This is a step in the right direction, but I'd like to see them held more accountable through stricter penalties. How about fines to fund those audits (make them pay to get audited? I like the irony), or better yet, refund people for all they're going to spend in both time and money when their identity is stolen?
For instance, the last sentence says, "When asked how consumers could measure service performance levels, Martin said that public Web sites already exist that let users measure their connection speeds." He's talking about limiting how much bandwidth you have based on how much you pay, which the telcos already do and have always done. You pay more for more bandwidth. If you read the rest of that article you'll see that AT&T has backed off of a tiered internet, calling it "economic suicide" and Martin says that they will enforce net neutrality if necessary. All they said is that they don't believe that new laws are needed to enforce net neutrality as they already have that power. TFA is blown way out of proportion to get more hits. Calm down."
Hopefully they'll hit them with more than a small fine. The EU really has no reason to prop up Microsoft. They don't put a significant amount of money into the EU compared to the US, and most governments are starting to see OSS as a viable alternative. The US, on the other hand, has every reason to let them do what they want because of all the money they have.
I have a Dell 600m with an extra battery. On one charge with a mid-level brightness it lasts about 7 hours. The extra battery was $50 with the laptop and slides in the side in place of the cdrom drive. It uses that one first and then switches over to the regular one without a reboot or anything. I would recommend this type of thing if you're looking for extra long battery life, especially if you can combine an extra battery with a laptop that gets good battery life to begin with. The 600m has above average battery life to begin with, but you can probably find better.
I only messed with it a little bit but here's what I got out of it. (Note: This was in Firefox 1.5...didn't try IE)
Pros
-The interface is pretty
-The image search interface is really pretty
Cons
-The search takes a long time
-The interface itself is slow as crap
-The results range from bad to terrible
-While the interface is pretty it's barely usable in many cases
--For instance, there's no good way to search for anything but web pages from the front page
--While I like the image preview type thing after an image search, I hate what happens after clicking on the image itself...you get the page in a frame and the image you clicked on isn't really shown anywhere until you ask for it, and then it just pops on top
--The slowness makes all of this standout even more
I'm with you on this one. I used to have trouble sleeping and just generally felt bad a lot of the time. I would drink at least one large cup of coffee and upwards of 4 cans of soda a day (I know, a tiny amount by comparison to some people, but it was enough for me). I managed to stop my caffeine (and most of my sugar) intake for about 3 months almost completely. After that I felt much, much better. That was about a year and a half ago. Now I drink one large cup of coffee and maybe one (diet) soda a day. Sometimes I feel like that is still too much, but overall I feel a lot better. I would recommend this type of thing to anyone who feels like crap due to the caffeine and sugar. If you can just scale it back and maybe switch to a diet soda it will help a lot. There's also exercise, but I'm not going to get into that on/.:)
I think a lot of us realize this. I just hope that people can see past our politics and realize that a lot of us don't want this any more than you would. I lived outside of the US for a long time and I've seen what happens. People hate American politics and that in turn rubs off and gets generalized to all Americans. But please try and keep in mind that there are a lot of people here that do not agree. Don't hate us just because we're American. We're trying.
Keep in mind that the UN is really just a bunch of countries. What the UN says (supposedly) is what the majority of the countries in the world are saying. That may or may not give them authority (depending on who you ask), but it almost certainly gives them the power to back it up...especially if the USA is on the yay side.
That may have been the most lies and misinformation that I have ever read in one place. Some choice comments:
"In other cases, the OpenDocument solution may cost more and provide less, but agencies and citizens will have to pay the price and make do."
Yup, definatley costs more, being free and all.
"It may be that an array of exceptional, low-cost OpenDocument applications will emerge in the coming years."
*Ahem*... http://www.openoffice.org/
That's about as low-cost as they come.
"Many technology writers, in fact, have cast a skeptical eye on OpenDocument and applications that support the format. George Ou, writing on ZDNet, recently compared the new Open Office Calc product to Microsoft Excel and found it lacking, writing, "[i]f someone from Open Office can explain why it takes more than 100 times longer to create and load spreadsheet documents and why it uses up several more times memory that Microsoft Excel to work with the same data, I'd love to hear it.""
