Millions of votes are 'lost' across the country, and some monkeys actually think that a couple hunderd screwed up votes in Flordia was the difference in who became president.
We have NO FUCKING CLUE who actually won, without manually recounting every single freaking vote in the country.
1) To those who say, "Hey, AltaVista is a business. Can you blame them?" Yes, we can blame them. Newspapers are a business, but you don't (well, you didn't once upon a time) see them printing corporate press releases as news.
Oh no, they're not swayed or biased in any way. They post the truth, no matter how it affects the parent company. No reporter is ever told that a story should be buried..
2) It's kinda funny to me how many people respond to this strictly in terms of capitalism. What ever happened to democracy? I realize that the original promise of the 'Net is drying up faster than liquid nitrogen, but still, someone needs to say it.
There is no democracy in business. The CEO is god, and you do what s/he says.
Let's imagine that Google goes out of business. Poof -- suddenly you can't do a search without having to turn to a paid search engine. Yeah, yeah, search engines suck anyway, but... unless I am running linuxisbitchin.org, they are a good way to get people to come to my site (I run a humor site and do not blanch at appearances of.aol in my logs). However, if $$$ is causing me to be marginalized, that ceases to be a tool for me.
Are you trying to make money on your site? Or is it just 'for fun'? If it's for fun, and it's a good site, you will be just fine with the internet version of 'word of mouth'. If you're trying to make money on it, how the hell do you think business work without investment capital? There are only so many commercial spots, you pay for the top spot. The cost of the top spot is determined by the demand generated for that spot. It's called supply and demand. You are getting free advertising anyways, and your whining about not being first in the list?
Ultimately, it seems to me the barrier to entry is being raised here. I understand quite well that search engines are not the only way to promote a site, but from a strictly democratic point of view, this leaves one in a situation that's like running for President with nothing but a bunch of bumper stickers, while your competition has access to the airwaves.
A barrier to entry? Do you show up in the search? Yes. Then who cares. You just got FREE ADVERTISIING. A search engine IS ALL ADVERTISING. If you're not willing to pay for GOOD advertising, then yes, you are running for president using a refirgerator box and a sharpie. Only a moron would do that, then whine when he gets no votes.
3) A philosophical question, really. The airwaves are supposed to be a public resource, according to the FCC charter. Since the airwaves are regularly sold lock, stock, and barrel to companies that couldn't possibly give a shit about the public good despite this, what protects the Internet, given that the infrastructure is owned by a zillion institutions and there is no charter to speak of?
The Internet is NOT airwaves. You can put up any site you want, at any time you want, and have EVERYONE in the world visit your site for a meager $5/mo at a hosting company. No restrictions. At least, nothing like the 'real' airwaves. Now you're whining that your advertisting (serch engine = The WORLD's YellowPages) should be free? Hell. Why should I have to pay $5/mo for someone to 'store' my message? That should be free too. And my Internet Access should be free, because I already bought a PC, and I have a radio, and the radio is free, so why not the internet?
Are you kidding me? They are searching and indexing the web, letting YOU use it for free!
Now you're complaining that your dorky little web site with pictures of your cats is being put further down in the rankings just because there are legitimate business with MONEY who pay for a search result to display them higher on the list.
Do you really believe the typical internet half-wit is looking for, or would even visit, your site in the first place? This is probably helping the internet more than anything else, by directing users to USEFULL information on the internet.
And isn't that what the damn thing is for in the first place? I thought we were all techs here who had open minds and could see things from different view points. That's supposed to be the strengh of this place. Apparently, you guys need to visit some non-PC/Linux/Science sites once in a while.
You guys are turning into old fogies who complain about EVERYTHING, and take it at face value, unless it MS.
Consider this: How much would a 'rogue' nation PAY the US to NOT retaliate when said nation fires a 'blank' at the US?
The leader of the 'rogue' nation can 'flex' his muscles for his people, the US can claim a success of the defense system, AND make some money off of it.
