I don't know. I keep reading this about advertising science fiction in the States. Perhaps it's better done over here? I live in downtown Toronto. I didn't have a television until 3 weeks ago, I won't get cable if I can help it, and I certainly wasn't a fan of Joss Whedon. As I was out of the country for years at a stretch, I never saw a single ep of Firefly. Anyway a few months ago a colleague turned me on to the show, and I was quite pleasantly surprised by it (honestly, I was a bit turned off both Farscape and Firefly by the rabidness of the reaction on this site). So you can imagine my surprise when I saw a huge painted wall with the Serenity ad on it, 30' by 20'. I also noted during the summer regular bottom-front-page banners for BSG and Serenity in the Toronto Star, which is Canada's largest circulation daily.
And the license is made for unofficial back-and-forth! The EULA specifically states that anyone is allowed to redistribute the CDs and material on a purely non-commercial basis to friends.
Once you've managed to find a friend willing to let you have it, do check out some of the additional resources available for the game since 'abandonment'.
Check out FS2_Open at this site. As the parent points out, the source was opened some time ago, and there are Windows {binary and source for VS.net, I believe}, Linux and Mac OS X {source tarballs} versions available. The new source code makes a real difference in terms of playability, graphics performance and all-'round fun.
Once you start getting into the game, you'll find a large number of extensive mods for the game available as well.
Look, I realise you're trying to be fair and all, but he can't plausibly claim to not have at least seen a single online reference to mplayer, css, ogle, vlc or the bloody HOWTOs on the Linux Documentation Project. The DVD-playing HOWTO even flat out tells the reader to go out and get the codecs for encrypted DVD playback! That document is not new, either -- the latest revisions -- never mind when the damn thing came out -- is over a year old now.
Five minutes of proper Googling would have given him enough information to at least be a bit more curious. I'll split hairs here: He says he 'didn't find the answers' himself, and I would argue it's because he really didn't put any effort into looking. Unfair? Maybe.
On reflection, it isn't. Let's assume he doesn't want to fiddle with compiling, or doesn't know how. Nearly every major Linux platform has precompiled binaries for watching DVDs -- granted the provenance of some of these is a little sketchy because of the CSS issue, but, Christ, it is simply not credible that he couldn't figure this out by applying a bit of the grey matter.
In fact, a better AS qn would be, 'You know, I've looked online, but I just can't get my mplayer to compile -- someone please help, I don't wanna reinstall Windows to watch DVDs'. Or 'Is an interActual DVD the same as any other DVD, meaning I must use one of X, Y or Z to watch it?'
Sure, but submitting it to Ask Slashdot is just so much fucking easier. Think? We don't need to think, or expend any effort whatsoever to research our problems; that's what a discussion forum like Slashdot is for!
Next on Ask Slashdot: How to operate a flush toilet when there's no little black blob of plastic on the drop chain
Is there anyone who honestly believes that OSDir.com provides any service of any use whatsoever? Christ, it's the same set of 60-80 screenshots of the same window managers and office apps, just using different themes.
They could just make up the names of the themes and distros used and no one would notice the frigging difference...
The translation of the 'who we say Fuck to [sic]' :
Ceux qu'on emmerde profond:
Which, back in literal English, is 'Who is in deep shit' . I get the impression 'deep shit' means something slightly different to what we're used to in English....
I used to be a customs officer in Canada (unfortunately). Management told us never, ever to say to any traveller that 'it was a random search' -- precisely because there is no such thing as random. (If we ever did get to court with that phrase, that would be our last day working for customs...)
Think about it. In order for a law enforcement official to check you out more carefully, you have to be providing some evidence that would lead a reasonable person to think that you might merit further inspection. Being furtive. Fiddling with wires. Acting 'strangely'. The point is, if you aren't doing these things, you are therefore not providing that evidence to law enforcement, and consequently, you are no more likely than the next person to warrant / merit / deserve - a search. This means your search is, for lack of a better term, illegal.
Caveats? - This is only true for Canada. The US and UK may have different jurisprudence (I suspect not though).
- Individual LE officers can (in practice) and often do ignore these rules. Increased legal hurdles such as these ones (like your rights!) often translate into cases being thrown out in court, not against their being prosecuted in the first place.
