print "<p>We are sorry, but we don't support your browser. ".
"Please upgrade to the latest Internet Explorer, ".
"or continue to use the site at your own risk</p>\n"; } ?>
"What kind of software would you use to enable simultaneous document editing with version control, or to sync presentations across participant browsers for an online meeting?"
It's been used to edit a 600,000-page document over at Wikipedia, where it seems to cope okay with about 6000 simultaneous editors. It has version control, file uploads, image support, etc. which means that you should be able to create most types of document with it.
"We can only cross our fingers and hope it will pass the acid2 test"
Given that acid2 mostly covers handling of deliberately-invalid or broken CSS, I'm not too worried about how my site looks in browsers that don't pass it...
"Personally, I think it would be refreshing for IE7 users to see something like: "We are sorry, but we don't support your browser. Please upgrade to the latest Internet Explorer"
+1: Funny. I might actually program a message like that into my website...
"Mod this flamebait if you like, but Apple isn't the paragon of virtue that many in the Slashdot community have made it out to be. DRM in iTunes."
Even Apple's DVD player is like that "You may change your region up to 5 times" -- who's supposed to be in control of this computer, me, or the person who wrote that message?
Back to using Linux, where the programmers respect your need to have control over the computer.
"Of course, when you throw out the PC, you then have to purchase a new copy of the operating system. In 99% of cases this is Windows."
90% at most surely?
If it were 99%, then I'd have to ask 100 computer-buyers before finding one who didn't purchase Windows. But of the 10-20 recent computer-buyers I know, 4 now have Mac OS X.
And those Apple-buying decisions do increase the incentive for Microsoft to fix their problem!
We don't put links to "What's Drupal" websites for the same reason we don't put links to "What's AppleMac" or "What's this grey box with a keyboard sitting on my desk" pages -- you're expected to know shit like that before you start commenting on slashdot
The same retards that buy anything that Dell sells, just because Dell sells it.
Ohh, it's too much trouble to buy a copy of Windows2000 nowadays - we'll have to migrate the whole company to XP. And then to longwhatsit. Sure it will break everything, but what else can we do?
Oops, better become anonymous. You know who you are, XP-choosers...
"How far can this go? If you can be guilty for linking to a site, what about linking to a site that links to a site?"
Well 2600 were banned from linking to a site that linked to a site that contained software that could have been used to copy something without permission, if that helps...
Install Ubuntu. Double-click on an MP3. "Unrecognised filetype/no application can open this file". You need to edit your repositary (sp?) list and install additional software to play MP3s.
"and anything linux-based won't play games"
Well yeah. I paid some £30 for Myth2 from Bungee, and it doesn't install on Ubuntu. Tried a few tricks I knew from before to make it install, and it segfaults the moment you run it. None of my real [Windows] games do that.
Incidentally, this is because of a soundcard issue that the game segfaults, which is why I sympathised with the original commenter about his inability to get sound working on *Ubuntu. However, even if I fixed that, the nVidia drivers [may their driver-writers use WindowsXP eternally] would make the game crash.
lol. There's always another application to reccommend isn't there?
I was actually thinking of AmaroK on KUbuntu not playing MP3s by default, until you (a) either edit your repositaries list to add non-free, or download Synaptic (because Kynaptic can't edit it's own repositary list), then (b) search newsgroups and the web to find out which gstreamer package you need to install to get the default MP3 player to play MP3s.
Granted, I wouldn't have it any other way. Certainly compared to Mandriva's "Agree to the EULA to continue" approach, or Apple's "You've changed your DVD region twice, you dirty pirate" approach, then KUbuntu is certainly the best OS around. But the fact remains that by default it doesn't play MP3s. And it doesn't play games (Myth2 for Linux doesn't even install)
Nice. So to play games on Linux, you install a Windows emulator.
