Three years or so ago, a friend of mine started a Mac hardware review site. Less than a year later, he was getting more than one new product in the mail from various companies every week. One might make the quick assumption that he was just whoring himself for free hardware.
Not true. He wrote honest reviews (not to mention he was a good writter, which helped), which ment his credibility and popularity went up. He did no advertising but gets a lot of traffic because of this. And companies know this, so they send him this stuff. Sure, he's said "Hey, this product is crap" and that company has had to take a hit. But then a month later that same co will send another product, and if it's good, he'll say so and they'll make sales. He has no advertising on his site, either.
So while being a hardware whore will get you some stuff (Probably crappy stuff too), being honest will help you in the long run because companies know when sites will say anything and most reputable companies avoid them.
Re:No matter how careful you are, you aren't enoug
on
ID Theft Made Easy
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· Score: 0
How about the gas station that writes down your license plate information when you purchase gas w/o paying at the pump. It's just for their economic safety they say.
Well Bill, let me share some facts as a former gas store employee:
1) Even at upscale, nice gas stations, hundreds of dollars of gas gets stolen every day by people who just drive off. Although it takes a while to develop an eye for the people who are going to do it, some managers just say "write down the # for all of 'em" to make sure we don't miss it. With gas as expensive as it is, we can't let people drive away with $50 worth of gas in their SUV.
2) Without a license plate, they've got nothing. The security cameras are a joke, because they don't get a good enough resoultion to get the plate number, and no one is being paid to watch them. In fact, I don't know if we can even claim it was stolen without a license plate number, which means, yup, no police report, no insurance claim, nothing, it's all out pocket for the stolen gas without the number. I laugh at the idea of a gas station NOT taking down plates: they're asking to be stolen from and not reimbursed. Your so-called privacy ('cuz your plate is sooo well hidden that I'm sure no one else could get it) isn't worth the hundreds stolen per day, nor would it be worth it once a lot of people realized they don't track plate numbers and more gas gets stolen.
On OS X, if you have a user in the Admin group, you _are_ root.
bash$ sudo bash pasword: bash#
Simple as that. OS X has a bunch of SUID programs like the major shells, "su", etc. The default sudo setting is to let all Admin users (all non-limited users) to use sudo on all SUID programs. It isn't even an exploit, it's built into the design (apparently) to allow all Admin group users to be root in the way presented above. Given that AppleScript can use the Terminal (and thus bash) and can also be compiled into a.app file, it won't be that long until a virus spreads like the old e-mail "screensaver" ones did/do [since the program would need to ask for the users password during the install to use it to get root].
What the hell is wrong with you? Did I make you read it? My comment doesn't even have a positive score so it shouldn't be showing up on the top thread, unless you set your preferences to, in which case you're going to get a lot of comments similar to mine.
In any case, your response and the other responses do not do anything to prove my theory wrong, so they are equally as pointless if that is your criteria.
I wrote in the original comment "As far as I know." I wasn't being deceitful. I honestly don't understand what you have against my comment. You act like I'm the first person to ever say something based partially on incomplete information, history of a programmer, or intuition. I'd like to read your similar replies to all speculation about Longhorn and other behind-closed-doors projects in which people speculate on incomplete information or history of the particular company.
$0.05 is nothing, agreed. But Joe 13 year old is still going to fire up KaZaA or whatever the latest GUI P2P program is and download them for free, just because it's easy and he doesn't have a credit card to pay $0.05 for.
Just because the RIAA companies might loose CD sales doesn't mean CDs are doomed. CDs are still sold on any club on any night from the bands playing, so if the RIAA labels stop selling them, then Best Buy will just buy from a record label that will.
Do you need a pretty GUI, or do you just want the new functionality etc.?
The majority of Mac users will probably want a GUI, but then again, the majority of Mac users won't care that BT is out in version 4 either. But the work-on-unix-and-play-on-mac users such as myself will probably do what you just described.
Let's see... He didn't do it the first time, and no where on his site does it have a GPL notice (not that it's required to). If the guy aggressively argued that he didn't use PearPC the first time until he was faced with undeniable proof (prev/. story), why would he suddenly change face and go legit? But to answer your question, no, I have not installed the free demo download because I don't use Windows. Anyway, RTFAbstract: "Its creator, Arben Kryeziu, found himself in hot water last year amid claims the software was simply stolen from the open source PearPC project. With the code now under public scrutiny, it appears that such allegations are true." Your opinion may vary, but it's not the opinion of the article and the guy that wrote is has lost all credibility ever since October when "Ooops, turns out I totally ripped off PearPC... back to the lab to make sure I've obfuscated the code some more..."
