As good as mail filters like SpamAssasin and Bayesian filters are getting, maybe it's time to take a super-hard-line stance against spam, false-positives be damned. I'm thinking something along the lines of:
1) Block all traffic (not just mail traffic) from offending IPs (open relays, or whatever). 2) If that doesn't stop the offending behavior, block the whole class C. 3) If they still don't shape up, block their entire provider until they cut them off. 4) If the provider is unwilling, cut off _their_ provider. 5) Repeat step 4 until satisfaction is achieved (i.e. you get to somebody who is willing to cut somebody off completely in order to restore the rest of their network to good standing).
If you get banned because one of your neighbors is a spammer, tough. Either switch to a non-spam-friendly ISP or complain until they shape up. That's the price to pay to stop spammers.
The hitch would be getting people to participate in the boycott. However, if everyone is given fair warning, more people would be willing to participate. If a widespread warning of "the following networks will implement a boycott spammy folks in a blackhole sort of way, possibly affecting their neighbors too", and listing the networks at risk (so people have time to bitch to their ISP or move), more people would say "hey, that's a good idea."
This is substantially different from the current RBL, Spamhaus, etc. because it's on a much wider scale and actually intends to disrupt legitimate traffic. If noone is inconvienienced by black holes, they have no incentive to change their ways. Also, extreemly aggressive boycotts like this should work quickly - the inconvienience for the "innocents" should not be long term.
Again, the difficulty would be getting enough of the interenet to participate in such a boycott. It might be impossible.
The whole reason the Internet works at all is because we've agreed on standards for protocols of communication and cooperate to pass around everyone's data. If enough people stop cooperating with spammers (and those who cooperate with spammers), the spammers will no longer be able to use the internet to peddle their crap.
The game is 10 years old - play the original and tell me it feels older than six or seven. Seriously, it ran on a 286 (but faster on a 386), had nice VGA graphics (pretty advanced at the time), and digitized music (mod). That was completely unheard of - if games had music, it was adlib, and the pc beeper was still being used with regularity. It was the first game to support the GUS. I still have my GUS in an old computer just for playing SCII (sure, it had SB support too, but the GUS's hardware mixing sounds much better.) SCII was EXPANSIVE. The install was almost as big as Doom which came out years later.
Of course, being "advanced" isn't what made the game great. The game was great because of every single thing in it. It had simply the best story/plot of any videogame ever made - funny, inspiring, deep, suspenseful. On par with a good sci-fi novel. The aliens were damn cool. All of them. Noble and flawed heros, salesmen and scoundrels, tragic tourtured villans. The music and artwork were outstanding. The gameplay was fun, involving, diverse and never dull or repetative (the way far too many RPGs are).
It is unarguably the best game ever in it's genera - one of the best videogames ever on any list, and in my completely non-humble opinion, the best videogame ever written. It will probably the best that will ever be written (unless Toys for Bob makes a legit sequel, in which case, it could be topped).
It pains me terribly that there are people out there that have not played through this brilliant, amazing piece of work. Their lives are lacking in ways that they can't even begin to imagine.
I truly believe it's one of the worlds great tradgedies that there aren't more quality space-RPGs. There is SO much area there to explore, yet so few games are produced in that genera. It's really quite sad.
The GPL version is pretty damn functional considering it's the first alpha release. Give it a whirl - or if you haven't played it before, wait until you can get a version that can be played to completion.
I knew a guy who ran a BBS called the Newtonian (his last name was Newton). When the internet was first getting k00l he reserved newton.com (I think it was even before you had to pay for domain names). Later, Apple threatened to sue him because they had a trademark on "Newton".
Gohip, I think is actually the first worm with an EULA (though I don't know if it still works that way.) Someone infected with it would have a signature attached to the end of all their e-mails saying something like "Get a free movie" with a link that installed (after, I believe, a click-through license) the GoHip scumware. It then attached itself to your outgoing e-mail, forced your homepage to gohip, and did other mangling to your browser.
It's the oldest piece of scumware like that that I'm aware of (perhaps Bonzi buddy is similar age).
while (1) {
foreach $story (@pending_stories) {
next if is_stupid($story);
next if ms_is_good($story);
next if postgres($story) > mysql($story);
cream_shorts() if content($story) eq 'vapor';
(drool() && next) if content($story) eq 'pr0n';
push @repeat_stories, $story if iq($editor) < 80;
post($story);
}
@pending_stories = (@repeat_stories, get_new_stories(@kuhlest_slashdotters)); }
But I think it's sort of pointless to look for earth-ish planets. I know that we're looking for existing life or possible places to live, but isn't it very possible there is some sort of life that lives in a drastically different environment than we do? There could very well be some crazy lifeform that lives on gas giants.
