That's right. Communism is a plague. Oh and which country's federal government is spending billions buying up bad debt? There's a piece of blatant socialism right there, whereas China is a capitalist country. It's only people too stupid to realise that the US is one of the poorest nations who don't seem to get that.
But I agree, you should keep on this rant and try and convince as many other Americans as possible you are right. Then maybe China will get pissed off and call in the debt.
I'd find it kind of funny telling my son that he has to eat all his vegetables because there are children starving in the US of A.
I'd like to point out that if you don't understand the ? : op, you shouldn't be programming in a language that uses it. It is an elegant and perfectly valid way of expressing an idea.
Seriously, what is so hard to read about it? I find it amazing that people who can handle complex programming tasks can't somehow figure out how to replace the ":" character with the word "otherwise". If you understand the word otherwise you've got it, otherwise piss off.
Or:
you = (vocab.contains(otherwise)) ? worthy : unworthy;
Look buddy, I got nothing against the ? : ternary, but the line ends with 0; which looks at best like someone with a droopy eye lookingh surprised and at worst someone bawling their eyes out. If you read code like that all day, you will get very upset. It's bad enough that so many lines of code end in );
Seriously, the one important piece of advice I have for anyone who is gouing to write code in one of these langauges with brackets and semi colons all over the place is this: the language is designed to briong you down, you gotta work hard to make it happy. That is why a good for loop goes like this:
int i;
for (; // that's happy
Thingy.condition()
;)
// more happiness
i += i < thing.number() ?
1: // not happy as such, but kind of cute
something()
; // avoid closing brackets followed by semi colons at all costs.
The trick is to remember that someone will have to maintain the code after you. It is your duty to make reading the code a happy experience.
Are you in Australia? Because that is very interesting. They said that they could provide a destruction disk (they call them recovery disks, I call them destruction disks because they recover nothing) but I said that the OS they provide is not Vista Home Premium as advertised by MS.
I also agree entirely that ALSA is a load of shite. I would much prefer something like an improved OSS (as in capabale of the rt performance on Linux) to alsa any day. But I thought I would point out that there is no reason for your sound cards to shuffle themselves. Mine never do.
You need to force alsa to load particular drivers and particular indices and everything is sweet. I have some onboard shite card which acts as default playback, an MAudio thing for doing realtime jack stuff and a USB MIDI thing. They always load into the same places everytime I boot.
Unfortunately I'm posting this from an XP machine away from home and I can't remember the details of how it's set up off the top of my head. If I remember when I get home, I'll post something.
According to MS, Windows Vista Home Premium requires a minimum of 40GB of hdd. The OS I was supplied could only install on a 150GB partition.
According to MS, Vista comes with repair tools to help you repair an installation and rescue corrupt files from a hard disk. The OS I was supplied could only be restored to factory condition, meaning that if my disk was slightly corrupted, my only choice was to lose all of my data and settings and wipe the entire system clean, losing any partitions I had created for other OSes, include others from Microsoft I may have rights to use. This was actually a bone of contention with HP support in that they kept referring to a "recovery partition" and I kept calling it a "destruction" or "wipe" partition. The fact that they choose to call it recovery in their marketing means nothing because it recovers nothing.
According to MS, Vista Home Premium will install on Intel processors with (I think) 750MB of RAM. The OS I was supplied only installs on my AMD machine with 2GB of RAM.
These are just a few off the top of my head, but probably enough to show a breach of statutory warranty in Australia, certainly enough to covince HP that they should bite the bullet and pay up.
The hardware vendors are allowed to sell modified "OEM" Windows disks because MS chooses to let them.
Not quite true. The hardware vendors are only allowed to sell modified "OEM" Windows disks because that is all MS chooses to allow.
At least that's the case with the HP lappy I bought here in OZ. When I complained that the OS they gave me didn't have the same features as Windows Vista Home Premium as described on the MS site and demanded remedy, they weren't allowed to ship a full install because their contract with MS precludes it. I had to get MS to ship a disk and get HP to send me a cheque.
So I don't blame the OEMs for putting crapware on systems, they need that extra money to deal with arseholes like me who hold them to their pre-sales claims. If they claim to offer a Windows Vista Home Premium machine but MS won't actually let them supply it, they are screwed. MS has created this issue.
Most large organisations including government provide 90% of their own tech support. Microsoft, in practice, provides none. At least it's like that where I am. The only "support" they provide is helping to ensure all of the machines are licensed properly.
So if a local government can't figure out that they can take save the $25 million they have spent on licenses by training their IT staff or supporting local business, they really aren't intelligent enough to be working for the government.
That whole support argument is bullshit, as is the TCO argument that gets bandied about.
Actually chimps do kill each other, they do seem to do it in tribal groups and it seems to be related to territorial claims. No one knows, or perhaps can know, the true reason behind it, although it does look similar to warfare.
Warfare only appeared in Homo Sapiens around the time we discovered bows and arrows, about 20,000 years ago, in Africa.
Interesting that Homo Sapiens only developed warfare after discovering bows and arrows. Chimpanzees make war, or at least violent tribal conflict, and as far as I know they don't use bows and arrows. We share a lot of DNA with chimps.
OK well this "monopolistic actions" have created a great product for the past 10 years at least. Psystar should lose this case.
This argument is a bit like a judge saying "You killed the guy, but no one liked him, so, not guilty". The quality of their products has nothing to do with the case at hand.
Apple is more than far away from a monopoly. They are at like 11% of pc market. Maybe my stats are wrong but psystar should lose and I hope they do.
You don't need a monopoly to engage in anti-competitive behaviour. The existance or not of a monopoly has nothing to do with whether Apple has engaged in anti-competitive behaviour.