Note: I am not saying I agree with any activity to get around these rules -- in fact, I think these rules should be better enforced. But they often are not.
has DSL with Bell (and they force you to have a landline with them as well - so no VoIP for you!
Hi there. I submitted the article - not so interesting.
Howewver, what I've quoted above - this is no longer true. You can now ask Bell for 'dry loop' DSL, which is essentially DSL without landline charges. Bell have only in the last 6 weeks rolled this out, and they are not advertising it (for obvious reasons) -- so anyone can reasonably ask to discontinue their landline, and continue with Sympatico HS as desired.
C: 'You're still paying for both, so it doesn't matter what each cost...'.
It would be one thing if MS figured it would be able to stick to these specs for a while (ie several years). But something tells me they ain't thinking like that...
You're right, there is. Remember how after 9/11 we had Taco and others going on about volunteering to help the rescue effort in NYC would not have space for OSS-specific appeals? 'Let's get the job done, and worry about the bits of it later'
Compare and contrast... I guess New Orleans just doesn't have that geek chic, so no one here talks about it. Now on the 'Girls Gone Wild' site, on the other hand...
For my part I have to agree with you. It's ameliorated somewhat by using Debian stable (this will change tonight as I'm finally getting DSL in) but Debian has got its own set of irritating problems from the flip side of shiny new instability.
I am seriously thinking about moving over to FreeBSD. I don't care about the trendiness factor at all; I just want my stuff to work consistently at as high performance as it can muster.
My first-ever foreign trip outside Italy (I was working for a solar power firm in the south) was to RWE Schott Solar's facilities near Frankfurt. As an icebreaker our hosts gave each of us FreePlay windup radios.
I used my radio for the next two years in just about every situation imaginable, many without proper electrical otherwise (the Mezzogiorno is unfortunately quite backwards in many ways -- often during the summer we would have weekly blackouts and no water in the evenings).
Solar's fine if you can forget about something for a few hours. But, elbow grease usually is more convenient.
I only stopped using the radio when I gave it away. Still miss using it though.
Well, that's not a huge concern. After all, if it were true, you would see quite a few more moving mounts for solar panels (I've only seen one set at a plant in southern Italy, near Bari).
Usually for larger (ie./ house-sized) installs the engineer calculates insolation values for a variety of south-facing degree mounts (in the northern hemisphere, everybody looks south) and just picks the optimum one, ignoring the rest. It's not that other angles don't work, they just don't work as well.
As well, solar panels themselves do also suffer from overheating issues, but obviously these are nowhere near the same level of concern you would see with laptops.
-- The main reasons we don't see wind-power generators for laptops are simply bulk, high thresholds for power generation, wear-and-tear, and cost. Wind generates much more power on average than the sun, but that efficiency comes at a cost: wind turbines suffer from mechanical wear-and-tear, because they have moving parts.
In practical terms you really should have a steady wind of approx. 3-5 metres per second to generate a good current. This is not a lot, but steady is the problem. At low altitudes (ie. ground level) you might get speed, but sustainability is the key. That wind might drop to nothing one minute, then gust the next. And quite frankly, if there is a steady wind of that strength or above, I don't think I would want to have my laptop sitting outside, hooked up to the generator!
Sure, but you are missing is that the computer-using world has been distorted by Windows' dominance. Windows is what the majority of desktop users uses, so 'using computers' means 'using Windows'.
You may have found it better to use Linux, and better to train others without the albatross of Microsoft. But for those users without the benefit of a local Linux-experienced geek to help them out, a Windows-alike may be an easier way of exploring alternative OSes.
I actually agree with you in principle, but I meet people who call themselves developers and admin staff each and every single day and a lot of them have never bothered to even install a distro. They've heard of Linux, and that's about it. Now, I am no expert, nor am I a guru. But I've used Linux for the last 8 years now, and I still don't see a lot of people using it.
You would argue that trying to appeal to these people by mimicking Windows is a mistake. I would argue that the proof of this error isn't in yet. And anyway, this is just one effort among many. (Are any of them really working yet??)
