It could also be stated with much fairness that PhotoShop users form a disproportionate population of those complaining about same. And that if you don't like it, you're at liberty create a fork or a parallel patch set to implement the windows however you like them.
So essentially, while everyone that swears by the GIMP says I can use it instead of Photoshop, the instant Photoshop users say 'well but this is a pain in the ass' you say 'too bad, fix it yourself'.
Fantastic attitude there. Open-source won't win the hearts or minds of professionals if the professionals don't like the tools and aren't provided a fix for it. If given a choice between fixing all that I've found wrong with the GIMP or sticking with Photoshop, my historical choice remails: the GIMP can take a flying leap.
You can't tell professionals to use your software and then tell them you won't fix what they don't like about it. Graphic artists (myself included) will pay $800 for a Photoshop license because Photoshop already works the way they need it to work. Why should we switch if the bugs aren't going to be fixed?
Consider it this way. Let's say the cards really cost $10 for the bank. They have basically two options.
The first is common: make the customer pay for the card, one-time up-front. Most utilities will do this for hook-up charges, etc. as well.
The second method is to include this in day-to-day charges. A lot of people say 'this should be part of the cost of doing business', but look at it this way. Banks aren't going to take money out of their profits to pay for something, they're going to raise your fees.
So let's say they raise your fees by $0.50/month. That's 20 months to have the card pays off. What this means is that anyone that gets a card more than once every 20 months (loses it, changes banks often, etc) is paying less than they are taking. Meanwhile, loyal customers (anyone who holds an account more than 20 months) end up paying MORE in the end.
I was talking to a customer of a major utility in Ontario who was upset that they were charging him a $25 administration fee even though he'd been a loyal customer for years. I told him that if they absorbed it into the costs, then the more loyal the customer, the more they would pay, while the customers that move around a lot (once every two years) would pay less.
Don't complain about up-front costs, because if they tucked them away, you'd pay more in the end.
I posted the parent so that what I said afterwards wouldn't be tainted either way after trying the beta. To put it bluntly, I've hated Opera with a passion since it came out, because it's consistantly been the worst browser I've ever used, bar none. So, with that said, here's my review.
The configuration is still a pain. A lot of stuff doesn't make any sense (under 'Security' I have the option of turning 'the wand' on or off. I turned it off because if it's relating to security and I don't know what it is, I don't want it doing anything).
The interface is still cluttered. I'd have to close everything that makes it nifty if I wanted to run it less than fullscreen. In the bottom-right corner where there are normally the angled lines at 45 degrees (indicating you can grab and resize the window), there are angled lines at 45 degrees indicating you can grab and resize the window. But you can't. Despite the fact that the cursor changes to the 'resize me!' cursor, you have to drag the actual border of the window. This will probably be fixed in beta.
It's very pretty by default. I like the way it looks better than any Firefox theme I've used so far, and I've got some pretty nice firefox themes.
As an 'internet suite', this actually has a lot of potential. The mail interface is fantastic, just what I've always wanted from a browser with mail built in. It's fast, it works, and it's easy to use.
The browser renders fast as well, it's snappy, it's pretty, and so far, nothing that has screwed up.
If you are willing to run it in fullscreen (or have a large screen), you are willing to use it as your primary browser, mail client, and contact list, and you don't mind ads or paying for a browser, give this a try. If you like Opera already, you'll love this. If you hate Opera like I do, you will be pleasantly surprised (though always waiting for the 'but...'). This is the first version of Opera I will be keeping installed, and it might be pretty hard to stick to Firefox exclusively from now on. We'll see.
I honestly don't mean to troll here, I know several people that use Opera (though none that have paid for it), but by some weird coincidence, every single time I install any version of opera, the first site I go to not only renders improperly, it renders so outrageously improperly that I uninstall it out of frustration. Version 4 didn't render much right, version 5 messed up 'width: 200px' on a table cell, and version 7 had surprisingly huge cell borders on www.thottbot.com.
On top of all that, I find the interface is busy, the configuration is clumsy (if I want to change the font for Heading tags I have to change it individually for every single one), and it really doesn't have anything over Firefox. If they've fixed these, then I will commend them.
Doom 3 is a terrible, terrible game. It's pitch black 99% of the time so you can't see what's going on or what's attacking you, the suspense is poorly manufactured, and after about 20 minutes, you'll be pointing to spots on the wall and saying 'a monster is going to jump out of there' with 100% accuracy.
id software says they lost millions to piracy of Doom 3. The reason they did is because everyone realized it was terrible before it hit the shelves. I know I played a pirated copy, but only for about 10 minutes. My roommate stuck with it for two hours before he gave up on it.
Perhaps, but after you've used the gravity gun to pick something up and throw it, you've pretty much explored the entirety of the environment. After I was finished with that, I went back to regular weapons to beat the game, and didn't notice any usefulness of the environment afterwards.