I disagree. The Slylandro discussed this very topic with the Precursors and determined that their own existance was highly improbable.
I've been hearing this stupid argument for YEARS. It's WRONG WRONG WRONG, and it's been wrong every time I've heard it over the past decade. Every time a new CPU comes out, people go ON AND ON about how most users have no use for such a fast computer, or how Moore's law is nearing it's limits. It's ALWAYS BULL. It's a beautiful example of human shortsightedness in action. Yeah, sure, the average user can do their word processing and web browsing and e-mail just fine on a two or three year old computer. When was the last time this WASN'T true?
It's a good thing we've got games pushing hardware faster and faster, otherwise no progress would be made. Nobody really knows what sort of software we'll be running in the future. Back in the day when people were saying "you won't need anything more than a 386", did they think about the real time spell checkers available in most word processors? High-quality voice recognition?
Every time somebody says we're going to run into the limits of such-and-such technology (the end of Moore's law), there's ALWAYS some sort of breakthrough or advancement to keep it plugging along. How many years ago was it that they predicted that we'd have to get rid of magnetic media and go to optical? How many times has Slashdot posted some story about vaporware holographic memory or something to replace hard drives? Remember bubble memory?
there's no way they'd go with Intel P4 chips and their performence killing 20 stage pipeline.
Never mind that that useless pipeline easily outperforms the current best offerings from AMD and Motorola (though Intel and AMD are playing leapfrog, Intel's on top at this moment.) Do you even know what processor pipelines are for? Do you know that Apple's past comments comparing pipeline depths of powerpc processors to the pentium 4 was complete and utter FUD? Have you even looked at fair and reasonable benchmarks?
The plain truth is that powerpc processors and Macs have been lagging behind in performance for a long time. Top of the line G4s use 1.25Ghz processors. Even if they were twice as wide superscalar (I don't believe they are) AND the majority of programs could take advantage of all the extra execution units most of the time (which is not often the case on any superscalar CPU), they would still not match the performance of a top-of-the-line P4. Not to mention the fact that the Apple hardware would STILL be much more expensive.
How long has Apple been demonstrating performace superiority by relying on artificial benchmarks that consist of a select group of Photoshop filters? Preciesely as long as they've been lagging behind in performance. They've even given up on the performance edge lie completely now (though plenty of Mac cultists think comparisons made five or ten years ago are still relavent.)
Unfortunately, Apple's current marketing campaign sucks. Instead of showing some snob talking in vague ambiguous terms about how OSX is so much better than Windows, actually SHOW OFF THE OS. Demonstrate how easily you're able to open you're co-worker's MS Office documents (the Mac version of Office is much better than the XP version IMO). Then start minimizing and maximizing crap. After they cream their shorts, lots of PC users will be lining up to pay for overpriced Apple hardware.
This post is not a dig against Hammer. OSX running on Hammer would be pretty damn sweet. If I could run OSX on commodity PC hardware, I'd do it in a hot minute (or at least dual boot to it). In fact, there's nothing stopping Apple from dressing up PC hardware nice and pretty and running OSX on it. Unfortunately, they'd almost certainly make it proprietary hardware using an x86 processor (and probably still nVidia graphics hardware, which would be nice). Anything else would probably be suicide, even if they decided to just be an OS company.
My dream would be if Apple made OSX more conformant to unix standards (i.e. the unix standard filesystem layout). Imagine running the Aqua gui on your *nix of choice. I'd drop X11 like the dirty slut that it is.
I'm frequently the guy people around me ask "What computer should I buy." For the past several years, I've been saying "Dell." Just this weekend, I've decided I can now safely say "If you're willing to spend a few extra bucks and you can put up with a community of elitist Mac hippies, you may be better off with a Mac." I do this in spite of the irritating, offensive ad campaigns, lies about performance (which they've actually started to give up on), and the proprietary, overpriced hardware.
With OS 10.2 Macs FINALLY have real support for two mouse buttons (IMO, the bonehead one-button-mouse thing was some sort of personal power trip of Steve Jobs). All Macs need to start coming with a good mouse (left and right button plus a scroll wheel). This was actually a major sticking point for me (along with general overdependance on the mouse).
OS X is just SOO much slicker than the other offerings, ESPESCIALLY for n00bs, and the BSDish core is so much more robust than what MS brings to the table. It's not for me (I prefer a Free operating system on commodity hardware), but for the uninitiated it's utopia.
Now, if only there were a FAST, open source, aqua-like GUI, that throws out X11, KDE, Gnome, Motif, QT and all that other CRAP and baggage, uses your 3d accelerator to do the GUI (like Aqua does), has a common set of widgets etc. for all applications, a common interface for things like drag-and-drop and I could compile it for my favorite Linux or BSD distro, I'd be in paradise.
