About a million years ago, back in the '80s, my 9th grade "Social Studies" teacher decided he was going to toss out our American history book the day before Christmas vacation and pull out his bible and hop upon his pulpit. A couple other students and I got up and started to walk when he threatened to have us suspended for leaving his class. I told him to go ahead, and walked straight to the principal's office and told him what was going on, and asked if I could go home, since it was my last class for the day. I told him I wasn't going to be forced to sit there and be preached at when I"m supposed to be sstudying American history. I wish I'd had a photo of the principal's face when I told him, his color just turned to ash, and he hustled out of the office and down to the classroom. When he returned, he gave me a pass and told me to have a good break. Turns out that the teacher was sitting in the classroom by himself, since the rest of the class took the cue from us and all bailed as well. He got suspended, not the students.
Sure they have. "If you don't perform the reactivation steps, Microsoft Office will go into Reduced Functionality Mode. In that mode you will not be able to save modifications to documents, or create a new document, and additional functionality may be reduced"
The whole point of a ballot box is that the votes are uncorrelated with the voters.
Sadly, that's not the case. The district in which I live still uses the 30+ year old lever-based voting machines. ID is not required, but verifying your signature in comparison to that on the voter registration form is. The pollster then writes a number next to your name. That number is how far in line you were. I know what my number was, so do the pollsters, and it's written right next to my name on the register, and that can be tied to the order of who went into the voting booth. I went with a group when I voted, and my tin-foil hat being as tight as it was, made sure I let a couple of friends ahead of me after that number was recorded.
Banking sites are often designed for IE and nothing else.
That's true, but I won't use those "services", and I've taken my banking elsewhere, and I let them know why. Banks _hate_ to lose customers. Sure, you can think "fuck him, he's an elitist asshole linux hippie", but it's got to start somewhere.
Re:How old (valuable) are the old PCs?
on
Free Geek Robbed
·
· Score: 1
The thieves should be glad they didn't steal the same hardware from the RIAA, or it would have been priced out at about $45,000,000.
...they consider it unlikely that little Johnnie is going to go out and blow up a city block with a bazooka from a commandeered humvee no matter how many action flicks he sees...
Had these folks not too long ago that were getting phone calls and actual snail mail from their ISP telling them to take their computer off line and have it repaired. The ISP actualy did cut them off, because their machine was saturating the line all the time as a spambot and as a server for other bot infections.
The machine was about a year old (and out of warranty, of course) - a 2.6 gig cpu with a gig of ram. It took almost 35 minutes to go from power off to the desktop. They had an antivirus that came with the machine, but the "free 90 day subscription" to it had run out long and they weren't aware of it, since that was one of the first things the malware went after. Their 16 year old son who loved to surf porn all the time didn't help matters. A machine like that really isn't worth the time to hunt and peck for individual pieces of malware and should wiped clean and started fresh, however the godawful shit that was on it even hosed the recovery partition. And since actual install media isn't included with a $MAJORMANUFACTURER machine, they would have had to shell out for a retail copy of their previous OS.
Since these folks were obviously pretty cluless about computers, I fired them up a knoppix CD to see how they took to it. They honestly had zero problems navigating the KDE desktop and were able to do everything they wanted with the computer, except obviously to save stuff. They now have a shiny Debian Etch based KDE desktop that they're enjoying, virus, malware, and calls from the ISP free.
...because I'm not a complete idiot. I only log in as adminstrator when necessary. I keep up with patches and security updates. I keep my data, the only unique and irreplacable thing on my computer, backed up. I don't click on every idiotic funny ha ha attachment going around.
And you, sir, are not the "average joe" computer user... not by a long shot. Hell, the fact that you've posted to slashdot proves that. The "complete idiots" that you refer to aren't you, but they also aren't idiots. They're doctors, lawyers, sisters, sons, husbands, mothers, etc. who have lives other than sitting in front of a computer all the time and figuring out how it all works; who have been told by Microsoft and all the "high tech" tv shows and news snippets they've seen that they were basically buying an appliance. Unfortunately for them, a computer has never been, nor will be just an appliance.
I suppose if you're dumb enough to think you need an Antivirus program, you probably do.
As such an obvious "people person", do you wear a seatbelt?
