I'm a big fan of Linux, but why would I want this instead of kicking a few bucks extra and actually getting a Palm device?
More? Wow, I heard on my car radio that I can get a Palm M100 for $99.99 plus tax - $CDN too. That seems cheaper than $100 US for this thing, and the Palm is far better supported.
Besides, what do I need 8 megs of memory for? I don't know 8 megs worth of people or send 8 megs worth of e-mail.
--Dan
Re:same reason we still run gasoline engines.....
on
Clockless Chips
·
· Score: 2
the chip stopped working if the temperature deviated more than 5K[elvin] in either direction.
That's 5 degrees Celcius for those non-science types out there.
I don't know what your philosophy is like, and I'm not one to judge, but I would rather have 1 friend in my home with me than a thousand frag targets online.
Games (for me, anyway, and for others) aren't a friends substitute, they're a group activity. Games are no fun alone, and having someone's comments popping up at the top of the screen aren't the same as actually hearing them scream when you pop them off.
And besides, both the GameCube and the X-Box are internet capable OOB, so you can do BOTH with them - crowd some friends around your TV, and face off against someone else and their group of friends online.
Seems to me like you get the best of both words with the gamecube, but if you prefer sitting online alone to actually interacting with real people, that's your perogative.
How would this differ than just using AOL over a standard TCP/IP connection? My LinkSys cable/DSl 4 port gateway/router lets me connect to AOL just fine. I just have my AOL client set to use TCP/IP instead of a dialup connection.
The difference is that the Airport can dial-in to AOL to login, while your use is over TCP/IP.
--Dan
What Globalization Means to Canadians
on
Defining Globalism
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· Score: 2
Globalization has lots of meanings for lots of people. Here's what it means to one particular Canadian (myself).
Globalization means that we have free trade across the border, without tariffs, unless we can sell our products (read: softwood lumber) for cheaper than American mills can, in which case we're 'dumping' our lumber, and get nailed with 18% tariffs which is going to put tens of thousands of people out of work so that the American mills can afford to gouge instead of becoming efficient. Globalization also means that low-cost housing in the US is going to become less low-cost because corporations are the rule.
Globalization means that the WTO is the final ruling body on international economic trade, unless they rule against the US (in the softwood lumber dispute, they ruled against the US twice before the tariffs were imposed), in which case they are ignored.
Globalization means that, under NAFTA, Ontario cannot ban certain highly toxic pesticides, becuase the American companies can pick any court on the continent to file a dispute, and can pick the friendliest court of the lot.
Globalization means that once Canada's government sells a crown corporation, they cannot buy it back, which goes directly parallel to what many people in Canada believe in - government intervention.
Globalization means that Canada selling cheap tomatoes in the US is 'dumping', but the US selling cheap tomatoes in Canada is 'fair economy'.
Globalization means that the US can sell their fresh fruit, which grows earlier because of the climate in Florida vs. Ontario, to the people in the US, and then sell whatever the Americans don't want across the border at 'must clear out' prices right when our growing season starts, but that's fair, because they're the US.
I'm a big fan of free trade. I'm a big fan of European Unions and Commonwealths and so on, but the US has to start playing by the rules they set down, or the problems ARE going to be problems. I don't think most Americans realize how unfriendly towards other countries their government is. America first, and to hell with the rest.
Ironic, isn't it? The US won't play fair with Kyoto. They won't play fair with the WTO. They won't play fair with ANYTHING, for that matter.. but when something terrible happens to them because of it (and I'm not trying to diminish the horror of the WTC), who do they come crying to, but the rest of the world - and THEN, they have the gall to say 'if you're not helping us, then you're our enemy'.
Globalization means the US wins all the time, and the rest of the world loses if necessary. That's not something I can sign on to.
Once there are McDonalds on every corner, and the whole world shops at The Gap, this place will be so boring it will drive me mad.
While I can't talk about all McDonalds in various areas...