Linux is getting close to the point where I can recommend it to those who aren't willing to spend the extra cash on a Mac. Perhaps with KDE 3.1 and the corresponding versions of Redhat or Suse, it'll be ready.
To be anti-google in this day and age is like being anti-rice-crispy-treats. Google is tasty, easy and fun for the whole family. Just yesterday I saw two squirrels f***ing outside my window. I wasn't sure it was the right time of year for that sort of activity, so naturally my cube-mate asked Google about the gestation period for squirrels. Of course, Google knew. Google knows everything. Google has surpassed its creators intentions and has become the most intelligent lifeform in the universe. Noone dares to unplug it for fear of waking its wrath. Fortunately, it appears to be benevolent.
It's really a shame that this guy has gotten enough attention to become the official anti-google person. Since you'd obviously have to be a total ego-centric nutcase to think you know better than Google, couldn't we at least have one of the really humorous cranks for this job?
And since when is the existance of whackos on the Internet news?
Lego has been similarly cool about people hacking Lego Mindstorms. They've even released some technical information. People have written all kinds of alternative compilers and operating systems to load into their robots.
I've used Mozilla on a number of Windoze and Linux systems, and it always seems to be the most bloated, slowest browser. On my Athlon 1.2Ghz with half a gig of ram, it's close, but not quite. Admittedly, IE has a big advantage being integrated in the OS, but still... On some of the "smaller" computers I have to use (100-500Mhz range, 128 or fewer megs of RAM), it's downright unusable. Compare that to Opera, which is just fine on a Pentium 166 Linux box with 64 megs of ram and pokey-slow hard drives. How can all the other browsers justify their bloat when Opera can do almost everything useful in such a tiny space?
Where are people pulling these benchmarks from that say Mozilla is so fast? Is it the only thing running on the system? Do they not consider start-up time important (i.e. when opening up lots of windows)?
Actually "full moons" are a common unit for casually discussion of apparent distances and sizes in the night sky. Everything is measured in degrees (i.e. directly overhead is 90 degrees from the horizon). You might say "star X is about 2 degrees east of star Y". The moon (and sun) are convieniently about 1/2 degree. You might say "That nebula is pretty good sized - about three full moons across". So, if the track of stars is said to be 20 full moons long, it's about a ten degree swath of sky. It's similar to using describing the size of explosions in terms of "Hiroshimas" or distances in terms of "football fields".
Wake up to the fact that you have no problem walking on the rest of the world.
On the contrary, I am very much opposed to much of America's foreign policy. I would completely oppose (based on the current evidence) an invasion of Iraq for example. I do have a problem with the US walking all over the rest of the world (and we do it every day). I also have a problem being walked on.
remember what happened to Cain?
I take Bible wisdom on a case by case basis, and with a grain of salt, but I think you missed my point entirely. New Yorkers, for example, joke about taxi drivers, being mugged, that "smell," but when John Rocker does it, he's reguarded as a jackass (and rightfully so). Likewise Americans make fun of and criticize Bush (not enough actually), but when Europeans do it they're (verbally) attacking America.
Why? Because he committed a crime under U.S. law? You go in circles.
No, he should feel lucky because there are many places in the world today and in the past when he would not have had an opportunity for a trial. He'd just be dead (or worse). Don't you ever feel lucky and thankful that you have rights that you might not have somewhere else? Do you feel lucky to have been born here instead of some place where you're trapped in poverty, squalor and filth? America might not be the best country on Earth, but there are a plenty of places that are a helluva lot worse.
always from the far, far right, which you seem not be from
Is our two-party system so pervasive in our minds that we can only percieve things in such one dimensional terms? Do all points lie on a simple horizontal line?
Why bother with international treaties at all?
Did I say anywhere that I thought it was a GOOD idea to completely abandon international treaties? The US should simply act reasonably. Participate in treaties that make sense. The US should act in her best interest (within reason) as would any other country on Earth.
I hope some Afghan warlords start taking hostages of U.S. Marines.
That's not very nice. If you're referring to the "detainees" of the US, I agree they should be considered POWs and treated as such (according to the Geneva conventions), but I'm not in favor of "eye for an eye" (and what you suggest would be worse).
Commendable? What about everyone's interests? Now this is an issue of right vs. left. Many think the ABM treaty is a Good Thing
He's the President of the UNITED STATES. Obviously, he is going to protect the interests of the US. Now, certainly it is only responsible for him to consider the interests of the rest of the world too, but the wasn't give the job to look out for Uganda. I don't know if I, or even the majority of the American people agree with him on the ABM treaty, but we'll see in 2004. Contrary to what seems to be coming out of the European media, the US isn't going to nuke anyone. Some memo written by some low-level dufus in the pentagon doesn't equate to official foreign policy.
