Picked up a copy of "Linux Configuration and Installation" with Slackware 3.something CDs in it for a buck at a bookstore going-out-of-business sale in 1998. The price was right, and it seemed like a good way to prove my 1337ness and learn something about "that UNIX stuff" at the same time. After a mere month of fiddling with and waving dead chickens over it (hack the kernel to probe the correct IRQ for my ne2000 ISA NIC, download a newer Xfree86 release that supported my video card, pay Opensound their outrageous $20 for a driver that would power up my AD1816 card's pre-amplifier, etc) I had a working machine.
The first thing I did with it? Install samba and xsmbrowser and start downloading music off the dorm LAN!
Doesn't help much when the last line of the writing is always something in the vein of "AT&VeriziCast-Warner reserves the right to change this agreement without written advance notice." They're the local phone monopoly, they have the right to offer crap service, and you have the right to pay $40 a month for it, or get dial-up and pay them $20/month for a land line and an ISP $20/month for internet access.
/Why no, I'm not bitter about the fact that I can't get any "broadband" faster than 1m down/512k up despite living LITERALLY next door to an AT&T central office. Why do you ask?
Not to defend the FBI's stupidity, but their approach is not that different from those Black Hole Lists that many Slashdotters defend.
I'm not much of a fan of email blacklisting but this is, pardon me, a fucking stupid argument. Being deprived of physical property by the government is not in any way shape or form like some third party refusing to accept your customers' email.
FBI data center raids are just like man-eating Indonesian tigers. I can't believe how many hypocritical slashdotters are willing to condone wildlife conservation, but complain about this raid!
Does anyone who wasn't into tabletop gaming the 80s (or hasn't read "The Hacker Crackdown") remember the Steve Jackson Games raid? I doubt many FBI field agents fall into either category...
Is it beyond the realm of possibility to have one desktop environment, fully configurable, and a "user-friendly" skinning of it that hides most of the configuration?
Yes. Gnome does this by hiding a lot of obscure options in gconf instead of exposing them in the UI, and people like you still complain that there aren't any options. QED
If the answer is that KDE and Gnome are already like that, then there is a really tragic 100% duplication of effort.
You're begging the "Mythical Man-Month" question, that is assuming that doubling the number of developers on one desktop is going to double the quality of that desktop. It won't, and in the short term adding people is likely to make things worse!
And let's not even get into the number of talented-but-egotistical people on both sides who will would say "Piss off! You killed my pet project, I'm not helping with yours." and go off to develop iPhone fart noise apps instead of working on the other desktop...
Perfect analogy, since it's vulnerable to the same generational turnabout as the vinyl-vs-iPod debate above. You like the sound of a big American pushrod V8, because that's what "fast" sounded like in 1970. A modern Formula 1 car is *far* faster than any 70s muscle car, but probably sounds like a weed-eater on steroids to you...
It's amusing that most counterfeit money comes from Iran from a pair of printing presses that are identical to the ones used here in the United States, yet there's all this effort on trying to curb production from Joe Average.
Funny thing about those perfect printing presses, for a while they were in North Korea. Before that China, and the Chinese probably bought them from the USSR. It's almost like they're an urban legend that springs up whenever there's a particular set of dastardly freedom-hating furriners we all need to be fearful of...
There's a reason the Beatles are still as popular as they are, and it's not some corporate conspiracy.
No, it's not a corporate conspiracy, it's zillions of baby boomers people clinging to the glory days of their youth because they can't deal with old age and cultural irrelevance. The Beatles were a great band, but in the end they were a band; not bigger than Jesus, not the best thing to ever happen in music, not the 20th century's Bach, a fucking pop-rock band.
Installation and use difficulties are generally greater in randompackageX off of SourceForge than, say, MS Word or FoxIt.
Duh. You're comparing software developed by one amateur to something developed by a team of professionals. Installation and use difficulties are generally greater for RandomWindowsSharewareY off of download.com than, say, Firefox or OpenOffice.
...employs a combination of infra-red technology, remote sensors and imagers, and flashing of subliminal images, such as a photo of Osama bin Laden. Developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person's reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration.
Are you testing whether I'm a terrorist or a lesbian, Mr Deckard?
From today's Boston Globe: Hunt is on for more men to lead classrooms From next year's Boston Globe: Potential rapists in the classroom: Is your child at risk? From the month after that: Hundreds of male elementary teachers fired, placed on Mass. sex offender registry for interacting with children, being "creepy"
However, the aggregation and the claims that WP makes about itself [examples?] contribute to the problem. Most people [who?] with some critical thinking don't trust everything they read on the Internet, and have a clue about how reliable certain publications usually are [citation needed]. Most of us [who?] know which newspapers have good reporting and which ones don't.
