That's not the point, is it? Of course you shouldn't modify code on someone else's server, but you should still have access to the source code.
Not at all.
The point is, if you buy software, you should be able to maintain it and fix bugs in the event that the vendor doesn't care to. That was RMS's whole point with the original GPL. The goal is maintainability of an installed system, not to give casual users access (who never need to install, upgrade, etc. the code, e.g., website users, kiosk users, end users working at a desk, etc.) to the code.
He has since gone insane with GPLv3, but that's neither here nor there.
no they don't. It's rare to need to reboot for a windows update. not really. You might want to talk to the people admining if your security is broke.
Really? Set up a box from scratch. You'll reboot a whole bunch of times. Also, security on Windows is horribly broken.
Application developers have caused it to be a problem because so few of them can do a decent uninstall.
Wrong. Microsoft designed Winsxs so that the updated DLLS remain in that directory and provided no means to clean it up. Installers actually don't copy the files into that directory, Windows itself does.
yes. The registry is broken, they no it but how to you change it?
Go back to config files.
No, It's annoying to people who feel it should apply to them.
* Your P&S photo suite * MSIE * iTunes * Microsoft Works (Er, Office Starter Edition) * That's it
If you work in an office, be it an accountant, system administrator, software engineer, graphic designer, architect, etc. and have 30 software packages installed to do your work, the taskbar will become an absolute nightmare, about as easy to follow as a desktop loaded with 800 icons. Where the hell is $foo?
Why oh why is Microsoft destroying everything about Windows that doesn't suck?
Microsoft, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
You have plenty that is broken:
* Windows/Microsoft updates still require eleventyteen thousand reboots. * Security is still horribly broken * Registry bloat over time is still a problem * Winsxs bloat is a huge problem * Fragmentation is still a huge problem * UAC is still brain dead but also ineffective * USB still sucks. Why must a device re-enumerate and be re-installed as a different device if it is moved from port to port? I *HATE* that! Every other OS does it far more intelligently * Licensing cost is still outrageous - why should people choose Windows servers over F/OSS solutions?
If you have a "high-end' system, why in the world wouldn't you calibrate all your speakers (including the subwoofers) to reference level?
You mean, by using MCACC? I did that, of course. It shakes the entire house disturbs others when a movie is turned up loud enough to hear the dialogue clearly during quiet bits (because DRC never compresses enough when you actually want compression on) then the loud portions are VERY loud.
If you do that, I think you'll find that ear-bleeding, intestine-smashing audio levels in the listening area don't actually carry very far beyond it.
Have you ever had neighbors who live in the next "apartment" in a townhouse, or above you or below you, and play house music incessantly (my neighbors play that tasteless non-copyrightable "music")? Isn't it annoying? I'm not going to annoy others with constant rumbling from movies at 2:00am even on weekends.
Having two subwoofer channels is a good thing - if the.2 channels are discrete (a.1 and a.1, or L/R if you will) then you can get cleaner bass. If the source material provides a.1 channel, having two subs allows you to achieve a 6dB to 10dB (depending on placement - take advantage of acoutic coupling with the walls and put the woofers a half wavelength apart and you can achieve a 10dB increase in output) increase in volume very easily. Also, bass is not totally nondirectional, so there is some audible directional cueing. Not only that, but the woofer crossover doesn't cut over at 140Hz, 90Hz, 60Hz, or whatever you set the crossover point to; it is usually an 12dB to 18dB/octave curve to eliminate harshness and so there are some higher frequencies emanating from the woofers which are definitely directional. Besides, at the very deep end, you can feel the direction of low frequencies if it hits one channel before the other, so if for example you have a woofer behind you and one in front of you, or widely spaced L/R, and a train or a herd of cattle is stampeding, the surround effect would be even greater as you feel the vibrations pan around you.
I have a high end 9.2 AV receiver with two subwoofers (260 WRMS each) and adding the second subwoofer was definitely worth it - the very bottom end was reinforced very well. If I set the subwoofer gain to unity (0dB) it is absolutely deafening. I normally listen with the subwoofers' gain set to -6dB and the subwoofer channel on the AV receiver to -11dB so I don't annoy everyone.
