If I knew this device existed 4 months ago I would have probably bought one.
I have a nearly complete MythTV box (just need TV out) in my living room now. I spent around $120 for the Happauge 150 card which only does TV in. I also shelled out around another $100 for a 250GB hard drive (numbers maybe skewed a little, weak memory). This device is a little over $200 which is about what I spent so far on my box (other than the box itself which I'm counting as $0 since I already had it and had no need for it).
I don't have Cable or a HD ready TV, but I'd like to be able to have PVR features with broadcast TV to record the shows that I always miss when I'm at work or even just being able to pause TV when my wife interrupts.
Actually come to think of it, I think I'm doing the MythTV thing for the tinkering fun, but I would have still paid for this a few months back.
I'm from the first camp, but let me take this discussion one step further into the "Off topic" area and argue the second camp's point of view back.
Not so long ago (it's still in my RSS feed) Marcus and Theo of the OpenBSD project were accused (mainly Marcus) of "stealing" GPL'ed code and porting it into the OpenBSD project. Regardless of how you feel about the whole fiasco, I'm pretty sure they weren't planning on making money off of the GPL'ed driver code.
Sure, people can argue all they want about the possibility of BSD code being close sourced by an entity that will make money off of it, but I bet you a $1000 dollars that if I were to close source a GPL project and give it away for FREE (without even an ads supported site), I'll have the author knocking on my door the next day demanding the enhanced (or not) source code.
Heck, some people (Referencing an AC.. brilliant!) argue that Google is unethical because they [allegedly] didn't distribute the GPL license (which any kid in kindergarten can find online in under 10 seconds) with their GSAs despite the fact that the source code is available on code.google.com.
Copying music is (in my opinion) exactly like copying GPL code and not adhering to the license. You may not like the rules but you have to play by them.
The music guys want money to allow you to obtain copies of their songs, the GPL guys want credit and source code enhancements back.
Rules are rules, and no matter how low your "enemy" is (not GPL in this sentence, spare my Karma:P), you don't sink to their level and break the rules as well.
And you can't hire Linux people because there is no Linux people, there are Fedora, RHEL, Suse, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, BSD, FreeBSd,Openbsd people, etc, etc. And the "linux" crowd tends to rush off on whatever the latest trend is, remember when Caldera Open Linux was trendy? Now it's Ubuntu, whoops, Kubuntu, whoops, linspire, whoops now back to Fedora. Like little kids running after the shiniest candy.
That right there tells me you don't know what you're talking about. Free/Open/Net BSD are not based on the Linux kernel, they're completely different beasts.
I wrote something before about how inconsistent some of the Linux distributions are and how frustrating it is, but this right here is an outright troll.
I'm a BSD guy at heart, maybe mainly because I got introduced to FreeBSD first as what a Unix like OS is all about, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate "Linux" or what it has done for us.
In my living room there's a MythTV (KnoppmMyth) box that is waiting for a second TV-Tuner card to output to TV to be complete DVR system. At my job we have a couple of CentOS servers that replaced FreeBSD because of specific RAID driver support (It's in 6.2 but that was beta back then).
Point in case: I'm no OS zealot.
Having cleared that up, sure there are tons of Linux distributions out there, some of them are "corporate ready" and some of them aren't. If you're a CIO and going to standardize on Linux "based distributions", I hope to god you're not basing your decisions on what teenagers are writing in their blog about the hottest new distribution.
When you imply that the entire community is behind X distribution based on what you read on blogs is a complete disconnect from reality. The Debian people are still Debian, the Redhatters still do their thing, etc. etc.
Sure, Ubuntu's new users can become more vocal and say Ubuntu is the new hotness, but that doesn't mean they're the ones who write great code or do great things for their distributions (not that some of them aren't, but you get my point).
I can hear you thinking "Well what about Beta testers?", well sure, some of the distributions may have more beta testing done than others based on the "community" shift, but that doesn't mean other distributions won't benefit from it. Linux distributions are just that, they combine and distribute Linux, GNU tools and other programs with a few (ok maybe a little more than that) tweaks here and there.
If someone in Ubuntu finds a bug in gcc, all of the distributions will benefit from it (heck even BSD).
Companies like RedHat exist solely to provide you (Mr./Ms. corporate CIO) with that safety net, which is: you're going to get the latest patched stuff, you can demand Certification and get trained Sys admins that know what they're doing, phone and on-site support etc.