HL2 is certainly a very polished FPS, but does that really break new ground? If you take away the fact that you can lift and move things, it's basically HL1 with new weapons and textures, and lifting and moving things got old for me before I left Ravenholm.
Its kind of like the "Nutritional Information" signs at McDonalds... you really have to press to get the information... then once you do, you don't want to eat there.
I don't know about your McDonald's outlets, but around here, all the nutritional information is posted on a large poster-thingie on the wall by the counter, listing every regular (i.e. non-limited-time) item they sell. Maybe yours is different.
Here's my take on open-sourced code. If I write a program because I want that program to exist (this is how many, if not most, OSS projects start), then I have fulfulled my goal. I have done the work for myself, and the project (presumably) has satisfied my goals.
If this is the case, then it costs me nothing to let everyone else have it too, and do what they want with it. If I release my software (under the BSD license, I don't like GPL), then other people can use it as they see fit to make it better. If a company wants to take it, close the source, and sell it off, that's fine too, because I don't have the time to do that myself. Maybe later on I will, and I'll make it better and compete with them. If not, and they continue to make money off of my work, then that's fine, because I'm not gaining anything either way.
I see Open Source as a philosophy that should not be forced on anyone. It is the 'right way' to do things - share and share alike - in all aspects of life. I do not gain anything by denying others of what I can provide them for nothing, so why shouldn't I let them have my code?. If I can help someone do their job easier, or help a company make money and pay wages, then I am glad to do so.
If Open-Source software wants to succeed, it should do two things. Firstly, it should be better than closed-source solutions. There are a lot of open-sourced programs I use because they are better (Firefox), but there are a lot of open-sourced programs that I refuse to use because I find they are simply inferior in some aspect than their proprietary counterparts (The GIMP). Once their usability surpasses the commercial products, I will switch in a heartbeat.
Secondly, it should remain true to its philosophies. Write open-sourced code for its own sake. Ignore Microsoft. When they implement a good idea, duplicate it, of course, that is how software works, but don't concern yourself with how they are 'wrong', but instead focus on how you, the open-source programmer, user, evangelist, are 'right'. Make things better by your own definition.
If users see things your way in terms of economy, seeing that open-source software is better software (or at least, better per dollar spent), then the open-source community wins, but if users understand how open-source works, why it works, and come to understand why it is better to work together than work against each other, then the community wins a thousand times over. A user that uses open-source because it is free/better quality will switch back when closed-source gets better, but a user that comes to understand the philosophy will stay loyal to the ideals for as long as the programmers do.
This is what is important in open-source. Without this, we are just making excuses.
I'd guess that the NOD blew up their power plant at their main base and the defensive systems went down. At least they've still got guard towers and cement walls to defend themselves until they get another one up, but if someone choppers an engineer into their base, it's all over. Careful guys!
I don't know about anyone else, but what I'd like is a lightweight browser that I can use on the desktop in low-memory circumstances. When I am using time-sensitive internet-based applications with large memory requirements (for example, World of Warcraft), I usually end up slightly over my physical memory threshold - this is fine because Windows XP will swap parts of itself out of memory, so as long as I am not using those parts, I am A++ super-good.
If, however, I decide I want to open a browser to do some research on virtual economic or social situations by accessing a major data repository for economic and geographic data about the network environment I am studying (usually from thottbot or allakhazam), then I find myself stressing my memory and swapping things out unnecessarily.
I am looking forward to a ram upgrade planned for later in the year or next year, but still, I would like a small, lightweight, simple browser that uses the Gecko or KHTML/Safari engine to render pages for those times when I just need to view tables, text, and jpegs.
Such a browser could perhaps be limited to gestures-only support, so as to provide optimal space for real data - a location bar, the drawing pane, and a translucent overlay status bar that only appears when relevant, with all the rest of the actions being done with gestures. This would cut down pretty much entirely on the interface aspects, and would basically be just a frontend to the rendering engine.
What I don't think you realize is that the hardcore players invest WAY more money than that in the game. They buy items and characters and game cash on eBay, and that consumes a FORTUNE.
People who buy cash and items on eBay are stupid, period. They don't need them, they just want them, and if they spend that money on their game instead of their real life, they're out of touch with reality, and that's their fault, not the game's.
I will admit, I've considered purchasing money in FFXI, but then I realized - if I need to spend extra REAL money to enjoy a game, then it's not worth playing. I still have the account, because I want some day to come back to it, but I'm not going to spend more than the monthly fee on it. Anyone who does needs to find a new hobby.
Well, there have been people who have let EQ get in the way of making a living, so it's not an entirely invalid point.
On the other end, there have been people who have used EQ as a way of making a living. At our EB there used to be a guy who would come in every month, buy a copy of Everquest, make a new character and powerlevel it for a month, and then sell it off. He was only supplimenting his income, but he was making a tidy profit to be sure.
Never underestimate the power of laziness as a way to make money.
