Firewire is absolutely not fading away. If anything, more people are buying digital video cameras now, which generally need Firewire. Some also have USB if they record to a hard drive or something like that, but most MiniDV and HDV cameras only have Firewire. The reason your Optiplexes don't have Firewire is because they are business-class stations, not home machines (the Dimension and XPS lines often have Firewire...I don't really know many people that have Optiplexes at home). And of course, you are going to determine whether a box you built yourself will have Firewire or not.
Let me start off by saying that I admire your convictions and your proactive approach to keeping your children safe. If more parents did their jobs as parents, I think the world would be a better place overall.
However, I think there is a difference between education and over-protection, so let me tell you where I disagree with you. I think that you're being a little heavy-handed in your approach, especially in your 'no reasonable right to privacy' rule. Let me extrapolate from your reasoning: you pay for the apartment/house in which your children live. Should you walk into their rooms at any time without knocking? Probably not--they might be changing clothes. But wait, you bought them those clothes! If they don't want you to walk in on them naked, they can buy their own clothes! Live in their own apartment!
I think a more holistic approach would be to offer them a certain amount of privacy, especially considering that if they really truly wanted to hide something from you, they would find a way--use a friend's computer (or one at school, a library, a cybercafe, etc) to meet a stranger online. They could use their allowance and buy a pre-paid mobile phone at the gas station down the street. Sign up for new email accounts and not tell you about them. Instead, let them experience the joy and security of privacy. By letting them have privacy, you are teaching them to expect it later in life. Someone who never expects privacy anyway is going to be more complacent later on. Obviously they're your kids and you can raise them how you want, but once they get out into society, it affects everyone.
Well, that's not entirely true. For example: 2.4 GHz, which is an ISM band in the United States, is used by the French military in France. Therefore, a number of common electronics, like cordless phones, Bluetooth devices, 802.11, etc., have faced problems with the government banning their use; over time, industry groups have been able to cut through the red tape, but both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi was not allowed in France for several years after it was already in wide use in other countries.
As long as they don't get "exclusive" features that are only in one version and not the other, this probably won't be a problem. But that's exactly what's happening. The go-ooo build of OpenOffice includes things like VBA support, reading MS Works documents, WordPerfect graphics import, and EMF+ rendering. The official Sun-maintained version does not have these features.
i defiantly agree You cannot 'defiantly agree' to something. Perhaps defiantly disagree, but not agree. That word does not mean what you think it means.
Believe it or not, I have version 1.05 of MS Works. It runs on PC-DOS on my 286, and it's actually great, as it included a terminal emulator, which lets you use a modem to dial into another machine (or use a null-modem cable straight to another computer) and exchange data. If you set up another machine to be an internet gateway, Works becomes a useful, if rudimentary, way of accessing files on the internet on a computer from 1983.
Future iPhones could use the OLPC XO-1 technique. Separate the 802.11 chipset into its own independent low-power long-range SOC that can run when the iPhone primary CPU is powered off. Cut the data rate to around 1 Mbps (you're not going to need 30 Mbps on a mobile device, right?). Perfect mesh network that hardly uses any battery.
Of course these people certainly make a good argument for avoiding mass transit. Right, of course. Everyone should just contract a private jet. *rolls eyes*
No, I'd say that the number of hearing-impaired people to the number of shows is surely getting smaller, not bigger, because there are more and more TV channels and videos out there. If you're old enough, you'll remember when cable TV didn't exist and the US just had a few networks, like NBC, ABC, CBS, and NET (predecessor to PBS). Everyone who watched TV then watched those networks. The Nielsen ratings for a show in the 70s and 80s was absolutely superior to the ratings shows get now. Only stuff like the Superbowl comes close anymore. Most people don't realise this.
The TV, and now online video, is so diverse and diluted to the point where viewers can only watch so much. Speciality channels in particular have very small audiences. With the multiplication in the number of shows, the number of viewers for each show diminishes, yet the cost of captioning each show remains the same (until machine speech recognition evolves to a suitable point). Thus, it is actually become less and less worthwhile--if it was ever worthwhile at all--for stations to caption their shows, because the number of hearing-impaired people *per capita* is not really growing.