Basically, if you use TransGaming, you pretty much admit that Linux isn't a games platform, and Windows rules. Want to run games? Well you need Windows (either a real copy, or a virtual-machine, or an emulator)
Then you go that route, and find yourself classified as a "Windows user" when they're totting-up statistics of who plays the most games. When the next game comes out, they know you're a Windows user who paid the $50 for a game, so they'll write their next game for Windows too. Better keep a subscription to that bootleg implementation of Windows if you want to play it.
And yes, I say this as a Kubuntu user. Who recently bought a Mac so that I can play games again. OK, it costs more than a games console, but consoles can't play RPGs. Linux certainly can't.
So $1000/mo rent to live closer to work, or $600/mo rent + $400/mo transport to live further away (neglecting the cost of you car, and any differences in the cost of (e.g.) food between those places)
Surely that means that jobs in those places will have to pay anyone who works there the additional cost of getting to that place?
For example, if I were to get a job in London (£700/mo extra in rent), then the jobs there will all pay £10,000/year more than an equivalent job somewhere where the rent is cheaper.
Sure, there are some places (notably schools and hospitals) in central london that offer 'normal' salaries, and as a rule, they can't find people to work for them. (In fact, I think even they get paid a lot more for being in London)
Private-sector companies have more money available, and they realise they need to pay people the cost of living before anyone will work for them. Some people take that money and live many miles away, spending a bit on petrol, toll roads, insurance, and pocketing the balance in return for sitting in traffic for hours, but that's their choice.
And when you need to move jobs, surely the city-center apartment will be better than a house in the middle of nowhere, as it gives you a choice of all the jobs in that city.
"Sure, [nuclear power is more expensive than pretty much anything else] using 1960's technology along with 1970's regulations."
Regulations like "must be reasonably safe"? I'd love to see you try and build a plant without those restrictions.
The oft-quoted example is of Diablo Canyon's pressurized-water nuclear reactors, which survived (for example) the magnitude 6.6 San Simeon earthquake in 2003, whereas the original design for that power station (pre-1970s regulations as you call them) would have been shaken into something that no longer held the radiation inside.
"More lunacy from the technologically illiterate. Ever been near one of the turbine farms? Pretty noisy"
Blimey, if that's the only argument against wind energy then we should invest in it now. Yes, I've travelled through vast areas of wind-farms (mostly on the Isle of Wight) and they're pretty normal structures, no more invasive than the lighthouses, farms, radio aerials, and motorways we already build in those areas.
Noisy? Compared to what, the motorways running past every other power station? Compared to the high-speed trains that we've built everywhere (including scenic spots) Compared to the aircraft flying over that area?
In fact I can't say I ever noticed the noise from those wind turbines -- perhaps you're talking about 1960's technology or something. We had one installed in the centre of London a while ago, and it was completely silent while operating.
If noise were a concern, then we'd have banned most forms of travel a long time ago. There are houses that physically shake when an airliner takes off, houses that shake when trains go past, houses everywhere that have to deal with constant traffic noise, yet you're worried about an almost-inaudible wind turbine?!?
"How do you expect me to make the 1.5 hour commute to work?"
Presumably, you (a) chose a house, and (b) chose a job. And the two are incompatible, and you're complaining to slashdot about it!
I got my first job recently, and it took less than a month to find a decent place to live nearby. And by nearby I mean walking distance. And that's perfectly normal, as about half of my colleagues are about the same distance.
So now I have a 4 mile cycle-ride to work, and you have a 1.5-hour (90 mile?) drive. WTF? that's not even in the same city, you're so far away. What's so crap about the job that you don't move nearer?
Perhaps there's something about your area where if you're prepared to drive for hours to get to work, then everyone else also drives for hours, and your company doesn't give a shit if it's located in the ass-end of nowhere. I know if I went for an interview somewhere that was 90 miles from the nearest residential area, they'd be looking for a new office when they couldn't hire anyone.
"Me personally? I favor nuclear. but for whatever reason, the Enviro-nuts don't like nuclear."
