End of the Microsoft Era (oh boy here we go)
on
Rebel Code
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· Score: 1
"Rebel code helped end the Microsoft era."
Ugh. I groaned when I read that. I just knew the comments were going to be filled with tons of people who take that quote out of context and pointed out that the MS Era hasn't ended, and then get modded up +5. Admit it Katz, you were trolling.
Whats the deal with the 3 value bits on the cover art? Sorry if I'm nitpicking here, but that bugs me in the same way that my math teacher always did when he wouldn't completely erase the chalk board but leave little edges here and there where he didn't quite get it all. Geez that was maddening.
Americans have been thumbing their noses at Intellectual Property (tm) long before the Internet and the "me" generation came around. Think VCR's and Cassettes, prior to that think libraries. Intellectual Property isn't some "Age Old Tradition", it's a new way for a small subset of the population to get "Filthy Stinking Rich" on as little work as possible.
I can whine about DLL problems in windows cause it had them with the old versions
What are you saying that we don't have those problems anymore? Boy is that wrong. Trust me, I work on the front lines (mid sized pc repair shop that mostly services family computers) and Windows has not improved one iota in the stabiilty department, if anything's it's gotten worse.
Thats what you might think if you never used the command line. Someone who always keeps an rxvt open would be less than thrilled with the lack of command line applications, as I was.
So what they are saying is "Kids these days just don't know good games. Playin' 'round with all that 3d and crap."
Heh...
Seriously, good games were made then using the best technology available, good games are made now using the best technology available. There were bad games then, and there are bad games now, I doubt that the ratio of good to bad games has changed much (If anything it's improved), so saying games are bad because they are too technology focused is just a load of bs.
Some really good games today:
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2
Crazy Taxi
Diablo 2
Baldurs Gate 2
Canon Spike
Chu Chu Rocket
Those games are excellent and they all have various amounts of new technology and "glitz" (as you old farts call it). So what difference does it make what kind of technology they use?
It's ironic that the people who say games are too focused on technology these days are the ones who are most focused on technology.
Re:IP provider or DSL provider?
on
DSL Woes
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· Score: 1
As a Network Administrator it really burns my ass when I come on Slashdot and read all of these comments about ISP's and what they are doing wrong. Most of you some clue about how this stuff works, but you take that clue and think it means you've got the whole picture, when you don't.
In the case of ISP's reselling DSL service, although it is true that some of the ISP's are just resellers for DSL service from other ISP's, most of these so called 'resellers' are actually just reselling the DSL line to the point of the DSLAM, at that point this virtual circuit still has to make it's way to your ISP of choice (usually by way of Bell's ATM network, which your ISP will have an OC3 to or something like that), and from there it *gasp* actually uses your ISP to get Internet bandwidth.
Changing that service from one ISP to the next is _NOT_ a simple case of just changing who you send your bill to, the network operations people actually have to setup your account, change your virtual circuit to point to them, and whatever else ISP's typically do when taking in new circuits.
Of course you know it alls sitting at home
complaining that "I already got DSL, just change the bill!", already knew that, right?
Things I sometimes can't remember:
My age, my phone number, peoples names.
It's true. I have incorrectly given my age when asked, several times. If not for my wife standing there to correct me I would have been oblivious to the error.
So I forget some stuff, big deal. All of those things are unimportant to me anyway, so who cares?
I think that most of you will agree that this type of attitude is common in the geek community. Of course the doctor blames this on the first thing he thinks of, namely PDA's. Newsflash: I don't use a PDA and never have. I never use my computer or any tech gadgets to store information because I'm not that organized, I usually just forget the info, heh.
Hrm... you know, doctors these days are getting really stupid.
"In your scheme, nothing is allowed until someone with authority specifically allows it. Don't you see the problem with this?
No, not really. "
So we assume that everything is bad until someone checks it to see if it is suitable.
It is amazing to me that you don't see the problem with this. There isn't any point in us continuing this debate because our ways of thinking are so incredibly alien to each other.
