Every time the topic of IIS and Apache comes up, I am reminded of this quote:
At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don't.
What about my parents? I know anecdotal evidence blah blah blah, but there is a reason Best Buy, Target, Meijer, Jewel, Albertons, Wal-Mart, FYI, etc... have a significant portion of their store dedicated to music and CD's. If they weren't profiting off it, they would get rid of it. So apparently, a large portion of the population is still buying CD's in brick and mortar stores.
I do think that digital distribution is the future of the music industry, and that the record labels are becoming increasingly unimportant, but they are not nearly as dead as Slashdot makes them out to be.
In the current scheme of things, a third party won't be elected in. The average American has no idea what's going on in Washington, and they really don't care. Hell, most Americans probably don't even know their state reps. They wake up, they go to work, they come home, maybe make dinner, play with their kids, put on their TV's or play their video games. Maybe they catch some news, read the paper or on TV. But that is definitely not enough to properly educate the average citizen on their choices, much less give them a detailed idea of what is going on in DC.
I hear people quote that line often. I completely agree with it, but it poses some interesting problems. Lets assume the average, middle class American has both the Government and major corporations working against him. Which is pretty true as it is.
First, you'd have to get a significant amount of the population off their asses. You'd have to convince them that Jet Skis, BMW's, and smartphones are not actually necessary. Because, lets face it, if you abolish the US Government.. those commodities will disappear pretty quickly (at least for a short time.)
Then there's the method. Let's say you go with civil disobedience (we should start with non-violence, anyways.) In our hypothetical situation, you get 30% of American workers to stop going to work (I cannot imagine what you would have to do to convince that many people to revolt.) Even then, there are loads of American families living below the poverty line, illegal immigrants, and people looking for part-time second jobs (for the service industry, anything else could be outsourced). What's to stop those companies from hiring those other people? Or changing their market? How do those people who left their jobs feed their families?
How about the violent option? OK, you (somehow!) convince enough Americans to take up arms against the government. The Armed Forces are going to be pretty reluctant to act against American civilians (Remember, the Army is staffed by people whose families/friends are revolting). So EVEN if you assume that the civilians do overthrow the government/corporations, what next? The dollar tanks, other countries and companies start getting rid of their American Dollars like they're bombs about to explode in their hands. The American economy tanks hardcore (worse than any depression America has seen) as the money flees the country.
What next? Does the UN step in to restore balance to the economy? How do we appoint a new government, with a new Constitution (assuming we have one). Whose job is that? Yours, because you led the Revolution? What about that angry mob of americans that want their gasoline and the SUV's to put it in? The ones that want telephone service? Power? Water?
I am not saying it's a bad idea, but it is not nearly as simple as that quote makes it out to be. 300 years ago, a revolution was as simple (ha!) as getting the rid of the armed troops in your country. Now, there are so many global implications (especially for first world countries, like US, the UK, Japan, etc...). The corporations are incredibly powerful, they have all the money, and money can indeed buy almost anything. I want to believe it is possible to change our government... but frankly, I don't know how such a task would even be approached.
I also bought some Fry's GQ boxes, but they Lindows installed. I can only guess that the distro was chosen to confuse consumers into thinking it was just a different Windows OS. I found Lindows itself to be lacking, but didn't play too long before I wiped it and installed debian...
Even if MS actually fixed their current product lines (or developed something new), would it ever get positive coverage on slashdot? Especially IE, as it is the software everyone around here loves to hate( not without reason). It seems to me that if ie 8 is actually decent software, the slashdot crowd will only ever pick at it's problems
I absolutely have lost interest of the politics concerning e.g. healthcare, economics, welfare, defense, infrastructure and what have you.
This is exactly what 'they' want. Not some sort of top-level conspiracy or anything, but governments can do pretty much whatever they want if the people don't care and aren't aware of what is going on.
In the US, I'm not sure if this is government planning, or media ineptitude. The media routinely focuses on non-essential topics, barely giving important political and governmental topics any airtime at all (and mostly mis-representing the facts when they do).
Since the people have no voice (or so they feel), they stop becoming emotionally involved in the process. They stop caring what exactly goes on in Washington, because they feel they're going to be screwed whether they know about it or not, so why not do something interesting or fun, instead of something they have no control over?
What is it about Apple products that make people willing to put up with all the crap they do to lock customers into everything. They do more bullying and steering of their customers through proprietary formats and schemes than any other company I know of.
Is having the newest Shiny Thing(tm) really worth putting up with Apple?
