It was the Nazis (Right Wingers) who implemented the concentration camps and the Communists/Socialists (Left Wingers) that implemented the gulags. Both had similar results. The problem is not the political and social philosophy, but the implementation of that philosophy with no checks and balances in place to protect the people.
The OS should be invisible to most users. It should just let the user get what they need to get to done, done. If it gets in the way, it's a liability.
I currently use XP and 2K (at work.) They do what I need them to do, without getting in the way for the most part.
I've resisted Vista and will continue to do so at least until SP2, or unless I am required to by other factors. I'm a gamer as well, and until I can no longer buy the games that I want to play that work with XP/DX9 I'll stick with XP.
I always turn animations off. Smooth scrolling is usually the first thing to get disabled when I install an OS, or get given a new machine at work, since it slows down my scrolling. Window transitions are okay as long as they aren't slow.
The point is that I want to do things quickly, not wait while some graphics redraws. I'm a speed reader and can scan text as I drag the scrollbar down. Anything that slows this down is a hindrance
Eye candy in an OS is nice, for the first three days. After that I hardly notice it. I'm not really interested in the OS. It's just a platform to all me to work and play. Even though I like spiffy GUIs, all they really need to do is make it easier to use the computer. Leave the effects to the apps.
Possibly. Or maybe the failure is designed to allow them to say to all the xIAAs, "Hey, our market hated this and cost us a lot of money, so we're not going to include this DRM crap again."
Unlikely, I know. But I imagine MS hates been told how to develop their software by third parties as much as anyone else does.
Your developers must be working on the fastest machines possible, that the development budget allows. Your testers must be doing the testing on the average user computer.
Back in the day I was working on a 286 that took nearly half an hour to do a build, and most of that was the linking. I remember asking my boss for a faster PC and his comment was that he wanted us to work on the same machines that our customers used. At the time I didn't question that.
Later, I went to work for a company that had the opposite philosophy. We tested on average boxes, but developed on beasts, and we were massively more productive. At the same time, work became much less frustrating. I didn't go home at night feeling like I got little done except watch compiler logs scroll past.
If you don't want productive developers, then sure, give them slow machines. If you want to get the job done quickly, give them good fast computers.
I hope they don't. No movie could capture the essence of the original System Shock. They'd probably get Uwe Boll to direct it, and instead of setting it on a space station, he'd set it in France.
how everyone jumps to defend Google when they are rapidly heading down the same path of abuse of monopoly for which MS is repeatedly hammered.
Google are a big huge company with shareholders and a legal obligation to make as much profit as possible. It's becoming clear that their intent is to monopolize the web in much the same way Microsoft monopolized the desktop. They pretty much have a stranglehold on search. They are buying up online advertisers left, right and centre.
Google isn't a search engine company anymore. They are an advertising company with a search engine hook.
A good author will set up a situation where you fear for the characters in the situation, not for yourself. I've read dozens of novels where I couldn't put the book down because I needed to see how the protagonist was going to get out of the situation.
Oh, and as for personal fear. Try reading Stephen King. I was reading Pet Cemetary one night before turning the lights out and had to stop. Damn book gave me nightmares too. King knows how to make you afraid.
Eve is played on a single server. WoW, even though they have way more users online at any one time, is played over a large number of servers. I'm not sure how many players can be on a server at one time in WoW, but it's nowhere near 23178.
I don't think a game about simulating an anus really appeals to me all that much. Maybe one that simulated the whole body, but the arsehole... nah, not for me.
Not to mention all the scifi movies that have been produced over the years that are hardly ever shown any more. The Day the Earth Stood Still has already been mentioned, but how about Forbidden Planet, When Worlds Collide, Tron, The Last Starfighter, or anyone of a hundred semi-decent movies from the last fifty years. Surely, the rights to these classics would not be that expensive?
Instead, they seem to want to air 'original' highly cliched movies that are so mind-numblingly awful in story, acting, and effects. You watch one animal attacks movie and you've seen em all. I don't understand it.
A ST series that stars David Hasselhoff. Let's see... it could have him travelling space in a single person spaceship, that is controlled by a sassy, somewhat sarcastic AI. He could be helping all sorts of folks, saving Klingon ranchers from evil Ferengi corportations bent on cutting off their water rights. Each episode, he could boost to warp 10 and jump a black hole.
The problem is that you can't unrefine it.