Don't blame the game, blame the gamer. The fact that people get so involved in EQ is disturbing, yes, but it's a disturbing facet of society, not gaming.
I used to be an oper on a middling-sized IRC network for a few years, and eventually was 'retired' from the network due to political concerns - which was probably the best thing that had happened to me at that point in my life. IRC had become too much like a job, after I got out of school I went home and served my 8 hours online. I was good, but I was still wasting my life.
Now that I've been playing FFXI and WoW, it's a very similar situation, but I've managed to avoid the same pitfalls by not putting priority on the game over reality. Still, I can see quite easily how people can get so into these things that they forget about real life.
It becomes your hobby, then it becomes your passion, then it becomes your job, and then you become its slave. A dangerous situation, but the blame lies entirely on the players, not the game itself.
At work, we have several passwords - one for the Windows login, one for Lotus Notes, and one for mainframe access. We also had another password for a system we recently phased out, but it was read-only anyway.
The upshot of all this is that in order to really be me, you need to know all three passwords. You have to log into the domain, which requires a password that rotates per the standard security policy (once every few months). You then have to log into Lotus Notes if you want to send e-mail as me, and this is a completely different password that I have changed myself; in addition, the Lotus notes.ini file is stored on the server and shared over CIFS so you have to be logged in as me in Windows to log in as me in Lotus. Lastly is the mainframe password which was provided by ITS and is unique to each person. Oh, and we have two accounts for the mainframe, and we need to be able to log into both at once.
For the Windows login, the username is Fname.X.Lname, which is easy to guess, but for the mainframe, it's a three-letter Login ID which is also generated by ITS, and is supposed to bear at least some resemblance to your initials. Because of limited namespace, however, a friend, let's call him James Roberts, has FJR, and myself, let's say Dave Underwood, I have DIE (my last name was read incorrectly from my application - no one had my correct name for weeks; also, no customers ever believe me when I tell them this). FYI, these are all made up names/IDs, they're just for examples.
Oh, and if you want to log into my phone, you need to have my Symposium ID, which is a four-digit number. Per company policy, managers can send out information (like # of calls taken/made per day) by name XOR by login ID.
Keep in mind, none of this is for security, it's actually because all of our systems are a pain in the ass. Still, it provides quite a few levels to security, and requires you get at least two passwords in order to really do anything as me.
I checked the other day - in all my storage, I have about 2 gigs of space left (bigger than my second hard drive) - the rest of my 120 gigs of assorted space is taken up with anime I'll probably never watch again and haven't gotten around to burning off (in addition to the 40 gigs I have burned off), game ISOs I ripped to save having to look for the discs (in addition to the DVD with KOTOR and Jedi Academy images I made for ease of storage, and the one with Simcity 4 and The Sims 2).
I have 10 gigs of music even though I pretty much listen to the same four artists all the time. I have a bunch of PDF formats of WotC rulebooks for D&D and Star Wars D20 that I use on my laptop instead of reaching for the book. I have e-mail records from one particular individual dating back over six years, and my homedirectory on my colocation has a tarball of MP3s I backed up to the server four servers ago, along with a gig of other miscellaneous data. I have a few hundred megs of images I picked up here and there and put in my web gallery (including about 300 pictures of women kissing other women, that I imported for the sake of archiving - I don't even remember where they are or how to find them anymore).
Some people are just packrats, god knows I am. I'm thinking of getting a firewire/USB2 drive enclosure and a 250g HD, so I can put all of my data on that and take it with me to have whenever I need it. There's not much I have that I couldn't fit on that, and I could carry it in my coat pocket without any effort. That's just the way it is. Your lifetime in your pocket, digitally preserved.
Look, we just got an 'In Korea, only old people...' meme, the last thing we need is another one. Let's put this one on the back burner for at least a few months, shall we?
I know that personally I've had my mail server go down for more than two days without a backup relay and had no notable drop in spam traffic.
I dunno, I accidentally took out my mail server for a few days until my coadmin noticed and got me to fix it, and he says he's getting less spam now than he was. As for how much spam I'm getting, I can't really tell if I'm getting less, because after a few hundred a day, it's hard to count exactly.
While they are the most obvious problems -- the easiest to spot, criticise, and correct -- if people aren't thinking clearly, then no amount of elegant grammar and immaculate spelling will convert their muddled ideas into clear and direct text.
Well said. Another aspect of the problem is that people aren't communicating well because what they type makes perfect sense to them, but only because they are thinking that way. For that matter, their own messages could become unintelligable after only a short period of time, much as my PHP code does when I'm working with SQL.
Languages exist for a reason - a standard way to communicate between people - and properly achieving the goal that languages solve requires one to adhere to the rules set down by the language. However it is that other people form ideas in their heads, they need to understand that others may not understand it. If they take the time to learn the proper way to use the language, they can write middling-good to perfect grammar with as little effort as today they spew word soup onto the screen, and their ability to communicate will increase greatly.