So, personally, I'd rather see it done by government regulation rather than trusting content providers to just 'be nice.' We all know how well that tends to work. What would end up happening if captioning laws were revoked would be that 1) almost all stations would cease closed captioning, 2) then a speciality station catering to the interests of deaf people would start up, and 3) this single station would be the extent of the choices that hearing-impaired people would have.
I think the complexity of computers causes people to believe that they can do anything, and should be able to do anything. Cars have been around long enough and they are simple enough in operation that no one get in a car and expect it to fly. No one would expect it to float. No one would expect it to be able to go 400 mph. No one would expect to be able to crash it at high speed with no damage. No one would expect it to run without fuel or oil. It's hard to live in society today without even unintentionally learning these things.
Contrast this with your sister and the DVD-burning situation.
I wish I had mod points right now, because I think this is a great point. I think that in the overall scheme of things, people seem to know more about cars, relatively speaking, because there just isn't as much to have to know about them in the first place. Let's put it this way: If there are 1000 things you can learn about computers (everything from word processing to soldering your own circuit board and flashing your custom-written firmware to an FPGA), there are perhaps 100 things to learn about cars. It is easier for people to know 100 things than know 1000 things. I think most people know that there are gasoline and diesel cars, and it's certainly a higher percentage than those who know the difference between i386 and PowerPC.
It's not a '1G' phone, it's a 2.5G phone, which means that it does in fact have GPRS and EDGE, just not HSDPA. And though it doesn't have Outlook, it does have push IMAP, which is what companies need, not specifically outlook or Blackberry email.
And we don't know jack shit about the battery, SIM, possible third-party apps, or voice recognition yet. So don't pretend you know.
Arguably, the US has already let other countries achieve automotive superiority. Rail system superiority. Internet access superiority. Health care superiority. Manufacturing superiority. Judging by the way the US is spending its taxpayer dollars primarily on the military, I think that would be the one thing it would be reluctant to give up. We only entered the space race in the 50s and 60s because at the time it seemed like that would be the next military front.
Now that all these 'scientists' with their 'peaceful exploration' want to go to space, we somehow conveniently don't have the money. In time, as space becomes militarised, we will develop a huge presence there. Until then, consider private companies to be the primary development resource.
Shame on you for capitalising on this tragedy in order to inject some stupid politics into this! Not only that, you're wrong too. If general gun posession was illegal, who knows if this shooter would have even been able to get a hold of a gun in the first place?
still a long way to go in terms of usability. A friend of mine recently installed 6.10 for the first time. He's basically never used Linux before. I briefly explained how to use Synaptic. He got the hang of things for a while, but then he interrupted a dpkg process when Synaptic was running by hitting the power button. I have no idea why he did this, but you probably know what happened...he tried to run Synaptic later on and it said 'you have to run dpkg update -a to fix these errors!' or something along those lines. Big mistake number one: it told the user to type in commands at the shell. Big mistake number two: it didn't tell him to use sudo.
He was immediately stuck. He even figured out how to access the shell, but he didn't understand why it kept saying that he needed superuser privileges to continue. The problem with these kinds of things is that if even one little glitch happens like this, the user gets stuck and then usually gives up and goes back to Windows. It has to be perfect. It has to be flawless. Or else it won't attract brand new users.
I actually don't see what the big f**king deal is. If you understand evolution, you probably know that natural selection does not depend on sexual reproduction. It just depends on reproduction, period. It's not as if this single, individual organism has lived 100 million years; its asexual offspring have lived that long, and any time in asexual reproduction, mutations can also occur. I repeat, IT IS NOT SPECIFIC TO SEXUAL REPRODUCTION.
I would fathom that mutation might happen more often with sexual reproduction, and thus asexual reproduction could slow the pace of evolution, but again, that's not to say it doesn't happen. Because it very surely does, as we know from the mutation of all those single-celled asexual organisms we know about. Like every disease out there. It is absolutely nonsense to claim otherwise. Bacteria multiply asexually. Protists do too. This is why diseases resist new drugs. Countless species of plants reproduce asexually. Myriad species of all these kingdoms have survived for 100 million years.
The headline might as well be, 'there has been life on Earth a long time.'
is when the Sun gets between the Earth and the Moon
I don't know if you were trying to be funny here, but there is simply no way the Sun would fit between the Earth and Moon. A Lunar eclipse is, in fact, when the Earth gets between the Sun and the Moon.