How about an addendum to the words "Open Source", maybe "OSI Approved Open Source Software" and possibly a seal.
This way companies or individuals that are interested in using open source software can ask the vendor "Is your 'Open Source' software OSI Approved?", If they get a yes and they're using a license that's incompatible with OSI, you can hunt them down and make them "pay" for their deception.
So, instead of promoting the words "Open Source", maybe promote OSI?
*Warning: Weak web programmer analogy coming up* It'll make you kind of like the W3C, anyone can come up with a DTD and say their markup is valid, but it's not the same thing as saying W3C Valid (x)HTML v.xx.
I'm pretty sure you can get a trademark/copywhatsoever (IANAL) on "OSI Approved OSS", promote that as what "true/standardized" Open Source software is, and then you can have the legal ground to go after deceitful entities.
I read the article and went ahead an looked up SSN on wikipedia trying to find a hole in your theory.
You are absolutely right, it doesn't necessarily mean that people (like my employer, and my mortgage company) wouldn't require you to provide that secret number.
However, I think it will come down to the implementation and the need for a credit report (I couldn't find that anywhere in the article).
My employer asked for my SSN to report my income to the IRS, that doesn't necessarily mean that they pulled my credit report (which some companies do for dumb reasons "ooh s/he's living beyond their means, they can't be a good programmer!!"). Meaning people who need your SSN just to identify you will not be affected by this.
My landlord (before I bought my house) however, needed my credit report to see if I filed for bankruptcy, can't pay my bills, living beyond my means, etc.
For this system to work, the secure number has to be given to the credit bureaus or a government agency _when_ someone tries to pull your credit report _by_ you. Meaning no one should be able to require you to provide that number because it will be useless to them.
If it's implemented in such a way that: 1) Business/whatever tries to pull a credit report on you 2) You get notified by a government agency or credit bureau 3) You authorize the pull by providing your secret number to authority in 2
Then it might actually work and be an extra security measure.
On a side note for other posters talking about instant credit approval, you don't need it. I cannot (from my point of view) imagine a scenario where you need credit "right now" to accomplish a goal. That would mean (to me that) either you are not capable of managing your finances or that you are living way beyond your means.
Final thoughts: When I said I was trying to find holes in your theory, I did not mean I was trying to prove I'm smarter than you or some cr*p like that. I mainly agree with your post but I'm too much of an optimist that I want to believe that a new legislation "for" the consumer like that wouldn't be completely useless.
But then again so many legislations can prove me wrong:(
Then users demanding "Linux" applications are demanding something that will never happen since you can not write an application to a kernel!
Sarcasm aside, I am (and have always been) shocked at how various Linux distributions differ. I'm by no means a Linux expert, but come on, if you can't agree on where to put your init0.d-init6.d (or whatever it is, yes I'm looking at you Gentoo) then how do you expect an outsider to write something that works for "Linux"?
I mean we hear all this crap about Microsoft and how ME breaks 98, and 2000 breaks ME and Vista breaks XP, etc. But do the math, how many operating systems are we talking about here? now compare that to Linux distributions available today.
I'm not trolling, I'm no shill and I definitely do not work for Microsoft.. but I just really believe that "too" much choice sucks.
I just (literally) bought a new house (closed escrow today) and I've been in the carpet choice dilemma for the past two weeks! (mind you it took me a while to settle on carpet instead of hard wood floors, pergo, etc.).
Come to think of it, I think this carpet analogy (that I'm about to write) is right on money here. OS is like carpet! It's the foundation that you build on. Think of how carpet pretty much dictates what kind of furniture (style/color etc.) you'll be placing on it, OS will do the same with your applications.
I would have a much easier time choosing between 2-3 carpet types and 10-20 colors than the amazing number of styles/options out there (visit the carpet section next time you're at home depot and you'll know what I'm talking about).
Things like carpet and operating systems (I can't believe I'm lumping them up in the same sentence) are not mundane. They are a *huge* deal because of the consequences of the choice (much like posting this without hitting the "Post Anonymously" checkbox). They're something that you will invest a good amount in, and that will be with you for a long time.
Choice is a VERY good thing, too much choice may even be perfect for those who know "exactly" what they want.