A guy who used to work for me described it this way: people want a computing appliance. That is, they want their computer to work like their toaster or, at worst, their microwave oven. They really don't know nor do they care what goes on "inside." They just want to play a game, toast a bagle or nuke some left-overs...
Except that a computer is _not_ an appliance. Not yet, not by a long shot... especially a Microsoft Windows computer. I explain to people that it's more like a power tool, like a circular saw. Like all power tools, if the operator doesn't know how to use it properly, it can cause injury to the operator and/or others. In the case of a power saw, you could lose a finger or a bystander could get cut. In the case of a computer, your personal (financial, etc.) data could be compromised or your computer could be used to compromise others' information. It's simple as that. Most people understand the analogy and then ask how they can learn to use their computer better/more safely. A car analogy doesn't work all that well these days.
Some of the things you're talking about aren't making sense to me, honestly.
I'm looking forward to DX10
I'm not a gamer, so I could care less. If I want to play games, I'll use a console.
lower CPU usage (because the UI is run on the GPU)
Lower CPU usage than what? XP? I've run XP on a 500 MHz with a 320 meg ram and a whopping 4 meg vid card and it's still usable. Vista _requires_ an 800 MHz CPU and a half-gig of ram (one gig preferred) minimum. You call that LOWER usage? If the UI is run on the (128 MB _minimum_) GPU, why should the CPU requirements be HIGHER?
the ability to prioritize I/O (no more 10 fps in games if you move big files around on your computer at the same time)
SMB 2.0 (transfers should survive now if the network is disconnected for a moment)
Good lord, things like ssh have been able to do that for almost a decade. You can even restart networking/samba/ftp service on a remote machine via a remote shell and not lose your connection.
virtualized registry
The registry is perhaps one of Microsoft's biggest blunders, in my opinion. Having a single point of failure for the entire system is just a Bad Idea(TM).
improved windows APIs (this is mostly for us programmers)
I'm not a programmer, so I won't comment.
improved audio system (ability to mute/adjust sound per application instead)
Don't most things like that include a volume control within the app itself? I may be mistaken on the concept though, that's for sure.
multitasking of GPUs
If you've got more than one GPU, I would hope to god they'd be multitasking.
general bugfixes
After 5 years, you'd hope there would be some bugfixing going on, instead of just dumping much touted features (i.e. winfs)
improved stability
The jury's still out on that one, mostly because the general public hasn't used it and been clicking on every thing that pops up in their face all the time... mostly only computer savvy people that know how to keep their systems stable in the first place have been running the betas.
A better question would be why some people (excluding mac & linux users:) are not looking forward to Vista? Aside from the DRM (which will be promptly cracked), that is.
Why exclude mac & linux users? Are they not computer users?
#1 Cost - increased hardware requirements, in the license, loss of rights to do with what we buy as we see fit #2 Cracked DRM? Is that even legal? AFAIK, it's punishable by law.
I'm sure others could provide more. However, #1 is the show stopper for me.
...Sorry - it one particular area is KDE superior to Windows XP?...
How about several for starters? --FISH in the file manager --Window placement (when the last time an XP window came up in the same place twice if it wasn't maximized?) --Highlight text in a file, then drag that text to the desktop and a new file is created with that content, can XP do that? --Kiosk mode baby! --A ton of apps included (office, m-media players, various utils)... for free; What's XP got, notepad and spider? Want Office on XP? 3rd party or shell out Hundred$. Decent burning software? Oops, buy the Media Center Edition(TM) instead!
It's a shame they didn't wait until it was 666 days. If they had waited a few more days, Debian would have had THREE stable releases in the time it took Microsoft to go from XP to Long^H^H^HVista. Debian volunteers can release 3 stable distros for free before Microsoft can release 1 with 50 BILLION in their cash coffers... not just funny... amazing.
Or any other search engine: AutoZone Burlington Coat Factory Cisco/Linksys City of Vienna information services Daimer/Chrysler Disney Ernie Ball Guitars Google IBM Los Alamos National Laboratory Merrill Lynch Mexico City municipal government Pixar Animation Papa John's Pizza Raymour & Flanigan Furniture Riverdale High School, Portland, Oregon St. Mary's School, Rockledge, Florida University of Oslo US Air Force
You might not get all the details, but it might send you in the right direction.