I am far from an Apple fanboy, I own precisely one Apple device, an iPhone 3G. It actually was not my first choice in smartphones, I initially bought an HTC Tilt running Windows Mobile 6. After the headache of trying to navigate the interface, horrible touch screen sensitivity (even the stylus was a little difficult to use, fingers? Out of the question). The killer was installing 3rd part apps. Half the apps I tried I could not get working with less than an hour worth of work. I never could get DivX working. Even getting the phone to sync with Microsoft's syncing program was a slight hassle, getting things to the phone and such. The HTC Tilt was sleek and sexy, but it was just missing intuitiveness, even if it had more features than the iPhone(java, tethering, access to the file system), it was a pain to use.
So I took it back to the AT&T store, and played with the iPhone for about thirty minutes. And it just worked. So I traded my phone back in, and took an iPhone home. iTunes/iPhone just work. Sure, I know that I am locked in, but my only real lament is lack of Java support (something that I am banking on Apple eventually including). Sure, I can only go through the app store, but... it all works. It works well as a phone, well as a music player, and works well for a mobile gaming platform.
So is it all about the newest Shiny Thing? Not really. It's about having a device that does what it is supposed to, easily with as little hassle as possible.
Agreed, I've become pretty reliant on ObjectDock, and I'd really hate to see that company get sued into oblivion. Stardock makes a quality product there.
It doesn't seem like Apple and Stardock would be in competition, though, since Stardock is clearly aimed for the Windows market (and Apple already has the Mac tied up with the dock built in), and Apple has not released a dock for Windows (and I somehow doubt they will).
Mod parent up.
FEAR had an amazing story that kept you wanting to play more, if nothing else than to find out what the story was. It was the first FPS I played that scared me, after playing all the Dooms, quake, UT, HL, HL2, it was by far the most interesting/emotionally charged FPS I've played.
Tommy:
Let's think about this for a sec, Ted, why would somebody put a guarantee on a box? Hmmm, very interesting.
Ted Nelson, Customer:
Go on, I'm listening.
Tommy:
Here's the way I see it, Ted. Guy puts a fancy guarantee on a box 'cause he wants you to fell all warm and toasty inside.
Ted Nelson, Customer:
Yeah, makes a man feel good.
Tommy:
'Course it does. Why shouldn't it? Ya figure you put that little box under your pillow at night, the Guarantee Fairy might come by and leave a quarter, am I right, Ted?
[chuckles until he sees that Ted is not laughing too]
Ted Nelson, Customer:
[impatiently] What's your point?
Tommy:
The point is, how do you know the fairy isn't a crazy glue sniffer? "Building model airplanes" says the little fairy; well, we're not buying it. He sneaks into your house once, that's all it takes. The next thing you know, there's money missing off the dresser, and your daughter's knocked up. I seen it a hundred times.
Ted Nelson, Customer:
But why do they put a guarantee on the box?
Tommy:
Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That's all it is, isn't it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer's sake, for your daughter's sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.
Ted Nelson, Customer:
[pause] Okay, I'll buy from you.
Ah, I guess so. I didn't think of it like that, I am so used to having scheduled raid times. In that case, yea, I could see issues happening there, but I'm not sure WoW (or any MMO) is to blame, but the person who chooses to PUG constantly instead of spend time with loved ones. (I have scheduled raids, but I spend time with my girlfriend on other nights/before the raids)
even ignore their wife/girlfriend's advances because they feel some silly raid obligation or somesuch
Would you say the same thing if the guy was on, say, a softball team that held a practice 2 nights a week, and a game once a week?
Honestly, raiding in an MMO is like playing any other team activity that requires a large group of people to come together at a set time. What difference does it make if I don't have to leave my house to play?
The difference is the main page. Sure, we geeks are savvy enough to go only to yahoo's search page, but when the default page on the root domain is so cluttered, far less likely to use it (if all I'm looking for is search)
Hello Farenheit 451.
At least, that's what it sounds like to me. I don't know the exact quote, but it goes along the lines of; "There were so many novels, soon people just began reading the Reader's Digest version, just a snippet of all the classics. Soon that became too much, and so all that was left was flashy magazine articles." If someone can find the exact quote, that would be great.
That is what this article seems to me. It seems that people don't want to invest the time to actually learn or research something, and so they'd prefer the condensed version, the sound bytes, if you will.