I live and breathe computers, and I think it's silly that I'm spending all this time researching "the" perfect carpet for me and my family. I also believe that the home decoration specialist that knows what kind/make/model/color/class of carpet they want for the hallway of their second house (and have it written somewhere) would be as frustrated as I am with carpet if they had to choose from the plethora of Linux distributions out there today.
The choice is even worse for software companies that put money or even the whole company on the line when they make a platform choice.
I'm done ranting, gotta hit the sack and hope that I come to a decision about the carpet before we get the keys!
Side [OT] (as if this whole thing wasn't anyway) note: If you happen to know something about carpet, or where I can get more/good information please post it. No pets, one year old and an average budget. Thanks in advance:)
That person just said that it was their own experience. A little criticism never hurts anybody.
Your analogy with the jack hammer isn't right on money here because we "know" what a jack hammer can do. With operating systems it's different. I would say it's more like customer service at a restaurant, everyone can tell you how good a restaurant is, but once you go there and get served by a waitress who just dumped her boyfriend and got kicked out of her apartment.. you'll think different.
I personally don't care what OS anyone is running. I'm typing this on my FreeBSD laptop, that's sitting right next to my windows workstation. Behind me are a couple of Macs and in the server room (5 feet away) there are a dozen or so Sunfires (and a FreeBSD server too). They all crunch away and work.. you know..
9. Prove residency to credit unions/credit card co. 10. Redeem all those 5 Miles from Philip Morris! (Or even get the catalogue)
The thing that's been bugging me since I got here (California) is the fact that your residency (green) card is hardly worth the plastic it's printed on!
All my problems have been with places that need an ID from DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) to prove residency/age/whatever, and they either a) Don't recognize residency or work cards, or b) Consider residency/work card a secondary ID and demand a DMV issued ID.
I personally think DHS (Department of Homeland Security) cards hold more water than a DMV ID, but that's how the system works here.
Plus, shouldn't the passport agency be handling IDs anyway?
I find the very idea of DMV handling "personal identification" bizarre, coming from other countries that either have a special department for that, or tie it to an agency that's more appropriate for the task.
I work in a small/medium political and marketing research co. at the moment and all our computers are windows based.
We have CATI software that's worth tens of thousands of dollars, and there's no way in hell the management is going to give it up unless the solution we come up with is superior to the one they have "already paid for".
I searched google, source forge etc. for a decent open-source CATI system, and all I found was some funny attempts to create one. Umm, actually there was one that "looked" kind of promising, the main problem is that their website/documentation and everything else is in Italian IIRC.
(BTW, If anyone knows of a serious OSS CATI system, please let me know. And what I mean by serious is support for Clustered Samples, Sample management, Decent programming language/interface, Quotas, Call backs, Monitoring, etc.)
We also have some data processing software that runs on MS-DOS, and we have a few FORTRAN programs in there as well.
The thing is, to move from all this, we'd be spending so much time researching and evaluating products, re-programming old programs, re-training staff, and will probably end up with an inferior un-familiar setup (talking specialized CATI software here) that will make our lives even harder.
I'm a big OSS fan (FreeBSD to be more specific), but I realize that "use whatever gets the job done" is the way to go.
Back when OS/2 was in it's 1.3 version (15 years ago)...When MS-Dos 4.1 came out, when installed or re-installed on a PC with OS/2 installed, it would report "You have OS/2 installed. There may not be enough room to install DOS. Would you like to remove OS/2?". This when installing a single floppy image on a FAT partition with 2+GB free.
I'm assuming you meant MS-DOS 4.01. I (my parents) bought my first computer in 1989 (about 16 years ago). It was a 80286 and it did NOT have a hard disk drive. I had to boot using a 5.25" floppy drive to DOS, and then using 3 floppies I would load up Prince of Persia 1 to play with.
A few years later (about 3) my older brother and I were debating if we had the money to buy a shiny new computer, should the hard disk drive be 40 Megabytes or 60. I told him "if we get a 60MB hard drive it will store all the games and programs we use and we'll have lots of opportunities to expand in the future". He argued that 40MB would have been "more than we will ever need".
Now.. At that time there weren't any 2GB drives, according to Wikipedia the first 2GB hard drive was introduced in 1995 to the consumer market.