For a long period of time there was much speculation and controversy about where the so-called `missing matter' of the Universe had got to. All over the Galaxy the science depart-ments of all the major universities were acquiring more and more elaborate equipment to probe and search the hearts of distant galaxies, and then the very centre and the very edges of the whole Universe, but when eventually it was tracked down it turned out in fact to he all the stuff which the equipment had been packed in.
There was quite a large quantity of missing matter in the box, little soft round white pellets of missing matter, which Random discarded for future generations of physicists to track down and discover all over again once the findings of the current generation of physicists had been lost and forgotten about.
Everyone scoffs at the Chinese when they boast like this, but there really isn't any particular problem with what they are proposing.
Okay, look at how long it takes to excavate/drill down to the bedrock.
Next, look at how long it takes for concrete to properly cure to full strength. Keep in mind that the foundation will be responsible for keeping millions of tons upright - something Chinese builders haven't been particularly good at even on a smaller scale lately.
Now tell me: do you really want to trust a millions-of-tons half-mile-tall building on a foundation that wasn't given months to cure?
I decided to stop using personal credit for anything for almost ten years and use cash for everything, then had a HELL of a time trying to get a car loan because it has been so long since I had any credit lines open, so they all "scrolled"/"dropped" from my credit report. I basically had "never" had credit in lenders' eyes. I finally found a lender but it was a pain in the ass. The insulting part is I have friends who are irresponsible and have been through foreclosures and vehicle repossessions who obtained financing through a particular lender - and they turned me down. I then mentioned friends by name who obtained financing through them after defaulting on loans through them, and their response? "But so-and-so has a credit history. You don't." I asked "So, the bottom line is that you're telling me is that no credit is worse than really bad credit?" His answer amounted to a reluctant yes. The credit system is total BS because their preferred customer is those willing to be enslaved by credit.
I then opened a small VISA but the fees, shitty customer service and their holding payments for 7-20 days was driving me nuts, so I talked to AmEx. Since I had a long history with them on the business side I was able to open a revolving account with them immediately. I waited a few months and closed the VISA and opened one with another company. Now I have three (personal) credit cards and a car loan I am keeping open to build my credit, and my credit started out low with the car loan but has been slowly but my score has been steadily climbing (currently about 70% credit utilization, 100% payments on time, etc. and am bring down my balances quickly on everything except the car loan, which I will keep through the entire term or until I buy a new car, which I will finance because going cash-only penalizes you credit-wise) and yes, closing the crappy VISA did ding my credit but it was worth it to eliminate the fees.
I use my AmEx for all day to day stuff. Having been penalized by being responsible and doing old-school cash-only for a long time, now I have accounts open and actively used so that I maintain an active history, and am bringing down credit utilization steadily. I will level it out at 20%-30% utilization and set up automatic payments once I get the accounts down to that level. I do not just pay the minimum; I pay several times the minimum payment twice monthly.
Closing an account dings your credit score by up to 60 points. Only close an account if a mortgage broker requests that you decrease your available credit or if you have a card which charges outrageous fees.
I have two 750GB hybrid hard drives in my laptop and it reduced both Windows and Linux boot times by at least 2/3, and launching commonly-used apps launch even more quickly (boot time can improve only so much due to boot-time enumeration of hardware). It was well worth upgrading.
Good, now just fix the menus then you're off to a good start.
Next, make choosing Metro or Explorer (with Aero glass or classic) for the UI an option then Windows 8 should be even better than Windows 7. Otherwise, it will be at least as despised as the epic fail known as Vista.
I blame lawyers contriving every possible way to squeeze a nickel from anywhere they can, and I blame the media for feeding into it, because sensationalizing "danger" makes for a larger viewer share to sell to advertisers.
You can't possibly provide students with hands-on experience. Hands-on experience in anything may lead to:
* Possible risk of injury (sue-happy paranoid America) * Possible smuggling of drug manufacturing materials (again, sue-happy paranoid America) * Only ter'rists would want to build a rocket * Only ter-rists work with chemistry kits * The noise from a rocket might "offend" someone somewhere (sue-happy pussified America) * The rocket is a dual-purpose vehicle. Sure, it may have academic and even fun value, but it might also be used to deliver a.00000000000000001 kiloton incindiary device. We can't risk that. Won't someone think of the children? * It is important to teach children that it is better to be safe than to have an interesting life with some element of risk involved.
