An entertaining read which will surely spark flame wars of epic proportions.
Hmm...
A long time ago, on a message board far, far away...
It is a period of flame war. Rebel thinkers, striking from their hidden message board, have won their first victory agains the Marketing Empire of Lucasfilm.
During the battle, Rebel geeks managed to come up with a new interpretation of the Empire's ultimate weapon, Episode I, a film so boring it could put entire audiences to sleep.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister lawyers, Princess Leia races home on her encrypted email, custodian of the new thoughts that can liberate her people and restore freedom of speech to the galaxy...
...would be to standardize a way to include a distribution date or something with the software... Then just have a simple bash script that displays the dates of your important stuff, and you can decide if it needs an upgrade. If you want to get fancy, cron it and have it email you if something is too old.
The same thing is going to happen with Microsoft. Their products are industry standard. They're going to have to make a MAJOR mistake before anyone else comes along to take the lead.
So you don't consider alienating a whole generation of CS students/profs, half the computer industry, and a large percentage of 'normal' users to be a MAJOR mistake? Lots of people i know use Windoze, but the ONLY reason they use it is because it's the 'industry standard'; they're all just waiting for their chance to bolt.
They would work just like a driver's liscense.
Class A: You can administer high-bandwidth connections (ISPs)
Class B: You can get broadband
Class C: 56k dialup max
Class D: 28.8 AOL for you!
Don't go giving out alternate routes! I like it when everyone ELSE is stuck on the freeway... it means there's no one in my way while I zip down the sidestreets...
I don't think you'd have to worry about getting a speeding ticket this way. How are they going to prove that you weren't riding with your buddy? Or on a bus/train? Your phone may be able to reveal where you are or how fast you're going, but it can't tell anyone the method.
I say screw cable and go back to the way it used to be...
I can use it whenever I wish, can fast forward, reverse, pause indefinately. It even has an easy to use, indexed random-access feature! They last years without maintenance, there's no wiring headaches, and the entire unit is about the size of a VHS tape or two. And all that without ever having to get out of your chair or use a remote. And the bandwidth is limited only by how many you can fit in your car on the way home from the bookstore.
As far as the Internet encouraging participation in government, do you see representatives becoming obsolete in the future? Why can't we just have permanent polling places where you can stop by once a week/month and vote on the issues that would normally be decided by representatives. We have a medium that would allow everyone to participate directly, why not use it? What do you think about the feasability of such a system from a political standpoint? (all technical details aside) It seems like this would solve almost all kinds of corruption, etc.
They also need to sue every single maker of laptop computers, as well. Oh, and PCs, too... I've packed up my PC and hauled it over to a friend's place... I guess that makes it 'portable', right?
Consider your numbers, and apply them to a company of 20,000 employees. That's 800,000 lost minutes or 13,333 lost man hours per week. Given an average salary of $15/hr, that's $200,000 a week, or $10.4M a year!
I think I see one way in which this may backfire. Say 50% of the people that watch a popular show can't watch it at the time it airs, and have to record it. Suddenly, they can no longer record it. Half of these people are so devoted that they change their schedules to accomodate. That still leaves 25% of the viewers not watching the show. So, ratings go down by 25%, ad revenue goes down by 25%. Oops.
They generally have a yearly "Guide to the Gear" issue where all they rate are recievers, speakers, and so on. They also have a very good "How to shop for foo" section, usually.
Speakers are the most important part, of course, and choice of reciver is governed almost exclusively by feature set and price.
PC makers like Dell already offer Linux as a choice of OS, so I seriously doubt they would do this (unless M$ pays them off big time), and other hardware makers won't do it because they're not going to tie their products/profits to a single version of a single OS.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes... It's called "spool of co-ax"
Hmm...
A long time ago, on a message board far, far away...
It is a period of flame war. Rebel thinkers, striking from their hidden message board, have won their first victory agains the Marketing Empire of Lucasfilm.
During the battle, Rebel geeks managed to come up with a new interpretation of the Empire's ultimate weapon, Episode I, a film so boring it could put entire audiences to sleep.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister lawyers, Princess Leia races home on her encrypted email, custodian of the new thoughts that can liberate her people and restore freedom of speech to the galaxy...