Languages are not a way to express our thoughts to ourselves, they are a way to convey our thoughts to others; with that goal in mind, we can use the language to its fullest.
to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information
I don't know, this could read as 'if I'm understanding things logically, our policy is to provide Murray with incorrect information.'
This probably isn't the case, but I like to see cloak-and-dagger whenever possible.:D
However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'.
This part gets me. When I read text interjected with hyphens - like this - I expect it to be just that - an interjection - and for the sentence to flow properly without it. This, however, I have difficulty making any sense out of; because she is using punctuation incorrectly, when I try to parse it, I have to stop, go back, and re-try, until I realize that I should stop assuming standard rules and fall back to 'word soup' mode.
For the same reason code should be syntactically correct, complete, and clear, so should the english language. Misparsing code, or more particularly, code that parses in an unintended manner, can be dangerous, distructive, and confusing, and cause no end of problems.
English, likewise, has rules, and those rules are there for a reason. If you follow those rules carefully, which is not hard if you try, then you can create a sentence, paragraph, or a ten-page essay that effortlessly flows from the very first word to the final punctuation, and the reading of which is effortless. Even with proper grammar but poor writing, the flow can be so jarring that I have to re-read some things in order to make sure I have everything, but with a good flow, communication can be improved astronomically.
No one wants a panda that eats, shoots, and leaves, and no one wants to have to re-read a sentence or a whole e-mail ten times before being able to figure it out. Anyone who says proper communication isn't important doesn't know how to properly relate to people - otherwise they would understand that the short-forms they understand will not be perceptable to everyone. People need to learn.
At my company, this is actually the policy. We use Lotus Notes, which actually wraps lines in the mailbox display, meaning that anything, say, three lines or less is expected to be sent in the subject. As a result, replying is nearly impossible, because you don't want to continue a conversation with a 2-page subject line, but you want to keep context when you reply. It's terrible, honestly.
Besides that, I don't know how many people in my office alone 'Reply to All' to e-mails that were sent to mailing lists which cover everyone in the office - as if 370 people need to know that so-and-so wants to leave early because of her son's soccer game. I mean, not that we mind, we get enough useless crap from the managers, but it's still pretty absurd.
Using the adblock extension for firefox, I've managed to eliminate all inline 'intellitxt' ads (javascript which highlights various words and attaches onHover ads to them - IGN uses these) by blocking 'http://*intellitxt*'. I'm sure these pop-ins will be as easily blocked, it's just a matter of determining a pattern.
Firefox should have an option to block off-site javascript files. That'd be keen (hint hint).
Oops - I just noticed that slashdot now handles 80 million views , which translates into 22.4 gigs a day, or $3300/month. I don't know about you guys, but I make around $1100/month, so just these bandwidth savings could hire three people like myself - heck, if slashdot wants to hire me at $2000/month, I'll fine tune every character to save every penny I can, and after the first three weeks, they'll be saving money. How about it taco? Hook a fella up!
I'll bet most ad supported sites will continue to find a way to exist also.
I was just thinking about slashdot, for example. Would slashdot survive a subscription-only model? I highly doubt it. Slashdot is a conveniance for me, but not a necessity. If it were a cheap subscription, I would probably consider signing up, and certainly if everyone that views slashdot signed up, it could probably be extremely cheap.
Then I started thinking, why don't websites reduce their costs? Take bandwidth for example. There are ways slashdot could save a ton of bandwidth. According to this experiment from the Web Development office at the University of Washington Platteville, slashdot alone could save 14 gigs/day just by converting their almost-HTML3.2 layout into an XHTML/CSS2. That's quite a lot. Even at the (fairly low) price I pay for my bandwidth, that's $2100 per month.
Then I thought, why XHTML? Theoretically, you could make up a slim-and-trim XML schema and a CSS file to go with it and publish slashdot like that. Probably they could trim a little bit more, especially from the CSS file (not having to override standard XHTML formatting). Removing extraneous whitespace (tabs!) would save even more space, which would add up over time.
That being said, bandwidth is probably the least of slashdot's costs, but for other websites with even worse HTML (I can only assume there are some that exist), this may be an option as well. Also, replacing an image-heavy layout with a pure CSS/XHTML layout would save a lot more bandwidth than it would save slashdot.
When I see these sites laden with ads, I have to ask myself, why do they need these ads? Is it to pay for people's time, or is it because they have waste they don't even know about? Professional web developers can pay for themselves over time, deals can be struck with colocation providers (our provider normally charges twice what we pay, and most companies don't haggle with tech companies). Using W2K? That's another few hundred to few grand, plus tech support for an MCSE.
I know a lot of sites do need revenue for legitimate reasons - i.e. slashdot, which has people to pay for their time - but there's always waste that can be trimmed. Perhaps now's the time to start.
Slashdot Mirror
It could also be stated with much fairness that PhotoShop users form a disproportionate population of those complaining about same. And that if you don't like it, you're at liberty create a fork or a parallel patch set to implement the windows however you like them.