If you were in Linspire's shoes (money, access to programmers and other resources, etc), what exactly would you do to help spread the word?
I started on an LC too, in 1991 - my student work exposed me to dtp on the Mac two years previously. And I certainly did love the Mac, used to proselytise for it all the time.
When I finished university I lost access to any computer for several years. So by the time I did get a new computer, it had to be a Linux box - wasn't interested in Win95 machines, and Macs were still too expensive.
Haven't looked back since. I think the current crop of Macs is pretty much perfect, but I don't really think Apple will make the price-point necessary to really threaten Windows marketshare.
That being said, the contortions that dieshard Mac fanatics go through to defend their OS of choice have always made me seriously wonder about their sanity... Christ, people, you're always going on about how a computer must be a tool to use, not something tried out just for its own sake... are Macs exempt from this intrinsically?
As another Canadian recently returned to Canada, I can tell you why they're fighting over it -- however stupid the whole notion is.
We are fighting with the Danish over this to enforce our sovereignty. Unfortunately, like private arena disputes over copyright, failure to exert sovereignty means you effectively cede control over an area. Lose it if you don't use it, more or less.
We actually have a First Nations military unit dedicated to looking after our interests in remote northern communities.
You can read an entertaining article about the Canadian Rangers here.
'And why did Darl tell the world, and Congress, that because Linux was written by volunteers, there was no way to know if it was clean code, that it was a "free-for-all", that "there's not a policeman to check in the code at the Linux kernel level to ensure that there are not violations", when they already knew that it presented very clear evidence of purity?'
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know. I keep reading this about advertising science fiction in the States. Perhaps it's better done over here? I live in downtown Toronto. I didn't have a television until 3 weeks ago, I won't get cable if I can help it, and I certainly wasn't a fan of Joss Whedon. As I was out of the country for years at a stretch, I never saw a single ep of Firefly. Anyway a few months ago a colleague turned me on to the show, and I was quite pleasantly surprised by it (honestly, I was a bit turned off both Farscape and Firefly by the rabidness of the reaction on this site). So you can imagine my surprise when I saw a huge painted wall with the Serenity ad on it, 30' by 20'. I also noted during the summer regular bottom-front-page banners for BSG and Serenity in the Toronto Star, which is Canada's largest circulation daily.
And the license is made for unofficial back-and-forth! The EULA specifically states that anyone is allowed to redistribute the CDs and material on a purely non-commercial basis to friends.
Once you've managed to find a friend willing to let you have it, do check out some of the additional resources available for the game since 'abandonment'.
Check out FS2_Open at this site. As the parent points out, the source was opened some time ago, and there are Windows {binary and source for VS.net, I believe}, Linux and Mac OS X {source tarballs} versions available. The new source code makes a real difference in terms of playability, graphics performance and all-'round fun.
Once you start getting into the game, you'll find a large number of extensive mods for the game available as well.
Look, I realise you're trying to be fair and all, but he can't plausibly claim to not have at least seen a single online reference to mplayer, css, ogle, vlc or the bloody HOWTOs on the Linux Documentation Project. The DVD-playing HOWTO even flat out tells the reader to go out and get the codecs for encrypted DVD playback! That document is not new, either -- the latest revisions -- never mind when the damn thing came out -- is over a year old now.
Five minutes of proper Googling would have given him enough information to at least be a bit more curious. I'll split hairs here: He says he 'didn't find the answers' himself, and I would argue it's because he really didn't put any effort into looking. Unfair? Maybe.
On reflection, it isn't. Let's assume he doesn't want to fiddle with compiling, or doesn't know how. Nearly every major Linux platform has precompiled binaries for watching DVDs -- granted the provenance of some of these is a little sketchy because of the CSS issue, but, Christ, it is simply not credible that he couldn't figure this out by applying a bit of the grey matter.
In fact, a better AS qn would be, 'You know, I've looked online, but I just can't get my mplayer to compile -- someone please help, I don't wanna reinstall Windows to watch DVDs'. Or 'Is an interActual DVD the same as any other DVD, meaning I must use one of X, Y or Z to watch it?'
