Even if the MPs all vote it forward, it still has to be approved by the Senate, and Senators don't have to follow party line - or do anything else, really.
Our first prime minister created the senate because he had a tendancy to hit the bottle, and wanted some 'sober second thought' - perhaps the reference isn't related to alcohol, but hey, it may as well be.
Even if this crap DOES get past the MPs (if you don't like it, write yours), the senate will take their time tearing it up. No worries here.
It sounds awfully confusing for a normal consumer if they buy one of these super combined dvd burners...
can you imagine? This guy wants to burn a dvd, but when he hits burn, he has 4-5 choices to pick between( DVD-R, DVD+R, etc...).
I think it'll actually be easier. The +/- difference is in the discs themselves - or at least, there's a difference in the discs themselves - so the chances are this burner will be able to detect what kind of discs they have and burn accordingly.
This seems like a Good Thing for non-tech users. Buy whatever disc you like, and away you go.
...we do start paying for music like this, and get mp3s in return, and the RIAA comes cruising along the networks and tags us for having "copyrighted content" on our computers?
You mean 'the RIAA comes cruising along the networks and tags us for sharing "copyrighted content" from your computers?'
If you make it publically available, then you're violating copyright (with the possible exception of claiming (in Canada) that you were merely providing a way for other people to make, from your collection, copies for their own use, which is legal).
Seriously, I know Slashdot isn't a real news site, but it's pretty sad when something that happened 3.5 billion years ago is considered news. It's over dudes, it's old news, let's try and keep up to date, shall we?
Maybe on a P4/1.6 running Windows, but on my P120 workstations/kickboxes and so on , that 0.01 seconds can come out to 10 or 15 on a complex page.
Then there's Linux and MacOS, both of which need a decent browser with a reasonable memory footprint, and neither of which have one (no one had better reply saying 'Mozilla is great, you only need 128 megs of ram....').
I've got a better idea. Lock people up for DUI for any blood-alcohol content. Give them a week on first offence (if no damage done), then a month, then a year (more, obviously, if damage is done).
Putting people's lives at risk IS an offence, and that's what someone is doing when they get behind a wheel with ANY alcohol in their system. I have zero tolerance for people doing stupid things, and I wish more people shared my opinion.
Punish for outcomes, not for causes? So we'll let someone drive drunk until they kill someone, because they haven't proven that they're a danger? You'd rather put people's lives at risk until we have blood on the asphalt so that we KNOW it's a danger?
I'm sorry, but after someone gets hurt is a little late to make a difference.
The Motorola V60 was $500 (CDN) when my friend got it with his contract, through Telus...
He's lost the phone. Stolen, he thinks. He's now planning on purchasing another one to replace it.
Don't say that people won't buy it. People WILL buy it. People bought the iPod, even though it was twice as much as a similarly-featured device. Why? Because it had Firewire, was small, and was easy to use. If Apple does what magic with the iPhone as they did with the iPod, I have no doubt that it will sell in mass quantities.
It just takes a while before people pick up on the etiquette. But you sure as hell don't need a law for it.
It's not a matter of not picking up on the etiquette, it's a matter of stupid people that don't give a crap about other people, and/or are totally oblivious to the rest of the world and will remain indefinitely so. Some people genuinely forget, but a lot of people genuinely don't care at all, or say 'fuck you, it's a free country, I'm allowed to annoy as many people as I want for whatever reasons I want' or what-have-you.
We wouldn't treat a fighter pilot the same as a private hobbyist. So why do we apply the same silly standard to drivers?
Because the likelihood of me being out with my family and getting hit by a pilot is almost nil.
What you're basically saying is 'wait until somethign bad happens, THEN act', which is fucking stupid if you've ever lost someone to drunk driving, criminal negligence, or the like. What about people who can drive straight while drunk, but have reduced reflexes or attention span? Are you saying let them run a stopsign or red light and kill someone before we do anything?