Or we go back to the old UFO theory. No US citizen would go along with a missle defense system that was built with the intent of saving the world from alien invaders. But what if there are? Many of you admit the US government doesn't tell all. Why, if there was proof, would they even tell anyone?
You people complain that NASA isn't getting enough funding, and the military is getting too much. Would you rather have NASA with no weapons come across a hostile race out there somewhere?
At face value, the military is worth MUCH more than NASA. So you point to ancilliary gains to promote NASA. Guess what, both groups provide much more than face value in the areas of R&D.
Stop whining, and pretend your whopping 10k of tax dollars wholly funds some program you favor. Stop acting like you fund the whole freaking government.
Where's the line that seperates:
"I wrote the software, and you will use it how I say."
and
"I bought this software, and I'll use it any way I damn well please."
Is the "bad greedy corporation" side just on the other side of where you happen to be? i.e. what doesn't benefit you freely?
Having visited the EComstation site, I don't understand what the 'hardware support' issue is. There appears to be just as much USB support in OS/2 as there is in Linux.
Here's the difference:
When I used OS/2 extensively, and you needed a driver, or some 3rd party app, you went to Hobbes.
Maybe IBM, if you wanted a FixPack, but more often than Not, Hobbes.nmsu.edu was the place to go.
Look at Linux Support. Freshmeat, sourceforce, cdrom.com mirrors... I think if anything has forked, it's where to find 3rd party applications.
How many times have you seen an Ask Slashdot, where the question is related to a type of app, only to get a million links to a bunch of different applications that were mostly 'discovered', rather than organized in a central repository.
True, Google/Deja(sniff) are definately helping with 3rd party support, but it would make thngs much easier if everything were centralized.
It seems to me, that any existing repositories each have their own lists. There's still too much searching.. We're networked people, lets combine them using SQL on FreeNet..:)
IIRC, Numlock status is also 'bonded' to each session, so if you have numlock on in one console window, it might be off in another.. Load the driver, and it should be on all the time (until you turn it off in an individual session...
Another thing to keep in mind was OS/2's timeouts when it came to an application not responding. IIRC, there was a timeout of at least 60 seconds before your 'End Task' dialog box would show.
Doesn't sound like a long time, but when you sit and wait for the PC to do something, it can appear that the system has locked up.
There was also a config.sys setting to change that timeout.
-Begin Rant-
Well yeah... When you're running your Proprietary Mitsumi CD ROM off your proprietary Mitsumi Interface on your SB16 card. How many of those 4 plugs did you try before you got the right one?
Oh yeah, your Packard Bell PB100 came with all that already installed.
Why did Win95 work when you first installed it? Because it just Dos 7, and Windows 4. So you used your DOS drivers to access proprietary CD from within Windows 4.
-End rant-
FYI, my Cheapo ATA-66 PCI card works better in OS/2 (and Linux) than it does in Win2k. (IRQL Less or not Equal? WTF?)
With EMX support on OS/2, you can build a lot of your Linux apps on OS/2, and run them in an X Session, or on the command line. Yes, you can get XFree86 for OS/2. You can also get Wine for OS/2.
I don't run OS/2 regularly for the same reasons I don't run Linux regularly. In fact, for my uses (Netware admin) OS/2 has worked better. Better Windows support with Netware shell support, and DOS sessions that run Netware DOS utils. (VMWare WORKS for that on Linux, but a Bicycle would WORK as transportation to get me 50 miles to work too...)
I don't doubt Linux can do more of that now than last time I tried, but some of you wanted an example of why you'd run OS/2 instead of Linux.
I'm guessing you're biggest expense is the traffic of those downloading ISO's..
With all the nifty things built into Kernel 2.4, I'm sure it would be possible to have volunteer mirrors, and when a user wants to download a file, you present that user with a site based on bandwidth availability...
Load balancing based on bandwidth.
