up, lose traction in the rear wheels? Living in a college town, I see lots and lots of Civics and Corollas every day, but never have I seen one lose traction in the rear, no matter how fast they were going.
You've obviously never taken any aerodynamics classes. The point of the spoiler isn't for traction, it goes along with the basic understanding that an airfoil will provide a significant horsepower increase. Your typical spoiler on a Civic will increase horsepower 40 to 60 percent.
So, assuming that you have a Civic that will go 120 MPH +, how exactly does downward pressure on the back end accomplish adding horsepower? And I'm sorry, I only took a few college level physics classes, but from what I remember, air flow around a vehicle doesn't have shit to do with the amount of power the engine puts out.
As someone who's also owned a car that could have used a spoiler, I always assumed that a spoiler added downward pressure on the back of the car, helping to maintain traction when accelerating rapidly. I've never, ever, ever, ever seen a Civic's back tires smoke. Ever.
But more imporantly, how about providing a simple explination as to how a piece of plastic on the back of a car, in no way attached to the engine, increases the engine's output.
I hope that this book explains the usefulness of putting giant spoilers on front wheel drive cars to all idiots who continue to do so. I also hope that it explains the difference between a real exhaust system, and a fart pipe. Kids these days are really, really, really stupid, it seems (either that, or I'm getting old).
Slashdot Mirror
I think the line refers to "on the auction block", which is a perfectly valid expression.
That's my point. Look at the article title: " DoubleClick On The Blocks?"
It would be "Is Doubleclick on the block"? Meaning, the auction block or potentially the chopping block. "On blocks" refers to rusting cars in somebody's front yard. Jeez, is even the Slashdot editing being farmed out overseas?
What do you say to them?
I say, "You're wrong." No matter what religion you're talking about, religion is based on faith, which is a belief based of things other than fact.
And while we're at it, I've heard that a new bug was found in Apache 1.0!
uhhh, recompile the kernel and use whichever distro you choose.
Oh, and people say there isn't support out there for Linux! Look at this pearl, this gem of wisdom... "recompile the kernel". In just 3 words, this obvsiously astute Linux expert managed to confuse, irritate, AND alienate! Wow, now that's what I call real user support; a real tight community! It's a wonder why more people aren't using Linux these days.
What if I use the distro that I use because it's the only one that I could get to actually work?
""The Firefox full-page NYT ad campaign finished off today with an impressive $250,000 over 10 days. Impressive to say the least, and it goes to show just how much momentum Firefox has.""
Or just how badly we want to get rid of IE.
Or how much extra money that geeks in NYC have lying around.
This is an obsession over a multi-national corporation. This is nothing but pure, unadulterated consumerism. Looking at Apple fanatics, I can completely understand (and partially agree with) why the Muslim world thinks that the US in particular, is full of fucked up, anti-spiritual, ultra-consumers who pray to the god of Keeping up With the Joneses. When people start putting a permanent tattoo of an advertising campaign for a company on them, it's time to start looking at our culture to figure out what went so terribly wrong.
simply because Microsoft has been using unethical and anticompetitive business tactics from the start to eliminate their competition.
But since MS's illegal tactics
So then are you a US Department of Justice Fanboy? Really, I'm so sick of Microsoft hating drones rolling out the ol "illegal" schtick because it suits them. They didn't kill anybody. They didn't hurt anybody. They played the game, and did it better than anybody else. Whether or not you like what they did is irrelevant, but throwing around the word "illegal" makes you sound like a real government shill. The same kind of person that supports anti-drug laws, strict copyright laws, patent laws, etc. So, unless you're ready to blow Ashcroft, I think that it's time to lay off the silly "illegal" stuff.
This is where the culture comes in bringing in a sense of loyalty to the product you use.
Repeat after me: "A Mac is a consumer product like any other. Apple is a large, for-profit corporation." I think that Apple is probably the US's finest shining example of consumerism run horribly awry.
Well, that says to me "bad programming". The "commit" should not have been fired until the cash was dispensed. If you can't roll back a change, then more than likely, the programming was bad. I mean, I don't know squat about this situation, but that's the whole point of having transactions. If the transaction didn't complete, then the whole thing is rolled back. It's sloppy (or greedy) on the bank's part to commit a transaction, THEN spit out the money because exactly what you described can happen, and really, should never happen.