Sure, but submitting it to Ask Slashdot is just so much fucking easier. Think? We don't need to think, or expend any effort whatsoever to research our problems; that's what a discussion forum like Slashdot is for!
Next on Ask Slashdot: How to operate a flush toilet when there's no little black blob of plastic on the drop chain
Is there anyone who honestly believes that OSDir.com provides any service of any use whatsoever? Christ, it's the same set of 60-80 screenshots of the same window managers and office apps, just using different themes.
They could just make up the names of the themes and distros used and no one would notice the frigging difference...
You're still subscribing?
Why in the name of crikey would you want to do that? Continuing to shoot money their way is essentially reinforcing their poor behaviour.
If it were me, I'd be thinking seriously about cancelling it and firing them a strongly-worded letter explaining why.
Ceux qu'on emmerde profond:
Which, back in literal English, is 'Who is in deep shit' . I get the impression 'deep shit' means something slightly different to what we're used to in English
you'd better get used to it.
I used to be a customs officer in Canada (unfortunately). Management told us never, ever to say to any traveller that 'it was a random search' -- precisely because there is no such thing as random. (If we ever did get to court with that phrase, that would be our last day working for customs...)
Think about it. In order for a law enforcement official to check you out more carefully, you have to be providing some evidence that would lead a reasonable person to think that you might merit further inspection. Being furtive. Fiddling with wires. Acting 'strangely'. The point is, if you aren't doing these things, you are therefore not providing that evidence to law enforcement, and consequently, you are no more likely than the next person to warrant / merit / deserve - a search. This means your search is, for lack of a better term, illegal.
Caveats?
- This is only true for Canada. The US and UK may have different jurisprudence (I suspect not though).
- Individual LE officers can (in practice) and often do ignore these rules. Increased legal hurdles such as these ones (like your rights!) often translate into cases being thrown out in court, not against their being prosecuted in the first place.
Note:
I am not saying I agree with any activity to get around these rules -- in fact, I think these rules should be better enforced. But they often are not.
has DSL with Bell (and they force you to have a landline with them as well - so no VoIP for you!
Hi there. I submitted the article - not so interesting.
Howewver, what I've quoted above - this is no longer true. You can now ask Bell for 'dry loop' DSL, which is essentially DSL without landline charges. Bell have only in the last 6 weeks rolled this out, and they are not advertising it (for obvious reasons) -- so anyone can reasonably ask to discontinue their landline, and continue with Sympatico HS as desired.
Thought you might want to know.
C: 'You're still paying for both, so it doesn't matter what each cost ...'.
...
It would be one thing if MS figured it would be able to stick to these specs for a while (ie several years). But something tells me they ain't thinking like that
You're right, there is. Remember how after 9/11 we had Taco and others going on about volunteering to help the rescue effort in NYC would not have space for OSS-specific appeals? 'Let's get the job done, and worry about the bits of it later'
... I guess New Orleans just doesn't have that geek chic, so no one here talks about it. Now on the 'Girls Gone Wild' site, on the other hand ...
Compare and contrast
Pretty fucking sad, eh?
Absolutely. With all the inotify/dnotify/whatever the hell it is, I've noticed that Linux performance -- honestly -- is not far off Mac System 7.
And not better either. Worse.
For my part I have to agree with you. It's ameliorated somewhat by using Debian stable (this will change tonight as I'm finally getting DSL in) but Debian has got its own set of irritating problems from the flip side of shiny new instability.
I am seriously thinking about moving over to FreeBSD. I don't care about the trendiness factor at all; I just want my stuff to work consistently at as high performance as it can muster.
My first-ever foreign trip outside Italy (I was working for a solar power firm in the south) was to RWE Schott Solar's facilities near Frankfurt. As an icebreaker our hosts gave each of us FreePlay windup radios.
I used my radio for the next two years in just about every situation imaginable, many without proper electrical otherwise (the Mezzogiorno is unfortunately quite backwards in many ways -- often during the summer we would have weekly blackouts and no water in the evenings).
Solar's fine if you can forget about something for a few hours. But, elbow grease usually is more convenient.
I only stopped using the radio when I gave it away. Still miss using it though.
Well, that's not a huge concern. After all, if it were true, you would see quite a few more moving mounts for solar panels (I've only seen one set at a plant in southern Italy, near Bari).