We set arbitrary limits because there have to be some limits. Limits that we have e.g. on DWI (blood alcohol, etc) mean that if you're drunk and get caught, you're fucked no matter what - you're not off the hook just because you didn't kill someone, or just because the accident wasn't your fault.
Moral of the story, we have DWI laws because driving while impaired is NOT fine just because you didn't kill someone, because who knows what'll happen next time?
... or you can choose to forgo Windows Media Player entirely and buy an independent, third-party program.
Or you can choose to forgo Windows altogether and e.g. buy a Mac. Yes, they cost money and you can't incrementally upgrade, but a functional, stable, modern user-friendly UNIX operating system coupled with free standards-using programs like iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, and the like, an accelerated user interface, nice-looking hardware, quality hardware, and, more importantly, NO attempt to control you.
The closest they come is saying 'Don't steal music' on the back of the iPod, and only letting you sync music with one computer (though you can change which computer that is easily). Other than that, they run everything on the honour system. They don't assume every user is a filthy criminal until otherwise proven, and to me, even without the other benefits, I'd rather not pay a company to call me a thief.
Yoga is a great way to get in all sorts of shape. It will let you work on your flexibility, breathing excercises, concentration and focus, and has many other benefits besides. My mother used to do yoga, and has been trying to get back into it. I plan to do so this fall when I go off to university. Perhaps you should look into doing the same, it would make a great compliment to strength training, if you were doing that, and can help you maintain a relaxed and stress-free lifestyle.
Your problem then was stupid manufacturers or crappy data entry.
Barcodes are unique to the product by design. The first digit (most often zero) is a codeset digit, the next five are the manufacturer ID, the next five are the product ID, and the last is a checksum. What you're describing sounds like people arbitrarily making up their own barcodes, or mistyping them when entering them into the system (the 5-pack President's Choice 400 ISO film has only one number different from No Name frozen french fries, which has resulted in very peculiar things on people's bills; the fries are cheaper though).
Another interesting thing I've learned is that Radio Shack (in Canada anyway), uses 7-digit SKUs, which are often made up and then printed on stickers and stuck on. These SKUs are what they use to handle... well, everything. Barcodes scanned at the terminal are converted into SKUs by the POS software so that it can look them up in the database.
Then again, RS doesn't carry 10,000,000 different items. Not mine, anyway...
Some people, like those in my job, have to punch in barcodes manually. I work in the photo/electronics department at the largest, busiest 'grocery' store (superstore, it's called, if you know it you know what I mean) within 200 km, and the largest one north of Saskatoon (which means the largest one in half the province) - and every product we sell, except film, I have to punch in barcodes manually - and let me tell you, when you're dyslexic, that's not always easy.
It's hard enough to punch in barcodes as it is. Sometimes, the numbers on them don't make sense. sometimes, '0 12345 67890 4' requires punching in 1234567890, sometimes 01234567890 or 12345678904, sometimes 01234567894. Some barcodes are only six numbers long (mostly soap and the like, which we don't normally ring up), and you have to add numbers.
Barcodes are annoying enough as it is, though they are important. My job, though, gives me lots of time to think about them. Are they wasted a lot? It's necessary to have every item in the store separately coded, for inventory purposes - my supervisor gets bonuses based on how many of x she sells, vs. y. But in the case of, for example, the 6-pack (2 free!) of Energizer Max batteries we hav a special on now, is it necessary? The prices have to be the same as the 4 packs, or it's false advertising, so that's not an issue. Inventory tracking? Not in this case. The theft problem in Prince Albert is higher than any other city in Canada, so for something like batteries, which aren't controlled (security tagged and thus alarmed so they can't leave the department), the amount of them that walk for a given shipment of a thousand makes inventory tracking pointless. And it's not like we'll stop selling them - when inventories run out, then there you go.