Actually, that "big joke" was already irrelevant several years ago when MS finally killed their DOS based OS's (95/98/ME). But that being said, I'm actually getting ready (today, maybe) to make a very big MS purchase because one of their products is much more reliable and robust than competing products. I'm using it for ease of use, excellent pricing, and reliability. In fact, I'm expecting this software package that I'm looking at will save me many $1,000's in 2005 alone.
Not that this means too much (apart from the annoyance factor) though, I've never lost any money due to an ATM crash - I'm pretty sure the system is designed so that the central machine does all the secure stuff, with the ATM being not much more than a calculator keypad.
Actually, this is why "real" databases like Oracle & DB2 are used. They have that nifty little "commit" and "rollback" functionality (part of ACID) that makes it incredibly unlikely that even in the event of a major event at the client, you're not going to be fubar'ed. That, and true fault tolerance (you can throw the power on a working Oracle database, and 9 times out of ten, it'll be just fine when it comes back).
"Hey, hot goth chicks like Nintendo games, how can we publicize this fact? I know, let's send them a nasty letter from our lawyers and 200,000 geeks will start to associate hot goth chicks with Nintendo."
Actually, this geek now associates "Nintendo" with "sleazebag company that I won't ever buy from again." There is no fury like that of a geek scorned.
Well, ok... let's look at non-facts, or things that can't be proven... I still don't necessarily see how the "masses" should necessarily hold any more sway than experts in the field. Without some kind of authority, there's still no way to say that the masses that do the editing in said "wiki" are more likely to be correct than an expert who has spent a good portion of his/her life studying the subject. Now, it's entirely possible that the "expert" is in fact wrong, but I would think that an expert would still pull more weight than average joe. When you have many people editing the same article, there's nothing stopping a few experts from being drowned out by the masses, especially if the masses are convinced that they are correct. If anything, I would think that a "wiki" would eventually become a large collection of "common knowledge" that may or may not be correct. I see it as being an extreme of the worst aspect of the Net... people read it online, and they're convinced that it's true, without looking at the source.
Case in point... I had a customer come in a week ago looking for vegetarian cat food. I told her that we don't sell it because cats are carnivores... they'd get sick and possibly die if force fed a vegetarian diet. She told me that she read it at "somethingaboutveggiecats.com", so it MUST be true. She insisted. She's also wrong. That whole web site (if it exists) is wrong. All of the people who write for that web site are wrong. I don't care how many people believe it, the fact is that cats are carnivores (because research by experts have established this fact), and a vegetarian diet is not healthy for them. But because she read it online, and there's a following of people attempting to force feed their cats vegetarian diets, she assumes it's true, even though I have spent the past several years researching and talking to people (experts and lay people) about pet nutrition. I've heard countless stories, and have more experience than most people ever will in this admittedly uninteresting subject. The same thing will happen with a "wiki". The end product will be a dumping ground for what people think is true, with little to no regard for the real truth (or what is most likely to be true).
Or those people are 1000 idiots. With traditional sources of information (books, magazines, scientific journals), you know who is writing it, so you can determine whether or not the information is valuable. Call me nuts, but if one MIT professor disagreed with 1000 people on his topic, I'd listen to the MIT professor.
All a Wiki is going to do is to perpetuate bad science. Science is not a democratic process. People don't get together to decide what the facts are. You don't "vote" on facts. Either it is or it isn't. Facts have nothing to do with consensus, which is ultimately why the "Wiki" idea is a bad one.
Why are you reading Slashdot?
Purely entertainment and geek culture. In no way would I trust random Slashdot posts to provide real information. Hell, half the time, the articles themselves are wrong or complete and utter bullshit! You don't go to a circus to learn stuff, and Slashdot makes a circus look like an institute of higher learning by comparison.
I vote for "Common sense" and a good understanding of how information technolgies work - past and present.
"Common sense" doesn't cover advanced science, and in some cases, even basic science. "Common sense" also doesn't take into account new discoveries/inventions.