Let's reference a chain email that I'm sure everyone has seen by now (and I never checked Snopes to see if it is really originated from Jay Leno), but it is well worth repeating anyhow:
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930s, '40s, '50s, '60s and '70s!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps not helmets on our heads.
As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes.
Riding in the back of a pick-up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and bacon.. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And, we weren't overweight. WHY?
Because we were Always outside playing...that's why!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And, we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, No video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, No cell phones, No personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms. WE HAD FRIENDS And we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever.
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
If YOU are one of them? CONGRATULATIONS! You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers
1. Evolutionary theory 2. Creation story from Genesis 3. Pastafarian story of creation
Since none can be proven with absolutely 100% certainty due to missing evidence, teach critical thinking and logic instead, and turn this into an exercise in debate, hand the students an unbiased guide (or really, a balanced guide with each section written by "experts" in each respective theory, giving each equal weight) containing empirical evidence of each of the three theories, then assign each debate team one of the three positions (whether or not the members of that team agree with the assigned position) and prepare arguments for and against each theory. I think that given evidence and proper training in critical thinking and logic, you are teaching students to examine the evidence, think the problem through and arrive at the correct conclusion, i.e., you are teaching people to think for themselves. I think this approach would make everyone happy - or at least any rational person should be satisfied. Tell the irrational fools who would get "offended" to STFU and deal with it.:-)
According to a remarkable book from Ursa Minor, God once existed, but does not exist any longer.
"The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. "Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. "The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' "`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' "`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic. "`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Dude, you're a few years late with this complaint. (As another poster noted here) many car manufacturers are switching to all-touchscreen controls, so you have to navigate menus on a touchscreen just to set the temperature, adjust fan speed, or adjust the radio volume. The worst offenders are Ford/Lincoln and BMW.
On the other hand, there are volume controls conveniently located on the steering wheel now. A rarity in the '80s and '90s but a feature that is present in all but the cheapest models. It is one of a million things that makes it a royal pain in the ass to upgrade to an aftermarket stereo system, but is still a major improvement. Throw in a HUD and even something as complex as BMW's i-drive system even better than knobs, because most controls can be duplicated on the steering wheel. This keeps your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all.
The point is, if you buy software, you should be able to maintain it and fix bugs in the event that the vendor doesn't care to. That was RMS's whole point with the original GPL. The goal is maintainability of an installed system, not to give casual users access (who never need to install, upgrade, etc. the code, e.g., website users, kiosk users, end users working at a desk, etc.) to the code.
He has since gone insane with GPLv3, but that's neither here nor there.
Really? Set up a box from scratch. You'll reboot a whole bunch of times.
Also, security on Windows is horribly broken.
Wrong. Microsoft designed Winsxs so that the updated DLLS remain in that directory and provided no means to clean it up. Installers actually don't copy the files into that directory, Windows itself does.
Go back to config files.
No, it's brain dead.
It's fine when your applications consist of:
* Your P&S photo suite
* MSIE
* iTunes
* Microsoft Works (Er, Office Starter Edition)
* That's it
If you work in an office, be it an accountant, system administrator, software engineer, graphic designer, architect, etc. and have 30 software packages installed to do your work, the taskbar will become an absolute nightmare, about as easy to follow as a desktop loaded with 800 icons. Where the hell is $foo?
Why oh why is Microsoft destroying everything about Windows that doesn't suck?
Microsoft, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
You have plenty that is broken:
* Windows/Microsoft updates still require eleventyteen thousand reboots.
* Security is still horribly broken
* Registry bloat over time is still a problem
* Winsxs bloat is a huge problem
* Fragmentation is still a huge problem
* UAC is still brain dead but also ineffective
* USB still sucks. Why must a device re-enumerate and be re-installed as a different device if it is moved from port to port? I *HATE* that! Every other OS does it far more intelligently
* Licensing cost is still outrageous - why should people choose Windows servers over F/OSS solutions?
Hey aspie, it was a joke. Settle down.