When you take Uranium out of the ground it is usually processed in to the form of yellowcake, which is Uranium Oxide. Yellowcake is insoluble, as is the original ore.
After it has gone through the reactor, a lot of it is no longer Uranium. There's a lot of radioactive isotopes of elements like Cesium, and Iodine, and some of these elements are, or easily form compounds which are soluble. Also, a lot of these elements are used in life processes, and accumulate up the food chain.
So just putting the waste back in the ground would be a nightmare. You'd be putting a huge amount of soluble radioactive material into the environment, where it would gradually accumulate in your body. That is pretty dangerous.
That's not to say there aren't solutions. I remember that the CSIRO a number of years back invented a ceramic called SynRock which basically trapped the radioactive material in a hard non-porous ceramic disc. Stored in a safe place something like that might be an option. And, material science has come a long way since SynRock was invented.
I even wondered if we could drill a deep well at the edge of a continental plate that was going to be sub-ducted(?) in a few hundred years, and put the waste in there. In the mantle there wouldn't be anything to worry about.
Actually, it'd be a lot easier to start by colonising the moon first.
It's closer, so it's easier to get set up, and there is a lot less risk. It has a much smaller gravity well than Mars, so it would be cheaper to 'export' minerals or industrial goods. And that lower gravity would make it easier to assemble and launch spacecraft from the ground, making it a lot cheaper to continue expanding into the solar system.
"Lets just outlaw everything that might be bad for us. It can be like Logan's Run or something Fun!"
You can do that if you want. Personally, I'd rather have restrictions on things that are used by certain groups to primarily hurt OTHER people. These people use guns because they WANT to hurt other people.
On the other hand, most drivers don't want to get drunk and hurt someone. If they do they should have their licence revoked and do time.
It's funny how people like you equate giving up a right that really has very little use to living in a police state. Back in Oz, even with laws banning guns, I am free to do most other things that you do in the US. In fact I am more free, since I don't have to worry about getting shot if I accidently drive through the wrong area, or if I am walking in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They got their guns because the guns were readily available. If the guns were harder to get, then those fourteen year old gangsters doing the drive-by would find it much harder to get a fully automatic weapon. I can guarantee you that the young gangsters in Australia are much less likely to be able to do an American style drive-by.
The problem is Chicago is attached to Illinois, and Illinois is attached to a bunch of other states where presumably it's a short drive across the state line to a place where guns are not illegal. Also, presumably, you don't get searched when crossing state lines.
The evidence is that countries where gun ownership is restricted also have very low incidences of violent gun crime. But, close minded conservatives could care less about such evidence. They seem to say, "To hell with everyone else! It's my right, damn it!"
There's a hell of a lot of difference between the government banning something like ice-cream where, if misused, can only hurt yourself, and banning guns which are commonly used to hurt and kill other people. There's enough straw in that argument to create an army of scarecrows.
The difference is that gun control is a law and order issue, and that ice-cream control is a health issue. You can't use ice-cream to hold up a liquor store, or to murder your spouse... at least over the short term.
"Hand over all your money, or I'll use the neopolitan."
We don't have to outlaw guns. As I missed before, there are some legitimate uses. What's needed is a way to prevent guns being used illegitimately.
Australia, as has been mentioned, has some pretty tough gun laws, but people are still allowed to have them. You need to maintain a registration. You can't own certain types without special permission. And for certain weapons, you have to maintain a safe storage. So if you own a handgun which is only allowed for sports use, you have to keep it registered, and in a gunsafe, or at the premises of the shooting club. A bolt action 22 rifle (my fathers gun) has to be registered and stored safely, but not necessarily in a gunsafe.
Consequently, I don't have to worry about drive-by shootings, being mugged by someone with a gun, or otherwise looking down the barrel.
Except that most of the time, the bad guys take the gun from you and kill you.
I'm not against home defence as such, but the fact of the matter is that you wouldn't need weapons for home defence in the first place if guns weren't so widespread.
Still, you make my point for me. It only takes one round. A six shooter should be enough for home defence. An automatic works because because it sprays a huge amount of lead in the general direction of what you want to kill. A semi-automatic follows the same principle. Rapid dispersal of lead with out needing to manually load a bullet into the chamber. In most cases it's just not needed.
In Australia, the easiest way to stop a break-in is to get an alarm system, and make it visible to the street. The odds of getting broken into, when I installed mine a few years ago, were one in four unprotected homes go broken into. Install an alarm and the odds go down to one in twenty.