So essentially, while everyone that swears by the GIMP says I can use it instead of Photoshop, the instant Photoshop users say 'well but this is a pain in the ass' you say 'too bad, fix it yourself'.
Fantastic attitude there. Open-source won't win the hearts or minds of professionals if the professionals don't like the tools and aren't provided a fix for it. If given a choice between fixing all that I've found wrong with the GIMP or sticking with Photoshop, my historical choice remails: the GIMP can take a flying leap.
You can't tell professionals to use your software and then tell them you won't fix what they don't like about it. Graphic artists (myself included) will pay $800 for a Photoshop license because Photoshop already works the way they need it to work. Why should we switch if the bugs aren't going to be fixed?
Consider it this way. Let's say the cards really cost $10 for the bank. They have basically two options.
The first is common: make the customer pay for the card, one-time up-front. Most utilities will do this for hook-up charges, etc. as well.
The second method is to include this in day-to-day charges. A lot of people say 'this should be part of the cost of doing business', but look at it this way. Banks aren't going to take money out of their profits to pay for something, they're going to raise your fees.
So let's say they raise your fees by $0.50/month. That's 20 months to have the card pays off. What this means is that anyone that gets a card more than once every 20 months (loses it, changes banks often, etc) is paying less than they are taking. Meanwhile, loyal customers (anyone who holds an account more than 20 months) end up paying MORE in the end.
I was talking to a customer of a major utility in Ontario who was upset that they were charging him a $25 administration fee even though he'd been a loyal customer for years. I told him that if they absorbed it into the costs, then the more loyal the customer, the more they would pay, while the customers that move around a lot (once every two years) would pay less.
Don't complain about up-front costs, because if they tucked them away, you'd pay more in the end.
I posted the parent so that what I said afterwards wouldn't be tainted either way after trying the beta. To put it bluntly, I've hated Opera with a passion since it came out, because it's consistantly been the worst browser I've ever used, bar none. So, with that said, here's my review.
The configuration is still a pain. A lot of stuff doesn't make any sense (under 'Security' I have the option of turning 'the wand' on or off. I turned it off because if it's relating to security and I don't know what it is, I don't want it doing anything).
The interface is still cluttered. I'd have to close everything that makes it nifty if I wanted to run it less than fullscreen. In the bottom-right corner where there are normally the angled lines at 45 degrees (indicating you can grab and resize the window), there are angled lines at 45 degrees indicating you can grab and resize the window. But you can't. Despite the fact that the cursor changes to the 'resize me!' cursor, you have to drag the actual border of the window. This will probably be fixed in beta.
It's very pretty by default. I like the way it looks better than any Firefox theme I've used so far, and I've got some pretty nice firefox themes.
As an 'internet suite', this actually has a lot of potential. The mail interface is fantastic, just what I've always wanted from a browser with mail built in. It's fast, it works, and it's easy to use.
The browser renders fast as well, it's snappy, it's pretty, and so far, nothing that has screwed up.
If you are willing to run it in fullscreen (or have a large screen), you are willing to use it as your primary browser, mail client, and contact list, and you don't mind ads or paying for a browser, give this a try. If you like Opera already, you'll love this. If you hate Opera like I do, you will be pleasantly surprised (though always waiting for the 'but...'). This is the first version of Opera I will be keeping installed, and it might be pretty hard to stick to Firefox exclusively from now on. We'll see.
I'm willing to try it, but I have my doubts.
I honestly don't mean to troll here, I know several people that use Opera (though none that have paid for it), but by some weird coincidence, every single time I install any version of opera, the first site I go to not only renders improperly, it renders so outrageously improperly that I uninstall it out of frustration. Version 4 didn't render much right, version 5 messed up 'width: 200px' on a table cell, and version 7 had surprisingly huge cell borders on www.thottbot.com.
On top of all that, I find the interface is busy, the configuration is clumsy (if I want to change the font for Heading tags I have to change it individually for every single one), and it really doesn't have anything over Firefox. If they've fixed these, then I will commend them.
Doom 3 is a terrible, terrible game. It's pitch black 99% of the time so you can't see what's going on or what's attacking you, the suspense is poorly manufactured, and after about 20 minutes, you'll be pointing to spots on the wall and saying 'a monster is going to jump out of there' with 100% accuracy.
id software says they lost millions to piracy of Doom 3. The reason they did is because everyone realized it was terrible before it hit the shelves. I know I played a pirated copy, but only for about 10 minutes. My roommate stuck with it for two hours before he gave up on it.
Nice engine, flop game.
Perhaps, but after you've used the gravity gun to pick something up and throw it, you've pretty much explored the entirety of the environment. After I was finished with that, I went back to regular weapons to beat the game, and didn't notice any usefulness of the environment afterwards.
HL2 is certainly a very polished FPS, but does that really break new ground? If you take away the fact that you can lift and move things, it's basically HL1 with new weapons and textures, and lifting and moving things got old for me before I left Ravenholm.