No, the biggest problem with /. is the cheetos-and-Mountain-Dew-induced obesity.
No, it's not due to gravitational pull. It's because the large concentration of us fat Americans might make the continent tip over or capsize.
You mean, by using MCACC? I did that, of course. It shakes the entire house disturbs others when a movie is turned up loud enough to hear the dialogue clearly during quiet bits (because DRC never compresses enough when you actually want compression on) then the loud portions are VERY loud.
Have you ever had neighbors who live in the next "apartment" in a townhouse, or above you or below you, and play house music incessantly (my neighbors play that tasteless non-copyrightable "music")? Isn't it annoying? I'm not going to annoy others with constant rumbling from movies at 2:00am even on weekends.
Having two subwoofer channels is a good thing - if the .2 channels are discrete (a .1 and a .1, or L/R if you will) then you can get cleaner bass. If the source material provides a .1 channel, having two subs allows you to achieve a 6dB to 10dB (depending on placement - take advantage of acoutic coupling with the walls and put the woofers a half wavelength apart and you can achieve a 10dB increase in output) increase in volume very easily. Also, bass is not totally nondirectional, so there is some audible directional cueing. Not only that, but the woofer crossover doesn't cut over at 140Hz, 90Hz, 60Hz, or whatever you set the crossover point to; it is usually an 12dB to 18dB/octave curve to eliminate harshness and so there are some higher frequencies emanating from the woofers which are definitely directional. Besides, at the very deep end, you can feel the direction of low frequencies if it hits one channel before the other, so if for example you have a woofer behind you and one in front of you, or widely spaced L/R, and a train or a herd of cattle is stampeding, the surround effect would be even greater as you feel the vibrations pan around you.
I have a high end 9.2 AV receiver with two subwoofers (260 WRMS each) and adding the second subwoofer was definitely worth it - the very bottom end was reinforced very well. If I set the subwoofer gain to unity (0dB) it is absolutely deafening. I normally listen with the subwoofers' gain set to -6dB and the subwoofer channel on the AV receiver to -11dB so I don't annoy everyone.
Does this mean I have to upgrade from my year-old-still-unscratched 9.2 receiver already?!
Is that you, Ballmer?
This is why Apple is dominating the market. They get it when it comes to upgradability. :-)
For a long period of time there was much speculation and controversy about where the so-called `missing matter' of the Universe had got to. All over the Galaxy the science depart-ments of all the major universities were acquiring more and more elaborate equipment to probe and search the hearts of distant galaxies, and then the very centre and the very edges of the whole Universe, but when eventually it was tracked down it turned out in fact to he all the stuff which the equipment had been packed in.
There was quite a large quantity of missing matter in the box, little soft round white pellets of missing matter, which Random discarded for future generations of physicists to track down and discover all over again once the findings of the current generation of physicists had been lost and forgotten about.
Okay, look at how long it takes to excavate/drill down to the bedrock.
Next, look at how long it takes for concrete to properly cure to full strength. Keep in mind that the foundation will be responsible for keeping millions of tons upright - something Chinese builders haven't been particularly good at even on a smaller scale lately.
Now tell me: do you really want to trust a millions-of-tons half-mile-tall building on a foundation that wasn't given months to cure?
No credit is worse than no credit.
I decided to stop using personal credit for anything for almost ten years and use cash for everything, then had a HELL of a time trying to get a car loan because it has been so long since I had any credit lines open, so they all "scrolled"/"dropped" from my credit report. I basically had "never" had credit in lenders' eyes. I finally found a lender but it was a pain in the ass. The insulting part is I have friends who are irresponsible and have been through foreclosures and vehicle repossessions who obtained financing through a particular lender - and they turned me down. I then mentioned friends by name who obtained financing through them after defaulting on loans through them, and their response? "But so-and-so has a credit history. You don't." I asked "So, the bottom line is that you're telling me is that no credit is worse than really bad credit?" His answer amounted to a reluctant yes. The credit system is total BS because their preferred customer is those willing to be enslaved by credit.