Outside of rush hour, a leisurely cruise back along the same route easily gets 60mpg. Best I've ever achieved was 77mpg...
Imperial gallons hold quite a bit more fuel than US gallons (4.5L vs 3.8L). 77 mpg in the states is only achievable if you ride a small-displacement motorcycle.
Actually, I recently tried the release candidate for the OS X Aqua version. It's horribly ugly (just like on other platforms), but it does seem to work.
Yup. And since Microsoft has dropped the only compelling feature that set Office for Mac apart from other office suites (VBA macros) and STILL hasn't made Entourage into a first-class Exchange client, OpenOffice 3 is now just as good (though not quite as good looking). Grats, OO.o team; adios, billg.
If your job requires Windows, maybe they should, uh, issue you a machine with Windows on it.
Set some boundaries here. If having you available to answer email 24/7 isn't worth paying for a laptop and a Windows and Office license to those "higher-ups", you can let that email wait until morning.
Check your bill and plug in a TV. If your local Cox setup is like mine was, you're paying a "connection fee" that's exactly the same as the bottom-tier cable TV rate, on top of the advertised high-speed internet rate.
AT&T doesn't give you more than 16mbit because your local government told them 16 mbit is all you need. If Verizon wanted to sell you a 50 mbit symmetric connection for half the price, there's a good chance they couldn't legally do it, thanks to your government
Well, that goes a long way toward explaining why you can't get Asian-style symmetric 100mbit broadband out in the sticks, but there ARE densely populated cities in the US. I could throw rocks from my apartment and hit 3 AT&T buildings. Why can't (won't) they provide better than 16mbit/512kbit ADSL to subscribers who are literally across the street from their switch? Because they don't have to. We don't have the regulation to make them, and thanks to the high cost of running new copper we will never have the competition to force them to offer more than lackluster speed at high prices. Hooray for deregulation and free markets...
And yet they have a shelf full of beakers, test tubes and flasks at Fry's. Sometimes I think nothing is actually legal here, they just don't have the resources to enforce all the (stupid) laws at the same time...
Slashdot Mirror
You *DO* know US1549 was an A320... right?
Picked up a copy of "Linux Configuration and Installation" with Slackware 3.something CDs in it for a buck at a bookstore going-out-of-business sale in 1998. The price was right, and it seemed like a good way to prove my 1337ness and learn something about "that UNIX stuff" at the same time. After a mere month of fiddling with and waving dead chickens over it (hack the kernel to probe the correct IRQ for my ne2000 ISA NIC, download a newer Xfree86 release that supported my video card, pay Opensound their outrageous $20 for a driver that would power up my AD1816 card's pre-amplifier, etc) I had a working machine.
The first thing I did with it? Install samba and xsmbrowser and start downloading music off the dorm LAN!
"Get it in writing."
Doesn't help much when the last line of the writing is always something in the vein of "AT&VeriziCast-Warner reserves the right to change this agreement without written advance notice." They're the local phone monopoly, they have the right to offer crap service, and you have the right to pay $40 a month for it, or get dial-up and pay them $20/month for a land line and an ISP $20/month for internet access.
Not to defend the FBI's stupidity, but their approach is not that different from those Black Hole Lists that many Slashdotters defend.
I'm not much of a fan of email blacklisting but this is, pardon me, a fucking stupid argument. Being deprived of physical property by the government is not in any way shape or form like some third party refusing to accept your customers' email.
FBI data center raids are just like man-eating Indonesian tigers. I can't believe how many hypocritical slashdotters are willing to condone wildlife conservation, but complain about this raid!
Does anyone who wasn't into tabletop gaming the 80s (or hasn't read "The Hacker Crackdown") remember the Steve Jackson Games raid? I doubt many FBI field agents fall into either category...
Is it beyond the realm of possibility to have one desktop environment, fully configurable, and a "user-friendly" skinning of it that hides most of the configuration?
Yes. Gnome does this by hiding a lot of obscure options in gconf instead of exposing them in the UI, and people like you still complain that there aren't any options. QED
If the answer is that KDE and Gnome are already like that, then there is a really tragic 100% duplication of effort.
You're begging the "Mythical Man-Month" question, that is assuming that doubling the number of developers on one desktop is going to double the quality of that desktop. It won't, and in the short term adding people is likely to make things worse!
And let's not even get into the number of talented-but-egotistical people on both sides who will would say "Piss off! You killed my pet project, I'm not helping with yours." and go off to develop iPhone fart noise apps instead of working on the other desktop...
Perfect analogy, since it's vulnerable to the same generational turnabout as the vinyl-vs-iPod debate above. You like the sound of a big American pushrod V8, because that's what "fast" sounded like in 1970. A modern Formula 1 car is *far* faster than any 70s muscle car, but probably sounds like a weed-eater on steroids to you...