You realise that nuclear power is more expensive than pretty much anything else?
e.g. when it was first developed ("look how civially-useful our nuclear weapons programme is, it can generate power too") the claim was that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter". Now, that claim is "might someday be comparable with the price of regular electricity"
Interestingly, you seem to be talking about there being unsuitable areas of the US, and unsuitable times of year, as arguments against solar/wind/hydro energy, yet this is a thread about producing hydrogen (which can be produced anywhere)
It's an alternative to gasoline which, despite obvious dangers and impracticability, is shipped all the way from Scotland, Alaska, Russia, and the Middle East to the US just to fuel cars.
If it's possible to get an explosive chemical from Russia to the US to fuel your car, then I'm sure it's possible to get hydrogen from sunny Texas, windy Kansas, or the hilly Rockies.
"I wonder if $10m will make sound work out of the box"
Irrelevant: Ubuntu won't play MP3s, and anything linux-based won't play games, so unless you've already got a.ogg collection to listen to, the soundcard drivers are a bit of an academic issue...
Of course, I like ubuntu a lot, use it on a load of different machines, and finally managed to get an MP3 encoder for it. Now if only they'd package a decent WindowMaker setup (menus, themes, etc.) instead of relying on this Gnome/KDE awfulness...
Actually in the real world (when I was at school), people use WordPerfect for MS-DOS, and smaller companies were starting to use Lotus Ami Pro.
How would it have helped if I'd learned those applications?
We even had a fairly-major CS test at school, where one of the questions was 'what keystroke is used to right-format a line in Ami Pro'. How is information like that going to help me now, typing into a Slashdot textbox using FireFox (neither of which could even have been imagined when I was learning IT/CS)
How would teaching people Word help now? The next generation of business technology seems to be influenced by what CS graduates are using at home today, and recently that's been Linux, Free Software on Windows2000, and we're starting to see some Mac OS. If you wanted to teach in school "for business", then you would start by thinking what people will find useful in 5-10 years when they get their first jobs.
And even if you're "living in the present", why would you standardise on something that requires the parents to pay hundreds of pounds extra to do computer-related homework, when you could select an almost-identical program that you can distribute for free?
Actually I had this same good idea a couple of years ago. It could effectly wipe out the slashdot effect. What if, each time server load went over a preset amount, it served a torrrent containing the HTML and image files instead of the HTML file itself.
There's a rumour ( = haven't looked it up) that BitTorrent works best with files of 10MB or more, which would imply that it's not ideal for unburdening a website full of 30K HTML files and 70K images.
Has anyone been using BT for websites and small files?
Spammer: I don't want to get suid... can you tell me who not to spam. Govt: Sorry, that's classified.
Ignoring for a moment why the spammer wouldn't want to be suid (is that a sort of identity theft?)... doesn't stuff like that already happen?
Pilot: I don't want to get shot down... can you tell me where are the nuclear power stations that I must stay 30 miles away from? Govt: Sorry, that's classified.
Builder: I don't want to get sued... can you tell me what rules apply to the house I'm building? Govt: Sorry, that's classified.
Gilmore: I don't want to get stopped from flying... can you tell me whether I'm on the list of communists? Govt: Sorry, that's classified.
"Uh huh. So a huge list is compiled of all the underage kids"
You'd assume that the published list would be MD5s of the lowercase version of each email address, and that the full database would only be available to the michigan government, their contractors, credit agencies, anyone who cracks their website.
At least, that's how everyone here would probably implement it. They don't need to release the email addresses, just provide a way to check whether they're on the list or not.
Slashdot Mirror
"What kind of software would you use to enable simultaneous document editing with version control, or to sync presentations across participant browsers for an online meeting?"
MediaWiki
It's been used to edit a 600,000-page document over at Wikipedia, where it seems to cope okay with about 6000 simultaneous editors. It has version control, file uploads, image support, etc. which means that you should be able to create most types of document with it.