Regardless, if English is your first language you should know that the qualifier "As far as I know" (which you quoted and used), means exactly what I ment it to say: "As far as I know." It means I'm not 100% sure. I could be wrong. If you have proof that I am, please show me, as (and I'm being serious) I'd rather be proven wrong than believe something that's false.
The GPL isn't a magic license that lets anyone do whatever they want with it. Yes, they can modify, redistribute modifications, charge money, etc, BUT they have keep the software under the GPL, and provide the source. Something that, as far as I know, CherryOS isn't doing. IF this guy wanted to create a closed-source PearPC installer, in which he acknowledged that the PearPC software is free and GPL, and that the close source software is just an easy to use installer for PearPC. But he isn't, so he's violating GPL.
Grandparent: while WinCE and its bastard brethren are a horrendous hack.
WinCE is soooo 2001.
Personally I like both Palm and PocketPC's, but I chose the PocketPC simply because at the time (a year and half ago) the PocketPC was better hardware for the price. Program X for Palm being better than Program Y for Windows Mobile is personal opinion, but for all intents and purposes, each platform has the same kind of software. And all the crud that makes Windows behave badly isn't really present on the mobile edition (at least in what I've seen), so the whole "XP sucks, so PockePCs must too" kind of talk is groundless and only serves to show everyone that you don't know what you (the grandparent) are talking about.
I'm 18 and from the 'States, and I've never heard of anything related to Azaria as a name, so I'd assume anyone younger probably hasn't either. My guess is that if one kid has to explain the reference to another kid to get an obscure joke, it won't catch on. A little OT, but the grandparent is reminding my of my bro-in-law that tried to think of every way someone could make fun of a given name before naming his kid. Meh.
The parent makes it really sound like it is, but no, no it's not. The big movie studios like consistency. They put out crappy buddy flicks every year because they know they'll make money, and a certain number of people will go to them every time. Doesn't make them good movies though. Doesn't make for a good OS either.
A certain amount of consistency is good, of course. For example, when I buy a car I expect the gas pedal to make it move. But that doesn't mean I want exactly 17.5 meters of cubic interior space and 17" tired and 28.7 MPG on every car I use.
Yeah, Microsoft is consistent. So consistent it takes them 10 years to innovate and they still support MS-DOS.
That's similar to just about any lame argument I've heard against Nintendo and it's "friendlyness".
I like how you assume I don't like Nintendo, or any game without gore. In fact, I love Nintendo's classic multiplayer games. And where did you get that "Why is a game automatically considered as not good if it doesn't have blood and gore in it?", I never said that! I just made a joke about a particular game, that happened to be a FPS, going in a completely different direction. So don't get all condescending because you *think* you know my opinions with a two-liner on/., please. But seriously, take a step back. Do you find nothing funny about the blurb in a/. post being about "holding hands"?
And for the record, I feel sorry for youif you get excited (enough to mention it in a news article even!) about a feature called "Holding Hands."
Holding hands? That has to be the lamest feature ever.
Coming Soon: Unreal 2K5! We've replaced running with skipping, and instead of bullets, you shoot love-beams. Also instead of robots, there's CareBears.
I have a pretty simple solution for my phone: It starts out on vibrate, then after 10 seconds or so will ring. That way, when I'm sitting in class I can mute it a few seconds after I feel it vibrate, but if I'm walking and don't feel it vibrate or it's in my backpack, it will ring and I still get the call.
I'm not exactly sure why you replied to my comment, but I did say that gaming has given me very good hand eye (or finger-eye, I suppose) coordination. I just think it's awesome that they get to game at work. Now if only I could convince my boss that games help improve my typing skills...
Anyway, are the $100,000 simulators you speak of simulate surgery? Because as much as I'd want my surgeon (sp?) to have good coordination and finger movement skills, I think also having simulated surgery training would be a benifit as well. Is the 25min/day gaming break intended to replace the simulated surgery, or suppliment it?
And just out of curiosity (because I didn't RTFA), what console was used in these studies?
I agree. KDE is very newbie-friendly, as I said before. I'm not trying to start another stupid "which desktop is better" thread (as I use GNOME/fluxbox and not KDE), but KDE has some very nice newbie-friendly tools. I've never had the "empty box" the grandparent speaks of. I will agree that it can be used as a powerful desktop manager.
Slashdot Mirror
Three years or so ago, a friend of mine started a Mac hardware review site. Less than a year later, he was getting more than one new product in the mail from various companies every week. One might make the quick assumption that he was just whoring himself for free hardware.