McDonalds in Quebec (the one I went into) sells poutine. McDonalds in Israel (the one I went into) sells potato wedges. According to Pulp Fiction, McDonalds in Paris (the one he went into) sells beer.
Perhaps you do see a McDonalds in any city you go to, but that doesn't mean they're all the same. Other stores and companies sell different things in one country than they do in another.
The two points were separate, I should have made that more clear.
The average budget is well over a million, but there's lots of low-budget crap out there (and low-budget quality, to be fair).
I suppose the point of my post was that console gaming (at least, for most consoles) is more 'elitest', at least in the case of Nintendo. There aren't as many 'Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen' and 'Spice World' games on the N64 as there are on the Playstation or PC. At least, if there are, I haven't seen them.
Games on the PC are easy to make - anyone with a graphics toolkit and a few thousand dollars can make one, and just because you have big names behind it (John Romero) doesn't mean it'll be any good (Daikatana).
Games on PC are also repetetive, for the most part. Once I'm bored of Quake III (which I never liked anyway), I can move on to Unreal Tournament, and then Wolfenstein 3D, and then..... But it's all the same! Sure, they're fun, but sometimes I want something different.
Games on Nintendo systems usually tend to be two things: well done, and fun. Maybe the graphics aren't killer (usually they're great if not awesome though), and maybe it's not eye candy, but at least it's not ONLY eye candy. Most of the other systems I've seen have awesome looking games that suck. The controls (game-side) are often totally pathetic, the games are repetetive, and they're just plain boring.
Nintendo is FUN. Mario Kart is FUN, Mario Brothers is FUN, Smash Brothers is FUN. And most of all, with a TV system, you can crowd people around and everyone can play/watch. You can have parties and people will play the GameCube, because it's a group activity. As another poster mentioned, you can't crowd 10 people around a 17" monitor, or a 21" for that matter.
Computers are a one-person thing. Two people is sometimes possible, but usually a stretch. Three is often nearly impossible. With a TV, this is no problem. Party entertainment, family entertainment, it all works.
And best of all, you won't have to buy $250 in new hardware every year and waste your time fixing driver installations just to keep the latest games playable.
The problem of a corrupt playground is almost directly (as I understand your ailing and failing political system) a result of politicians not having any limits or regulations on campaign contributions, and things like that.
How does one solve this problem? I don't know. It seems like the government is decending into anarchy, with corporations controlling the country more and more. Solution? Fix the government.
It seems ironic - not to gloat, but for a country whose government was designed to protect the people from the government, that doesn't seem to be happening. I suppose in such a pure example of capitalism, what the people need is protection from corporations.
Either way, best of luck in your country's struggle.
You believe that this is a violation of your rights. I believe that it's a violation of copyright law, or at least, a violation of the principles behind copyright law, which are fair and just principles.
What you need to do is challenge this in court. Get rid of the DCMA, and the problem is over. Treat the disease, not the symptoms.
The problem is not CDs that can't be played/copied properly, the problem is laws that remove people's fair use rights, and the result is CDs that can't be played/copied properly.
Yes it's using the propaganda machinre, but if we dont use their weapons in this war then we will all become casualties.
That's not true. You don't fight fire with fire, you fight fire with water. You don't right injustice with injustice, or terror with terror, or lies with lies. You fight injustice with justice, terror with reassurance, and lies with truth.
Interesting thought, but what would stop the RIAA from putting some sort of canary trap in place on randomly selected discs?
It's an interesting idea, but the problem lies thusly:
CDs are pressed, not burned. The manufacturing plants get a master, press x thousand discs, and ship them all. Each unique copy of a disc would need a separate master, which would be a pain in the ass (I would imagine), considering how many copies they sell.
If they did two masters and sold 80,000 copies, then they would be able to limit the search to 40,000 of those users.