"We can only cross our fingers and hope it will pass the acid2 test"
Given that acid2 mostly covers handling of deliberately-invalid or broken CSS, I'm not too worried about how my site looks in browsers that don't pass it...
"Personally, I think it would be refreshing for IE7 users to see something like: "We are sorry, but we don't support your browser. Please upgrade to the latest Internet Explorer"
+1: Funny. I might actually program a message like that into my website...
"Mod this flamebait if you like, but Apple isn't the paragon of virtue that many in the Slashdot community have made it out to be. DRM in iTunes."
Even Apple's DVD player is like that "You may change your region up to 5 times" -- who's supposed to be in control of this computer, me, or the person who wrote that message?
Back to using Linux, where the programmers respect your need to have control over the computer.
"Of course, when you throw out the PC, you then have to purchase a new copy of the operating system. In 99% of cases this is Windows."
90% at most surely?
If it were 99%, then I'd have to ask 100 computer-buyers before finding one who didn't purchase Windows. But of the 10-20 recent computer-buyers I know, 4 now have Mac OS X.
And those Apple-buying decisions do increase the incentive for Microsoft to fix their problem!
"Remind me what Drupal is again"
We don't put links to "What's Drupal" websites for the same reason we don't put links to "What's AppleMac" or "What's this grey box with a keyboard sitting on my desk" pages -- you're expected to know shit like that before you start commenting on slashdot
"I mean who would want to buy this?!"
The same retards that buy anything that Dell sells, just because Dell sells it.
Ohh, it's too much trouble to buy a copy of Windows2000 nowadays - we'll have to migrate the whole company to XP. And then to longwhatsit. Sure it will break everything, but what else can we do?
Oops, better become anonymous. You know who you are, XP-choosers...
"How far can this go? If you can be guilty for linking to a site, what about linking to a site that links to a site?"
Well 2600 were banned from linking to a site that linked to a site that contained software that could have been used to copy something without permission, if that helps...
"Ubuntu won't play MP3s"
Install Ubuntu. Double-click on an MP3. "Unrecognised filetype/no application can open this file". You need to edit your repositary (sp?) list and install additional software to play MP3s.
"and anything linux-based won't play games"
Well yeah. I paid some £30 for Myth2 from Bungee, and it doesn't install on Ubuntu. Tried a few tricks I knew from before to make it install, and it segfaults the moment you run it. None of my real [Windows] games do that.
Incidentally, this is because of a soundcard issue that the game segfaults, which is why I sympathised with the original commenter about his inability to get sound working on *Ubuntu. However, even if I fixed that, the nVidia drivers [may their driver-writers use WindowsXP eternally] would make the game crash.
"Sheesh... guess you never heard of xmms."
lol. There's always another application to reccommend isn't there?
I was actually thinking of AmaroK on KUbuntu not playing MP3s by default, until you (a) either edit your repositaries list to add non-free, or download Synaptic (because Kynaptic can't edit it's own repositary list), then (b) search newsgroups and the web to find out which gstreamer package you need to install to get the default MP3 player to play MP3s.
Granted, I wouldn't have it any other way. Certainly compared to Mandriva's "Agree to the EULA to continue" approach, or Apple's "You've changed your DVD region twice, you dirty pirate" approach, then KUbuntu is certainly the best OS around. But the fact remains that by default it doesn't play MP3s. And it doesn't play games (Myth2 for Linux doesn't even install)
"I seem to imagine this"
Nice. So to play games on Linux, you install a Windows emulator.
Basically, if you use TransGaming, you pretty much admit that Linux isn't a games platform, and Windows rules. Want to run games? Well you need Windows (either a real copy, or a virtual-machine, or an emulator)
Then you go that route, and find yourself classified as a "Windows user" when they're totting-up statistics of who plays the most games. When the next game comes out, they know you're a Windows user who paid the $50 for a game, so they'll write their next game for Windows too. Better keep a subscription to that bootleg implementation of Windows if you want to play it.