Not true. He wrote honest reviews (not to mention he was a good writter, which helped), which ment his credibility and popularity went up. He did no advertising but gets a lot of traffic because of this. And companies know this, so they send him this stuff. Sure, he's said "Hey, this product is crap" and that company has had to take a hit. But then a month later that same co will send another product, and if it's good, he'll say so and they'll make sales. He has no advertising on his site, either.
So while being a hardware whore will get you some stuff (Probably crappy stuff too), being honest will help you in the long run because companies know when sites will say anything and most reputable companies avoid them.
Well Bill, let me share some facts as a former gas store employee:
1) Even at upscale, nice gas stations, hundreds of dollars of gas gets stolen every day by people who just drive off. Although it takes a while to develop an eye for the people who are going to do it, some managers just say "write down the # for all of 'em" to make sure we don't miss it. With gas as expensive as it is, we can't let people drive away with $50 worth of gas in their SUV.
2) Without a license plate, they've got nothing. The security cameras are a joke, because they don't get a good enough resoultion to get the plate number, and no one is being paid to watch them. In fact, I don't know if we can even claim it was stolen without a license plate number, which means, yup, no police report, no insurance claim, nothing, it's all out pocket for the stolen gas without the number. I laugh at the idea of a gas station NOT taking down plates: they're asking to be stolen from and not reimbursed. Your so-called privacy ('cuz your plate is sooo well hidden that I'm sure no one else could get it) isn't worth the hundreds stolen per day, nor would it be worth it once a lot of people realized they don't track plate numbers and more gas gets stolen.
Yeah, but last time I did the neat voodoo dance I sprained my ankle.
On OS X, if you have a user in the Admin group, you _are_ root.
.app file, it won't be that long until a virus spreads like the old e-mail "screensaver" ones did/do [since the program would need to ask for the users password during the install to use it to get root].
bash$ sudo bash
pasword:
bash#
Simple as that. OS X has a bunch of SUID programs like the major shells, "su", etc. The default sudo setting is to let all Admin users (all non-limited users) to use sudo on all SUID programs. It isn't even an exploit, it's built into the design (apparently) to allow all Admin group users to be root in the way presented above. Given that AppleScript can use the Terminal (and thus bash) and can also be compiled into a
What the hell is wrong with you? Did I make you read it? My comment doesn't even have a positive score so it shouldn't be showing up on the top thread, unless you set your preferences to, in which case you're going to get a lot of comments similar to mine.
In any case, your response and the other responses do not do anything to prove my theory wrong, so they are equally as pointless if that is your criteria.
I wrote in the original comment "As far as I know." I wasn't being deceitful. I honestly don't understand what you have against my comment. You act like I'm the first person to ever say something based partially on incomplete information, history of a programmer, or intuition. I'd like to read your similar replies to all speculation about Longhorn and other behind-closed-doors projects in which people speculate on incomplete information or history of the particular company.
$0.05 is nothing, agreed. But Joe 13 year old is still going to fire up KaZaA or whatever the latest GUI P2P program is and download them for free, just because it's easy and he doesn't have a credit card to pay $0.05 for.
Just because the RIAA companies might loose CD sales doesn't mean CDs are doomed. CDs are still sold on any club on any night from the bands playing, so if the RIAA labels stop selling them, then Best Buy will just buy from a record label that will.
Do you need a pretty GUI, or do you just want the new functionality etc.?
The majority of Mac users will probably want a GUI, but then again, the majority of Mac users won't care that BT is out in version 4 either. But the work-on-unix-and-play-on-mac users such as myself will probably do what you just described.
This article would be more interesting if it read "Mount St. Helens Shoots Load"
Let's see... He didn't do it the first time, and no where on his site does it have a GPL notice (not that it's required to). If the guy aggressively argued that he didn't use PearPC the first time until he was faced with undeniable proof (prev /. story), why would he suddenly change face and go legit? But to answer your question, no, I have not installed the free demo download because I don't use Windows. Anyway, RTFAbstract: "Its creator, Arben Kryeziu, found himself in hot water last year amid claims the software was simply stolen from the open source PearPC project. With the code now under public scrutiny, it appears that such allegations are true." Your opinion may vary, but it's not the opinion of the article and the guy that wrote is has lost all credibility ever since October when "Ooops, turns out I totally ripped off PearPC... back to the lab to make sure I've obfuscated the code some more..."