Slashdot Mirror
You are misunderstanding what Visual Voicemail is.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305935
Firewire is absolutely not fading away. If anything, more people are buying digital video cameras now, which generally need Firewire. Some also have USB if they record to a hard drive or something like that, but most MiniDV and HDV cameras only have Firewire. The reason your Optiplexes don't have Firewire is because they are business-class stations, not home machines (the Dimension and XPS lines often have Firewire...I don't really know many people that have Optiplexes at home). And of course, you are going to determine whether a box you built yourself will have Firewire or not.
Let me start off by saying that I admire your convictions and your proactive approach to keeping your children safe. If more parents did their jobs as parents, I think the world would be a better place overall.
However, I think there is a difference between education and over-protection, so let me tell you where I disagree with you. I think that you're being a little heavy-handed in your approach, especially in your 'no reasonable right to privacy' rule. Let me extrapolate from your reasoning: you pay for the apartment/house in which your children live. Should you walk into their rooms at any time without knocking? Probably not--they might be changing clothes. But wait, you bought them those clothes! If they don't want you to walk in on them naked, they can buy their own clothes! Live in their own apartment!
I think a more holistic approach would be to offer them a certain amount of privacy, especially considering that if they really truly wanted to hide something from you, they would find a way--use a friend's computer (or one at school, a library, a cybercafe, etc) to meet a stranger online. They could use their allowance and buy a pre-paid mobile phone at the gas station down the street. Sign up for new email accounts and not tell you about them. Instead, let them experience the joy and security of privacy. By letting them have privacy, you are teaching them to expect it later in life. Someone who never expects privacy anyway is going to be more complacent later on. Obviously they're your kids and you can raise them how you want, but once they get out into society, it affects everyone.
I suppose you think Linux on laptops that have 802.11 should be outlawed too, hm?
Not to mention that the imminent 700 MHz auction means mobile devices will probably also have to support that band, also.
Time for software-defined radio, anyone?
Well, that's not entirely true. For example: 2.4 GHz, which is an ISM band in the United States, is used by the French military in France. Therefore, a number of common electronics, like cordless phones, Bluetooth devices, 802.11, etc., have faced problems with the government banning their use; over time, industry groups have been able to cut through the red tape, but both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi was not allowed in France for several years after it was already in wide use in other countries.
In Soviet Russia, Linux hacks you!
Believe it or not, I have version 1.05 of MS Works. It runs on PC-DOS on my 286, and it's actually great, as it included a terminal emulator, which lets you use a modem to dial into another machine (or use a null-modem cable straight to another computer) and exchange data. If you set up another machine to be an internet gateway, Works becomes a useful, if rudimentary, way of accessing files on the internet on a computer from 1983.
Let's see Works 9 do that.
Future iPhones could use the OLPC XO-1 technique. Separate the 802.11 chipset into its own independent low-power long-range SOC that can run when the iPhone primary CPU is powered off. Cut the data rate to around 1 Mbps (you're not going to need 30 Mbps on a mobile device, right?). Perfect mesh network that hardly uses any battery.
Also, when you're using the stereo headset, you can click and double-click the microphone button to answer, hang up, pause and jump to the next track.
Isn't a euro the same value basically anywhere?
No, I'd say that the number of hearing-impaired people to the number of shows is surely getting smaller, not bigger, because there are more and more TV channels and videos out there. If you're old enough, you'll remember when cable TV didn't exist and the US just had a few networks, like NBC, ABC, CBS, and NET (predecessor to PBS). Everyone who watched TV then watched those networks. The Nielsen ratings for a show in the 70s and 80s was absolutely superior to the ratings shows get now. Only stuff like the Superbowl comes close anymore. Most people don't realise this.
The TV, and now online video, is so diverse and diluted to the point where viewers can only watch so much. Speciality channels in particular have very small audiences. With the multiplication in the number of shows, the number of viewers for each show diminishes, yet the cost of captioning each show remains the same (until machine speech recognition evolves to a suitable point). Thus, it is actually become less and less worthwhile--if it was ever worthwhile at all--for stations to caption their shows, because the number of hearing-impaired people *per capita* is not really growing.
So, personally, I'd rather see it done by government regulation rather than trusting content providers to just 'be nice.' We all know how well that tends to work. What would end up happening if captioning laws were revoked would be that 1) almost all stations would cease closed captioning, 2) then a speciality station catering to the interests of deaf people would start up, and 3) this single station would be the extent of the choices that hearing-impaired people would have.