"Hmm. I was trying to show that the "Christians want to censor all other religions!" attitude is not neccesarily as true as many people seem to believe. I guess I should have left it out of my argument, since the mere mention of religion has apparently made you decide that you can discount my arguments as being fundamentally unsound."
Actually no. I just added that as a jibe, I was certain your idea was fundamentally unsound before I even read the Catholic part. I was dead serious about that being the cause of your beliefs though, isn't that a given?
"Windows 2000 is quite stable... My Win2K system runs continuously for weeks at a time"
Heh.
Therein lies the source of all of these "stability arguments" between Windows ppl and *nix guys.
Stable as defined by a Windows user: "Hasn't crashed this week."
Stable as defined by a *nix user: "I've worked here for 12 years and never had a crash except when I spilled coffee on the back of the rack."
Anyway. I got the impression that cmdrtaco was trying to force the point that he didn't think this was important news. I speculate that the reason for this was to head off all of the "Here is slashdot bashing MS again for something unimportant when their own DNS was just down yesterday!" type arguments.
Of course I don't really know what the commander was thinking, but I'll bet that had gone through his mind.
Damned if you do...
Hardly. Finding a DC ISO on the web is just short of impossible. These things tend to be between 200 and 400mb and if you put one up, expect your webhost to take it down when they realize your $20/month account is pulling $20,000/month in bandwidth.
There are two places that you can get DC ISO's from with any kind of reliability: Usenet and IRC.
So, DC piracy is done by:
People on broadband with the know how to use IRC and/or Usenet, and the time to spend hunting down the ISOs (not negligible).
Furthermore, DC ISO's are the -most- difficult to burn of any of the ISO types that are commonly released in the piracy scene. About 1 in 5 burners can't even do it, and about 1/3 of the users that can burn the ISO's that have to do so by tearing the ISO apart and changing some offset values (has to do with some Burners burning 2 extra sectors to the end of audio tracks) and rebuilding it.
I'm pretty sure that of all the warzing that goes on in all of the other scenes, DC warzing has the SMALLEST impact on it's market.
I doubt that. What percentage of the mass market do you think has this ability?
Piracy might have had a -small- impact, but the complexity of acquiring and burning the games is barrier to entry for the majority of the population.
The real problem with the Dreamcast has always been marketing. Hardly anyone knows about how good the software for the DC really is. Right now, with the DC being 2 years old, it still offers the best console experience on the market (PS2 included), but if you go to the local arcade and ask around, the impression the kids in there have is that the DC is on par with the original Playstation.
Most providers will not allow anyone from an outside network to send mail through their mail servers that isn't destined for their local network. This is commonly done now to reduce spam. In fact if a provider does not do this they will likely be contacted from one of the various groups that police this, such as ORBS.
When you sign up for an ISP they give you a list of outgoing SMTP servers for you to use, and you should use them.
This is a good thing, trust me. If you think spam is bad now you have no idea what it would be like if all isps (or even a moderate number of isps) allowed outside relaying.
A lot of you are responding and debating what can be done, and how 'bad' is this going to get (Cmdrtaco included). That just shows you haven't read the article. The whole point was that the Internet is -not- adding significantly more demand to the power industry. Power consumption in the 90's continued to increase at the same rate as the 80's. The power shortages in California are mostly due to other reasons, with a few exceptions where the tech industry really exploded.
In fact, there is reason to believe that power consumption itself is down because it has been rising at a much slower rate than the GNP.
There is no crisis related to power consumption of Internet devices.
Well those are reasonable assumptions to make, but they are wrong. The most skilled gamepad player in an FPS will have a difficult time beating mid-level mouse/keyboarders.
I know all of you gamepad types have a hard time beleiving this, but it's extremely true.
You wont believe me without seeing it for yourself, so download some demos from one of the many online FPS fan sites and watch them. You will wonder how doing those things is possible with a gamepad.
It's not the keybaord that makes the difference, it's the mouse. Being able to instantly move your crosshair over any target on the screen with pinpoint accuracy in a few milliseconds is a huge advantage.