We had a product recently - a PS2 Gameshark - that was 'disc' - discontinued, the warehouse is out of stock, will never get more, and what we have is all we ever will. We also got a brand new product - a PS2 gameshark. Same product number, radically different UPC.
It's a lot like IPv4 - stupidly wasted (every manufacturer has a specific 6 digit prefix, and then a 6 digit product ID, which means if you make a thousand products, you've got 999,000 more left over. Maybe. Or maybe 99,000. It depends on how your barcodes ring in on our system), but superstore is not going to buy scanners for our department unless they *have* to - and I think they can probably justify anything they want in the name of fiscal savings.
2. Driver's Licenses can be just for drivers: So, so many Americans who can't drive (for reasons including age, disability, etc.) fight to maintain their driver's licenses because it's HARD to participate in society and commerce without one. A national ID card would provide all persons with an ID that merchants wouldn't question -- and no need for a driving test. Furthermore, people who know that they're unsafe, incapable drivers would have an alternative to keeping their licenses. This would allow them to avoid the temptation to drive.
I second this one. I don't have a driver's license, and don't have any plans to ever get one. I live in Canada, but I move around so much within Canada that it's too much trouble to get one - most provinces require you to live there six months before you can get a license, but I haven't lived in one province for six months for *ages*.
Normally, this wouldn't matter (I don't feel like paying to get it renewed anyway), but so many (stupid) businesses out there are requiring one. I walked into Rogers Video last year and wanted to rent a movie - but since their computer systems aren't interlinked, we had no account at that branch, and they required a driver's license. I had a passport, far harder to get than a license, and still they said no.
PC Financial, same thing. You need a BC ID card or a BC Driver's license (BCID is basically a license that doesn't let you drive, for all intents and purposes). No passport, no mail with your name and address on it, no nothing. ONLY a BCID/license. Heck, even my old Alberta learner's (which is like four years old and probably expired) wouldn't do there.
The Canadian government is implementing an ID card for immigrants - a government-issued picture ID with biometrics (fingerprint) on the card, as well as a magnetic strip and two lines of text like you see on passports:
PCANUDEYDANIELJAMES etc.
I'm hoping hoping hoping that this is extended to cover the rest of the population. The reason they're only applying it to the immigrants (this was started before 9.11 but was much more popular afterwards) at the moment isn't terrorism, bur rather because the old documents (not ID, documents, papers) were absurdly easy to forge, so they're modernizing it entirely.
I don't care if I have a card that everyone is required to use. I mean, if you have a driver's license, don't you need to always use that anyway? In Canada, you do (you only give your SIN out to places that give you money - banks, business, etc, credit card apps - and the government. no one else even asks). What I want is a card that businesses can't refuse to accept. I'm tired of being dicked around by local policies that change from city to city and require different ID depending on the sun in the sky and the phase of the moon.
I like rumors just as much as the next guy, but this is getting a little silly.
Quoting someone who claims someone he won't name told him Motorola's not making any 64-bit chips as proof ('According to this...') is just silly. I mean, MY source at Motorola says they already have 1024-bit optical chips running at a bajillion petahertz and that OS X 10.a million billion.1 is going to be ported to it Real Soon Now.
If there's one thing Apple does well, it's get people speculating, but the rumors floating around now are pretty baseless. Moving to a system like x86 would be just horrible (x86 assembly is ass-ugly in the first place), not to mention having to support shitty hardware.
Power4/5/whatever is more plausible, though those chips aren't really designed for desktop use, and I don't think IBM loves Apple enough to redesign them. Perhaps Apple would benefit from building a fab plant of their own and doing whatever they like. It would certainly be a perfect compliment to their all-from-us philosophy, and it would give them a lot more freedom. For that matter though, maybe the new IBM.1 micron plant is there to manufacture Power4/5 chips for Apple. Who knows?
All I know is that x86 is a bad, ugly idea, 64-bit or not.
Basically what that quote means is 'we thought we'd try a stupid publicity stunt to get more people to come to our website and look around, but then we decided that maybe we shouldn't lose our shirts'.