Usually for larger (ie./ house-sized) installs the engineer calculates insolation values for a variety of south-facing degree mounts (in the northern hemisphere, everybody looks south) and just picks the optimum one, ignoring the rest. It's not that other angles don't work, they just don't work as well.
As well, solar panels themselves do also suffer from overheating issues, but obviously these are nowhere near the same level of concern you would see with laptops.
--
The main reasons we don't see wind-power generators for laptops are simply bulk, high thresholds for power generation, wear-and-tear, and cost. Wind generates much more power on average than the sun, but that efficiency comes at a cost: wind turbines suffer from mechanical wear-and-tear, because they have moving parts.
In practical terms you really should have a steady wind of approx. 3-5 metres per second to generate a good current. This is not a lot, but steady is the problem. At low altitudes (ie. ground level) you might get speed, but sustainability is the key. That wind might drop to nothing one minute, then gust the next. And quite frankly, if there is a steady wind of that strength or above, I don't think I would want to have my laptop sitting outside, hooked up to the generator!
Sure, but you are missing is that the computer-using world has been distorted by Windows' dominance. Windows is what the majority of desktop users uses, so 'using computers' means 'using Windows'.
You may have found it better to use Linux, and better to train others without the albatross of Microsoft. But for those users without the benefit of a local Linux-experienced geek to help them out, a Windows-alike may be an easier way of exploring alternative OSes.
I actually agree with you in principle, but I meet people who call themselves developers and admin staff each and every single day and a lot of them have never bothered to even install a distro. They've heard of Linux, and that's about it. Now, I am no expert, nor am I a guru. But I've used Linux for the last 8 years now, and I still don't see a lot of people using it.
You would argue that trying to appeal to these people by mimicking Windows is a mistake. I would argue that the proof of this error isn't in yet. And anyway, this is just one effort among many. (Are any of them really working yet??)
If you were in Linspire's shoes (money, access to programmers and other resources, etc), what exactly would you do to help spread the word?
I started on an LC too, in 1991 - my student work exposed me to dtp on the Mac two years previously. And I certainly did love the Mac, used to proselytise for it all the time.
When I finished university I lost access to any computer for several years. So by the time I did get a new computer, it had to be a Linux box - wasn't interested in Win95 machines, and Macs were still too expensive.
Haven't looked back since. I think the current crop of Macs is pretty much perfect, but I don't really think Apple will make the price-point necessary to really threaten Windows marketshare.
That being said, the contortions that dieshard Mac fanatics go through to defend their OS of choice have always made me seriously wonder about their sanity... Christ, people, you're always going on about how a computer must be a tool to use, not something tried out just for its own sake... are Macs exempt from this intrinsically?
As another Canadian recently returned to Canada, I can tell you why they're fighting over it -- however stupid the whole notion is.
We are fighting with the Danish over this to enforce our sovereignty. Unfortunately, like private arena disputes over copyright, failure to exert sovereignty means you effectively cede control over an area. Lose it if you don't use it, more or less.
We actually have a First Nations military unit dedicated to looking after our interests in remote northern communities.
You can read an entertaining article about the Canadian Rangers here.
... but where can I find a copy of GTA:SA for sale now in Toronto, then?
Since news of this story broke all copies have gone up the spout here in Canada.
"Dammit, tell me where I can buy an old version of GTA-SA now?! Can't kill a person to get it now!!!!"
Except the editors are the Visigoths.
... the Sims 2 really all that expensive? :)
'And why did Darl tell the world, and Congress, that because Linux was written by volunteers, there was no way to know if it was clean code, that it was a "free-for-all", that "there's not a policeman to check in the code at the Linux kernel level to ensure that there are not violations", when they already knew that it presented very clear evidence of purity?'
Because Darl is a lying cunt, that's why.
So, how long before some smart-arse comes up with the idea for menless-dildos ?
Getting them erect might be a problem.
Christ, I think I've just grossed myself out.
You kidding? Fuckin' hell, the signal-to-noise ratio of this article is beyond insane:
- What exactly is GAC ? Shurely shome mistake...
- Summary ????