Now, if they, say, did this in two ways - one for radio stations, music videos (with the advent of MTV being broadcast digitally in Canada, we can record CD-quality audio from MTV now), etc, and one for 'the rest of us', they'd be able to find out if it was ripped by end-listeners or radio stations.
Of course, lots of people rip CDs as soon as they get home - I know I do, iTunes makes my life easier, since I have one playlist with all Garbage songs (even the B-Sides! mwaha!) - and the majority of people who use napter/aimster/gnutella/wangshare/whatever share the dir they rip their MP3s to, so the point becomes moot as the signal-to-noise ratio goes all to hell as soon as the CD is released.
So what you suggest is that to allow us to excercise our 'fair use' rights, we should break the law on a massive scale as yet unseen by this generation, and illegally share this music with everyone?
Look, I agree that we should be able to fairly use music we pay for, but putting music on the internet IS illegal, by any stretch of the law, DCMA or no.
What you suggest is akin to bars having rules against shouting (because that often leads to fighting), and fighting that by starting brawls in every bar that has that kind of rule.
What you suggest will not show 'this is stupid', it will show 'this is necessary'. Think about things beforehand. You cannot fight a stupid law by breaking a good one.
I didn't say it was legitimate, I said it was an argument.
I'm glad that things like MP3.com and the internet in general are allowing artists to bypass record companies in some areas. The only problem is going from indie record label to MTV/MuchMusic and actually getting popular.
We signed up for Rogers@Home a few years ago, and mostly it's been good service. The quality started to degrade around the time Shaw bought them, but after Shaw put us on their own network (Fibrelink) instead of @home's, the quality was ten times what it had ever been - low latencies, high speeds (420 kilobytes/second was common, 180 was average).
We've had a few instances of downtime, but all in all, it's been excellent.
high prices,
We pay about CDN$50/month for two IPs ($40/mo with only one), though we have a 'package deal' now ($85/mo for cable modem, extra IP, and digital cable with almost all the channels). That comes out to about US$30 I think, give or take, and maybe US$60 for the whole package.
and shamefully bad customer service and support.
Any time we've had to call customer support, when our connection went down, we haven't been able to get through - mostly because the entire city was down, because some lame script kiddie was overloading a router (I should keep my mouth shut on IRC) - so really, it doesn't matter.
The few times I have gotten through to tech support, the first-level tech I spoke to knew what IRC was, knew what a DoS attack was, knew about firewalls, knew that there aren't many MacOS firewalls, and told me exactly what the problem was (a router was rebooted because the techs found it was dropping massive packets), when it happened, and when it would probably be fixed.
Other than that instance, our longest downtime was when my stepfather forgot to plug the frigging cable modem in. They don't work with no power, you see.
Argument 1: Because the 'big bad music companies' are companies, and gouge the artists, supposedly. Artists hardly get any money from a $16 CD. Theoretically, this justifies not letting the artists get anything at all, by pirating the CD.
Argument 2: Stealing music helps sales. The first year that Napster was out, sales of CDs went up by a lot. People argue that this is because people could 'try out' the music. I argue that this is because dial-up users pay more for their dial-up connection than they do for CDs, so they try one song and then buy the CD. Broadband users have no such problems. Also, I'd expect that people just bought more CDs through normal market forces.
I agree it's rather hypocritical. Me, I pirate music only to the point where the CD isn't worth getting. If I like a song, I'll download the song. If I like an album, I'll buy the album. If I can't find the album in stores, I'll download it.
Everyone is talking about online file trading programs, Gnutella clients, and so on. My question is, what services are out there and cross-platform to that 'other' alternate OS?
On Linux, I just used used OpenNap servers, but on my MacOS-laden G4, I have to use Gnutella, and the only decent client I've found is MP3Rage - an awesome program, but shareware (and I'm a little broke). Audiogalaxy is unreliable at best, and I can't log on anymore because of 'bad version', even though I can't find a newer version of the mac client anywhere.