Rule number one of marketing: let the suppliers do the rebates, unless you have a ton of stock that you NEED to get rid of, but don't want to just mark down. The only reason to ever sell for less than you buy at is amortization, depreciation, or cutting your losses. Selling pre-orders at less than cost is the mentality behind most dot-com businesses - bleed red ink, but make up for it in added services.
Actually, I'm inclined to think this is one of the better Ask Slashdot questions out there lately. When you have a large userbase of installed Windows machines, it would be nice to have a consistant way to manage them all, in an apt-get, software/windows update sort of fashion - software installation and updates, and system updates, patches, fixes, and drivers, combined with an intelligent packaging system, would be a great product.
Hmm... I smell money-making opportunity...
--Dan
PS: Just before I hit post, I mentioned this money-making opportunity to a friend of mine, who pointed out that MS has had a product called the Systems Management Server out for about four years now, that will do exactly this - system and application installation and updating. Probably works well too, up until the whole thing goes to hell. Yay for Norton Ghost.
Why must providers always assume that someone who sets up a home network is a bandwidth hog?
One of the techs at Shaw Cable told me, long ago, that the reason they didn't support home networks is that people buy cheap, and don't understand the difference between a hub and a switch... so they buy a hub, because it's cheaper, and then all your lan data gets thrown to the cable modem, which dutifully passes it on to the upstream gateway, which then deals with (and disgards) it.
While I'm not sure if this is necessarily applicable in all (any?) cases, it sounds like a good indicator of what's wrong - stupid or ignorant people doing networking badly. Networking can be a very finicky thing if it's not extremely well done, and it's easy for people to cause problems.
If you're spending $5000 on a software package, you're NOT going to get it stock, with 128 megs of ram and a shitty monitor. You're going to need to crank up all the stats and get a kickass display. The display doesn't factor into my five grand, but I've been building a dream system and even mine comes out to about $8000 USD, so you'd better believe a production film studio is going to drop more than I am on their system.
Stop freaking out dude. I never said macs were overpriced. Hell, I have one in my living room, G4/533, bought it brand new, with a monitor that can do 1900x1440 or some shit like that, and it only came to like three grand total. Oh, and a laser printer too. Maybe it was five grand actually, but that's $CDN, so oh well.
Let people say macs are overpriced, it just means you wont' have idiots buying them and bitching because they're too stupid to go out and buy their own two-button mouse instead of bitching about how one isn't included.
Debian 3.0 has support for 11 architectures, while your comments of stability apply directly to maybe one or two. Fact is, 2.4 is unstable (enough to warrant exclusion) on several of the 11 arches, and in order to avoid having to support two different kernels and installer systems, they went with what works.
You can use 2.4 if you want, just grab the 24bf netinst image and away you go.
Hmm... Does anyone else think it's worrying that the Linux VM system has had more overhauls in the last five years than Debian has? Peculiar...
Debian is open-source start to finish, meaning, basically, that whatever gets done is whatever people want to do. If someone wants to translate the release notes (or entire distro) into Catalan, what's wrong with that? Chances are the person who did so did not do so instead of another language, like Hebrew, Sanskrit, Farsi, or what-have-you. If there had been no Catalan translation, that would be the only difference.
Slashdot Mirror
Well spoken. I'll add one comment too...
Even if the MPs all vote it forward, it still has to be approved by the Senate, and Senators don't have to follow party line - or do anything else, really.
Our first prime minister created the senate because he had a tendancy to hit the bottle, and wanted some 'sober second thought' - perhaps the reference isn't related to alcohol, but hey, it may as well be.
Even if this crap DOES get past the MPs (if you don't like it, write yours), the senate will take their time tearing it up. No worries here.
--Dan
It sounds awfully confusing for a normal consumer if they buy one of these super combined dvd burners...
can you imagine? This guy wants to burn a dvd, but when he hits burn, he has 4-5 choices to pick between( DVD-R, DVD+R, etc...).