I'm going to assume that you were working at a huge corporation at the time that had access to such huge amounts of storage. What would a corporation like that need MS-DOS 4.01 for anyway?
A message like that was probably a sound decision by the engineers who worked on MS-DOS, as consumers did not have enough room to have more than one OS installed at the same time (my friend had a 80486 with *gasp* 10 Megabytes hard disk drive in 92/93).
Man, I didn't say either of the consoles are halo, please don't put words in my mouth.
I don't care about either console because I simply don't have the time to play games anymore. I'm married and I'm expecting a child next July. I work 2 jobs and I'm looking for a third job right now. enough said..
Cheering for or against Sony because of their games and not their tactics sounds great, but is Microsoft treated the same here? No matter how good Microsoft's products are they're ridiculed here (although some comments surface through the moderation).
My point is, if you're gonna point fingers around and say "bad company", then do it fairly and don't be a hypocrite.
My post isn't directed at you, you just ignited this point:)
Thank for replying and hope you're having a wonderful night/day.
Nope, the general sentiment around here is pro Sony and anti Microsoft when it comes to game consoles. You may wanna search slashdot for the articles/discussions regarding the arrival of XboX360 and dig through the comments, you'll see tons of "I'm waiting for PS3!!!one1!!1".
I couldn't care less about any gaming console, I don't own any and I don't plan on buying any. The whole GTA San Andreas thing came up because I was expecting RockStar to have a PC version when they released it.
I try my best to not stereotype people based on anything, but the general sentiment around here is really obvious among the majority of posts.
Anyway, hope this cleared things up. Please don't take anything I said here personally, I just had a long day and I'm pretty tired.
Then I'll say it: Islamic principles do not lend themselves to democracy. "because the Koran rejects the distinction between religious and political authority, Islamic civilization cannot easily coexist with democracy."(Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1996). "mass suffrage, elections, and representation are "profoundly alien to the Muslim political tradition." (Elie Kedourie, Democracy and Arab Political Culture, London, Frank Cass, 1994)
I beg to differ. Here's my source:
"Those who hearken to their Lord, and establish regular Prayer; who (conduct) their affairs by mutual Consultation; who spend out of what We bestow on them for Sustenance;" (Quran, Ash-Shurah, Verse 38, God, 609-632 A.C.)
The misconception comes from the fact that people misinterpret Quran as they misinterpret many other things. I think you can relate to that in other religions by comparing what people do and what their holy book says. (see also U.S. Constitution, Tax laws, etc.)
People have used religion throughout the years to gain more control and power over the common man (as in human). And nowadays most people either follow their religious "leaders" blindly or give up on god and religion all together.
Relating religion to computers, just because someone missuses the Internet to DDOS others, spam or phish doesn't necessarily mean that the Internet is evil and should be abandoned.
I can't blame you (or the writers you mentioned) for not understanding Quran, as many Muslims in the Islamic world don't understand it themselves (Read: the common man and Al-Qaeda idiots).
I advice you to take the tinfoil hat off for a second and research deeper into the subject yourself.
I'm a freelancer, and none of my clients even consider paying me if their website doesn't display correctly on IE. Why? They believe IE is the ONLY browser, they believe Windows is the ONLY OS.
I have a hard time explaining to clients why we can't just create the whole thing with flash, or why flash intros is a bad idea (they still request it anyway), or why oh why they can't put that amazing 3D presentation that they have on a CD on their website.
Not everyone who wants a website knows how it should be designed, they usually see something that they like (and you won't believe the crap they like) and say they want something like it.
Apart from website owners you have users, do you think that when a user sees your website broken he'd think (no matter what you tell him) that IE is bad? GOD FORBIDS!
He'll just move away and take his business, ads clicks/views somewhere else and curse the dumb-ass who created that site.
My solution? nothing. I try my best to educate business owners, try my best to design for standards and fix IE bugs, and most of all try to avoid client side projects and look for more server side stuff.
Gmail is simple to use and generous in terms of space
The list goes on...
I don't care if their motto is "do no evil" or not. As long as I see and perceive no evil *AND* I like the service I'm getting, I see no reason to hate them.
I'm not going to blindly follow some faceless comment or story telling me to think Google is evil *or* good. I make up my own damn mind!
Slashdot Mirror
I believe with Schwartz he meant Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO.