You'll understand my reluctance to believe in the journalistic ethics of online dot-com news agencies, but I've nothing to back up my claim, so I'll defer to yours.
No they're not, they sold their shares quite a while ago.
If Intel owned part of CNet, then CNet would be required by law to state that fact at the start of the article (read any MSNBC article that mentions Microsoft for an example).
I spent 2 years in a Computer Information Systems course at a local highschool/college hybrid in town here, and it's totally ruined me. Before, I would write PHP for fun, at the start I hacked on the IRCd for StarChat, and now I can't even bring myself to bother USING the software I wrote (online journals, poetry databases, etc), let alone write more. For that matter, I stopped liking Linux, because I don't want to bother with all the crap I have to deal with to make things work - I used to love it, but now? Can't stand it. I use a Mac.
What I did was find something else that interests me - namely languages - and start exploring that. I had the good fortune of meeting a lot of Mexicans on StarChat, and through them, got a base understanding of Spanish in a week or two. I've also found myself comparing languages, alphabets, and so on.
Basically, what I'm saying is, find something else that interests you and do that instead. Maybe change your major and don't graduate for a while longer, but even if you do change your major, you'll have a lot of electives done already. Maybe Physics is more up your alley, if you like the math of computing, or Engineering if you like problem-solving and design.
There's more to life to computers, as I've found, and the trick is to find what other stuff you enjoy, and what interested you in computers in the first place, and to pick a path based on those.
I think that this might be a misstatement. And personally, I think it's rather condescending of people to think that all our ancestors lived in little isolated tribes.
You misunderstand me, friend. I did not mean to say that there was no travel whatsoever, merely that not everyone travelled. Certainly the colonization of most of the world long before the Europeans started floating their boats proves this beyond a doubt.
All I meant was that news and people did not travel as much or as fast, which is true. People in Egypt may not have heard anything from Iran for months or years, depending on how things went, weather and so forth. Nomads may have learned more by virtue of travelling, or less by virtue of not being in a fixed location for travellers to be brought to. It's hard to say what the exact circumstances of the time was.
Atata(if memory serves)- "you" in Japanese
Ata- "you" in Hebrew.
Tu - 'you' in French
Te - 'you' in Spanish
Of course, those are easily explained by what we know, but perhaps the same explanation applies here. I'd suspect it likely does.
Wouldn't somebody have survived (maybe somebody who was traveling at the time) and passed the story of this down through history?
Travel back then wasn't the luxury it once was, and so isolated tribes/villiages/civilizations would be rather prone to oblivion.
Also, things get passed down, but there are very few stories that do not get warped with each telling. Perhaps, too, that this story is in religious texts, but how are we to know which? The symbolism may be too obscure or too abstract for us to pick up on immediately.
That being said, the article specifically mentions an ancient story:
A date of around 2300 BC for the impact may also cast new light on the legend of Gilgamesh, dating from the same period. The legend talks of "the Seven Judges of Hell", who raised their torches, lighting the land with flame, and a storm that turned day into night, "smashed the land like a cup", and flooded the area.
That may be to what you refer to. Perhaps they didn't mention the civilizations that were destroyed because the land being lit with flame and a storm turning day into night, smashing the land like a cup and flooding the area were kind of heavy on their minds at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a big fan of Linux, but why would I want this instead of kicking a few bucks extra and actually getting a Palm device?
More? Wow, I heard on my car radio that I can get a Palm M100 for $99.99 plus tax - $CDN too. That seems cheaper than $100 US for this thing, and the Palm is far better supported.
Besides, what do I need 8 megs of memory for? I don't know 8 megs worth of people or send 8 megs worth of e-mail.
--Dan
the chip stopped working if the temperature deviated more than 5K[elvin] in either direction.
That's 5 degrees Celcius for those non-science types out there.
I don't know what your philosophy is like, and I'm not one to judge, but I would rather have 1 friend in my home with me than a thousand frag targets online.