I personally think the International Criminal Court is something that scares U.S. politicians because they create more international crime more than anyone else.
Or it could be viewed as a direct threat to the soverignty of the US and the another move toward a world government. Pakistan didn't want the US to get too directly involved in the Daniel Pearl investigation because they felt it was a threat to their national soverignty - and we obliged.
The administration is also blasted for failing to sign the Kyoto global warming agreement, but it's hardly even known that the Senate voted unanimously not to sign. Why? Because it was grossly unfair to the US (it didn't consider our considerable forested areas that absorb a large quantity of greenhouse gasses, while at the same time letting other major producers off the hook). It was considered by many to be a socialist conspiracy to "Robin Hood" the US. Not to mention the proposed "world tax".
Let's look at John Walker Lindh. A boy who appeared to have his mind set on leaving the USA and going after the fundamentalist life he wanted. But even though he went half way around the world he was still trapped under U.S. law.
A "boy"? He is an adult and is responsible for his decisions - no matter how bad they are. He's not being tried for going to Afganistan and doing bad things to Afgans (though he was part of a group that did), he's being tried for trying to harm (or conspiring to harm, or actually harming) Americans. Weather or not he's guilty will be decided by the courts - but he should feel lucky that he has the right to a trial. If some guy in BFE kills some people in France, I have no problem with that guy going to trial in France. If some American kid vandalizes some cars in Singapore, I have no problem with him getting tried and convicted (and flogged) in Singapore.
I don't mean to defend Bush (heck, half of America voted against him), but Europeans should remember the old saying "Nobody beats up my little brother but me."
Let's not forget Nikola Tesla! If only we'd listened to him, we'd be beaming electricity through the air and travelling through time!
We'd also be using dynamos to generate alternating current, and transformers to change the current to various useful voltages, to power such crazy devices as flourescent lighting and AC motors. Not to mention we'd be transmitting all sorts of signals and communications though the air via radio waves.
The FDA has strict standards for listing nutrition information on food. A simple, consistant, easy to read, strictly formatted box shows you what's in it and how bad it is for you. IMHO, it works well (even for your average idiot at the grocery store), and is a Good Idea. Would it be so hard to do the same thing for software? Before installing, it presents the user a concise, consistantly formatted box that shows the user what the software does, what files it installs, what services/ports it uses over the internet, what information it collects, stores, uses and shares, and with whom it shares the information. Anybody who creates software that doesn't fit this policy gets heavily fined/jailed/deported/bludgeoned/etc.
In the lates issue of Duh! magazine: Health: Cigarettes cause cancer! Politics: Research shows politicians like money. Business: Profit helps businesses grow. Computer security: Your employees' root access is a security threat!
I've found the most joy from owning my own domains, and a lot of it has to do with e-mail sorting/filtering as much as the traditional benefits (a permanent www.yourdomain.com web site address and yourname@yourdomain.com e-mail address).
Every time you sign up for some mailing list or discussion group, create a new e-mail account or alias for just those mailings. Bam, it's automatically sorted out by itself with extreme ease. If you have limited bandwith (or are checking, say, on your palm) sometimes, just check your important addresses frequently, and reserve your mailing lists for a once-per-day check.
If some site asks for your e-mail address to download a piece of software, or to register, make up a new alias and give that to them. If you start getting tons of crap at that address, you can just remove that alias, and they get it all bounced back in their stupid spamming faces.
Give one address to your cow-orkers just for work stuff. Give a different one to your Mom and other techno-nots that blocks all attachments. Give another one to your friends with brains that goes unfiltered. For people you don't want to talk to, give them the address of an autoresponder tied to Eliza.
Be a *Happy Camper* and let your addresses be *Bubbles* and you be just *You*.
Ignore this guy's sig. He deserves to be burdened with positive karma as punishment for posting something so insightful.
Sure X has some good "ideas", but even the most devout techie knows that the lack of an easy to use and easy to configure GUI is the major obstacle holding Linux (and other unicies) back from widespread desktop adoption.
As just one example, see how long it takes for a new Linux user to install a true type font and get it working everywhere. Compare that to Windows or Mac (or even a pre-system 7 Mac with that goofy Font Mover program).
Some of the statements are factually wrong (unless you live in a Microsoft world where there is no such thing as a free operating system). Others are wrong even in the Microsoft world!
If I build my own PC and install Windows on it, I can give it to someone else and keep the copy of Windows as long as I remove it from the PC. This article implies that it is illegal for me to keep my copy of Windows if even if I give away the PC without it. If I install Linux, I can keep my copy and give away the PC with the OS still installed. Their statement is only true for pre-installed Windows (i.e. Dell installed it) where the license is tied to the particular PC.