It's amusing that most counterfeit money comes from Iran from a pair of printing presses that are identical to the ones used here in the United States, yet there's all this effort on trying to curb production from Joe Average.
Funny thing about those perfect printing presses, for a while they were in North Korea. Before that China, and the Chinese probably bought them from the USSR. It's almost like they're an urban legend that springs up whenever there's a particular set of dastardly freedom-hating furriners we all need to be fearful of...
There's a reason the Beatles are still as popular as they are, and it's not some corporate conspiracy.
No, it's not a corporate conspiracy, it's zillions of baby boomers people clinging to the glory days of their youth because they can't deal with old age and cultural irrelevance. The Beatles were a great band, but in the end they were a band; not bigger than Jesus, not the best thing to ever happen in music, not the 20th century's Bach, a fucking pop-rock band.
Installation and use difficulties are generally greater in randompackageX off of SourceForge than, say, MS Word or FoxIt.
Duh. You're comparing software developed by one amateur to something developed by a team of professionals. Installation and use difficulties are generally greater for RandomWindowsSharewareY off of download.com than, say, Firefox or OpenOffice.
...employs a combination of infra-red technology, remote sensors and imagers, and flashing of subliminal images, such as a photo of Osama bin Laden. Developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person's reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration.
Are you testing whether I'm a terrorist or a lesbian, Mr Deckard?
"What resolves this issue?"
OpenBSD, of course.
So when the (l)user asks where to find device firmware you just tell him to get stuffed? Brilliant!
Right then, carry on.
If an hourly employee is wasting off the clock time, it's none of the employer's goddamn business. That's what being off the clock means!
From today's Boston Globe: Hunt is on for more men to lead classrooms
From next year's Boston Globe: Potential rapists in the classroom: Is your child at risk?
From the month after that: Hundreds of male elementary teachers fired, placed on Mass. sex offender registry for interacting with children, being "creepy"
Please see the [talk page] for more information.
However, the aggregation and the claims that WP makes about itself [examples?] contribute to the problem. Most people [who?] with some critical thinking don't trust everything they read on the Internet, and have a clue about how reliable certain publications usually are [citation needed]. Most of us [who?] know which newspapers have good reporting and which ones don't.
Popular online service issues patch, loud whiners threaten to cancel, drown out happy users. Film at 11.
Outside of rush hour, a leisurely cruise back along the same route easily gets 60mpg. Best I've ever achieved was 77mpg...
Imperial gallons hold quite a bit more fuel than US gallons (4.5L vs 3.8L). 77 mpg in the states is only achievable if you ride a small-displacement motorcycle.
Actually, I recently tried the release candidate for the OS X Aqua version. It's horribly ugly (just like on other platforms), but it does seem to work.
Yup. And since Microsoft has dropped the only compelling feature that set Office for Mac apart from other office suites (VBA macros) and STILL hasn't made Entourage into a first-class Exchange client, OpenOffice 3 is now just as good (though not quite as good looking). Grats, OO.o team; adios, billg.
What did you think that "new computer smell" is? Volatile organic chemicals, including benzene!
Once again we see that by mentioning Apple by name (especially in an environmental story) can magically make a pointless story into front page news...
If your job requires Windows, maybe they should, uh, issue you a machine with Windows on it.
Set some boundaries here. If having you available to answer email 24/7 isn't worth paying for a laptop and a Windows and Office license to those "higher-ups", you can let that email wait until morning.
Check your bill and plug in a TV. If your local Cox setup is like mine was, you're paying a "connection fee" that's exactly the same as the bottom-tier cable TV rate, on top of the advertised high-speed internet rate.
AT&T doesn't give you more than 16mbit because your local government told them 16 mbit is all you need. If Verizon wanted to sell you a 50 mbit symmetric connection for half the price, there's a good chance they couldn't legally do it, thanks to your government
[citation needed]
Well, that goes a long way toward explaining why you can't get Asian-style symmetric 100mbit broadband out in the sticks, but there ARE densely populated cities in the US. I could throw rocks from my apartment and hit 3 AT&T buildings. Why can't (won't) they provide better than 16mbit/512kbit ADSL to subscribers who are literally across the street from their switch? Because they don't have to. We don't have the regulation to make them, and thanks to the high cost of running new copper we will never have the competition to force them to offer more than lackluster speed at high prices. Hooray for deregulation and free markets...
And yet they have a shelf full of beakers, test tubes and flasks at Fry's. Sometimes I think nothing is actually legal here, they just don't have the resources to enforce all the (stupid) laws at the same time...