Server: Novell's OpenExchange server
Client: Novell Connector
Its kind of like the "Nutritional Information" signs at McDonalds... you really have to press to get the information... then once you do, you don't want to eat there.
I don't know about your McDonald's outlets, but around here, all the nutritional information is posted on a large poster-thingie on the wall by the counter, listing every regular (i.e. non-limited-time) item they sell. Maybe yours is different.
Here's my take on open-sourced code. If I write a program because I want that program to exist (this is how many, if not most, OSS projects start), then I have fulfulled my goal. I have done the work for myself, and the project (presumably) has satisfied my goals.
If this is the case, then it costs me nothing to let everyone else have it too, and do what they want with it. If I release my software (under the BSD license, I don't like GPL), then other people can use it as they see fit to make it better. If a company wants to take it, close the source, and sell it off, that's fine too, because I don't have the time to do that myself. Maybe later on I will, and I'll make it better and compete with them. If not, and they continue to make money off of my work, then that's fine, because I'm not gaining anything either way.
I see Open Source as a philosophy that should not be forced on anyone. It is the 'right way' to do things - share and share alike - in all aspects of life. I do not gain anything by denying others of what I can provide them for nothing, so why shouldn't I let them have my code?. If I can help someone do their job easier, or help a company make money and pay wages, then I am glad to do so.
If Open-Source software wants to succeed, it should do two things. Firstly, it should be better than closed-source solutions. There are a lot of open-sourced programs I use because they are better (Firefox), but there are a lot of open-sourced programs that I refuse to use because I find they are simply inferior in some aspect than their proprietary counterparts (The GIMP). Once their usability surpasses the commercial products, I will switch in a heartbeat.
Secondly, it should remain true to its philosophies. Write open-sourced code for its own sake. Ignore Microsoft. When they implement a good idea, duplicate it, of course, that is how software works, but don't concern yourself with how they are 'wrong', but instead focus on how you, the open-source programmer, user, evangelist, are 'right'. Make things better by your own definition.
If users see things your way in terms of economy, seeing that open-source software is better software (or at least, better per dollar spent), then the open-source community wins, but if users understand how open-source works, why it works, and come to understand why it is better to work together than work against each other, then the community wins a thousand times over. A user that uses open-source because it is free/better quality will switch back when closed-source gets better, but a user that comes to understand the philosophy will stay loyal to the ideals for as long as the programmers do.
This is what is important in open-source. Without this, we are just making excuses.
I'd guess that the NOD blew up their power plant at their main base and the defensive systems went down. At least they've still got guard towers and cement walls to defend themselves until they get another one up, but if someone choppers an engineer into their base, it's all over. Careful guys!
I don't know about anyone else, but what I'd like is a lightweight browser that I can use on the desktop in low-memory circumstances. When I am using time-sensitive internet-based applications with large memory requirements (for example, World of Warcraft), I usually end up slightly over my physical memory threshold - this is fine because Windows XP will swap parts of itself out of memory, so as long as I am not using those parts, I am A++ super-good.
If, however, I decide I want to open a browser to do some research on virtual economic or social situations by accessing a major data repository for economic and geographic data about the network environment I am studying (usually from thottbot or allakhazam), then I find myself stressing my memory and swapping things out unnecessarily.
I am looking forward to a ram upgrade planned for later in the year or next year, but still, I would like a small, lightweight, simple browser that uses the Gecko or KHTML/Safari engine to render pages for those times when I just need to view tables, text, and jpegs.
Such a browser could perhaps be limited to gestures-only support, so as to provide optimal space for real data - a location bar, the drawing pane, and a translucent overlay status bar that only appears when relevant, with all the rest of the actions being done with gestures. This would cut down pretty much entirely on the interface aspects, and would basically be just a frontend to the rendering engine.
Or has this been done?
What I don't think you realize is that the hardcore players invest WAY more money than that in the game. They buy items and characters and game cash on eBay, and that consumes a FORTUNE.
People who buy cash and items on eBay are stupid, period. They don't need them, they just want them, and if they spend that money on their game instead of their real life, they're out of touch with reality, and that's their fault, not the game's.
I will admit, I've considered purchasing money in FFXI, but then I realized - if I need to spend extra REAL money to enjoy a game, then it's not worth playing. I still have the account, because I want some day to come back to it, but I'm not going to spend more than the monthly fee on it. Anyone who does needs to find a new hobby.
Well, there have been people who have let EQ get in the way of making a living, so it's not an entirely invalid point.
On the other end, there have been people who have used EQ as a way of making a living. At our EB there used to be a guy who would come in every month, buy a copy of Everquest, make a new character and powerlevel it for a month, and then sell it off. He was only supplimenting his income, but he was making a tidy profit to be sure.
Never underestimate the power of laziness as a way to make money.