Games (for me, anyway, and for others) aren't a friends substitute, they're a group activity. Games are no fun alone, and having someone's comments popping up at the top of the screen aren't the same as actually hearing them scream when you pop them off.
And besides, both the GameCube and the X-Box are internet capable OOB, so you can do BOTH with them - crowd some friends around your TV, and face off against someone else and their group of friends online.
Seems to me like you get the best of both words with the gamecube, but if you prefer sitting online alone to actually interacting with real people, that's your perogative.
--Dan
How would this differ than just using AOL over a standard TCP/IP connection? My LinkSys cable/DSl 4 port gateway/router lets me connect to AOL just fine. I just have my AOL client set to use TCP/IP instead of a dialup connection.
The difference is that the Airport can dial-in to AOL to login, while your use is over TCP/IP.
--Dan
Globalization has lots of meanings for lots of people. Here's what it means to one particular Canadian (myself).
Globalization means that we have free trade across the border, without tariffs, unless we can sell our products (read: softwood lumber) for cheaper than American mills can, in which case we're 'dumping' our lumber, and get nailed with 18% tariffs which is going to put tens of thousands of people out of work so that the American mills can afford to gouge instead of becoming efficient. Globalization also means that low-cost housing in the US is going to become less low-cost because corporations are the rule.
Globalization means that the WTO is the final ruling body on international economic trade, unless they rule against the US (in the softwood lumber dispute, they ruled against the US twice before the tariffs were imposed), in which case they are ignored.
Globalization means that, under NAFTA, Ontario cannot ban certain highly toxic pesticides, becuase the American companies can pick any court on the continent to file a dispute, and can pick the friendliest court of the lot.
Globalization means that once Canada's government sells a crown corporation, they cannot buy it back, which goes directly parallel to what many people in Canada believe in - government intervention.
Globalization means that Canada selling cheap tomatoes in the US is 'dumping', but the US selling cheap tomatoes in Canada is 'fair economy'.
Globalization means that the US can sell their fresh fruit, which grows earlier because of the climate in Florida vs. Ontario, to the people in the US, and then sell whatever the Americans don't want across the border at 'must clear out' prices right when our growing season starts, but that's fair, because they're the US.
I'm a big fan of free trade. I'm a big fan of European Unions and Commonwealths and so on, but the US has to start playing by the rules they set down, or the problems ARE going to be problems. I don't think most Americans realize how unfriendly towards other countries their government is. America first, and to hell with the rest.
Ironic, isn't it? The US won't play fair with Kyoto. They won't play fair with the WTO. They won't play fair with ANYTHING, for that matter.. but when something terrible happens to them because of it (and I'm not trying to diminish the horror of the WTC), who do they come crying to, but the rest of the world - and THEN, they have the gall to say 'if you're not helping us, then you're our enemy'.
Globalization means the US wins all the time, and the rest of the world loses if necessary. That's not something I can sign on to.
--Dan
Once there are McDonalds on every corner, and the whole world shops at The Gap, this place will be so boring it will drive me mad.
While I can't talk about all McDonalds in various areas...
McDonalds in Quebec (the one I went into) sells poutine. McDonalds in Israel (the one I went into) sells potato wedges. According to Pulp Fiction, McDonalds in Paris (the one he went into) sells beer.
Perhaps you do see a McDonalds in any city you go to, but that doesn't mean they're all the same. Other stores and companies sell different things in one country than they do in another.
It's not much reassurance, but it's something.
--Dan
The two points were separate, I should have made that more clear.
The average budget is well over a million, but there's lots of low-budget crap out there (and low-budget quality, to be fair).
I suppose the point of my post was that console gaming (at least, for most consoles) is more 'elitest', at least in the case of Nintendo. There aren't as many 'Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen' and 'Spice World' games on the N64 as there are on the Playstation or PC. At least, if there are, I haven't seen them.