The fact is that most break and enters are drug related. A simple consequence of the drug prohibition. Legalising, or decriminalising drugs, and taking the distribution away from organised criminals would go a long way to easing violent crime and break-ins.
Sure a gun is a tool. It's a tool with only one use, killing other people. A knife has a few non-violent uses, as does a baseball bat.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. Wrong.
It was the Nazis (Right Wingers) who implemented the concentration camps and the Communists/Socialists (Left Wingers) that implemented the gulags. Both had similar results. The problem is not the political and social philosophy, but the implementation of that philosophy with no checks and balances in place to protect the people.
Yes. A brown one with white spots. Or a white one with brown spots... whatever.
Absolutely.
The OS should be invisible to most users. It should just let the user get what they need to get to done, done. If it gets in the way, it's a liability.
I currently use XP and 2K (at work.) They do what I need them to do, without getting in the way for the most part.
I've resisted Vista and will continue to do so at least until SP2, or unless I am required to by other factors. I'm a gamer as well, and until I can no longer buy the games that I want to play that work with XP/DX9 I'll stick with XP.
I always turn animations off. Smooth scrolling is usually the first thing to get disabled when I install an OS, or get given a new machine at work, since it slows down my scrolling. Window transitions are okay as long as they aren't slow.
The point is that I want to do things quickly, not wait while some graphics redraws. I'm a speed reader and can scan text as I drag the scrollbar down. Anything that slows this down is a hindrance
Eye candy in an OS is nice, for the first three days. After that I hardly notice it. I'm not really interested in the OS. It's just a platform to all me to work and play. Even though I like spiffy GUIs, all they really need to do is make it easier to use the computer. Leave the effects to the apps.
Possibly. Or maybe the failure is designed to allow them to say to all the xIAAs, "Hey, our market hated this and cost us a lot of money, so we're not going to include this DRM crap again."
Unlikely, I know. But I imagine MS hates been told how to develop their software by third parties as much as anyone else does.
Rubbish.
Your developers must be working on the fastest machines possible, that the development budget allows. Your testers must be doing the testing on the average user computer.
Back in the day I was working on a 286 that took nearly half an hour to do a build, and most of that was the linking. I remember asking my boss for a faster PC and his comment was that he wanted us to work on the same machines that our customers used. At the time I didn't question that.
Later, I went to work for a company that had the opposite philosophy. We tested on average boxes, but developed on beasts, and we were massively more productive. At the same time, work became much less frustrating. I didn't go home at night feeling like I got little done except watch compiler logs scroll past.
If you don't want productive developers, then sure, give them slow machines. If you want to get the job done quickly, give them good fast computers.
You don't give a tradesman blunt tools.
And Aunty was making gas weapons with high grade pig crap... and Angry Anderson.
I hope they don't. No movie could capture the essence of the original System Shock. They'd probably get Uwe Boll to direct it, and instead of setting it on a space station, he'd set it in France.
those were built to withstand re-entry without vaporizing or breaking open with parts and labor sourced from the lowest bidders.
how everyone jumps to defend Google when they are rapidly heading down the same path of abuse of monopoly for which MS is repeatedly hammered.
Google are a big huge company with shareholders and a legal obligation to make as much profit as possible. It's becoming clear that their intent is to monopolize the web in much the same way Microsoft monopolized the desktop. They pretty much have a stranglehold on search. They are buying up online advertisers left, right and centre.
Google isn't a search engine company anymore. They are an advertising company with a search engine hook.
A good author will set up a situation where you fear for the characters in the situation, not for yourself. I've read dozens of novels where I couldn't put the book down because I needed to see how the protagonist was going to get out of the situation. Oh, and as for personal fear. Try reading Stephen King. I was reading Pet Cemetary one night before turning the lights out and had to stop. Damn book gave me nightmares too. King knows how to make you afraid.
Eve is played on a single server. WoW, even though they have way more users online at any one time, is played over a large number of servers. I'm not sure how many players can be on a server at one time in WoW, but it's nowhere near 23178.
Not to mention all the scifi movies that have been produced over the years that are hardly ever shown any more. The Day the Earth Stood Still has already been mentioned, but how about Forbidden Planet, When Worlds Collide, Tron, The Last Starfighter, or anyone of a hundred semi-decent movies from the last fifty years. Surely, the rights to these classics would not be that expensive?
Instead, they seem to want to air 'original' highly cliched movies that are so mind-numblingly awful in story, acting, and effects. You watch one animal attacks movie and you've seen em all. I don't understand it.