The comparison between a gamepad and mouse is so far gone it's ridiculous. It's like comparing a firecracker to a grenade.
Wrong. I have been turned down credit due to not carrying a large balance on my credit cards. I don't remember the exact wording, but it wasn't ambiguous at all, it clearly said I wasn't worth giving credit to because I wouldn't keep a balance.
The are setup the same way any DSS is set up. You look up your area code or zip code in a guide somewhere (usually the manual or possibly an on screen automated one) and it tells you the exact direction (in degrees) and elevation to aim your dish using a compass.
One simple point; there is no good reason to make this law.
Considering that you can always be fired for goofing off on the job, what purpose does this law serve exactly? Why would we make another law to cover activities that are already covered under current law, especially if our new law impedes normal, legitimate, activity?
One reason: because sex is involved.
The conservative, puritanical, backwards morons who are in power have found just another way to stick it to the rest of us.
It's another movement to censor and purify us, and this is why we should be upset. In the past few years we have seen countless, and constant attacks against our liberty like this one and it's making my skin crawl.
The original poster was correct in saying that installing Freeside is worse than jumping through flaming hoops, but he was wrong as to why.
Yes, Freeside uses a large amount of perl modules and that can be a pain to get all of them installed and functioning correctly, but that isn't too bad. The real problem is the configuration of Freeside itself. The project simply has the worst documentation I have ever witnessed in any project anywhere. There is little documentation available, but what documentation there is makes little sense at all. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with reading and comprehending even poorly written documentation, but there are limits, and Freeside surpasses them.
Slashdot Mirror
"Rebel code helped end the Microsoft era."
Ugh. I groaned when I read that. I just knew the comments were going to be filled with tons of people who take that quote out of context and pointed out that the MS Era hasn't ended, and then get modded up +5. Admit it Katz, you were trolling.
Whats the deal with the 3 value bits on the cover art? Sorry if I'm nitpicking here, but that bugs me in the same way that my math teacher always did when he wouldn't completely erase the chalk board but leave little edges here and there where he didn't quite get it all. Geez that was maddening.
Americans have been thumbing their noses at Intellectual Property (tm) long before the Internet and the "me" generation came around. Think VCR's and Cassettes, prior to that think libraries. Intellectual Property isn't some "Age Old Tradition", it's a new way for a small subset of the population to get "Filthy Stinking Rich" on as little work as possible.
I can whine about DLL problems in windows cause it had them with the old versions
What are you saying that we don't have those problems anymore? Boy is that wrong. Trust me, I work on the front lines (mid sized pc repair shop that mostly services family computers) and Windows has not improved one iota in the stabiilty department, if anything's it's gotten worse.
Thats what you might think if you never used the command line. Someone who always keeps an rxvt open would be less than thrilled with the lack of command line applications, as I was.
The original quote was
"It will probably take another three years to build a [truly enterprise-ready] Linux kernel."
He seems to be focusing on -just- the kernel, apps be damned.
err... actually, I was just thinking it might be neat to try to blow something up in orbit...
None of it's difficult... hrm.. I guess that means that it all should be done immediately when you call in right? Level 1 techs and all...
So what they are saying is "Kids these days just don't know good games. Playin' 'round with all that 3d and crap."
Heh...
Seriously, good games were made then using the best technology available, good games are made now using the best technology available. There were bad games then, and there are bad games now, I doubt that the ratio of good to bad games has changed much (If anything it's improved), so saying games are bad because they are too technology focused is just a load of bs.
Some really good games today:
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2
Crazy Taxi
Diablo 2
Baldurs Gate 2
Canon Spike
Chu Chu Rocket
Those games are excellent and they all have various amounts of new technology and "glitz" (as you old farts call it). So what difference does it make what kind of technology they use?
It's ironic that the people who say games are too focused on technology these days are the ones who are most focused on technology.
As a Network Administrator it really burns my ass when I come on Slashdot and read all of these comments about ISP's and what they are doing wrong. Most of you some clue about how this stuff works, but you take that clue and think it means you've got the whole picture, when you don't.