My first guess was Randall Schwartz who's on *my* list of "big" names. But in context, Sun's CEO seems to fit the bunch more.
Accurate signature is not a prerequisite for processing payments.
No one really cares until you dispute the charges and say it wasn't you.
At that point handwriting specialists come into play.
Welcome to my foe list.
If I knew this device existed 4 months ago I would have probably bought one.
I have a nearly complete MythTV box (just need TV out) in my living room now. I spent around $120 for the Happauge 150 card which only does TV in. I also shelled out around another $100 for a 250GB hard drive (numbers maybe skewed a little, weak memory). This device is a little over $200 which is about what I spent so far on my box (other than the box itself which I'm counting as $0 since I already had it and had no need for it).
I don't have Cable or a HD ready TV, but I'd like to be able to have PVR features with broadcast TV to record the shows that I always miss when I'm at work or even just being able to pause TV when my wife interrupts.
Actually come to think of it, I think I'm doing the MythTV thing for the tinkering fun, but I would have still paid for this a few months back.
I'm from the first camp, but let me take this discussion one step further into the "Off topic" area and argue the second camp's point of view back.
:P), you don't sink to their level and break the rules as well.
Not so long ago (it's still in my RSS feed) Marcus and Theo of the OpenBSD project were accused (mainly Marcus) of "stealing" GPL'ed code and porting it into the OpenBSD project. Regardless of how you feel about the whole fiasco, I'm pretty sure they weren't planning on making money off of the GPL'ed driver code.
Sure, people can argue all they want about the possibility of BSD code being close sourced by an entity that will make money off of it, but I bet you a $1000 dollars that if I were to close source a GPL project and give it away for FREE (without even an ads supported site), I'll have the author knocking on my door the next day demanding the enhanced (or not) source code.
Heck, some people (Referencing an AC.. brilliant!) argue that Google is unethical because they [allegedly] didn't distribute the GPL license (which any kid in kindergarten can find online in under 10 seconds) with their GSAs despite the fact that the source code is available on code.google.com.
Copying music is (in my opinion) exactly like copying GPL code and not adhering to the license. You may not like the rules but you have to play by them.
The music guys want money to allow you to obtain copies of their songs, the GPL guys want credit and source code enhancements back.
Rules are rules, and no matter how low your "enemy" is (not GPL in this sentence, spare my Karma
GBTW.. GBTW... GBTW...
That right there tells me you don't know what you're talking about. Free/Open/Net BSD are not based on the Linux kernel, they're completely different beasts.
I wrote something before about how inconsistent some of the Linux distributions are and how frustrating it is, but this right here is an outright troll.
I'm a BSD guy at heart, maybe mainly because I got introduced to FreeBSD first as what a Unix like OS is all about, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate "Linux" or what it has done for us.
In my living room there's a MythTV (KnoppmMyth) box that is waiting for a second TV-Tuner card to output to TV to be complete DVR system. At my job we have a couple of CentOS servers that replaced FreeBSD because of specific RAID driver support (It's in 6.2 but that was beta back then).
Point in case: I'm no OS zealot.
Having cleared that up, sure there are tons of Linux distributions out there, some of them are "corporate ready" and some of them aren't. If you're a CIO and going to standardize on Linux "based distributions", I hope to god you're not basing your decisions on what teenagers are writing in their blog about the hottest new distribution.
When you imply that the entire community is behind X distribution based on what you read on blogs is a complete disconnect from reality. The Debian people are still Debian, the Redhatters still do their thing, etc. etc.
Sure, Ubuntu's new users can become more vocal and say Ubuntu is the new hotness, but that doesn't mean they're the ones who write great code or do great things for their distributions (not that some of them aren't, but you get my point).
I can hear you thinking "Well what about Beta testers?", well sure, some of the distributions may have more beta testing done than others based on the "community" shift, but that doesn't mean other distributions won't benefit from it. Linux distributions are just that, they combine and distribute Linux, GNU tools and other programs with a few (ok maybe a little more than that) tweaks here and there.
If someone in Ubuntu finds a bug in gcc, all of the distributions will benefit from it (heck even BSD).
Companies like RedHat exist solely to provide you (Mr./Ms. corporate CIO) with that safety net, which is: you're going to get the latest patched stuff, you can demand Certification and get trained Sys admins that know what they're doing, phone and on-site support etc.