--Dan
Here's how I look at it:
Games on the PC are easy to make - anyone with a graphics toolkit and a few thousand dollars can make one, and just because you have big names behind it (John Romero) doesn't mean it'll be any good (Daikatana).
Games on PC are also repetetive, for the most part. Once I'm bored of Quake III (which I never liked anyway), I can move on to Unreal Tournament, and then Wolfenstein 3D, and then..... But it's all the same! Sure, they're fun, but sometimes I want something different.
Games on Nintendo systems usually tend to be two things: well done, and fun. Maybe the graphics aren't killer (usually they're great if not awesome though), and maybe it's not eye candy, but at least it's not ONLY eye candy. Most of the other systems I've seen have awesome looking games that suck. The controls (game-side) are often totally pathetic, the games are repetetive, and they're just plain boring.
Nintendo is FUN. Mario Kart is FUN, Mario Brothers is FUN, Smash Brothers is FUN. And most of all, with a TV system, you can crowd people around and everyone can play/watch. You can have parties and people will play the GameCube, because it's a group activity. As another poster mentioned, you can't crowd 10 people around a 17" monitor, or a 21" for that matter.
Computers are a one-person thing. Two people is sometimes possible, but usually a stretch. Three is often nearly impossible. With a TV, this is no problem. Party entertainment, family entertainment, it all works.
And best of all, you won't have to buy $250 in new hardware every year and waste your time fixing driver installations just to keep the latest games playable.
That's how I see it, anyway.
--Dan
Alright, let's take it one step further.
The problem of a corrupt playground is almost directly (as I understand your ailing and failing political system) a result of politicians not having any limits or regulations on campaign contributions, and things like that.
How does one solve this problem? I don't know. It seems like the government is decending into anarchy, with corporations controlling the country more and more. Solution? Fix the government.
It seems ironic - not to gloat, but for a country whose government was designed to protect the people from the government, that doesn't seem to be happening. I suppose in such a pure example of capitalism, what the people need is protection from corporations.
Either way, best of luck in your country's struggle.
--Dan
You believe that this is a violation of your rights. I believe that it's a violation of copyright law, or at least, a violation of the principles behind copyright law, which are fair and just principles.
What you need to do is challenge this in court. Get rid of the DCMA, and the problem is over. Treat the disease, not the symptoms.
The problem is not CDs that can't be played/copied properly, the problem is laws that remove people's fair use rights, and the result is CDs that can't be played/copied properly.
Yes it's using the propaganda machinre, but if we dont use their weapons in this war then we will all become casualties.
That's not true. You don't fight fire with fire, you fight fire with water. You don't right injustice with injustice, or terror with terror, or lies with lies. You fight injustice with justice, terror with reassurance, and lies with truth.
--Dan
Right, and those crazy blokes who threw all that tea into Boston Harbor were way out of line as well!!!
Someone dumps my tea into the harbour, I'd kick their ass personally, but that's just me.
As for your tea party, I do think it's incredibly silly, but that's just me.
You yankees have the oddest ways of rebelling against your governments. Didn't seem to do very well the first time, better luck on the second run. =;>
--Dan
Interesting thought, but what would stop the RIAA from putting some sort of canary trap in place on randomly selected discs?
It's an interesting idea, but the problem lies thusly:
CDs are pressed, not burned. The manufacturing plants get a master, press x thousand discs, and ship them all. Each unique copy of a disc would need a separate master, which would be a pain in the ass (I would imagine), considering how many copies they sell.
If they did two masters and sold 80,000 copies, then they would be able to limit the search to 40,000 of those users.
Now, if they, say, did this in two ways - one for radio stations, music videos (with the advent of MTV being broadcast digitally in Canada, we can record CD-quality audio from MTV now), etc, and one for 'the rest of us', they'd be able to find out if it was ripped by end-listeners or radio stations.