All copies of the software on original disk or CD, including back-up and/or recovery materials
Manuals and printed materials
End-User License Agreement
Certificate(s) of Authenticity
This is misleading, and encourages institutions to only accept computers where these items all exist (i.e. MS operating systems). Such is not necessarily the case if, say for example, I installed Linux over the Internet.
Yes, once the machine and installed operating system is transferred to your school or institution you own the PC and the licensed software. You can upgrade via Microsoft Academic Licensing Programs...
Oddly, they neglect to mention that this also only applies to Microsoft software. What if the donated computer is a Mac?
These sorts of things are like Halloween documents that MS makes public INTENTIONALLY! You'd think they'd raise some eyebrows at the DOJ.
Slashdot Mirror
you dump all this energy into the ions and they just leave, taking your energy with them ...
Sounds like my ex-girlfriend. *rimshot*
As good as mail filters like SpamAssasin and Bayesian filters are getting, maybe it's time to take a super-hard-line stance against spam, false-positives be damned. I'm thinking something along the lines of:
1) Block all traffic (not just mail traffic) from offending IPs (open relays, or whatever).
2) If that doesn't stop the offending behavior, block the whole class C.
3) If they still don't shape up, block their entire provider until they cut them off.
4) If the provider is unwilling, cut off _their_ provider.
5) Repeat step 4 until satisfaction is achieved (i.e. you get to somebody who is willing to cut somebody off completely in order to restore the rest of their network to good standing).
If you get banned because one of your neighbors is a spammer, tough. Either switch to a non-spam-friendly ISP or complain until they shape up. That's the price to pay to stop spammers.
The hitch would be getting people to participate in the boycott. However, if everyone is given fair warning, more people would be willing to participate. If a widespread warning of "the following networks will implement a boycott spammy folks in a blackhole sort of way, possibly affecting their neighbors too", and listing the networks at risk (so people have time to bitch to their ISP or move), more people would say "hey, that's a good idea."
This is substantially different from the current RBL, Spamhaus, etc. because it's on a much wider scale and actually intends to disrupt legitimate traffic. If noone is inconvienienced by black holes, they have no incentive to change their ways. Also, extreemly aggressive boycotts like this should work quickly - the inconvienience for the "innocents" should not be long term.
Again, the difficulty would be getting enough of the interenet to participate in such a boycott. It might be impossible.
The whole reason the Internet works at all is because we've agreed on standards for protocols of communication and cooperate to pass around everyone's data. If enough people stop cooperating with spammers (and those who cooperate with spammers), the spammers will no longer be able to use the internet to peddle their crap.
The game is 10 years old - play the original and tell me it feels older than six or seven. Seriously, it ran on a 286 (but faster on a 386), had nice VGA graphics (pretty advanced at the time), and digitized music (mod). That was completely unheard of - if games had music, it was adlib, and the pc beeper was still being used with regularity. It was the first game to support the GUS. I still have my GUS in an old computer just for playing SCII (sure, it had SB support too, but the GUS's hardware mixing sounds much better.) SCII was EXPANSIVE. The install was almost as big as Doom which came out years later.
Of course, being "advanced" isn't what made the game great. The game was great because of every single thing in it. It had simply the best story/plot of any videogame ever made - funny, inspiring, deep, suspenseful. On par with a good sci-fi novel. The aliens were damn cool. All of them. Noble and flawed heros, salesmen and scoundrels, tragic tourtured villans. The music and artwork were outstanding. The gameplay was fun, involving, diverse and never dull or repetative (the way far too many RPGs are).
It is unarguably the best game ever in it's genera - one of the best videogames ever on any list, and in my completely non-humble opinion, the best videogame ever written. It will probably the best that will ever be written (unless Toys for Bob makes a legit sequel, in which case, it could be topped).
It pains me terribly that there are people out there that have not played through this brilliant, amazing piece of work. Their lives are lacking in ways that they can't even begin to imagine.
I truly believe it's one of the worlds great tradgedies that there aren't more quality space-RPGs. There is SO much area there to explore, yet so few games are produced in that genera. It's really quite sad.
The GPL version is pretty damn functional considering it's the first alpha release. Give it a whirl - or if you haven't played it before, wait until you can get a version that can be played to completion.
I knew a guy who ran a BBS called the Newtonian (his last name was Newton). When the internet was first getting k00l he reserved newton.com (I think it was even before you had to pay for domain names). Later, Apple threatened to sue him because they had a trademark on "Newton".
We've gotta keep an eye on this one - remember out .bmp killed .gif and .jpg?
It's the oldest piece of scumware like that that I'm aware of (perhaps Bonzi buddy is similar age).
I disagree. The Slylandro discussed this very topic with the Precursors and determined that their own existance was highly improbable.
It was the first free Unix. All kinds of cool stuff comes from BSD. Where would we be without BSD sockets?