How about an addendum to the words "Open Source", maybe "OSI Approved Open Source Software" and possibly a seal.
This way companies or individuals that are interested in using open source software can ask the vendor "Is your 'Open Source' software OSI Approved?", If they get a yes and they're using a license that's incompatible with OSI, you can hunt them down and make them "pay" for their deception.
So, instead of promoting the words "Open Source", maybe promote OSI?
*Warning: Weak web programmer analogy coming up*
It'll make you kind of like the W3C, anyone can come up with a DTD and say their markup is valid, but it's not the same thing as saying W3C Valid (x)HTML v.xx.
I'm pretty sure you can get a trademark/copywhatsoever (IANAL) on "OSI Approved OSS", promote that as what "true/standardized" Open Source software is, and then you can have the legal ground to go after deceitful entities.
Just my 2 cents.
Your post is +10 insightful in my book.
Thank you for your reply :)
I read the article and went ahead an looked up SSN on wikipedia trying to find a hole in your theory.
:(
You are absolutely right, it doesn't necessarily mean that people (like my employer, and my mortgage company) wouldn't require you to provide that secret number.
However, I think it will come down to the implementation and the need for a credit report (I couldn't find that anywhere in the article).
My employer asked for my SSN to report my income to the IRS, that doesn't necessarily mean that they pulled my credit report (which some companies do for dumb reasons "ooh s/he's living beyond their means, they can't be a good programmer!!"). Meaning people who need your SSN just to identify you will not be affected by this.
My landlord (before I bought my house) however, needed my credit report to see if I filed for bankruptcy, can't pay my bills, living beyond my means, etc.
For this system to work, the secure number has to be given to the credit bureaus or a government agency _when_ someone tries to pull your credit report _by_ you. Meaning no one should be able to require you to provide that number because it will be useless to them.
If it's implemented in such a way that:
1) Business/whatever tries to pull a credit report on you
2) You get notified by a government agency or credit bureau
3) You authorize the pull by providing your secret number to authority in 2
Then it might actually work and be an extra security measure.
On a side note for other posters talking about instant credit approval, you don't need it.
I cannot (from my point of view) imagine a scenario where you need credit "right now" to accomplish a goal. That would mean (to me that) either you are not capable of managing your finances or that you are living way beyond your means.
Final thoughts:
When I said I was trying to find holes in your theory, I did not mean I was trying to prove I'm smarter than you or some cr*p like that. I mainly agree with your post but I'm too much of an optimist that I want to believe that a new legislation "for" the consumer like that wouldn't be completely useless.
But then again so many legislations can prove me wrong
Then users demanding "Linux" applications are demanding something that will never happen since you can not write an application to a kernel!
:)
Sarcasm aside, I am (and have always been) shocked at how various Linux distributions differ. I'm by no means a Linux expert, but come on, if you can't agree on where to put your init0.d-init6.d (or whatever it is, yes I'm looking at you Gentoo) then how do you expect an outsider to write something that works for "Linux"?
I mean we hear all this crap about Microsoft and how ME breaks 98, and 2000 breaks ME and Vista breaks XP, etc.
But do the math, how many operating systems are we talking about here? now compare that to Linux distributions available today.
I'm not trolling, I'm no shill and I definitely do not work for Microsoft.. but I just really believe that "too" much choice sucks.
I just (literally) bought a new house (closed escrow today) and I've been in the carpet choice dilemma for the past two weeks! (mind you it took me a while to settle on carpet instead of hard wood floors, pergo, etc.).
Come to think of it, I think this carpet analogy (that I'm about to write) is right on money here. OS is like carpet! It's the foundation that you build on. Think of how carpet pretty much dictates what kind of furniture (style/color etc.) you'll be placing on it, OS will do the same with your applications.
I would have a much easier time choosing between 2-3 carpet types and 10-20 colors than the amazing number of styles/options out there (visit the carpet section next time you're at home depot and you'll know what I'm talking about).
Things like carpet and operating systems (I can't believe I'm lumping them up in the same sentence) are not mundane. They are a *huge* deal because of the consequences of the choice (much like posting this without hitting the "Post Anonymously" checkbox). They're something that you will invest a good amount in, and that will be with you for a long time.
Choice is a VERY good thing, too much choice may even be perfect for those who know "exactly" what they want.