So, OpenOffice Calc isn't as good as Microsoft Excel, and therefore the OpenDocument standard is no good...
One more.
"Until now, Massachusetts' citizens and government agencies have been well served by a competitive, merit-based procurement process for technology services."
And they still could be. He forgets to mention that the OpenDocument format is in fact open and therefore anyone can support it. Microsoft could make a product that competes here just as easily as anyone else (or more easily, considering the money they have to throw around).
I could go on and on. The entire article is horrid, anti-open source propaganda.
"If you have or would like to set up an online gaming operation, and want a regulated and secure environment that has tight, but not rediculous, gaming regulations - click right here."
I still don't understand how they're going to cover that much area using current technology. The signal just isn't good enough. The only way I can see this being possible is if they use WiMax or something like that.
When Sony announced that their basic console would not ship with an HD everyone jumped on them because developers would be less inclined to use functionality that not everyone would have. The original Xbox had a huge advantage in this because developers could always expect the HD to be present, and therefore would use it well, whereas the PS2's HD was barely ever used because not everyone had one. I really think both of them are misstepping by having more than one version of their console. If I want to worry about my hardware I go to my computer. I expect all my console games to just work. Really, of the big three this gen, Nintendo is the only one doing things right so far (and this is coming from someone who owns an Xbox and PS2, but no Gamecube).
We're going to have to island hop the galaxy. Bring tons of parts to the moon, build a ship and haul all the parts to Mars, build a ship, etc.
Only problem is once you land on (in?) Jupiter, you probably ain't leaving...
I have to agree with you here. While having them actually dock might be a bad idea (too risky), proving that they can get to the height where it is possible for them to dock is fine. But seriously, we have (at least the remnants of) a capitalist society. No matter what your thoughts are on that, we should use what we have to our advantage.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a step in the right direction, but I'd like to see them held more accountable through stricter penalties. How about fines to fund those audits (make them pay to get audited? I like the irony), or better yet, refund people for all they're going to spend in both time and money when their identity is stolen?
The difference being, of course, that those programs (while bloated) are actually accomplishing something useful.
In other news, Vista has been delayed, Google launched another beta, and fire is hot. More at 11.
"This is a sensationalist headline/article. Look at this article and read what he actually said:
http://www.networkingpipeline.com/news/183701554
For instance, the last sentence says, "When asked how consumers could measure service performance levels, Martin said that public Web sites already exist that let users measure their connection speeds." He's talking about limiting how much bandwidth you have based on how much you pay, which the telcos already do and have always done. You pay more for more bandwidth. If you read the rest of that article you'll see that AT&T has backed off of a tiered internet, calling it "economic suicide" and Martin says that they will enforce net neutrality if necessary. All they said is that they don't believe that new laws are needed to enforce net neutrality as they already have that power. TFA is blown way out of proportion to get more hits. Calm down."
Hopefully they'll hit them with more than a small fine. The EU really has no reason to prop up Microsoft. They don't put a significant amount of money into the EU compared to the US, and most governments are starting to see OSS as a viable alternative. The US, on the other hand, has every reason to let them do what they want because of all the money they have.
I'll believe it when I see it (even then...)
I have a Dell 600m with an extra battery. On one charge with a mid-level brightness it lasts about 7 hours. The extra battery was $50 with the laptop and slides in the side in place of the cdrom drive. It uses that one first and then switches over to the regular one without a reboot or anything. I would recommend this type of thing if you're looking for extra long battery life, especially if you can combine an extra battery with a laptop that gets good battery life to begin with. The 600m has above average battery life to begin with, but you can probably find better.