In the case of ISP's reselling DSL service, although it is true that some of the ISP's are just resellers for DSL service from other ISP's, most of these so called 'resellers' are actually just reselling the DSL line to the point of the DSLAM, at that point this virtual circuit still has to make it's way to your ISP of choice (usually by way of Bell's ATM network, which your ISP will have an OC3 to or something like that), and from there it *gasp* actually uses your ISP to get Internet bandwidth.
Changing that service from one ISP to the next is _NOT_ a simple case of just changing who you send your bill to, the network operations people actually have to setup your account, change your virtual circuit to point to them, and whatever else ISP's typically do when taking in new circuits.
Of course you know it alls sitting at home
complaining that "I already got DSL, just change the bill!", already knew that, right?
No Kidding. I am a daily reader of both linuxgames.com and happypenguin.org and everytime I see another engine released I just groan.
Oh boy, here we go again.
If only we could get just half as many people working on games as engines.
And for christ sakes people, enough with the tetris, bomberman, breakout and sokoban clones.
Things I sometimes can't remember:
My age, my phone number, peoples names.
It's true. I have incorrectly given my age when asked, several times. If not for my wife standing there to correct me I would have been oblivious to the error.
So I forget some stuff, big deal. All of those things are unimportant to me anyway, so who cares?
I think that most of you will agree that this type of attitude is common in the geek community. Of course the doctor blames this on the first thing he thinks of, namely PDA's. Newsflash: I don't use a PDA and never have. I never use my computer or any tech gadgets to store information because I'm not that organized, I usually just forget the info, heh.
Hrm... you know, doctors these days are getting really stupid.
"In your scheme, nothing is allowed until someone with authority specifically allows it. Don't you see the problem with this?
No, not really. "
So we assume that everything is bad until someone checks it to see if it is suitable.
It is amazing to me that you don't see the problem with this. There isn't any point in us continuing this debate because our ways of thinking are so incredibly alien to each other.
"Hmm. I was trying to show that the "Christians want to censor all other religions!" attitude is not neccesarily as true as many people seem to believe. I guess I should have left it out of my argument, since the mere mention of religion has apparently made you decide that you can discount my arguments as being fundamentally unsound."
Actually no. I just added that as a jibe, I was certain your idea was fundamentally unsound before I even read the Catholic part. I was dead serious about that being the cause of your beliefs though, isn't that a given?
Set aside the obvious manpower problem involved when every website viewed has to be verified and added by a libarian, what of the ethics involved.
In your scheme, nothing is allowed until someone with authority specifically allows it. Don't you see the problem with this?
"Just as an aside, I went to a Catholic high school:"
Ah.. yeah, I guess that explains it.
"Windows 2000 is quite stable ... My Win2K system runs continuously for weeks at a time"
Heh.
Therein lies the source of all of these "stability arguments" between Windows ppl and *nix guys.
Stable as defined by a Windows user: "Hasn't crashed this week."
Stable as defined by a *nix user: "I've worked here for 12 years and never had a crash except when I spilled coffee on the back of the rack."
Anyway. I got the impression that cmdrtaco was trying to force the point that he didn't think this was important news. I speculate that the reason for this was to head off all of the "Here is slashdot bashing MS again for something unimportant when their own DNS was just down yesterday!" type arguments.
Of course I don't really know what the commander was thinking, but I'll bet that had gone through his mind.
Damned if you do...
Hardly. Finding a DC ISO on the web is just short of impossible. These things tend to be between 200 and 400mb and if you put one up, expect your webhost to take it down when they realize your $20/month account is pulling $20,000/month in bandwidth.
There are two places that you can get DC ISO's from with any kind of reliability: Usenet and IRC.
So, DC piracy is done by:
People on broadband with the know how to use IRC and/or Usenet, and the time to spend hunting down the ISOs (not negligible).
Furthermore, DC ISO's are the -most- difficult to burn of any of the ISO types that are commonly released in the piracy scene. About 1 in 5 burners can't even do it, and about 1/3 of the users that can burn the ISO's that have to do so by tearing the ISO apart and changing some offset values (has to do with some Burners burning 2 extra sectors to the end of audio tracks) and rebuilding it.