Lots of details to iron out though... maybe each site check avg speeds of all the other sites, and submit those to a central site, which then arranges a server list by % of available bandwidth, with total bandwidth factored in... (A T3 site with %10 free would be higher than a T1 with %25 free...)
Man this country's fucked-up. Next week Slashdot will have a story about some 10th grader with a web site listing the names of the kids he hates, and he'll be sent to jail.
American SQL:
SELECT names FROM American_People;
WHERE age LESS_THAN 20 AND;
offense LIKE "Current News";
INTO Prison
So you mean to tell me that Earthlink is monitoring who is browsing from what POP, and to where on the internet? So that can use that information for what purpose?
The only one I can think of is customer service. Everyone knows someone who tries to dial into AOL on a busy night and gets a busy signal. Those boxes should also be giving usage info, but I don't see Slashdot throwing a fit over that. What do you do with that info? You decide whether you need more or less dial-in servers at any location.
This is the same thing for internet traffic. So what if Earthlink rearranges their peering to accomodate heavier volume in other areas? If I was an Earthlink customer, I'd be happy to know that they're making sure high bandwidth users who goto a similar location just might be re-arranged so as to not interfere with the rest of their users.
There's a HUGE gap between Home ISP serveice, and Corporate ISP service. While I can agree that Mom and Pop ISPs are good for the standard Dial-up user, they are a pain for the corporate user.
<vent>
I am currently attemping to move off of our current 'Mom and Pop' ISP, who provides us ISDN service, to a national ISP with T1 service. Unforunately, my predecessor had our domain name in his name, and the current ISP. All I needed was a name change to be authorized by them. That's it. Nothing more. The local admin ended up calling president of MY company, to whine about what I wanted to do.
Hello?!? We're moving off you. I don't need your DNS. I don't need explanations on how a Domain Arbitration would be needed if someone not related to the company had complete control of the domain name (what moron would do that).
Of course, the president felt like 'mom' after all this. Nobody need that crap. Especially when they aren't required to know those details.
At least when I've asked the 'evil' corporations to do step 1, they didn't whine to my boss about steps 7 and 8.
Re-read the WHOLE-PAGE. It's obviously a campaign for moving to Canada.
Not only do they have a cure for the plague's of the 20th century (They won't be plagues for the 21st, Canada has the cure), But the 75% of college chicks are having casual sex!
Yeah!
Oh yeah? I 'designed' one of these 10 years ago.. my senior year in High School..
Maybe I could sue for idea theft:) IP infringement. Hey, it was in my head first. (Assuming i can still find the papers describing my chair)
The was a certain manufaturer, who I can't remember at the moment (Komani?), that had a habit of putting the 'cheat' up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-B-A in their games.
This was back in Nintendo land (not N64, not Super Nintendo, NINTENDO)
It's been so long, I can't even remember any examples of what the damn thing did...Something with Super...something... aw hell..
My only real memory is a whole sheet full of 'cheat codes' my best friend and I discovered in Bubble Bobble...
>Critics of the company are sceptical about >whether the system will be reliable since it >comes on tape. > > "I just used the CD record feature >on my stereo" said Rob. "It works for music so >why not data?"
:( That's not funny. I used to save my data to 60 minute audio tape on my TI99/4a.
Slashdot Mirror
Millions of votes are 'lost' across the country, and some monkeys actually think that a couple hunderd screwed up votes in Flordia was the difference in who became president.
We have NO FUCKING CLUE who actually won, without manually recounting every single freaking vote in the country.
And how is this different from most Internet users? I got off an ISP who had their OWN Windows boxes shared with the world...
As if dial-up is 'secure'..
Oh no, they're not swayed or biased in any way. They post the truth, no matter how it affects the parent company. No reporter is ever told that a story should be buried..
2) It's kinda funny to me how many people respond to this strictly in terms of capitalism. What ever happened to democracy? I realize that the original promise of the 'Net is drying up faster than liquid nitrogen, but still, someone needs to say it.