I have a Sony CPD-400G 19" trinitron... very nice, and only about $500 (also has dual inputs)
Under no circumstances should you mail-order one of these. The packing is so bad, that subjecting it to UPS or FedEx will destroy it. =(
...would be to standardize a way to include a distribution date or something with the software... Then just have a simple bash script that displays the dates of your important stuff, and you can decide if it needs an upgrade. If you want to get fancy, cron it and have it email you if something is too old.
Several airliners were hit by airborne pigs today, and ACME sweaters reports their largest order ever has come in from Hell.
So you don't consider alienating a whole generation of CS students/profs, half the computer industry, and a large percentage of 'normal' users to be a MAJOR mistake? Lots of people i know use Windoze, but the ONLY reason they use it is because it's the 'industry standard'; they're all just waiting for their chance to bolt.
Maybe we can capitalize on the It's For The Children idiocy that seems so prevalant in government:
1) Have your 14-year-old kid set up and email account somewhere.
2) Help him/her write an innocent letter to your representative complaining about the inappropriate spam s/he is recieving.
3) Watch them trip over themselves to Save The Children =P
have been filed under 'Humor'?
They would work just like a driver's liscense.
Class A: You can administer high-bandwidth connections (ISPs)
Class B: You can get broadband
Class C: 56k dialup max
Class D: 28.8 AOL for you!
I think they oughta just ban IIS in their ToS...
If you want to have a web server on our network, you have to use secure software.
Cool...then all you need is cell-signal-tracking artillery/smart bombs. =)
Don't go giving out alternate routes! I like it when everyone ELSE is stuck on the freeway... it means there's no one in my way while I zip down the sidestreets...
I don't think you'd have to worry about getting a speeding ticket this way. How are they going to prove that you weren't riding with your buddy? Or on a bus/train? Your phone may be able to reveal where you are or how fast you're going, but it can't tell anyone the method.
I say screw cable and go back to the way it used to be...
I can use it whenever I wish, can fast forward, reverse, pause indefinately. It even has an easy to use, indexed random-access feature! They last years without maintenance, there's no wiring headaches, and the entire unit is about the size of a VHS tape or two. And all that without ever having to get out of your chair or use a remote. And the bandwidth is limited only by how many you can fit in your car on the way home from the bookstore.
but it's only a matter of time before MS starts "correcting" misspellings like micro$oft, microsloth, windoze, etc =)
I predict we'll start seeing lots of new MCPs with certification in "Microsoft Licensing"
Junkbuster runs on winblows, too, and just about any UNIX-like OS. Don't think it runs on MacOS, but just grab the source and fix it!
As far as the Internet encouraging participation in government, do you see representatives becoming obsolete in the future? Why can't we just have permanent polling places where you can stop by once a week/month and vote on the issues that would normally be decided by representatives. We have a medium that would allow everyone to participate directly, why not use it? What do you think about the feasability of such a system from a political standpoint? (all technical details aside) It seems like this would solve almost all kinds of corruption, etc.
They also need to sue every single maker of laptop computers, as well. Oh, and PCs, too... I've packed up my PC and hauled it over to a friend's place... I guess that makes it 'portable', right?
Consider your numbers, and apply them to a company of 20,000 employees. That's 800,000 lost minutes or 13,333 lost man hours per week. Given an average salary of $15/hr, that's $200,000 a week, or $10.4M a year!
"Your mega-corp only has one CEO, and is controlled by one man. This can't possibly be in the best interests of your 2 million stockholders."
I think I see one way in which this may backfire. Say 50% of the people that watch a popular show can't watch it at the time it airs, and have to record it. Suddenly, they can no longer record it. Half of these people are so devoted that they change their schedules to accomodate. That still leaves 25% of the viewers not watching the show. So, ratings go down by 25%, ad revenue goes down by 25%.
Oops.
They generally have a yearly "Guide to the Gear" issue where all they rate are recievers, speakers, and so on. They also have a very good "How to shop for foo" section, usually.
Speakers are the most important part, of course, and choice of reciver is governed almost exclusively by feature set and price.
PC makers like Dell already offer Linux as a choice of OS, so I seriously doubt they would do this (unless M$ pays them off big time), and other hardware makers won't do it because they're not going to tie their products/profits to a single version of a single OS.
but I'm a Texan, so I'd probably last until October, then they'd uncover a man-shaped ice block next May. =)