I think it'll actually be easier. The +/- difference is in the discs themselves - or at least, there's a difference in the discs themselves - so the chances are this burner will be able to detect what kind of discs they have and burn accordingly.
This seems like a Good Thing for non-tech users. Buy whatever disc you like, and away you go.
One can hope.
--Dan
...we do start paying for music like this, and get mp3s in return, and the RIAA comes cruising along the networks and tags us for having "copyrighted content" on our computers?
You mean 'the RIAA comes cruising along the networks and tags us for sharing "copyrighted content" from your computers?'
If you make it publically available, then you're violating copyright (with the possible exception of claiming (in Canada) that you were merely providing a way for other people to make, from your collection, copies for their own use, which is legal).
--Dan
Seriously, I know Slashdot isn't a real news site, but it's pretty sad when something that happened 3.5 billion years ago is considered news. It's over dudes, it's old news, let's try and keep up to date, shall we?
--Dan
Maybe on a P4/1.6 running Windows, but on my P120 workstations/kickboxes and so on , that 0.01 seconds can come out to 10 or 15 on a complex page.
Then there's Linux and MacOS, both of which need a decent browser with a reasonable memory footprint, and neither of which have one (no one had better reply saying 'Mozilla is great, you only need 128 megs of ram....').
--Dan
I've got a better idea. Lock people up for DUI for any blood-alcohol content. Give them a week on first offence (if no damage done), then a month, then a year (more, obviously, if damage is done).
Putting people's lives at risk IS an offence, and that's what someone is doing when they get behind a wheel with ANY alcohol in their system. I have zero tolerance for people doing stupid things, and I wish more people shared my opinion.
Punish for outcomes, not for causes? So we'll let someone drive drunk until they kill someone, because they haven't proven that they're a danger? You'd rather put people's lives at risk until we have blood on the asphalt so that we KNOW it's a danger?
I'm sorry, but after someone gets hurt is a little late to make a difference.
--Dan
The Motorola V60 was $500 (CDN) when my friend got it with his contract, through Telus...
He's lost the phone. Stolen, he thinks. He's now planning on purchasing another one to replace it.
Don't say that people won't buy it. People WILL buy it. People bought the iPod, even though it was twice as much as a similarly-featured device. Why? Because it had Firewire, was small, and was easy to use. If Apple does what magic with the iPhone as they did with the iPod, I have no doubt that it will sell in mass quantities.
--Dan
It just takes a while before people pick up on the etiquette. But you sure as hell don't need a law for it.
It's not a matter of not picking up on the etiquette, it's a matter of stupid people that don't give a crap about other people, and/or are totally oblivious to the rest of the world and will remain indefinitely so. Some people genuinely forget, but a lot of people genuinely don't care at all, or say 'fuck you, it's a free country, I'm allowed to annoy as many people as I want for whatever reasons I want' or what-have-you.
--Dan
We wouldn't treat a fighter pilot the same as a private hobbyist. So why do we apply the same silly standard to drivers?
Because the likelihood of me being out with my family and getting hit by a pilot is almost nil.
What you're basically saying is 'wait until somethign bad happens, THEN act', which is fucking stupid if you've ever lost someone to drunk driving, criminal negligence, or the like. What about people who can drive straight while drunk, but have reduced reflexes or attention span? Are you saying let them run a stopsign or red light and kill someone before we do anything?
We set arbitrary limits because there have to be some limits. Limits that we have e.g. on DWI (blood alcohol, etc) mean that if you're drunk and get caught, you're fucked no matter what - you're not off the hook just because you didn't kill someone, or just because the accident wasn't your fault.
Moral of the story, we have DWI laws because driving while impaired is NOT fine just because you didn't kill someone, because who knows what'll happen next time?
--Dan
... or you can choose to forgo Windows Media Player entirely and buy an independent, third-party program.