Don't blame the game, blame the gamer. The fact that people get so involved in EQ is disturbing, yes, but it's a disturbing facet of society, not gaming.
I used to be an oper on a middling-sized IRC network for a few years, and eventually was 'retired' from the network due to political concerns - which was probably the best thing that had happened to me at that point in my life. IRC had become too much like a job, after I got out of school I went home and served my 8 hours online. I was good, but I was still wasting my life.
Now that I've been playing FFXI and WoW, it's a very similar situation, but I've managed to avoid the same pitfalls by not putting priority on the game over reality. Still, I can see quite easily how people can get so into these things that they forget about real life.
It becomes your hobby, then it becomes your passion, then it becomes your job, and then you become its slave. A dangerous situation, but the blame lies entirely on the players, not the game itself.
UNLESS they make you change them all in 6 weeks. How would you handle it then?
I'd quit.
At work, we have several passwords - one for the Windows login, one for Lotus Notes, and one for mainframe access. We also had another password for a system we recently phased out, but it was read-only anyway.
The upshot of all this is that in order to really be me, you need to know all three passwords. You have to log into the domain, which requires a password that rotates per the standard security policy (once every few months). You then have to log into Lotus Notes if you want to send e-mail as me, and this is a completely different password that I have changed myself; in addition, the Lotus notes.ini file is stored on the server and shared over CIFS so you have to be logged in as me in Windows to log in as me in Lotus. Lastly is the mainframe password which was provided by ITS and is unique to each person. Oh, and we have two accounts for the mainframe, and we need to be able to log into both at once.
For the Windows login, the username is Fname.X.Lname, which is easy to guess, but for the mainframe, it's a three-letter Login ID which is also generated by ITS, and is supposed to bear at least some resemblance to your initials. Because of limited namespace, however, a friend, let's call him James Roberts, has FJR, and myself, let's say Dave Underwood, I have DIE (my last name was read incorrectly from my application - no one had my correct name for weeks; also, no customers ever believe me when I tell them this). FYI, these are all made up names/IDs, they're just for examples.
Oh, and if you want to log into my phone, you need to have my Symposium ID, which is a four-digit number. Per company policy, managers can send out information (like # of calls taken/made per day) by name XOR by login ID.
Keep in mind, none of this is for security, it's actually because all of our systems are a pain in the ass. Still, it provides quite a few levels to security, and requires you get at least two passwords in order to really do anything as me.
I checked the other day - in all my storage, I have about 2 gigs of space left (bigger than my second hard drive) - the rest of my 120 gigs of assorted space is taken up with anime I'll probably never watch again and haven't gotten around to burning off (in addition to the 40 gigs I have burned off), game ISOs I ripped to save having to look for the discs (in addition to the DVD with KOTOR and Jedi Academy images I made for ease of storage, and the one with Simcity 4 and The Sims 2).
I have 10 gigs of music even though I pretty much listen to the same four artists all the time. I have a bunch of PDF formats of WotC rulebooks for D&D and Star Wars D20 that I use on my laptop instead of reaching for the book. I have e-mail records from one particular individual dating back over six years, and my homedirectory on my colocation has a tarball of MP3s I backed up to the server four servers ago, along with a gig of other miscellaneous data. I have a few hundred megs of images I picked up here and there and put in my web gallery (including about 300 pictures of women kissing other women, that I imported for the sake of archiving - I don't even remember where they are or how to find them anymore).
Some people are just packrats, god knows I am. I'm thinking of getting a firewire/USB2 drive enclosure and a 250g HD, so I can put all of my data on that and take it with me to have whenever I need it. There's not much I have that I couldn't fit on that, and I could carry it in my coat pocket without any effort. That's just the way it is. Your lifetime in your pocket, digitally preserved.
Then again, everything is cooler... in Japan!!!
Look, we just got an 'In Korea, only old people...' meme, the last thing we need is another one. Let's put this one on the back burner for at least a few months, shall we?
I know that personally I've had my mail server go down for more than two days without a backup relay and had no notable drop in spam traffic.
I dunno, I accidentally took out my mail server for a few days until my coadmin noticed and got me to fix it, and he says he's getting less spam now than he was. As for how much spam I'm getting, I can't really tell if I'm getting less, because after a few hundred a day, it's hard to count exactly.
While they are the most obvious problems -- the easiest to spot, criticise, and correct -- if people aren't thinking clearly, then no amount of elegant grammar and immaculate spelling will convert their muddled ideas into clear and direct text.
Well said. Another aspect of the problem is that people aren't communicating well because what they type makes perfect sense to them, but only because they are thinking that way. For that matter, their own messages could become unintelligable after only a short period of time, much as my PHP code does when I'm working with SQL.
Languages exist for a reason - a standard way to communicate between people - and properly achieving the goal that languages solve requires one to adhere to the rules set down by the language. However it is that other people form ideas in their heads, they need to understand that others may not understand it. If they take the time to learn the proper way to use the language, they can write middling-good to perfect grammar with as little effort as today they spew word soup onto the screen, and their ability to communicate will increase greatly.