Well, it has to be all those people in China, jumping up and down in unison.
A ST series that stars David Hasselhoff. Let's see... it could have him travelling space in a single person spaceship, that is controlled by a sassy, somewhat sarcastic AI. He could be helping all sorts of folks, saving Klingon ranchers from evil Ferengi corportations bent on cutting off their water rights. Each episode, he could boost to warp 10 and jump a black hole.
Sounds like a winner to me.
After it has gone through the reactor, a lot of it is no longer Uranium. There's a lot of radioactive isotopes of elements like Cesium, and Iodine, and some of these elements are, or easily form compounds which are soluble. Also, a lot of these elements are used in life processes, and accumulate up the food chain.
So just putting the waste back in the ground would be a nightmare. You'd be putting a huge amount of soluble radioactive material into the environment, where it would gradually accumulate in your body. That is pretty dangerous.
That's not to say there aren't solutions. I remember that the CSIRO a number of years back invented a ceramic called SynRock which basically trapped the radioactive material in a hard non-porous ceramic disc. Stored in a safe place something like that might be an option. And, material science has come a long way since SynRock was invented.
I even wondered if we could drill a deep well at the edge of a continental plate that was going to be sub-ducted(?) in a few hundred years, and put the waste in there. In the mantle there wouldn't be anything to worry about.
Is that HIV without the adware?
It's closer, so it's easier to get set up, and there is a lot less risk. It has a much smaller gravity well than Mars, so it would be cheaper to 'export' minerals or industrial goods. And that lower gravity would make it easier to assemble and launch spacecraft from the ground, making it a lot cheaper to continue expanding into the solar system.
And the humans will ride westward ho, systematically hunting the dustallo to extinction!
On the other hand, most drivers don't want to get drunk and hurt someone. If they do they should have their licence revoked and do time.
It's funny how people like you equate giving up a right that really has very little use to living in a police state. Back in Oz, even with laws banning guns, I am free to do most other things that you do in the US. In fact I am more free, since I don't have to worry about getting shot if I accidently drive through the wrong area, or if I am walking in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The problem is Chicago is attached to Illinois, and Illinois is attached to a bunch of other states where presumably it's a short drive across the state line to a place where guns are not illegal. Also, presumably, you don't get searched when crossing state lines.
The evidence is that countries where gun ownership is restricted also have very low incidences of violent gun crime. But, close minded conservatives could care less about such evidence. They seem to say, "To hell with everyone else! It's my right, damn it!"
The difference is that gun control is a law and order issue, and that ice-cream control is a health issue. You can't use ice-cream to hold up a liquor store, or to murder your spouse... at least over the short term.
"Hand over all your money, or I'll use the neopolitan."
We don't have to outlaw guns. As I missed before, there are some legitimate uses. What's needed is a way to prevent guns being used illegitimately.
Australia, as has been mentioned, has some pretty tough gun laws, but people are still allowed to have them. You need to maintain a registration. You can't own certain types without special permission. And for certain weapons, you have to maintain a safe storage. So if you own a handgun which is only allowed for sports use, you have to keep it registered, and in a gunsafe, or at the premises of the shooting club. A bolt action 22 rifle (my fathers gun) has to be registered and stored safely, but not necessarily in a gunsafe.
Consequently, I don't have to worry about drive-by shootings, being mugged by someone with a gun, or otherwise looking down the barrel.
I'm not against home defence as such, but the fact of the matter is that you wouldn't need weapons for home defence in the first place if guns weren't so widespread.
Still, you make my point for me. It only takes one round. A six shooter should be enough for home defence. An automatic works because because it sprays a huge amount of lead in the general direction of what you want to kill. A semi-automatic follows the same principle. Rapid dispersal of lead with out needing to manually load a bullet into the chamber. In most cases it's just not needed.
In Australia, the easiest way to stop a break-in is to get an alarm system, and make it visible to the street. The odds of getting broken into, when I installed mine a few years ago, were one in four unprotected homes go broken into. Install an alarm and the odds go down to one in twenty.
The fact is that most break and enters are drug related. A simple consequence of the drug prohibition. Legalising, or decriminalising drugs, and taking the distribution away from organised criminals would go a long way to easing violent crime and break-ins.
Sure a gun is a tool. It's a tool with only one use, killing other people. A knife has a few non-violent uses, as does a baseball bat.