Or you can choose to forgo Windows altogether and e.g. buy a Mac. Yes, they cost money and you can't incrementally upgrade, but a functional, stable, modern user-friendly UNIX operating system coupled with free standards-using programs like iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, and the like, an accelerated user interface, nice-looking hardware, quality hardware, and, more importantly, NO attempt to control you.
The closest they come is saying 'Don't steal music' on the back of the iPod, and only letting you sync music with one computer (though you can change which computer that is easily). Other than that, they run everything on the honour system. They don't assume every user is a filthy criminal until otherwise proven, and to me, even without the other benefits, I'd rather not pay a company to call me a thief.
--Dan
And if you are a starfish it will loko like this.
I don't think starfishes care that much about wealth, but I sure hope they don't revolt.
--Dan
Yoga.
Yoga is a great way to get in all sorts of shape. It will let you work on your flexibility, breathing excercises, concentration and focus, and has many other benefits besides. My mother used to do yoga, and has been trying to get back into it. I plan to do so this fall when I go off to university. Perhaps you should look into doing the same, it would make a great compliment to strength training, if you were doing that, and can help you maintain a relaxed and stress-free lifestyle.
--Dan
Your problem then was stupid manufacturers or crappy data entry.
Barcodes are unique to the product by design. The first digit (most often zero) is a codeset digit, the next five are the manufacturer ID, the next five are the product ID, and the last is a checksum. What you're describing sounds like people arbitrarily making up their own barcodes, or mistyping them when entering them into the system (the 5-pack President's Choice 400 ISO film has only one number different from No Name frozen french fries, which has resulted in very peculiar things on people's bills; the fries are cheaper though).
Another interesting thing I've learned is that Radio Shack (in Canada anyway), uses 7-digit SKUs, which are often made up and then printed on stickers and stuck on. These SKUs are what they use to handle... well, everything. Barcodes scanned at the terminal are converted into SKUs by the POS software so that it can look them up in the database.
Then again, RS doesn't carry 10,000,000 different items. Not mine, anyway...
--Dan
I hate you.
Some people, like those in my job, have to punch in barcodes manually. I work in the photo/electronics department at the largest, busiest 'grocery' store (superstore, it's called, if you know it you know what I mean) within 200 km, and the largest one north of Saskatoon (which means the largest one in half the province) - and every product we sell, except film, I have to punch in barcodes manually - and let me tell you, when you're dyslexic, that's not always easy.
It's hard enough to punch in barcodes as it is. Sometimes, the numbers on them don't make sense. sometimes, '0 12345 67890 4' requires punching in 1234567890, sometimes 01234567890 or 12345678904, sometimes 01234567894. Some barcodes are only six numbers long (mostly soap and the like, which we don't normally ring up), and you have to add numbers.
Barcodes are annoying enough as it is, though they are important. My job, though, gives me lots of time to think about them. Are they wasted a lot? It's necessary to have every item in the store separately coded, for inventory purposes - my supervisor gets bonuses based on how many of x she sells, vs. y. But in the case of, for example, the 6-pack (2 free!) of Energizer Max batteries we hav a special on now, is it necessary? The prices have to be the same as the 4 packs, or it's false advertising, so that's not an issue. Inventory tracking? Not in this case. The theft problem in Prince Albert is higher than any other city in Canada, so for something like batteries, which aren't controlled (security tagged and thus alarmed so they can't leave the department), the amount of them that walk for a given shipment of a thousand makes inventory tracking pointless. And it's not like we'll stop selling them - when inventories run out, then there you go.
We had a product recently - a PS2 Gameshark - that was 'disc' - discontinued, the warehouse is out of stock, will never get more, and what we have is all we ever will. We also got a brand new product - a PS2 gameshark. Same product number, radically different UPC.