Languages are not a way to express our thoughts to ourselves, they are a way to convey our thoughts to others; with that goal in mind, we can use the language to its fullest.
to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information
:D
I don't know, this could read as 'if I'm understanding things logically, our policy is to provide Murray with incorrect information.'
This probably isn't the case, but I like to see cloak-and-dagger whenever possible.
However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'.
This part gets me. When I read text interjected with hyphens - like this - I expect it to be just that - an interjection - and for the sentence to flow properly without it. This, however, I have difficulty making any sense out of; because she is using punctuation incorrectly, when I try to parse it, I have to stop, go back, and re-try, until I realize that I should stop assuming standard rules and fall back to 'word soup' mode.
For the same reason code should be syntactically correct, complete, and clear, so should the english language. Misparsing code, or more particularly, code that parses in an unintended manner, can be dangerous, distructive, and confusing, and cause no end of problems.
English, likewise, has rules, and those rules are there for a reason. If you follow those rules carefully, which is not hard if you try, then you can create a sentence, paragraph, or a ten-page essay that effortlessly flows from the very first word to the final punctuation, and the reading of which is effortless. Even with proper grammar but poor writing, the flow can be so jarring that I have to re-read some things in order to make sure I have everything, but with a good flow, communication can be improved astronomically.
No one wants a panda that eats, shoots, and leaves, and no one wants to have to re-read a sentence or a whole e-mail ten times before being able to figure it out. Anyone who says proper communication isn't important doesn't know how to properly relate to people - otherwise they would understand that the short-forms they understand will not be perceptable to everyone. People need to learn.
At my company, this is actually the policy. We use Lotus Notes, which actually wraps lines in the mailbox display, meaning that anything, say, three lines or less is expected to be sent in the subject. As a result, replying is nearly impossible, because you don't want to continue a conversation with a 2-page subject line, but you want to keep context when you reply. It's terrible, honestly.
Besides that, I don't know how many people in my office alone 'Reply to All' to e-mails that were sent to mailing lists which cover everyone in the office - as if 370 people need to know that so-and-so wants to leave early because of her son's soccer game. I mean, not that we mind, we get enough useless crap from the managers, but it's still pretty absurd.
Using the adblock extension for firefox, I've managed to eliminate all inline 'intellitxt' ads (javascript which highlights various words and attaches onHover ads to them - IGN uses these) by blocking 'http://*intellitxt*'. I'm sure these pop-ins will be as easily blocked, it's just a matter of determining a pattern.
Firefox should have an option to block off-site javascript files. That'd be keen (hint hint).
Oops - I just noticed that slashdot now handles 80 million views , which translates into 22.4 gigs a day, or $3300/month. I don't know about you guys, but I make around $1100/month, so just these bandwidth savings could hire three people like myself - heck, if slashdot wants to hire me at $2000/month, I'll fine tune every character to save every penny I can, and after the first three weeks, they'll be saving money. How about it taco? Hook a fella up!
I'll bet most ad supported sites will continue to find a way to exist also.
I was just thinking about slashdot, for example. Would slashdot survive a subscription-only model? I highly doubt it. Slashdot is a conveniance for me, but not a necessity. If it were a cheap subscription, I would probably consider signing up, and certainly if everyone that views slashdot signed up, it could probably be extremely cheap.
Then I started thinking, why don't websites reduce their costs? Take bandwidth for example. There are ways slashdot could save a ton of bandwidth. According to this experiment from the Web Development office at the University of Washington Platteville, slashdot alone could save 14 gigs/day just by converting their almost-HTML3.2 layout into an XHTML/CSS2. That's quite a lot. Even at the (fairly low) price I pay for my bandwidth, that's $2100 per month.
Then I thought, why XHTML? Theoretically, you could make up a slim-and-trim XML schema and a CSS file to go with it and publish slashdot like that. Probably they could trim a little bit more, especially from the CSS file (not having to override standard XHTML formatting). Removing extraneous whitespace (tabs!) would save even more space, which would add up over time.
That being said, bandwidth is probably the least of slashdot's costs, but for other websites with even worse HTML (I can only assume there are some that exist), this may be an option as well. Also, replacing an image-heavy layout with a pure CSS/XHTML layout would save a lot more bandwidth than it would save slashdot.
When I see these sites laden with ads, I have to ask myself, why do they need these ads? Is it to pay for people's time, or is it because they have waste they don't even know about? Professional web developers can pay for themselves over time, deals can be struck with colocation providers (our provider normally charges twice what we pay, and most companies don't haggle with tech companies). Using W2K? That's another few hundred to few grand, plus tech support for an MCSE.
I know a lot of sites do need revenue for legitimate reasons - i.e. slashdot, which has people to pay for their time - but there's always waste that can be trimmed. Perhaps now's the time to start.