Slashdot Mirror
At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don't.
http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html
What about my parents? I know anecdotal evidence blah blah blah, but there is a reason Best Buy, Target, Meijer, Jewel, Albertons, Wal-Mart, FYI, etc... have a significant portion of their store dedicated to music and CD's. If they weren't profiting off it, they would get rid of it. So apparently, a large portion of the population is still buying CD's in brick and mortar stores.
I do think that digital distribution is the future of the music industry, and that the record labels are becoming increasingly unimportant, but they are not nearly as dead as Slashdot makes them out to be.
In the current scheme of things, a third party won't be elected in. The average American has no idea what's going on in Washington, and they really don't care. Hell, most Americans probably don't even know their state reps. They wake up, they go to work, they come home, maybe make dinner, play with their kids, put on their TV's or play their video games. Maybe they catch some news, read the paper or on TV. But that is definitely not enough to properly educate the average citizen on their choices, much less give them a detailed idea of what is going on in DC.
I hear people quote that line often. I completely agree with it, but it poses some interesting problems. Lets assume the average, middle class American has both the Government and major corporations working against him. Which is pretty true as it is.
First, you'd have to get a significant amount of the population off their asses. You'd have to convince them that Jet Skis, BMW's, and smartphones are not actually necessary. Because, lets face it, if you abolish the US Government.. those commodities will disappear pretty quickly (at least for a short time.)
Then there's the method. Let's say you go with civil disobedience (we should start with non-violence, anyways.) In our hypothetical situation, you get 30% of American workers to stop going to work (I cannot imagine what you would have to do to convince that many people to revolt.) Even then, there are loads of American families living below the poverty line, illegal immigrants, and people looking for part-time second jobs (for the service industry, anything else could be outsourced). What's to stop those companies from hiring those other people? Or changing their market? How do those people who left their jobs feed their families?
How about the violent option? OK, you (somehow!) convince enough Americans to take up arms against the government. The Armed Forces are going to be pretty reluctant to act against American civilians (Remember, the Army is staffed by people whose families/friends are revolting). So EVEN if you assume that the civilians do overthrow the government/corporations, what next? The dollar tanks, other countries and companies start getting rid of their American Dollars like they're bombs about to explode in their hands. The American economy tanks hardcore (worse than any depression America has seen) as the money flees the country.
What next? Does the UN step in to restore balance to the economy? How do we appoint a new government, with a new Constitution (assuming we have one). Whose job is that? Yours, because you led the Revolution? What about that angry mob of americans that want their gasoline and the SUV's to put it in? The ones that want telephone service? Power? Water?
I am not saying it's a bad idea, but it is not nearly as simple as that quote makes it out to be. 300 years ago, a revolution was as simple (ha!) as getting the rid of the armed troops in your country. Now, there are so many global implications (especially for first world countries, like US, the UK, Japan, etc...). The corporations are incredibly powerful, they have all the money, and money can indeed buy almost anything. I want to believe it is possible to change our government... but frankly, I don't know how such a task would even be approached.
Every time I read about space debris and its implications, I am reminded of the scene from Wall-E when the ship leaves earth...
What defines the media?
Where is the +1 Depressing option?
I also bought some Fry's GQ boxes, but they Lindows installed. I can only guess that the distro was chosen to confuse consumers into thinking it was just a different Windows OS. I found Lindows itself to be lacking, but didn't play too long before I wiped it and installed debian...
Wouldn't it have just been easier to say brother-in-law?
Even if MS actually fixed their current product lines (or developed something new), would it ever get positive coverage on slashdot? Especially IE, as it is the software everyone around here loves to hate( not without reason). It seems to me that if ie 8 is actually decent software, the slashdot crowd will only ever pick at it's problems
This is exactly what 'they' want. Not some sort of top-level conspiracy or anything, but governments can do pretty much whatever they want if the people don't care and aren't aware of what is going on.
In the US, I'm not sure if this is government planning, or media ineptitude. The media routinely focuses on non-essential topics, barely giving important political and governmental topics any airtime at all (and mostly mis-representing the facts when they do).
Since the people have no voice (or so they feel), they stop becoming emotionally involved in the process. They stop caring what exactly goes on in Washington, because they feel they're going to be screwed whether they know about it or not, so why not do something interesting or fun, instead of something they have no control over?