The article summary is misleading in ways that would give CNN a hardon....
Except that CNN isn't reporting on it. In fact, about the only references about this issue I've seen about this have been on foreign news sources. The Register is in the UK and another linked video was on a.nl server...
Why is it that we in the USA can't get news about what the fuck is happening on our own country except from foreign/tiny news services?
Slashdot Mirror
There is one
Science? Religion?
I'm listening to the guy with the lens in a tube rather than the guy with the corpse on a stick.
About a million years ago, back in the '80s, my 9th grade "Social Studies" teacher decided he was going to toss out our American history book the day before Christmas vacation and pull out his bible and hop upon his pulpit. A couple other students and I got up and started to walk when he threatened to have us suspended for leaving his class. I told him to go ahead, and walked straight to the principal's office and told him what was going on, and asked if I could go home, since it was my last class for the day. I told him I wasn't going to be forced to sit there and be preached at when I"m supposed to be sstudying American history. I wish I'd had a photo of the principal's face when I told him, his color just turned to ash, and he hustled out of the office and down to the classroom. When he returned, he gave me a pass and told me to have a good break.
Turns out that the teacher was sitting in the classroom by himself, since the rest of the class took the cue from us and all bailed as well. He got suspended, not the students.
Who needs sleep?
You mean... they've come up with a cure for this Restless Leg Syndrome I've had for 3 years???
Hurray!
Actually, it's about the six lessons.
Sure they have.
"If you don't perform the reactivation steps, Microsoft Office will go into Reduced Functionality Mode. In that mode you will not be able to save modifications to documents, or create a new document, and additional functionality may be reduced"
Sadly, that's not the case. The district in which I live still uses the 30+ year old lever-based voting machines. ID is not required, but verifying your signature in comparison to that on the voter registration form is. The pollster then writes a number next to your name. That number is how far in line you were. I know what my number was, so do the pollsters, and it's written right next to my name on the register, and that can be tied to the order of who went into the voting booth. I went with a group when I voted, and my tin-foil hat being as tight as it was, made sure I let a couple of friends ahead of me after that number was recorded.
That's true, but I won't use those "services", and I've taken my banking elsewhere, and I let them know why. Banks _hate_ to lose customers.
Sure, you can think "fuck him, he's an elitist asshole linux hippie", but it's got to start somewhere.
The thieves should be glad they didn't steal the same hardware from the RIAA, or it would have been priced out at about $45,000,000.
Dammit if I didn't read that as realplayer and just about puke.
Tell Jack Thompson that.
Microsoft has the undenial habit of embrace/extend/extinguish. If you don't see that inevitability, you're pretty much just plain fucked in the head.
Best. Use of itsatrap tag. Evar.
Had these folks not too long ago that were getting phone calls and actual snail mail from their ISP telling them to take their computer off line and have it repaired. The ISP actualy did cut them off, because their machine was saturating the line all the time as a spambot and as a server for other bot infections.
The machine was about a year old (and out of warranty, of course) - a 2.6 gig cpu with a gig of ram. It took almost 35 minutes to go from power off to the desktop. They had an antivirus that came with the machine, but the "free 90 day subscription" to it had run out long and they weren't aware of it, since that was one of the first things the malware went after. Their 16 year old son who loved to surf porn all the time didn't help matters. A machine like that really isn't worth the time to hunt and peck for individual pieces of malware and should wiped clean and started fresh, however the godawful shit that was on it even hosed the recovery partition. And since actual install media isn't included with a $MAJORMANUFACTURER machine, they would have had to shell out for a retail copy of their previous OS.
Since these folks were obviously pretty cluless about computers, I fired them up a knoppix CD to see how they took to it. They honestly had zero problems navigating the KDE desktop and were able to do everything they wanted with the computer, except obviously to save stuff.
They now have a shiny Debian Etch based KDE desktop that they're enjoying, virus, malware, and calls from the ISP free.
That was one of the worst I've ever seen.
And you, sir, are not the "average joe" computer user... not by a long shot. Hell, the fact that you've posted to slashdot proves that.