It's a lot like IPv4 - stupidly wasted (every manufacturer has a specific 6 digit prefix, and then a 6 digit product ID, which means if you make a thousand products, you've got 999,000 more left over. Maybe. Or maybe 99,000. It depends on how your barcodes ring in on our system), but superstore is not going to buy scanners for our department unless they *have* to - and I think they can probably justify anything they want in the name of fiscal savings.
Le sigh.
--Dan
2. Driver's Licenses can be just for drivers: So, so many Americans who can't drive (for reasons including age, disability, etc.) fight to maintain their driver's licenses because it's HARD to participate in society and commerce without one. A national ID card would provide all persons with an ID that merchants wouldn't question -- and no need for a driving test. Furthermore, people who know that they're unsafe, incapable drivers would have an alternative to keeping their licenses. This would allow them to avoid the temptation to drive.
I second this one. I don't have a driver's license, and don't have any plans to ever get one. I live in Canada, but I move around so much within Canada that it's too much trouble to get one - most provinces require you to live there six months before you can get a license, but I haven't lived in one province for six months for *ages*.
Normally, this wouldn't matter (I don't feel like paying to get it renewed anyway), but so many (stupid) businesses out there are requiring one. I walked into Rogers Video last year and wanted to rent a movie - but since their computer systems aren't interlinked, we had no account at that branch, and they required a driver's license. I had a passport, far harder to get than a license, and still they said no.
PC Financial, same thing. You need a BC ID card or a BC Driver's license (BCID is basically a license that doesn't let you drive, for all intents and purposes). No passport, no mail with your name and address on it, no nothing. ONLY a BCID/license. Heck, even my old Alberta learner's (which is like four years old and probably expired) wouldn't do there.
The Canadian government is implementing an ID card for immigrants - a government-issued picture ID with biometrics (fingerprint) on the card, as well as a magnetic strip and two lines of text like you see on passports:
PCANUDEYDANIELJAMES etc.
I'm hoping hoping hoping that this is extended to cover the rest of the population. The reason they're only applying it to the immigrants (this was started before 9.11 but was much more popular afterwards) at the moment isn't terrorism, bur rather because the old documents (not ID, documents, papers) were absurdly easy to forge, so they're modernizing it entirely.
I don't care if I have a card that everyone is required to use. I mean, if you have a driver's license, don't you need to always use that anyway? In Canada, you do (you only give your SIN out to places that give you money - banks, business, etc, credit card apps - and the government. no one else even asks). What I want is a card that businesses can't refuse to accept. I'm tired of being dicked around by local policies that change from city to city and require different ID depending on the sun in the sky and the phase of the moon.
Consistency is the way.
--Dan
I like rumors just as much as the next guy, but this is getting a little silly.
.1 micron plant is there to manufacture Power4/5 chips for Apple. Who knows?
Quoting someone who claims someone he won't name told him Motorola's not making any 64-bit chips as proof ('According to this...') is just silly. I mean, MY source at Motorola says they already have 1024-bit optical chips running at a bajillion petahertz and that OS X 10.a million billion.1 is going to be ported to it Real Soon Now.
If there's one thing Apple does well, it's get people speculating, but the rumors floating around now are pretty baseless. Moving to a system like x86 would be just horrible (x86 assembly is ass-ugly in the first place), not to mention having to support shitty hardware.
Power4/5/whatever is more plausible, though those chips aren't really designed for desktop use, and I don't think IBM loves Apple enough to redesign them. Perhaps Apple would benefit from building a fab plant of their own and doing whatever they like. It would certainly be a perfect compliment to their all-from-us philosophy, and it would give them a lot more freedom. For that matter though, maybe the new IBM
All I know is that x86 is a bad, ugly idea, 64-bit or not.
--Dan
Especially if it comes with M$ office which is the only reason a lot of people dont wish to use anything other than windows.
You say that like there isn't an MS Office for OS X.
--Dan
Yes, Walmart is the pinnacle of computer sales. Go anywhere that sells stuff that isn't crap (Future Shop, Radio Shack) and you'll still find hubs.