I'm pretty sure that of all the warzing that goes on in all of the other scenes, DC warzing has the SMALLEST impact on it's market.
I doubt that. What percentage of the mass market do you think has this ability?
Piracy might have had a -small- impact, but the complexity of acquiring and burning the games is barrier to entry for the majority of the population.
The real problem with the Dreamcast has always been marketing. Hardly anyone knows about how good the software for the DC really is. Right now, with the DC being 2 years old, it still offers the best console experience on the market (PS2 included), but if you go to the local arcade and ask around, the impression the kids in there have is that the DC is on par with the original Playstation.
Nobody really knows the scoop.
Most providers will not allow anyone from an outside network to send mail through their mail servers that isn't destined for their local network. This is commonly done now to reduce spam. In fact if a provider does not do this they will likely be contacted from one of the various groups that police this, such as ORBS.
When you sign up for an ISP they give you a list of outgoing SMTP servers for you to use, and you should use them.
This is a good thing, trust me. If you think spam is bad now you have no idea what it would be like if all isps (or even a moderate number of isps) allowed outside relaying.
A lot of you are responding and debating what can be done, and how 'bad' is this going to get (Cmdrtaco included). That just shows you haven't read the article. The whole point was that the Internet is -not- adding significantly more demand to the power industry. Power consumption in the 90's continued to increase at the same rate as the 80's. The power shortages in California are mostly due to other reasons, with a few exceptions where the tech industry really exploded.
In fact, there is reason to believe that power consumption itself is down because it has been rising at a much slower rate than the GNP.
There is no crisis related to power consumption of Internet devices.
Wow, nice quick kneejerk reaction there. I guess it got you the +5 so it's all good. In the end your rant changes nothing though.
1 mouse button == dumb.
Well those are reasonable assumptions to make, but they are wrong. The most skilled gamepad player in an FPS will have a difficult time beating mid-level mouse/keyboarders.
I know all of you gamepad types have a hard time beleiving this, but it's extremely true.
You wont believe me without seeing it for yourself, so download some demos from one of the many online FPS fan sites and watch them. You will wonder how doing those things is possible with a gamepad.
It's not the keybaord that makes the difference, it's the mouse. Being able to instantly move your crosshair over any target on the screen with pinpoint accuracy in a few milliseconds is a huge advantage.
The comparison between a gamepad and mouse is so far gone it's ridiculous. It's like comparing a firecracker to a grenade.
Wrong. I have been turned down credit due to not carrying a large balance on my credit cards. I don't remember the exact wording, but it wasn't ambiguous at all, it clearly said I wasn't worth giving credit to because I wouldn't keep a balance.
The are setup the same way any DSS is set up. You look up your area code or zip code in a guide somewhere (usually the manual or possibly an on screen automated one) and it tells you the exact direction (in degrees) and elevation to aim your dish using a compass.
One simple point; there is no good reason to make this law.
Considering that you can always be fired for goofing off on the job, what purpose does this law serve exactly? Why would we make another law to cover activities that are already covered under current law, especially if our new law impedes normal, legitimate, activity?
One reason: because sex is involved.
The conservative, puritanical, backwards morons who are in power have found just another way to stick it to the rest of us.
It's another movement to censor and purify us, and this is why we should be upset. In the past few years we have seen countless, and constant attacks against our liberty like this one and it's making my skin crawl.
Again, WHAT PURPOSE DOES THE LAW SERVE? None.
The original poster was correct in saying that installing Freeside is worse than jumping through flaming hoops, but he was wrong as to why.
Yes, Freeside uses a large amount of perl modules and that can be a pain to get all of them installed and functioning correctly, but that isn't too bad. The real problem is the configuration of Freeside itself. The project simply has the worst documentation I have ever witnessed in any project anywhere. There is little documentation available, but what documentation there is makes little sense at all. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with reading and comprehending even poorly written documentation, but there are limits, and Freeside surpasses them.