Of course, lots of people rip CDs as soon as they get home - I know I do, iTunes makes my life easier, since I have one playlist with all Garbage songs (even the B-Sides! mwaha!) - and the majority of people who use napter/aimster/gnutella/wangshare/whatever share the dir they rip their MP3s to, so the point becomes moot as the signal-to-noise ratio goes all to hell as soon as the CD is released.
Oh well. Still, a neat idea.
--Dan
So what you suggest is that to allow us to excercise our 'fair use' rights, we should break the law on a massive scale as yet unseen by this generation, and illegally share this music with everyone?
Look, I agree that we should be able to fairly use music we pay for, but putting music on the internet IS illegal, by any stretch of the law, DCMA or no.
What you suggest is akin to bars having rules against shouting (because that often leads to fighting), and fighting that by starting brawls in every bar that has that kind of rule.
What you suggest will not show 'this is stupid', it will show 'this is necessary'. Think about things beforehand. You cannot fight a stupid law by breaking a good one.
--Dan
So, again, until you can actually compile the kernel, it's a fascinating breakthrough, but one with little utility to the real world.
So what you're saying is that the only really useful use of a compiler is to compile the Linux kernel?
That's quite possibly the silliest thing I've heard someone say. Try:
Son: "Look ma, I got the fastest engine in the world for my car! Now I can drive faster than anyone else!"
Ma: "Um, sonny, it can't play MIDI files or make julean fries, so it's totally useless."
Totally wrong. There are thousands of pieces of software out there. The Linux kernel is merely one.
--Dan
They're used, The Man gets no money from you. The Man already got their money from someone else.
--Dan
I didn't say it was legitimate, I said it was an argument.
I'm glad that things like MP3.com and the internet in general are allowing artists to bypass record companies in some areas. The only problem is going from indie record label to MTV/MuchMusic and actually getting popular.
--Dan
Most people still can't get cable modem or DSL.
Those who can face unreliable service,
We signed up for Rogers@Home a few years ago, and mostly it's been good service. The quality started to degrade around the time Shaw bought them, but after Shaw put us on their own network (Fibrelink) instead of @home's, the quality was ten times what it had ever been - low latencies, high speeds (420 kilobytes/second was common, 180 was average).
We've had a few instances of downtime, but all in all, it's been excellent.
high prices,
We pay about CDN$50/month for two IPs ($40/mo with only one), though we have a 'package deal' now ($85/mo for cable modem, extra IP, and digital cable with almost all the channels). That comes out to about US$30 I think, give or take, and maybe US$60 for the whole package.
and shamefully bad customer service and support.
Any time we've had to call customer support, when our connection went down, we haven't been able to get through - mostly because the entire city was down, because some lame script kiddie was overloading a router (I should keep my mouth shut on IRC) - so really, it doesn't matter.
The few times I have gotten through to tech support, the first-level tech I spoke to knew what IRC was, knew what a DoS attack was, knew about firewalls, knew that there aren't many MacOS firewalls, and told me exactly what the problem was (a router was rebooted because the techs found it was dropping massive packets), when it happened, and when it would probably be fixed.
Other than that instance, our longest downtime was when my stepfather forgot to plug the frigging cable modem in. They don't work with no power, you see.
--Dan
Argument 1: Because the 'big bad music companies' are companies, and gouge the artists, supposedly. Artists hardly get any money from a $16 CD. Theoretically, this justifies not letting the artists get anything at all, by pirating the CD.
Argument 2: Stealing music helps sales. The first year that Napster was out, sales of CDs went up by a lot. People argue that this is because people could 'try out' the music. I argue that this is because dial-up users pay more for their dial-up connection than they do for CDs, so they try one song and then buy the CD. Broadband users have no such problems. Also, I'd expect that people just bought more CDs through normal market forces.
I agree it's rather hypocritical. Me, I pirate music only to the point where the CD isn't worth getting. If I like a song, I'll download the song. If I like an album, I'll buy the album. If I can't find the album in stores, I'll download it.