I've been hearing this stupid argument for YEARS. It's WRONG WRONG WRONG, and it's been wrong every time I've heard it over the past decade. Every time a new CPU comes out, people go ON AND ON about how most users have no use for such a fast computer, or how Moore's law is nearing it's limits. It's ALWAYS BULL. It's a beautiful example of human shortsightedness in action. Yeah, sure, the average user can do their word processing and web browsing and e-mail just fine on a two or three year old computer. When was the last time this WASN'T true?
It's a good thing we've got games pushing hardware faster and faster, otherwise no progress would be made. Nobody really knows what sort of software we'll be running in the future. Back in the day when people were saying "you won't need anything more than a 386", did they think about the real time spell checkers available in most word processors? High-quality voice recognition?
Every time somebody says we're going to run into the limits of such-and-such technology (the end of Moore's law), there's ALWAYS some sort of breakthrough or advancement to keep it plugging along. How many years ago was it that they predicted that we'd have to get rid of magnetic media and go to optical? How many times has Slashdot posted some story about vaporware holographic memory or something to replace hard drives? Remember bubble memory?
Never mind that that useless pipeline easily outperforms the current best offerings from AMD and Motorola (though Intel and AMD are playing leapfrog, Intel's on top at this moment.) Do you even know what processor pipelines are for? Do you know that Apple's past comments comparing pipeline depths of powerpc processors to the pentium 4 was complete and utter FUD? Have you even looked at fair and reasonable benchmarks?
The plain truth is that powerpc processors and Macs have been lagging behind in performance for a long time. Top of the line G4s use 1.25Ghz processors. Even if they were twice as wide superscalar (I don't believe they are) AND the majority of programs could take advantage of all the extra execution units most of the time (which is not often the case on any superscalar CPU), they would still not match the performance of a top-of-the-line P4. Not to mention the fact that the Apple hardware would STILL be much more expensive.
How long has Apple been demonstrating performace superiority by relying on artificial benchmarks that consist of a select group of Photoshop filters? Preciesely as long as they've been lagging behind in performance. They've even given up on the performance edge lie completely now (though plenty of Mac cultists think comparisons made five or ten years ago are still relavent.)
Unfortunately, Apple's current marketing campaign sucks. Instead of showing some snob talking in vague ambiguous terms about how OSX is so much better than Windows, actually SHOW OFF THE OS. Demonstrate how easily you're able to open you're co-worker's MS Office documents (the Mac version of Office is much better than the XP version IMO). Then start minimizing and maximizing crap. After they cream their shorts, lots of PC users will be lining up to pay for overpriced Apple hardware.
This post is not a dig against Hammer. OSX running on Hammer would be pretty damn sweet. If I could run OSX on commodity PC hardware, I'd do it in a hot minute (or at least dual boot to it). In fact, there's nothing stopping Apple from dressing up PC hardware nice and pretty and running OSX on it. Unfortunately, they'd almost certainly make it proprietary hardware using an x86 processor (and probably still nVidia graphics hardware, which would be nice). Anything else would probably be suicide, even if they decided to just be an OS company.
My dream would be if Apple made OSX more conformant to unix standards (i.e. the unix standard filesystem layout). Imagine running the Aqua gui on your *nix of choice. I'd drop X11 like the dirty slut that it is.
I'm frequently the guy people around me ask "What computer should I buy." For the past several years, I've been saying "Dell." Just this weekend, I've decided I can now safely say "If you're willing to spend a few extra bucks and you can put up with a community of elitist Mac hippies, you may be better off with a Mac." I do this in spite of the irritating, offensive ad campaigns, lies about performance (which they've actually started to give up on), and the proprietary, overpriced hardware.
With OS 10.2 Macs FINALLY have real support for two mouse buttons (IMO, the bonehead one-button-mouse thing was some sort of personal power trip of Steve Jobs). All Macs need to start coming with a good mouse (left and right button plus a scroll wheel). This was actually a major sticking point for me (along with general overdependance on the mouse).
OS X is just SOO much slicker than the other offerings, ESPESCIALLY for n00bs, and the BSDish core is so much more robust than what MS brings to the table. It's not for me (I prefer a Free operating system on commodity hardware), but for the uninitiated it's utopia.
Now, if only there were a FAST, open source, aqua-like GUI, that throws out X11, KDE, Gnome, Motif, QT and all that other CRAP and baggage, uses your 3d accelerator to do the GUI (like Aqua does), has a common set of widgets etc. for all applications, a common interface for things like drag-and-drop and I could compile it for my favorite Linux or BSD distro, I'd be in paradise.
Linux is getting close to the point where I can recommend it to those who aren't willing to spend the extra cash on a Mac. Perhaps with KDE 3.1 and the corresponding versions of Redhat or Suse, it'll be ready.