--Dan
Basically what that quote means is 'we thought we'd try a stupid publicity stunt to get more people to come to our website and look around, but then we decided that maybe we shouldn't lose our shirts'.
Rule number one of marketing: let the suppliers do the rebates, unless you have a ton of stock that you NEED to get rid of, but don't want to just mark down. The only reason to ever sell for less than you buy at is amortization, depreciation, or cutting your losses. Selling pre-orders at less than cost is the mentality behind most dot-com businesses - bleed red ink, but make up for it in added services.
Dumb dumb.
--Dan
Actually, I'm inclined to think this is one of the better Ask Slashdot questions out there lately. When you have a large userbase of installed Windows machines, it would be nice to have a consistant way to manage them all, in an apt-get, software/windows update sort of fashion - software installation and updates, and system updates, patches, fixes, and drivers, combined with an intelligent packaging system, would be a great product.
Hmm... I smell money-making opportunity...
--Dan
PS: Just before I hit post, I mentioned this money-making opportunity to a friend of mine, who pointed out that MS has had a product called the Systems Management Server out for about four years now, that will do exactly this - system and application installation and updating. Probably works well too, up until the whole thing goes to hell. Yay for Norton Ghost.
Why must providers always assume that someone who sets up a home network is a bandwidth hog?
One of the techs at Shaw Cable told me, long ago, that the reason they didn't support home networks is that people buy cheap, and don't understand the difference between a hub and a switch... so they buy a hub, because it's cheaper, and then all your lan data gets thrown to the cable modem, which dutifully passes it on to the upstream gateway, which then deals with (and disgards) it.
While I'm not sure if this is necessarily applicable in all (any?) cases, it sounds like a good indicator of what's wrong - stupid or ignorant people doing networking badly. Networking can be a very finicky thing if it's not extremely well done, and it's easy for people to cause problems.
--Dan
Uhh, someone needs to be a little less sensitive.
If you're spending $5000 on a software package, you're NOT going to get it stock, with 128 megs of ram and a shitty monitor. You're going to need to crank up all the stats and get a kickass display. The display doesn't factor into my five grand, but I've been building a dream system and even mine comes out to about $8000 USD, so you'd better believe a production film studio is going to drop more than I am on their system.
Stop freaking out dude. I never said macs were overpriced. Hell, I have one in my living room, G4/533, bought it brand new, with a monitor that can do 1900x1440 or some shit like that, and it only came to like three grand total. Oh, and a laser printer too. Maybe it was five grand actually, but that's $CDN, so oh well.
Let people say macs are overpriced, it just means you wont' have idiots buying them and bitching because they're too stupid to go out and buy their own two-button mouse instead of bitching about how one isn't included.
--Dan
More probable is that Apple will require people buying the $5000 package, and possibly a $5000 G4, to also go out and buy a $25 mouse.
That being said, I'd probably buy an Apple wheel mouse if they made one. Doubt it'd happen, but a guy can hope.
--Dan
Debian 3.0 has support for 11 architectures, while your comments of stability apply directly to maybe one or two. Fact is, 2.4 is unstable (enough to warrant exclusion) on several of the 11 arches, and in order to avoid having to support two different kernels and installer systems, they went with what works.
You can use 2.4 if you want, just grab the 24bf netinst image and away you go.
Hmm... Does anyone else think it's worrying that the Linux VM system has had more overhauls in the last five years than Debian has? Peculiar...
--Dan
Debian is open-source start to finish, meaning, basically, that whatever gets done is whatever people want to do. If someone wants to translate the release notes (or entire distro) into Catalan, what's wrong with that? Chances are the person who did so did not do so instead of another language, like Hebrew, Sanskrit, Farsi, or what-have-you. If there had been no Catalan translation, that would be the only difference.
It doesn't hurt anything, so hey, why not?
--Dan