I think the complexity of computers causes people to believe that they can do anything, and should be able to do anything. Cars have been around long enough and they are simple enough in operation that no one get in a car and expect it to fly. No one would expect it to float. No one would expect it to be able to go 400 mph. No one would expect to be able to crash it at high speed with no damage. No one would expect it to run without fuel or oil. It's hard to live in society today without even unintentionally learning these things.
Contrast this with your sister and the DVD-burning situation.
I wish I had mod points right now, because I think this is a great point. I think that in the overall scheme of things, people seem to know more about cars, relatively speaking, because there just isn't as much to have to know about them in the first place. Let's put it this way: If there are 1000 things you can learn about computers (everything from word processing to soldering your own circuit board and flashing your custom-written firmware to an FPGA), there are perhaps 100 things to learn about cars. It is easier for people to know 100 things than know 1000 things. I think most people know that there are gasoline and diesel cars, and it's certainly a higher percentage than those who know the difference between i386 and PowerPC.
Sorry, but this post is mostly wrong.
It's not a '1G' phone, it's a 2.5G phone, which means that it does in fact have GPRS and EDGE, just not HSDPA. And though it doesn't have Outlook, it does have push IMAP, which is what companies need, not specifically outlook or Blackberry email.
And we don't know jack shit about the battery, SIM, possible third-party apps, or voice recognition yet. So don't pretend you know.
Arguably, the US has already let other countries achieve automotive superiority. Rail system superiority. Internet access superiority. Health care superiority. Manufacturing superiority. Judging by the way the US is spending its taxpayer dollars primarily on the military, I think that would be the one thing it would be reluctant to give up. We only entered the space race in the 50s and 60s because at the time it seemed like that would be the next military front.
Now that all these 'scientists' with their 'peaceful exploration' want to go to space, we somehow conveniently don't have the money. In time, as space becomes militarised, we will develop a huge presence there. Until then, consider private companies to be the primary development resource.
Shame on you for capitalising on this tragedy in order to inject some stupid politics into this! Not only that, you're wrong too. If general gun posession was illegal, who knows if this shooter would have even been able to get a hold of a gun in the first place?
still a long way to go in terms of usability. A friend of mine recently installed 6.10 for the first time. He's basically never used Linux before. I briefly explained how to use Synaptic. He got the hang of things for a while, but then he interrupted a dpkg process when Synaptic was running by hitting the power button. I have no idea why he did this, but you probably know what happened...he tried to run Synaptic later on and it said 'you have to run dpkg update -a to fix these errors!' or something along those lines. Big mistake number one: it told the user to type in commands at the shell. Big mistake number two: it didn't tell him to use sudo.
He was immediately stuck. He even figured out how to access the shell, but he didn't understand why it kept saying that he needed superuser privileges to continue. The problem with these kinds of things is that if even one little glitch happens like this, the user gets stuck and then usually gives up and goes back to Windows. It has to be perfect. It has to be flawless. Or else it won't attract brand new users.
I actually don't see what the big f**king deal is. If you understand evolution, you probably know that natural selection does not depend on sexual reproduction. It just depends on reproduction, period. It's not as if this single, individual organism has lived 100 million years; its asexual offspring have lived that long, and any time in asexual reproduction, mutations can also occur. I repeat, IT IS NOT SPECIFIC TO SEXUAL REPRODUCTION.
I would fathom that mutation might happen more often with sexual reproduction, and thus asexual reproduction could slow the pace of evolution, but again, that's not to say it doesn't happen. Because it very surely does, as we know from the mutation of all those single-celled asexual organisms we know about. Like every disease out there. It is absolutely nonsense to claim otherwise. Bacteria multiply asexually. Protists do too. This is why diseases resist new drugs. Countless species of plants reproduce asexually. Myriad species of all these kingdoms have survived for 100 million years.
The headline might as well be, 'there has been life on Earth a long time.'
Just so you know, over-the-air ATSC is actually MPEG-compressed also.
is when the Sun gets between the Earth and the Moon
I don't know if you were trying to be funny here, but there is simply no way the Sun would fit between the Earth and Moon. A Lunar eclipse is, in fact, when the Earth gets between the Sun and the Moon.