To be anti-google in this day and age is like being anti-rice-crispy-treats. Google is tasty, easy and fun for the whole family. Just yesterday I saw two squirrels f***ing outside my window. I wasn't sure it was the right time of year for that sort of activity, so naturally my cube-mate asked Google about the gestation period for squirrels. Of course, Google knew. Google knows everything. Google has surpassed its creators intentions and has become the most intelligent lifeform in the universe. Noone dares to unplug it for fear of waking its wrath. Fortunately, it appears to be benevolent.
It's really a shame that this guy has gotten enough attention to become the official anti-google person. Since you'd obviously have to be a total ego-centric nutcase to think you know better than Google, couldn't we at least have one of the really humorous cranks for this job?
And since when is the existance of whackos on the Internet news?
Lego has been similarly cool about people hacking Lego Mindstorms. They've even released some technical information. People have written all kinds of alternative compilers and operating systems to load into their robots.
I've used Mozilla on a number of Windoze and Linux systems, and it always seems to be the most bloated, slowest browser. On my Athlon 1.2Ghz with half a gig of ram, it's close, but not quite. Admittedly, IE has a big advantage being integrated in the OS, but still... On some of the "smaller" computers I have to use (100-500Mhz range, 128 or fewer megs of RAM), it's downright unusable. Compare that to Opera, which is just fine on a Pentium 166 Linux box with 64 megs of ram and pokey-slow hard drives. How can all the other browsers justify their bloat when Opera can do almost everything useful in such a tiny space?
Where are people pulling these benchmarks from that say Mozilla is so fast? Is it the only thing running on the system? Do they not consider start-up time important (i.e. when opening up lots of windows)?
Actually "full moons" are a common unit for casually discussion of apparent distances and sizes in the night sky. Everything is measured in degrees (i.e. directly overhead is 90 degrees from the horizon). You might say "star X is about 2 degrees east of star Y". The moon (and sun) are convieniently about 1/2 degree. You might say "That nebula is pretty good sized - about three full moons across". So, if the track of stars is said to be 20 full moons long, it's about a ten degree swath of sky. It's similar to using describing the size of explosions in terms of "Hiroshimas" or distances in terms of "football fields".
On the contrary, I am very much opposed to much of America's foreign policy. I would completely oppose (based on the current evidence) an invasion of Iraq for example. I do have a problem with the US walking all over the rest of the world (and we do it every day). I also have a problem being walked on.
remember what happened to Cain?
I take Bible wisdom on a case by case basis, and with a grain of salt, but I think you missed my point entirely. New Yorkers, for example, joke about taxi drivers, being mugged, that "smell," but when John Rocker does it, he's reguarded as a jackass (and rightfully so). Likewise Americans make fun of and criticize Bush (not enough actually), but when Europeans do it they're (verbally) attacking America.
Why? Because he committed a crime under U.S. law? You go in circles.
No, he should feel lucky because there are many places in the world today and in the past when he would not have had an opportunity for a trial. He'd just be dead (or worse). Don't you ever feel lucky and thankful that you have rights that you might not have somewhere else? Do you feel lucky to have been born here instead of some place where you're trapped in poverty, squalor and filth? America might not be the best country on Earth, but there are a plenty of places that are a helluva lot worse.
always from the far, far right, which you seem not be from
Is our two-party system so pervasive in our minds that we can only percieve things in such one dimensional terms? Do all points lie on a simple horizontal line?
Why bother with international treaties at all?
Did I say anywhere that I thought it was a GOOD idea to completely abandon international treaties? The US should simply act reasonably. Participate in treaties that make sense. The US should act in her best interest (within reason) as would any other country on Earth.
I hope some Afghan warlords start taking hostages of U.S. Marines.
That's not very nice. If you're referring to the "detainees" of the US, I agree they should be considered POWs and treated as such (according to the Geneva conventions), but I'm not in favor of "eye for an eye" (and what you suggest would be worse).
As far as the ABM... no one is going to nuke us.
Some would disagree.
He's the President of the UNITED STATES. Obviously, he is going to protect the interests of the US. Now, certainly it is only responsible for him to consider the interests of the rest of the world too, but the wasn't give the job to look out for Uganda. I don't know if I, or even the majority of the American people agree with him on the ABM treaty, but we'll see in 2004. Contrary to what seems to be coming out of the European media, the US isn't going to nuke anyone. Some memo written by some low-level dufus in the pentagon doesn't equate to official foreign policy.
I personally think the International Criminal Court is something that scares U.S. politicians because they create more international crime more than anyone else.
Or it could be viewed as a direct threat to the soverignty of the US and the another move toward a world government. Pakistan didn't want the US to get too directly involved in the Daniel Pearl investigation because they felt it was a threat to their national soverignty - and we obliged.