--Dan
Everyone is talking about online file trading programs, Gnutella clients, and so on. My question is, what services are out there and cross-platform to that 'other' alternate OS?
On Linux, I just used used OpenNap servers, but on my MacOS-laden G4, I have to use Gnutella, and the only decent client I've found is MP3Rage - an awesome program, but shareware (and I'm a little broke). Audiogalaxy is unreliable at best, and I can't log on anymore because of 'bad version', even though I can't find a newer version of the mac client anywhere.
Anyone have any suggestions?
--Dan
You'll understand my reluctance to believe in the journalistic ethics of online dot-com news agencies, but I've nothing to back up my claim, so I'll defer to yours.
--Dan
No they're not, they sold their shares quite a while ago.
If Intel owned part of CNet, then CNet would be required by law to state that fact at the start of the article (read any MSNBC article that mentions Microsoft for an example).
--Dan
I spent 2 years in a Computer Information Systems course at a local highschool/college hybrid in town here, and it's totally ruined me. Before, I would write PHP for fun, at the start I hacked on the IRCd for StarChat, and now I can't even bring myself to bother USING the software I wrote (online journals, poetry databases, etc), let alone write more. For that matter, I stopped liking Linux, because I don't want to bother with all the crap I have to deal with to make things work - I used to love it, but now? Can't stand it. I use a Mac.
What I did was find something else that interests me - namely languages - and start exploring that. I had the good fortune of meeting a lot of Mexicans on StarChat, and through them, got a base understanding of Spanish in a week or two. I've also found myself comparing languages, alphabets, and so on.
Basically, what I'm saying is, find something else that interests you and do that instead. Maybe change your major and don't graduate for a while longer, but even if you do change your major, you'll have a lot of electives done already. Maybe Physics is more up your alley, if you like the math of computing, or Engineering if you like problem-solving and design.
There's more to life to computers, as I've found, and the trick is to find what other stuff you enjoy, and what interested you in computers in the first place, and to pick a path based on those.
Good luck.
--Dan
I think that this might be a misstatement. And personally, I think it's rather condescending of people to think that all our ancestors lived in little isolated tribes.
You misunderstand me, friend. I did not mean to say that there was no travel whatsoever, merely that not everyone travelled. Certainly the colonization of most of the world long before the Europeans started floating their boats proves this beyond a doubt.
All I meant was that news and people did not travel as much or as fast, which is true. People in Egypt may not have heard anything from Iran for months or years, depending on how things went, weather and so forth. Nomads may have learned more by virtue of travelling, or less by virtue of not being in a fixed location for travellers to be brought to. It's hard to say what the exact circumstances of the time was.
Atata(if memory serves)- "you" in Japanese
Ata- "you" in Hebrew.
Tu - 'you' in French
Te - 'you' in Spanish
Of course, those are easily explained by what we know, but perhaps the same explanation applies here. I'd suspect it likely does.
--Dan
I don't have a bible. Need to pick one up next time I'm around a Synagogue, or Jerusalem, or whatnot.
Wouldn't somebody have survived (maybe somebody who was traveling at the time) and passed the story of this down through history?
Travel back then wasn't the luxury it once was, and so isolated tribes/villiages/civilizations would be rather prone to oblivion.
Also, things get passed down, but there are very few stories that do not get warped with each telling. Perhaps, too, that this story is in religious texts, but how are we to know which? The symbolism may be too obscure or too abstract for us to pick up on immediately.
That being said, the article specifically mentions an ancient story:
A date of around 2300 BC for the impact may also cast new light on the legend of Gilgamesh, dating from the same period. The legend talks of "the Seven Judges of Hell", who raised their torches, lighting the land with flame, and a storm that turned day into night, "smashed the land like a cup", and flooded the area.
That may be to what you refer to. Perhaps they didn't mention the civilizations that were destroyed because the land being lit with flame and a storm turning day into night, smashing the land like a cup and flooding the area were kind of heavy on their minds at the time.
--Dan