And yes, I say this as a Kubuntu user. Who recently bought a Mac so that I can play games again. OK, it costs more than a games console, but consoles can't play RPGs. Linux certainly can't.
"Most taxpayers use Windows. It is more popular than Linux/MacOS"
Most taxpayers aren't blind either, but governments are still legally-obliged to produce a braille-version of every single leaflet they print.
Same with minority languages. You can't discriminate against a group because they're in the minority.
For government communications, "most people" being able to use them isn't good enough.
So $1000/mo rent to live closer to work, or $600/mo rent + $400/mo transport to live further away (neglecting the cost of you car, and any differences in the cost of (e.g.) food between those places)
Surely that means that jobs in those places will have to pay anyone who works there the additional cost of getting to that place?
For example, if I were to get a job in London (£700/mo extra in rent), then the jobs there will all pay £10,000/year more than an equivalent job somewhere where the rent is cheaper.
Sure, there are some places (notably schools and hospitals) in central london that offer 'normal' salaries, and as a rule, they can't find people to work for them. (In fact, I think even they get paid a lot more for being in London)
Private-sector companies have more money available, and they realise they need to pay people the cost of living before anyone will work for them. Some people take that money and live many miles away, spending a bit on petrol, toll roads, insurance, and pocketing the balance in return for sitting in traffic for hours, but that's their choice.
And when you need to move jobs, surely the city-center apartment will be better than a house in the middle of nowhere, as it gives you a choice of all the jobs in that city.
"Sure, [nuclear power is more expensive than pretty much anything else] using 1960's technology along with 1970's regulations."
Regulations like "must be reasonably safe"? I'd love to see you try and build a plant without those restrictions.
The oft-quoted example is of Diablo Canyon's pressurized-water nuclear reactors, which survived (for example) the magnitude 6.6 San Simeon earthquake in 2003, whereas the original design for that power station (pre-1970s regulations as you call them) would have been shaken into something that no longer held the radiation inside.
"More lunacy from the technologically illiterate. Ever been near one of the turbine farms? Pretty noisy"
Blimey, if that's the only argument against wind energy then we should invest in it now. Yes, I've travelled through vast areas of wind-farms (mostly on the Isle of Wight) and they're pretty normal structures, no more invasive than the lighthouses, farms, radio aerials, and motorways we already build in those areas.
Noisy? Compared to what, the motorways running past every other power station? Compared to the high-speed trains that we've built everywhere (including scenic spots) Compared to the aircraft flying over that area?
In fact I can't say I ever noticed the noise from those wind turbines -- perhaps you're talking about 1960's technology or something. We had one installed in the centre of London a while ago, and it was completely silent while operating.
If noise were a concern, then we'd have banned most forms of travel a long time ago. There are houses that physically shake when an airliner takes off, houses that shake when trains go past, houses everywhere that have to deal with constant traffic noise, yet you're worried about an almost-inaudible wind turbine?!?
And so the cost of last week's terrorist attacks rises by another £500 million...
I assume this is only the start of the damage to Britain.
"How do you expect me to make the 1.5 hour commute to work?"
Presumably, you (a) chose a house, and (b) chose a job. And the two are incompatible, and you're complaining to slashdot about it!
I got my first job recently, and it took less than a month to find a decent place to live nearby. And by nearby I mean walking distance. And that's perfectly normal, as about half of my colleagues are about the same distance.
So now I have a 4 mile cycle-ride to work, and you have a 1.5-hour (90 mile?) drive. WTF? that's not even in the same city, you're so far away. What's so crap about the job that you don't move nearer?
Perhaps there's something about your area where if you're prepared to drive for hours to get to work, then everyone else also drives for hours, and your company doesn't give a shit if it's located in the ass-end of nowhere. I know if I went for an interview somewhere that was 90 miles from the nearest residential area, they'd be looking for a new office when they couldn't hire anyone.