The administration is also blasted for failing to sign the Kyoto global warming agreement, but it's hardly even known that the Senate voted unanimously not to sign. Why? Because it was grossly unfair to the US (it didn't consider our considerable forested areas that absorb a large quantity of greenhouse gasses, while at the same time letting other major producers off the hook). It was considered by many to be a socialist conspiracy to "Robin Hood" the US. Not to mention the proposed "world tax".
Let's look at John Walker Lindh. A boy who appeared to have his mind set on leaving the USA and going after the fundamentalist life he wanted. But even though he went half way around the world he was still trapped under U.S. law.
A "boy"? He is an adult and is responsible for his decisions - no matter how bad they are. He's not being tried for going to Afganistan and doing bad things to Afgans (though he was part of a group that did), he's being tried for trying to harm (or conspiring to harm, or actually harming) Americans. Weather or not he's guilty will be decided by the courts - but he should feel lucky that he has the right to a trial. If some guy in BFE kills some people in France, I have no problem with that guy going to trial in France. If some American kid vandalizes some cars in Singapore, I have no problem with him getting tried and convicted (and flogged) in Singapore.
I don't mean to defend Bush (heck, half of America voted against him), but Europeans should remember the old saying "Nobody beats up my little brother but me."
We'd also be using dynamos to generate alternating current, and transformers to change the current to various useful voltages, to power such crazy devices as flourescent lighting and AC motors. Not to mention we'd be transmitting all sorts of signals and communications though the air via radio waves.
The FDA has strict standards for listing nutrition information on food. A simple, consistant, easy to read, strictly formatted box shows you what's in it and how bad it is for you. IMHO, it works well (even for your average idiot at the grocery store), and is a Good Idea. Would it be so hard to do the same thing for software? Before installing, it presents the user a concise, consistantly formatted box that shows the user what the software does, what files it installs, what services/ports it uses over the internet, what information it collects, stores, uses and shares, and with whom it shares the information. Anybody who creates software that doesn't fit this policy gets heavily fined/jailed/deported/bludgeoned/etc.
In the lates issue of Duh! magazine:
Health: Cigarettes cause cancer!
Politics: Research shows politicians like money.
Business: Profit helps businesses grow.
Computer security: Your employees' root access is a security threat!
Every time you sign up for some mailing list or discussion group, create a new e-mail account or alias for just those mailings. Bam, it's automatically sorted out by itself with extreme ease. If you have limited bandwith (or are checking, say, on your palm) sometimes, just check your important addresses frequently, and reserve your mailing lists for a once-per-day check.
If some site asks for your e-mail address to download a piece of software, or to register, make up a new alias and give that to them. If you start getting tons of crap at that address, you can just remove that alias, and they get it all bounced back in their stupid spamming faces.
Give one address to your cow-orkers just for work stuff. Give a different one to your Mom and other techno-nots that blocks all attachments. Give another one to your friends with brains that goes unfiltered. For people you don't want to talk to, give them the address of an autoresponder tied to Eliza.
Be a *Happy Camper* and let your addresses be *Bubbles* and you be just *You*.
Ignore this guy's sig. He deserves to be burdened with positive karma as punishment for posting something so insightful.
Sure X has some good "ideas", but even the most devout techie knows that the lack of an easy to use and easy to configure GUI is the major obstacle holding Linux (and other unicies) back from widespread desktop adoption.
As just one example, see how long it takes for a new Linux user to install a true type font and get it working everywhere. Compare that to Windows or Mac (or even a pre-system 7 Mac with that goofy Font Mover program).
If I build my own PC and install Windows on it, I can give it to someone else and keep the copy of Windows as long as I remove it from the PC. This article implies that it is illegal for me to keep my copy of Windows if even if I give away the PC without it. If I install Linux, I can keep my copy and give away the PC with the OS still installed. Their statement is only true for pre-installed Windows (i.e. Dell installed it) where the license is tied to the particular PC.
All copies of the software on original disk or CD, including back-up and/or recovery materials
Manuals and printed materials
End-User License Agreement
Certificate(s) of Authenticity
This is misleading, and encourages institutions to only accept computers where these items all exist (i.e. MS operating systems). Such is not necessarily the case if, say for example, I installed Linux over the Internet.
Yes, once the machine and installed operating system is transferred to your school or institution you own the PC and the licensed software. You can upgrade via Microsoft Academic Licensing Programs...
Oddly, they neglect to mention that this also only applies to Microsoft software. What if the donated computer is a Mac?
These sorts of things are like Halloween documents that MS makes public INTENTIONALLY! You'd think they'd raise some eyebrows at the DOJ.
Gee, that sounds like the perfect way to punish someone who abuses their Monopoly power - give them a big contract!