There is no democracy in business. The CEO is god, and you do what s/he says.
Let's imagine that Google goes out of business. Poof -- suddenly you can't do a search without having to turn to a paid search engine. Yeah, yeah, search engines suck anyway, but... unless I am running linuxisbitchin.org, they are a good way to get people to come to my site (I run a humor site and do not blanch at appearances of .aol in my logs). However, if $$$ is causing me to be marginalized, that ceases to be a tool for me.
Are you trying to make money on your site? Or is it just 'for fun'? If it's for fun, and it's a good site, you will be just fine with the internet version of 'word of mouth'. If you're trying to make money on it, how the hell do you think business work without investment capital? There are only so many commercial spots, you pay for the top spot. The cost of the top spot is determined by the demand generated for that spot. It's called supply and demand. You are getting free advertising anyways, and your whining about not being first in the list?
Ultimately, it seems to me the barrier to entry is being raised here. I understand quite well that search engines are not the only way to promote a site, but from a strictly democratic point of view, this leaves one in a situation that's like running for President with nothing but a bunch of bumper stickers, while your competition has access to the airwaves.
A barrier to entry? Do you show up in the search? Yes. Then who cares. You just got FREE ADVERTISIING. A search engine IS ALL ADVERTISING. If you're not willing to pay for GOOD advertising, then yes, you are running for president using a refirgerator box and a sharpie. Only a moron would do that, then whine when he gets no votes.
3) A philosophical question, really. The airwaves are supposed to be a public resource, according to the FCC charter. Since the airwaves are regularly sold lock, stock, and barrel to companies that couldn't possibly give a shit about the public good despite this, what protects the Internet, given that the infrastructure is owned by a zillion institutions and there is no charter to speak of?
The Internet is NOT airwaves. You can put up any site you want, at any time you want, and have EVERYONE in the world visit your site for a meager $5/mo at a hosting company. No restrictions. At least, nothing like the 'real' airwaves. Now you're whining that your advertisting (serch engine = The WORLD's YellowPages) should be free? Hell. Why should I have to pay $5/mo for someone to 'store' my message? That should be free too. And my Internet Access should be free, because I already bought a PC, and I have a radio, and the radio is free, so why not the internet?
*Havokmon slaps all of Slashdot with a Tuna.
Are you kidding me? They are searching and indexing the web, letting YOU use it for free!
Now you're complaining that your dorky little web site with pictures of your cats is being put further down in the rankings just because there are legitimate business with MONEY who pay for a search result to display them higher on the list.
Do you really believe the typical internet half-wit is looking for, or would even visit, your site in the first place? This is probably helping the internet more than anything else, by directing users to USEFULL information on the internet.
And isn't that what the damn thing is for in the first place? I thought we were all techs here who had open minds and could see things from different view points. That's supposed to be the strengh of this place. Apparently, you guys need to visit some non-PC/Linux/Science sites once in a while.
Consider this: How much would a 'rogue' nation PAY the US to NOT retaliate when said nation fires a 'blank' at the US?
The leader of the 'rogue' nation can 'flex' his muscles for his people, the US can claim a success of the defense system, AND make some money off of it.
Or we go back to the old UFO theory. No US citizen would go along with a missle defense system that was built with the intent of saving the world from alien invaders. But what if there are? Many of you admit the US government doesn't tell all. Why, if there was proof, would they even tell anyone?
You people complain that NASA isn't getting enough funding, and the military is getting too much. Would you rather have NASA with no weapons come across a hostile race out there somewhere?
At face value, the military is worth MUCH more than NASA. So you point to ancilliary gains to promote NASA. Guess what, both groups provide much more than face value in the areas of R&D.
Stop whining, and pretend your whopping 10k of tax dollars wholly funds some program you favor. Stop acting like you fund the whole freaking government.
If MS has a web site that requires user auth, and they have a service that has user auth support, it would be senile NOT to use it.