I live and breathe computers, and I think it's silly that I'm spending all this time researching "the" perfect carpet for me and my family. I also believe that the home decoration specialist that knows what kind/make/model/color/class of carpet they want for the hallway of their second house (and have it written somewhere) would be as frustrated as I am with carpet if they had to choose from the plethora of Linux distributions out there today.
The choice is even worse for software companies that put money or even the whole company on the line when they make a platform choice.
I'm done ranting, gotta hit the sack and hope that I come to a decision about the carpet before we get the keys!
Side [OT] (as if this whole thing wasn't anyway) note:
If you happen to know something about carpet, or where I can get more/good information please post it. No pets, one year old and an average budget. Thanks in advance
You could have just said that you're a social worker!
j/k, no offense, yada dada..
I honestly did not know.
The last time I remember saying "Mario" was at least 8 years ago. The article is pretty interesting, yet seems very short.
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out sometime.
That person just said that it was their own experience. A little criticism never hurts anybody.
Your analogy with the jack hammer isn't right on money here because we "know" what a jack hammer can do. With operating systems it's different. I would say it's more like customer service at a restaurant, everyone can tell you how good a restaurant is, but once you go there and get served by a waitress who just dumped her boyfriend and got kicked out of her apartment.. you'll think different.
I personally don't care what OS anyone is running. I'm typing this on my FreeBSD laptop, that's sitting right next to my windows workstation. Behind me are a couple of Macs and in the server room (5 feet away) there are a dozen or so Sunfires (and a FreeBSD server too). They all crunch away and work.. you know..
Let me add to that:
9. Prove residency to credit unions/credit card co.
10. Redeem all those 5 Miles from Philip Morris! (Or even get the catalogue)
The thing that's been bugging me since I got here (California) is the fact that your residency (green) card is hardly worth the plastic it's printed on!
All my problems have been with places that need an ID from DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) to prove residency/age/whatever, and they either a) Don't recognize residency or work cards, or b) Consider residency/work card a secondary ID and demand a DMV issued ID.
I personally think DHS (Department of Homeland Security) cards hold more water than a DMV ID, but that's how the system works here.
Plus, shouldn't the passport agency be handling IDs anyway?
I find the very idea of DMV handling "personal identification" bizarre, coming from other countries that either have a special department for that, or tie it to an agency that's more appropriate for the task.
Just my 2 cents...
I work in a small/medium political and marketing research co. at the moment and all our computers are windows based.
We have CATI software that's worth tens of thousands of dollars, and there's no way in hell the management is going to give it up unless the solution we come up with is superior to the one they have "already paid for".
I searched google, source forge etc. for a decent open-source CATI system, and all I found was some funny attempts to create one. Umm, actually there was one that "looked" kind of promising, the main problem is that their website/documentation and everything else is in Italian IIRC.
(BTW, If anyone knows of a serious OSS CATI system, please let me know. And what I mean by serious is support for Clustered Samples, Sample management, Decent programming language/interface, Quotas, Call backs, Monitoring, etc.)
We also have some data processing software that runs on MS-DOS, and we have a few FORTRAN programs in there as well.
The thing is, to move from all this, we'd be spending so much time researching and evaluating products, re-programming old programs, re-training staff, and will probably end up with an inferior un-familiar setup (talking specialized CATI software here) that will make our lives even harder.
I'm a big OSS fan (FreeBSD to be more specific), but I realize that "use whatever gets the job done" is the way to go.
I'm assuming you meant MS-DOS 4.01. I (my parents) bought my first computer in 1989 (about 16 years ago). It was a 80286 and it did NOT have a hard disk drive. I had to boot using a 5.25" floppy drive to DOS, and then using 3 floppies I would load up Prince of Persia 1 to play with.
A few years later (about 3) my older brother and I were debating if we had the money to buy a shiny new computer, should the hard disk drive be 40 Megabytes or 60. I told him "if we get a 60MB hard drive it will store all the games and programs we use and we'll have lots of opportunities to expand in the future". He argued that 40MB would have been "more than we will ever need".
Now.. At that time there weren't any 2GB drives, according to Wikipedia the first 2GB hard drive was introduced in 1995 to the consumer market . I'm going to assume that you were working at a huge corporation at the time that had access to such huge amounts of storage. What would a corporation like that need MS-DOS 4.01 for anyway?