I am far from an Apple fanboy, I own precisely one Apple device, an iPhone 3G. It actually was not my first choice in smartphones, I initially bought an HTC Tilt running Windows Mobile 6. After the headache of trying to navigate the interface, horrible touch screen sensitivity (even the stylus was a little difficult to use, fingers? Out of the question). The killer was installing 3rd part apps. Half the apps I tried I could not get working with less than an hour worth of work. I never could get DivX working. Even getting the phone to sync with Microsoft's syncing program was a slight hassle, getting things to the phone and such. The HTC Tilt was sleek and sexy, but it was just missing intuitiveness, even if it had more features than the iPhone(java, tethering, access to the file system), it was a pain to use.
So I took it back to the AT&T store, and played with the iPhone for about thirty minutes. And it just worked. So I traded my phone back in, and took an iPhone home. iTunes/iPhone just work. Sure, I know that I am locked in, but my only real lament is lack of Java support (something that I am banking on Apple eventually including). Sure, I can only go through the app store, but... it all works. It works well as a phone, well as a music player, and works well for a mobile gaming platform.
So is it all about the newest Shiny Thing? Not really. It's about having a device that does what it is supposed to, easily with as little hassle as possible.
Agreed, I've become pretty reliant on ObjectDock, and I'd really hate to see that company get sued into oblivion. Stardock makes a quality product there.
It doesn't seem like Apple and Stardock would be in competition, though, since Stardock is clearly aimed for the Windows market (and Apple already has the Mac tied up with the dock built in), and Apple has not released a dock for Windows (and I somehow doubt they will).
Check out the first link that appears when searching on "World of Warcraft"
Moron?
Mod parent up. FEAR had an amazing story that kept you wanting to play more, if nothing else than to find out what the story was. It was the first FPS I played that scared me, after playing all the Dooms, quake, UT, HL, HL2, it was by far the most interesting/emotionally charged FPS I've played.
Tommy: Let's think about this for a sec, Ted, why would somebody put a guarantee on a box? Hmmm, very interesting.
Ted Nelson, Customer: Go on, I'm listening.
Tommy: Here's the way I see it, Ted. Guy puts a fancy guarantee on a box 'cause he wants you to fell all warm and toasty inside.
Ted Nelson, Customer: Yeah, makes a man feel good.
Tommy: 'Course it does. Why shouldn't it? Ya figure you put that little box under your pillow at night, the Guarantee Fairy might come by and leave a quarter, am I right, Ted?
[chuckles until he sees that Ted is not laughing too]
Ted Nelson, Customer: [impatiently] What's your point?
Tommy: The point is, how do you know the fairy isn't a crazy glue sniffer? "Building model airplanes" says the little fairy; well, we're not buying it. He sneaks into your house once, that's all it takes. The next thing you know, there's money missing off the dresser, and your daughter's knocked up. I seen it a hundred times.
Ted Nelson, Customer: But why do they put a guarantee on the box?
Tommy: Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That's all it is, isn't it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer's sake, for your daughter's sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.
Ted Nelson, Customer: [pause] Okay, I'll buy from you.
Ah, I guess so. I didn't think of it like that, I am so used to having scheduled raid times. In that case, yea, I could see issues happening there, but I'm not sure WoW (or any MMO) is to blame, but the person who chooses to PUG constantly instead of spend time with loved ones. (I have scheduled raids, but I spend time with my girlfriend on other nights/before the raids)
even ignore their wife/girlfriend's advances because they feel some silly raid obligation or somesuch
Would you say the same thing if the guy was on, say, a softball team that held a practice 2 nights a week, and a game once a week? Honestly, raiding in an MMO is like playing any other team activity that requires a large group of people to come together at a set time. What difference does it make if I don't have to leave my house to play?
Enter the Twitter sockpuppet...
It would be better if the media player let me play anything but "The King In Yellow." I think I'm going mad, I can't stop watching it...
The difference is the main page. Sure, we geeks are savvy enough to go only to yahoo's search page, but when the default page on the root domain is so cluttered, far less likely to use it (if all I'm looking for is search)
Gunnar AndrÃf©n
In other words, Slashdot hates unicode
Hello Farenheit 451. At least, that's what it sounds like to me. I don't know the exact quote, but it goes along the lines of; "There were so many novels, soon people just began reading the Reader's Digest version, just a snippet of all the classics. Soon that became too much, and so all that was left was flashy magazine articles." If someone can find the exact quote, that would be great.
That is what this article seems to me. It seems that people don't want to invest the time to actually learn or research something, and so they'd prefer the condensed version, the sound bytes, if you will.
You got modded as funny, but I'm not so sure it's a laughing matter. John Taylor Gatto talks about this in his essay, and also in his new book.