I then opened a small VISA but the fees, shitty customer service and their holding payments for 7-20 days was driving me nuts, so I talked to AmEx. Since I had a long history with them on the business side I was able to open a revolving account with them immediately. I waited a few months and closed the VISA and opened one with another company. Now I have three (personal) credit cards and a car loan I am keeping open to build my credit, and my credit started out low with the car loan but has been slowly but my score has been steadily climbing (currently about 70% credit utilization, 100% payments on time, etc. and am bring down my balances quickly on everything except the car loan, which I will keep through the entire term or until I buy a new car, which I will finance because going cash-only penalizes you credit-wise) and yes, closing the crappy VISA did ding my credit but it was worth it to eliminate the fees.
I use my AmEx for all day to day stuff. Having been penalized by being responsible and doing old-school cash-only for a long time, now I have accounts open and actively used so that I maintain an active history, and am bringing down credit utilization steadily. I will level it out at 20%-30% utilization and set up automatic payments once I get the accounts down to that level. I do not just pay the minimum; I pay several times the minimum payment twice monthly.
Closing an account dings your credit score by up to 60 points. Only close an account if a mortgage broker requests that you decrease your available credit or if you have a card which charges outrageous fees.
I have two 750GB hybrid hard drives in my laptop and it reduced both Windows and Linux boot times by at least 2/3, and launching commonly-used apps launch even more quickly (boot time can improve only so much due to boot-time enumeration of hardware). It was well worth upgrading.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
When was the last time that ever worked with patent trolls?
What I would like to know is: what does it sound like on the surface of Mars?
Good, now just fix the menus then you're off to a good start.
Next, make choosing Metro or Explorer (with Aero glass or classic) for the UI an option then Windows 8 should be even better than Windows 7. Otherwise, it will be at least as despised as the epic fail known as Vista.
All important decisions are not made in the boardroom, but in the bathroom:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QZB_cbjdM8
I blame lawyers contriving every possible way to squeeze a nickel from anywhere they can, and I blame the media for feeding into it, because sensationalizing "danger" makes for a larger viewer share to sell to advertisers.
You can't possibly provide students with hands-on experience. Hands-on experience in anything may lead to:
* Possible risk of injury (sue-happy paranoid America) .00000000000000001 kiloton incindiary device. We can't risk that. Won't someone think of the children?
* Possible smuggling of drug manufacturing materials (again, sue-happy paranoid America)
* Only ter'rists would want to build a rocket
* Only ter-rists work with chemistry kits
* The noise from a rocket might "offend" someone somewhere (sue-happy pussified America)
* The rocket is a dual-purpose vehicle. Sure, it may have academic and even fun value, but it might also be used to deliver a
* It is important to teach children that it is better to be safe than to have an interesting life with some element of risk involved.
Let's reference a chain email that I'm sure everyone has seen by now (and I never checked Snopes to see if it is really originated from Jay Leno), but it is well worth repeating anyhow:
I propose a simple solution for schools:
Present three popular theories:
1. Evolutionary theory
2. Creation story from Genesis
3. Pastafarian story of creation
Since none can be proven with absolutely 100% certainty due to missing evidence, teach critical thinking and logic instead, and turn this into an exercise in debate, hand the students an unbiased guide (or really, a balanced guide with each section written by "experts" in each respective theory, giving each equal weight) containing empirical evidence of each of the three theories, then assign each debate team one of the three positions (whether or not the members of that team agree with the assigned position) and prepare arguments for and against each theory. I think that given evidence and proper training in critical thinking and logic, you are teaching students to examine the evidence, think the problem through and arrive at the correct conclusion, i.e., you are teaching people to think for themselves. I think this approach would make everyone happy - or at least any rational person should be satisfied. Tell the irrational fools who would get "offended" to STFU and deal with it. :-)
According to a remarkable book from Ursa Minor, God once existed, but does not exist any longer.
Was a Masshole piloting the tugboat?
(ref: all the insane drivers here)
On the other hand, there are volume controls conveniently located on the steering wheel now. A rarity in the '80s and '90s but a feature that is present in all but the cheapest models. It is one of a million things that makes it a royal pain in the ass to upgrade to an aftermarket stereo system, but is still a major improvement. Throw in a HUD and even something as complex as BMW's i-drive system even better than knobs, because most controls can be duplicated on the steering wheel. This keeps your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.