All you NEED is a user/pass. The other info doesn't fucking matter.
Oh my GOD! You mean I have to give MS my personal username and password! They shouldn't be allowed to have that, they'll use it for evil purposes!
I hate the company as much as anyone, but let's not lose perspective here. Give me a fucking break.
How can anyone go an hour without seeing a gopher shot out of a cannon?
"Not going anywhere for a while?"
RING!!! "Hello, this is Brad."
"What are YOU doing?"
"No, What are YOU doing?"
"I wrote the software, and you will use it how I say."
and
"I bought this software, and I'll use it any way I damn well please."
Is the "bad greedy corporation" side just on the other side of where you happen to be? i.e. what doesn't benefit you freely?
Having visited the EComstation site, I don't understand what the 'hardware support' issue is. There appears to be just as much USB support in OS/2 as there is in Linux.
:)
Here's the difference:
When I used OS/2 extensively, and you needed a driver, or some 3rd party app, you went to Hobbes.
Maybe IBM, if you wanted a FixPack, but more often than Not, Hobbes.nmsu.edu was the place to go.
Look at Linux Support. Freshmeat, sourceforce, cdrom.com mirrors... I think if anything has forked, it's where to find 3rd party applications.
How many times have you seen an Ask Slashdot, where the question is related to a type of app, only to get a million links to a bunch of different applications that were mostly 'discovered', rather than organized in a central repository.
True, Google/Deja(sniff) are definately helping with 3rd party support, but it would make thngs much easier if everything were centralized.
It seems to me, that any existing repositories each have their own lists. There's still too much searching.. We're networked people, lets combine them using SQL on FreeNet..
I agree with the variable tuning... Always had to adjust the cache size.. that made no sense, but wasn't a big deal.
:), I played Descent. I also had a PAS 16 (you know the REAL 16 bit sound card :).
I never was a Doom fan (took over #doom once
Never had a problem with sound. I thought the coolest thing was having 4 copies of Descent running simultaniously on a P75 with 16MB.
And a 320x200 DOS game, was actually a 320x200 window when not full-screen... can Win2k even do that yet?
As in the Numlock always being off at boot up?
Theres a driver for that.
IIRC, Numlock status is also 'bonded' to each session, so if you have numlock on in one console window, it might be off in another.. Load the driver, and it should be on all the time (until you turn it off in an individual session...
try hobbes.nmsu.edu
There was a fixpack out long ago to fix that..
Another thing to keep in mind was OS/2's timeouts when it came to an application not responding. IIRC, there was a timeout of at least 60 seconds before your 'End Task' dialog box would show.
Doesn't sound like a long time, but when you sit and wait for the PC to do something, it can appear that the system has locked up.
There was also a config.sys setting to change that timeout.
-Begin Rant-
Well yeah... When you're running your Proprietary Mitsumi CD ROM off your proprietary Mitsumi Interface on your SB16 card. How many of those 4 plugs did you try before you got the right one?
Oh yeah, your Packard Bell PB100 came with all that already installed.
Why did Win95 work when you first installed it? Because it just Dos 7, and Windows 4. So you used your DOS drivers to access proprietary CD from within Windows 4.
-End rant-
FYI, my Cheapo ATA-66 PCI card works better in OS/2 (and Linux) than it does in Win2k. (IRQL Less or not Equal? WTF?)
With EMX support on OS/2, you can build a lot of your Linux apps on OS/2, and run them in an X Session, or on the command line. Yes, you can get XFree86 for OS/2. You can also get Wine for OS/2.
I don't run OS/2 regularly for the same reasons I don't run Linux regularly. In fact, for my uses (Netware admin) OS/2 has worked better. Better Windows support with Netware shell support, and DOS sessions that run Netware DOS utils. (VMWare WORKS for that on Linux, but a Bicycle would WORK as transportation to get me 50 miles to work too...)