Case in point. I have a pet supply shop. The vast majority of people and veterinarians *think* that they understand animal nutrition, when in reality, they don't. The whole "science" of veterinary nutrition is driven by commercial interests at the university level. There are only a few people who have studied the science and know the facts. 1000 people may *think* that they know the facts, but without doing real research, they have no way of knowing what is true. In reality, a few people have the credibility to address such a topic, because the "masses" are simply wrong.
Want proof? Go to several local veterinarians. Count how many carry "Science Diet" by Hills. Ask the vets why they carry it. They'll tell you because it's the best food, which in turn, they also tell their customers. In reality, this is completely false. But a Wiki would agree with the veterinarians and the public on this.
A Wiki allows no room for dissent, which is how all great discoveries came about: dissent. All a Wiki is good for continuing to expand "public knowledge", with little regard for its correctness. And if a new idea were to come around that is contrary to popular opinion, it's going to get drowned out by ignorance. Quite honestly, I don't even understand how this theory is supposed to be good. I'm not going to trust random anonymous person to explain particle physics from me. I'm only going to accept that information from somebody that I know is knowledgeable on the subject.
These sites are driven by the users themselves, and are able to gather astonishing amounts of high quality information.
And isn't that the problem? There's no way of KNOWING if the information is good quality or not. Just because the majority believes something, in no way makes it real. If "Wikis" were the source of information hundreds of years ago, we'd all still think that the world is flat, Earth was created in 7 days, and that black people are inferior. "Majority rules" is not a way to determine whether or not information is valid. I'd rather read something by one intelligent person with credentials than something written by 1000 idiots.
I don't understand this whole PayPal thing. PayPal has repeatedly and maliciously (from what I remember) messed around with their customers' funds, they're expensive as hell, and it's very amateurish. 1. Why would ANYBODY use PayPal and more importantly 2. Why would ANYBODY give money to a company that only had PayPal as an acceptable payment method? It's very simple: if you want to buy a service from a company that only accepts PayPal: don't. It's gonna be either a scam or a tiny, fly-by-night company. Any legitimate business can accept credit cards. It's very easy to do (and much much smarter from a business perspective). And to all of those people who are convinced that PayPal is perfectly acceptable, just PayPal me $20 and I'll send you a great penis extender...
Yes, you're a moron. TCO means "total cost of ownership". In the "total cost of ownership" of any kind of server, $142 is infitesimally small compared to training and setup costs. No offense, but you can't even troll very well. You sound like some kid looking at a '69 Mustang for his first car, saying "$5,000 is cheaper than a new Honda Civic", all the while, compeltely ignoring the fact that maintenance, gas, lost time with breakdowns, and insurance is going to make that '69 Mustang a hell of a lot more expensive than a Civic.
I didn't get the sticker thing, true. But no, I took him seriously. Damn. Now I feel really stupid.
So, when was the last time you saw a Civic, or any other family car that kids like to dress up, lose traction in the rear wheels? Living in a college town, I see lots and lots of Civics and Corollas every day, but never have I seen one lose traction in the rear, no matter how fast they were going.
You've obviously never taken any aerodynamics classes. The point of the spoiler isn't for traction, it goes along with the basic understanding that an airfoil will provide a significant horsepower increase. Your typical spoiler on a Civic will increase horsepower 40 to 60 percent.
So, assuming that you have a Civic that will go 120 MPH +, how exactly does downward pressure on the back end accomplish adding horsepower? And I'm sorry, I only took a few college level physics classes, but from what I remember, air flow around a vehicle doesn't have shit to do with the amount of power the engine puts out.
As someone who's also owned a car that could have used a spoiler, I always assumed that a spoiler added downward pressure on the back of the car, helping to maintain traction when accelerating rapidly. I've never, ever, ever, ever seen a Civic's back tires smoke. Ever.
But more imporantly, how about providing a simple explination as to how a piece of plastic on the back of a car, in no way attached to the engine, increases the engine's output.
I hope that this book explains the usefulness of putting giant spoilers on front wheel drive cars to all idiots who continue to do so. I also hope that it explains the difference between a real exhaust system, and a fart pipe. Kids these days are really, really, really stupid, it seems (either that, or I'm getting old).