A message like that was probably a sound decision by the engineers who worked on MS-DOS, as consumers did not have enough room to have more than one OS installed at the same time (my friend had a 80486 with *gasp* 10 Megabytes hard disk drive in 92/93).
Man, I didn't say either of the consoles are halo, please don't put words in my mouth.
:)
I don't care about either console because I simply don't have the time to play games anymore. I'm married and I'm expecting a child next July. I work 2 jobs and I'm looking for a third job right now. enough said..
Cheering for or against Sony because of their games and not their tactics sounds great, but is Microsoft treated the same here?
No matter how good Microsoft's products are they're ridiculed here (although some comments surface through the moderation).
My point is, if you're gonna point fingers around and say "bad company", then do it fairly and don't be a hypocrite.
My post isn't directed at you, you just ignited this point
Thank for replying and hope you're having a wonderful night/day.
Dude, I have mod points and I would mod you +10 Awesome point, but I can't :/
Thanks for realizing what I was trying to say :)
Nope, the general sentiment around here is pro Sony and anti Microsoft when it comes to game consoles. You may wanna search slashdot for the articles/discussions regarding the arrival of XboX360 and dig through the comments, you'll see tons of "I'm waiting for PS3!!!one1!!1".
I couldn't care less about any gaming console, I don't own any and I don't plan on buying any. The whole GTA San Andreas thing came up because I was expecting RockStar to have a PC version when they released it.
I try my best to not stereotype people based on anything, but the general sentiment around here is really obvious among the majority of posts.
Anyway, hope this cleared things up. Please don't take anything I said here personally, I just had a long day and I'm pretty tired.
Shouldn't that apply to game consoles as well?
Didn't the "beloved" Sony sign an agreement with RockStar to keep GTA San Andreas on the PlayStation 2 platform for a period of time?
Oh, I forgot how slashdot works, When a company is beloved here they're cheered for blindly and all is forgiven...
I just posted a comment that references Quran on democracy here.
Thought it might be interesting...
I beg to differ. Here's my source:
The misconception comes from the fact that people misinterpret Quran as they misinterpret many other things. I think you can relate to that in other religions by comparing what people do and what their holy book says. (see also U.S. Constitution, Tax laws, etc.)
People have used religion throughout the years to gain more control and power over the common man (as in human). And nowadays most people either follow their religious "leaders" blindly or give up on god and religion all together.
Relating religion to computers, just because someone missuses the Internet to DDOS others, spam or phish doesn't necessarily mean that the Internet is evil and should be abandoned.
I can't blame you (or the writers you mentioned) for not understanding Quran, as many Muslims in the Islamic world don't understand it themselves (Read: the common man and Al-Qaeda idiots).
I advice you to take the tinfoil hat off for a second and research deeper into the subject yourself.
e.g.:
- Interesting Question
- Insightful Post
- Informative Troll
You get the idea...Sure, sit back and relax and don't get paid!
I'm a freelancer, and none of my clients even consider paying me if their website doesn't display correctly on IE. Why? They believe IE is the ONLY browser, they believe Windows is the ONLY OS.
I have a hard time explaining to clients why we can't just create the whole thing with flash, or why flash intros is a bad idea (they still request it anyway), or why oh why they can't put that amazing 3D presentation that they have on a CD on their website.
Not everyone who wants a website knows how it should be designed, they usually see something that they like (and you won't believe the crap they like) and say they want something like it.
Apart from website owners you have users, do you think that when a user sees your website broken he'd think (no matter what you tell him) that IE is bad? GOD FORBIDS!
He'll just move away and take his business, ads clicks/views somewhere else and curse the dumb-ass who created that site.
My solution? nothing. I try my best to educate business owners, try my best to design for standards and fix IE bugs, and most of all try to avoid client side projects and look for more server side stuff.
The web as it is disgusts me...
- Google's services are free
- The advertisements are not intrusive
- The search engine is very useful to me
- Gmail is simple to use and generous in terms of space
- The list goes on...
I don't care if their motto is "do no evil" or not. As long as I see and perceive no evil *AND* I like the service I'm getting, I see no reason to hate them.I'm not going to blindly follow some faceless comment or story telling me to think Google is evil *or* good. I make up my own damn mind!