I don't doubt Linux can do more of that now than last time I tried, but some of you wanted an example of why you'd run OS/2 instead of Linux.
I'm doing essentially the same thing here at work.
Hook up our existing security cameras to the 'web'. I found Ivista at www.inetcam.com.
It does:
Streaming Video
Streaming Audio
Motion Detection
- Also, Do 'X' when motion is detected...
Basic Recording
Scheduling all the above...
My only issue is the motion detection part... Once it detects motion, you tell it how much time to wait between shots, but you only get 20 shots.
If you can live with that, and windows, it's quite cool.
I'm guessing you're biggest expense is the traffic of those downloading ISO's..
With all the nifty things built into Kernel 2.4, I'm sure it would be possible to have volunteer mirrors, and when a user wants to download a file, you present that user with a site based on bandwidth availability...
Load balancing based on bandwidth.
Lots of details to iron out though... maybe each site check avg speeds of all the other sites, and submit those to a central site, which then arranges a server list by % of available bandwidth, with total bandwidth factored in... (A T3 site with %10 free would be higher than a T1 with %25 free...)
Just a thought...
American SQL:
SELECT names FROM American_People;
WHERE age LESS_THAN 20 AND;
offense LIKE "Current News";
INTO Prison
So you mean to tell me that Earthlink is monitoring who is browsing from what POP, and to where on the internet? So that can use that information for what purpose?
The only one I can think of is customer service. Everyone knows someone who tries to dial into AOL on a busy night and gets a busy signal. Those boxes should also be giving usage info, but I don't see Slashdot throwing a fit over that. What do you do with that info? You decide whether you need more or less dial-in servers at any location.
This is the same thing for internet traffic. So what if Earthlink rearranges their peering to accomodate heavier volume in other areas? If I was an Earthlink customer, I'd be happy to know that they're making sure high bandwidth users who goto a similar location just might be re-arranged so as to not interfere with the rest of their users.
There's a HUGE gap between Home ISP serveice, and Corporate ISP service. While I can agree that Mom and Pop ISPs are good for the standard Dial-up user, they are a pain for the corporate user.
<vent>
I am currently attemping to move off of our current 'Mom and Pop' ISP, who provides us ISDN service, to a national ISP with T1 service. Unforunately, my predecessor had our domain name in his name, and the current ISP. All I needed was a name change to be authorized by them. That's it. Nothing more. The local admin ended up calling president of MY company, to whine about what I wanted to do.
Hello?!? We're moving off you. I don't need your DNS. I don't need explanations on how a Domain Arbitration would be needed if someone not related to the company had complete control of the domain name (what moron would do that).
Of course, the president felt like 'mom' after all this. Nobody need that crap. Especially when they aren't required to know those details.
At least when I've asked the 'evil' corporations to do step 1, they didn't whine to my boss about steps 7 and 8.
</vent>
Re-read the WHOLE-PAGE. It's obviously a campaign for moving to Canada. Not only do they have a cure for the plague's of the 20th century (They won't be plagues for the 21st, Canada has the cure), But the 75% of college chicks are having casual sex! Yeah!
Oh yeah? I 'designed' one of these 10 years ago.. my senior year in High School.. Maybe I could sue for idea theft :) IP infringement. Hey, it was in my head first. (Assuming i can still find the papers describing my chair)
The was a certain manufaturer, who I can't remember at the moment (Komani?), that had a habit of putting the 'cheat' up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-B-A in their games. This was back in Nintendo land (not N64, not Super Nintendo, NINTENDO) It's been so long, I can't even remember any examples of what the damn thing did...Something with Super ...something... aw hell..
My only real memory is a whole sheet full of 'cheat codes' my best friend and I discovered in Bubble Bobble...
>whether the system will be reliable since it
>comes on tape.
>
> "I just used the CD record feature
>on my stereo" said Rob. "It works for music so
>why not data?"
60 minute audio tape on my TI99/4a.
Now I just feel old.