The "complete idiots" that you refer to aren't you, but they also aren't idiots. They're doctors, lawyers, sisters, sons, husbands, mothers, etc. who have lives other than sitting in front of a computer all the time and figuring out how it all works; who have been told by Microsoft and all the "high tech" tv shows and news snippets they've seen that they were basically buying an appliance. Unfortunately for them, a computer has never been, nor will be just an appliance.
As such an obvious "people person", do you wear a seatbelt?
Slide the CD gently underneath the $TASTYBEVERAGE that's sitting next to you.
A little??
$300+ per doesn't seem like 'a little', especially for a small business.
Except that a computer is _not_ an appliance. Not yet, not by a long shot... especially a Microsoft Windows computer. I explain to people that it's more like a power tool, like a circular saw. Like all power tools, if the operator doesn't know how to use it properly, it can cause injury to the operator and/or others. In the case of a power saw, you could lose a finger or a bystander could get cut. In the case of a computer, your personal (financial, etc.) data could be compromised or your computer could be used to compromise others' information. It's simple as that.
Most people understand the analogy and then ask how they can learn to use their computer better/more safely. A car analogy doesn't work all that well these days.
I'm not a gamer, so I could care less. If I want to play games, I'll use a console.
Lower CPU usage than what? XP? I've run XP on a 500 MHz with a 320 meg ram and a whopping 4 meg vid card and it's still usable. Vista _requires_ an 800 MHz CPU and a half-gig of ram (one gig preferred) minimum. You call that LOWER usage? If the UI is run on the (128 MB _minimum_) GPU, why should the CPU requirements be HIGHER?
That's nice...
Good lord, things like ssh have been able to do that for almost a decade. You can even restart networking/samba/ftp service on a remote machine via a remote shell and not lose your connection.
The registry is perhaps one of Microsoft's biggest blunders, in my opinion. Having a single point of failure for the entire system is just a Bad Idea(TM).
I'm not a programmer, so I won't comment.
Don't most things like that include a volume control within the app itself? I may be mistaken on the concept though, that's for sure.
If you've got more than one GPU, I would hope to god they'd be multitasking.
After 5 years, you'd hope there would be some bugfixing going on, instead of just dumping much touted features (i.e. winfs)
The jury's still out on that one, mostly because the general public hasn't used it and been clicking on every thing that pops up in their face all the time... mostly only computer savvy people that know how to keep their systems stable in the first place have been running the betas.
Why exclude mac & linux users? Are they not computer users?
#1 Cost - increased hardware requirements, in the license, loss of rights to do with what we buy as we see fit
#2 Cracked DRM? Is that even legal? AFAIK, it's punishable by law.
I'm sure others could provide more. However, #1 is the show stopper for me.
How about several for starters?
--FISH in the file manager
--Window placement (when the last time an XP window came up in the same place twice if it wasn't maximized?)
--Highlight text in a file, then drag that text to the desktop and a new file is created with that content, can XP do that?
--Kiosk mode baby!
--A ton of apps included (office, m-media players, various utils)... for free; What's XP got, notepad and spider? Want Office on XP? 3rd party or shell out Hundred$. Decent burning software? Oops, buy the Media Center Edition(TM) instead!
It's a shame they didn't wait until it was 666 days. If they had waited a few more days, Debian would have had THREE stable releases in the time it took Microsoft to go from XP to Long^H^H^HVista. Debian volunteers can release 3 stable distros for free before Microsoft can release 1 with 50 BILLION in their cash coffers... not just funny... amazing.
3) Add Rootkit
Or any other search engine:
AutoZone
Burlington Coat Factory
Cisco/Linksys
City of Vienna information services
Daimer/Chrysler
Disney
Ernie Ball Guitars
Google
IBM
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Merrill Lynch
Mexico City municipal government
Pixar Animation
Papa John's Pizza
Raymour & Flanigan Furniture
Riverdale High School, Portland, Oregon
St. Mary's School, Rockledge, Florida
University of Oslo
US Air Force
You might not get all the details, but it might send you in the right direction.
Except that CNN isn't reporting on it. In fact, about the only references about this issue I've seen about this have been on foreign news sources. The Register is in the UK and another linked video was on a
Why is it that we in the USA can't get news about what the fuck is happening on our own country except from foreign/tiny news services?
or slashdot editors