Regardless, if English is your first language you should know that the qualifier "As far as I know" (which you quoted and used), means exactly what I ment it to say: "As far as I know." It means I'm not 100% sure. I could be wrong. If you have proof that I am, please show me, as (and I'm being serious) I'd rather be proven wrong than believe something that's false.
Doh! Typo:
"easy to use installer for PearPC, he'd be fine. But he isn't..."
The GPL isn't a magic license that lets anyone do whatever they want with it. Yes, they can modify, redistribute modifications, charge money, etc, BUT they have keep the software under the GPL, and provide the source. Something that, as far as I know, CherryOS isn't doing. IF this guy wanted to create a closed-source PearPC installer, in which he acknowledged that the PearPC software is free and GPL, and that the close source software is just an easy to use installer for PearPC. But he isn't, so he's violating GPL.
Grandparent:
while WinCE and its bastard brethren are a horrendous hack.
WinCE is soooo 2001.
Personally I like both Palm and PocketPC's, but I chose the PocketPC simply because at the time (a year and half ago) the PocketPC was better hardware for the price. Program X for Palm being better than Program Y for Windows Mobile is personal opinion, but for all intents and purposes, each platform has the same kind of software. And all the crud that makes Windows behave badly isn't really present on the mobile edition (at least in what I've seen), so the whole "XP sucks, so PockePCs must too" kind of talk is groundless and only serves to show everyone that you don't know what you (the grandparent) are talking about.
I'm 18 and from the 'States, and I've never heard of anything related to Azaria as a name, so I'd assume anyone younger probably hasn't either. My guess is that if one kid has to explain the reference to another kid to get an obscure joke, it won't catch on. A little OT, but the grandparent is reminding my of my bro-in-law that tried to think of every way someone could make fun of a given name before naming his kid. Meh.
Ra.. aise?
Must be a compliment.
You're pretty 'raised' yourself, dude!
Consistency is not always good.
The parent makes it really sound like it is, but no, no it's not. The big movie studios like consistency. They put out crappy buddy flicks every year because they know they'll make money, and a certain number of people will go to them every time. Doesn't make them good movies though. Doesn't make for a good OS either.
A certain amount of consistency is good, of course. For example, when I buy a car I expect the gas pedal to make it move. But that doesn't mean I want exactly 17.5 meters of cubic interior space and 17" tired and 28.7 MPG on every car I use.
Yeah, Microsoft is consistent. So consistent it takes them 10 years to innovate and they still support MS-DOS.
No, it's twice as hard. 2^129 is twice as many possibile combinations as 2^128.
The new standard is 129 bit encryption. Takes twice as long to crack.
That, or one more than 303infinity.
I like how you assume I don't like Nintendo, or any game without gore. In fact, I love Nintendo's classic multiplayer games. And where did you get that "Why is a game automatically considered as not good if it doesn't have blood and gore in it?", I never said that! I just made a joke about a particular game, that happened to be a FPS, going in a completely different direction. So don't get all condescending because you *think* you know my opinions with a two-liner on /., please. But seriously, take a step back. Do you find nothing funny about the blurb in a /. post being about "holding hands"?
And for the record, I feel sorry for you if you get excited (enough to mention it in a news article even!) about a feature called "Holding Hands."
"Market Acceptance Issues" (n): It sucks.
Holding hands? That has to be the lamest feature ever.
Coming Soon: Unreal 2K5! We've replaced running with skipping, and instead of bullets, you shoot love-beams. Also instead of robots, there's CareBears.
I have a pretty simple solution for my phone: It starts out on vibrate, then after 10 seconds or so will ring. That way, when I'm sitting in class I can mute it a few seconds after I feel it vibrate, but if I'm walking and don't feel it vibrate or it's in my backpack, it will ring and I still get the call.
I'm not exactly sure why you replied to my comment, but I did say that gaming has given me very good hand eye (or finger-eye, I suppose) coordination. I just think it's awesome that they get to game at work. Now if only I could convince my boss that games help improve my typing skills...
Anyway, are the $100,000 simulators you speak of simulate surgery? Because as much as I'd want my surgeon (sp?) to have good coordination and finger movement skills, I think also having simulated surgery training would be a benifit as well. Is the 25min/day gaming break intended to replace the simulated surgery, or suppliment it?
And just out of curiosity (because I didn't RTFA), what console was used in these studies?
I agree. KDE is very newbie-friendly, as I said before. I'm not trying to start another stupid "which desktop is better" thread (as I use GNOME/fluxbox and not KDE), but KDE has some very nice newbie-friendly tools. I've never had the "empty box" the grandparent speaks of. I will agree that it can be used as a powerful desktop manager.