"Me personally? I favor nuclear. but for whatever reason, the Enviro-nuts don't like nuclear."
You realise that nuclear power is more expensive than pretty much anything else?
e.g. when it was first developed ("look how civially-useful our nuclear weapons programme is, it can generate power too") the claim was that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter". Now, that claim is "might someday be comparable with the price of regular electricity"
Interestingly, you seem to be talking about there being unsuitable areas of the US, and unsuitable times of year, as arguments against solar/wind/hydro energy, yet this is a thread about producing hydrogen (which can be produced anywhere)
It's an alternative to gasoline which, despite obvious dangers and impracticability, is shipped all the way from Scotland, Alaska, Russia, and the Middle East to the US just to fuel cars.
If it's possible to get an explosive chemical from Russia to the US to fuel your car, then I'm sure it's possible to get hydrogen from sunny Texas, windy Kansas, or the hilly Rockies.
"I wonder if $10m will make sound work out of the box"
.ogg collection to listen to, the soundcard drivers are a bit of an academic issue...
Irrelevant: Ubuntu won't play MP3s, and anything linux-based won't play games, so unless you've already got a
Of course, I like ubuntu a lot, use it on a load of different machines, and finally managed to get an MP3 encoder for it. Now if only they'd package a decent WindowMaker setup (menus, themes, etc.) instead of relying on this Gnome/KDE awfulness...
"In the real world people use Microsoft Office."
Actually in the real world (when I was at school), people use WordPerfect for MS-DOS, and smaller companies were starting to use Lotus Ami Pro.
How would it have helped if I'd learned those applications?
We even had a fairly-major CS test at school, where one of the questions was 'what keystroke is used to right-format a line in Ami Pro'. How is information like that going to help me now, typing into a Slashdot textbox using FireFox (neither of which could even have been imagined when I was learning IT/CS)
How would teaching people Word help now? The next generation of business technology seems to be influenced by what CS graduates are using at home today, and recently that's been Linux, Free Software on Windows2000, and we're starting to see some Mac OS. If you wanted to teach in school "for business", then you would start by thinking what people will find useful in 5-10 years when they get their first jobs.
And even if you're "living in the present", why would you standardise on something that requires the parents to pay hundreds of pounds extra to do computer-related homework, when you could select an almost-identical program that you can distribute for free?
Actually I had this same good idea a couple of years ago. It could effectly wipe out the slashdot effect. What if, each time server load went over a preset amount, it served a torrrent containing the HTML and image files instead of the HTML file itself.
There's a rumour ( = haven't looked it up) that BitTorrent works best with files of 10MB or more, which would imply that it's not ideal for unburdening a website full of 30K HTML files and 70K images.
Has anyone been using BT for websites and small files?
Spammer: I don't want to get suid... can you tell me who not to spam.
Govt: Sorry, that's classified.
Ignoring for a moment why the spammer wouldn't want to be suid (is that a sort of identity theft?)... doesn't stuff like that already happen?
Pilot: I don't want to get shot down... can you tell me where are the nuclear power stations that I must stay 30 miles away from?
Govt: Sorry, that's classified.
Builder: I don't want to get sued... can you tell me what rules apply to the house I'm building?
Govt: Sorry, that's classified.
Gilmore: I don't want to get stopped from flying... can you tell me whether I'm on the list of communists?
Govt: Sorry, that's classified.
"Uh huh. So a huge list is compiled of all the underage kids"
You'd assume that the published list would be MD5s of the lowercase version of each email address, and that the full database would only be available to the michigan government, their contractors, credit agencies, anyone who cracks their website.
At least, that's how everyone here would probably implement it. They don't need to release the email addresses, just provide a way to check whether they're on the list or not.
Morse code command-line laptop?
With just one button for input, and one buzzer for output, you could probably make a 'real' computer the size of a mobile phone.
Just need to think of some morse-code codes for F1 and all the other non-alphabetic stuff that computers use.