Pros
-The interface is pretty
-The image search interface is really pretty
Cons
-The search takes a long time
-The interface itself is slow as crap
-The results range from bad to terrible
-While the interface is pretty it's barely usable in many cases
--For instance, there's no good way to search for anything but web pages from the front page
--While I like the image preview type thing after an image search, I hate what happens after clicking on the image itself...you get the page in a frame and the image you clicked on isn't really shown anywhere until you ask for it, and then it just pops on top
--The slowness makes all of this standout even more
I'm with you on this one. I used to have trouble sleeping and just generally felt bad a lot of the time. I would drink at least one large cup of coffee and upwards of 4 cans of soda a day (I know, a tiny amount by comparison to some people, but it was enough for me). I managed to stop my caffeine (and most of my sugar) intake for about 3 months almost completely. After that I felt much, much better. That was about a year and a half ago. Now I drink one large cup of coffee and maybe one (diet) soda a day. Sometimes I feel like that is still too much, but overall I feel a lot better. I would recommend this type of thing to anyone who feels like crap due to the caffeine and sugar. If you can just scale it back and maybe switch to a diet soda it will help a lot. There's also exercise, but I'm not going to get into that on /. :)
So does this mean they fixed the performance issues?
I think a lot of us realize this. I just hope that people can see past our politics and realize that a lot of us don't want this any more than you would. I lived outside of the US for a long time and I've seen what happens. People hate American politics and that in turn rubs off and gets generalized to all Americans. But please try and keep in mind that there are a lot of people here that do not agree. Don't hate us just because we're American. We're trying.
Because that's comforting...
Keep in mind that the UN is really just a bunch of countries. What the UN says (supposedly) is what the majority of the countries in the world are saying. That may or may not give them authority (depending on who you ask), but it almost certainly gives them the power to back it up...especially if the USA is on the yay side.
This is like a pun gone horribly wrong...
They must be using one of those machines with 640K of memory.
If this is the kind of stuff that comes out, imagine how much more (and worse) remains hidden.
That may have been the most lies and misinformation that I have ever read in one place. Some choice comments:
"In other cases, the OpenDocument solution may cost more and provide less, but agencies and citizens will have to pay the price and make do."
Yup, definatley costs more, being free and all.
"It may be that an array of exceptional, low-cost OpenDocument applications will emerge in the coming years."
*Ahem*... http://www.openoffice.org/
That's about as low-cost as they come.
"Many technology writers, in fact, have cast a skeptical eye on OpenDocument and applications that support the format. George Ou, writing on ZDNet, recently compared the new Open Office Calc product to Microsoft Excel and found it lacking, writing, "[i]f someone from Open Office can explain why it takes more than 100 times longer to create and load spreadsheet documents and why it uses up several more times memory that Microsoft Excel to work with the same data, I'd love to hear it.""
So, OpenOffice Calc isn't as good as Microsoft Excel, and therefore the OpenDocument standard is no good...
One more.
"Until now, Massachusetts' citizens and government agencies have been well served by a competitive, merit-based procurement process for technology services."
And they still could be. He forgets to mention that the OpenDocument format is in fact open and therefore anyone can support it. Microsoft could make a product that competes here just as easily as anyone else (or more easily, considering the money they have to throw around).
I could go on and on. The entire article is horrid, anti-open source propaganda.
The government needs a spell checker.
Google OS! Now with more vendor lockin!
I guess a better question then is, how far from the APs do they expect the signal to be reliable?
I still don't understand how they're going to cover that much area using current technology. The signal just isn't good enough. The only way I can see this being possible is if they use WiMax or something like that.
Finally, my google fix. Now I can get on with life.
When Sony announced that their basic console would not ship with an HD everyone jumped on them because developers would be less inclined to use functionality that not everyone would have. The original Xbox had a huge advantage in this because developers could always expect the HD to be present, and therefore would use it well, whereas the PS2's HD was barely ever used because not everyone had one. I really think both of them are misstepping by having more than one version of their console. If I want to worry about my hardware I go to my computer. I expect all my console games to just work. Really, of the big three this gen, Nintendo is the only one doing things right so far (and this is coming from someone who owns an Xbox and PS2, but no Gamecube).
We're going to have to island hop the galaxy. Bring tons of parts to the moon, build a ship and haul all the parts to Mars, build a ship, etc. Only problem is once you land on (in?) Jupiter, you probably ain't leaving...
I have to agree with you here. While having them actually dock might be a bad idea (too risky), proving that they can get to the height where it is possible for them to dock is fine. But seriously, we have (at least the remnants of) a capitalist society. No matter what your thoughts are on that, we should use what we have to our advantage.