Unfortunately these practices have helped created a superior product.
So which practices are those? Are you saying Apple engages in anti-competitive behaviour? If so, Apple should lose, regardless of how much anyone likes their products. If a judge found in favour of Apple for any of the "reasons" you have listed, I would hope that they are not a judge for very long, having shown gross incompetence.
We're in a group that plays music and we often share files at rehearsal via bluetooth so we can get to know them. The one guy that has an iPhone is left out of that one. All the Nokias, Motorolas and Sony Ericssons are happy to exchange and play mp3s, iPhone isn't.
Anything that is done over a network has to be done through Telstra and just about every application involves using the network. My current phone pretends to be a flash drive and lets me read/write whatever I want over usb. Would an iPhone? My current phone lets me use whatever wifi point I can configure. iPhone?
These things are all really simple and I would expect these things to be possible on an iPhone, without even touching on how easy it is for me to make my own apps. Seriously, these things aren't apples, they're lemons.
I think our best bets for the moment are still Mars and Europa.
You're right.
In fact Mars is teaming with life, including large amounts of the red weed which gives Mars it's distinctive appearance. Europa also supports life, but seeing as all these worlds are ours except Europa, I don't think we should attempt landing there.
The average person in Canada doesn't know or care about open-source handsets, and isn't going to care enough to learn.
Can't speak for Canadians myself, but I know a few non techy Apple fans that won't buy the iPhone because it is too locked down, they don't feel confident to crack it themselves and they are sick of otherwise good phones being rendered shitty by rude business practices. These are die hard Apple fans who don't know or care what open source is - computers work because plug them in and turn them on and there are two kinds, Macs or PCs which all run windows. They are starting to understand that their toys can't do certain things you'd think they should because they are deliberately made that way.
So if OpenMoko does eventually get out of the pre alpha stage and provide something useful and pretty, I'm sure it would sell like hotcakes to these non-tech types. The fact that it's open source is irrelevant, the fact that it's open isn't.
After looking at the Koolu.com website, I'd almost rather they not be referred to as Canadian... it makes us look bad...
I wouldn't be so hard on them. Looking at the W.E. Appliance, I think you should be proud. There's a simple and cheap product that I find quite tempting for some applications.
BSD with the Koran? You see anyone like the GPLers shooting hail Marys err hail.. Stallmans out of their assholes in the BSD group?
Yeah, I find the BSD and Koran thing a bit of a stretch but the suggestion that someone feels that the Koran is offensive in the current political climate makes me want to go out and piss on a Bible. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all belief systems fundamentally based on the same fairy stories from Africa. Just because the current enemy the neo cons have created to galvanise the population is Islam, doesn't mean you have to buy into it. Intelligent people, particularly intelligent Christians who follow the actual teaching of their prophet certainly wouldn't. Objectively, the Koran is just as holy/evil as the Bible.
The Koran is more like Ubuntu - respects the prophet to a point but says he wasn't really god and has another updated profit (Shuttleworth) that has something extra to offer in a modern setting (Usability).
BSD is probably more like Buddhism. Perhaps even Taoism.
yahoo pulled the site - or someone pulled it. It's gone
I was able to get 20 something tunes earlier. I was humanly selective - probably stupid on my part - and now I wish I could get more. No RIAA, I don't want you getting rich off graves, I wont pay you for this.
increase the percentage of hybrids on their streets, to switch public transportation to hybrids
Current hybrids are not the answer. They are more efficient in urban areas, but the efficiency gain is roughly equivalent to the difference between electronic fuel injected and old fashioned carburettor engines - they are just slightly more efficient oil burners. They suck for longer distances.
Trains and trams (you call them cable cars I think) are a lot better, A good bus network is also good, but if you really must have individual transport, get on a bike and burn some fat that you have created rather than the fossilised variety.
Wow I was really hoping the US would take the lead on this issue
And I was hoping for ponies. And winning 60 billion on the lottery.
Seriously, when a country is prepared to invade another purely over oil supplies and have a enough of the population support it to vote the idiot back in, how in hell are they going to take the lead on something like this. California maybe, but really Europe is already way ahead on this stuff. The rest of the US will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Don't want to do a gratuitous anti US troll thing, but seriously, get real.
Depending on what renewable energy systems are used, manufacturing can be pretty neutral. Windmills take a relatively small amount of energy to produce compared to photovoltaic, or even gas and coal for that matter. Solar thermal is also generally lower input than photovoltaic.
The question is, apart from Government financing, is it possible for Normal People to buy a Green Home / Car / Life?
This does raise an interesting counter to the whole capitalism/free market FTW crap that gets spewed by a lot of people. As soon as you start looking at a community or society genuinely taking responsibility for anything, the system fails to deliver. It puts too much power in the hands of a few and the few are usually in that position thanks to their selfishness. Not that I'm completely for government control, mind, I actually find both extremes equally laughable.
There are of course simple things that everyone can do to reduce our impact, but a lot of people don't want to change, are lazy or ignorant.
Because the real reason windows is such a bad product is that it tries to cater to people with your attitude.
So let me get this straight... the fact that there are people out their that perceive Linux and Ubuntu as different brands has nothing to do with whether or not they are perceived as different brands, computer OSes are easy for non-technical users to use unless they do something which is not easy and don't expect any old sound card to work. How does that have anything to do with my attitude and how does my attitude have anything to do with the product development of windows.
If you are drunk or stoned, that's cool, just try re-reading my post when you aren't. If you're one of those knee jerk reactionary open source zealots, don't bother re-reading the post and also please avoid user forums frequented by noobs and also avoid technical positions where your clients are non technical unless they are insulated by an experienced business analyst. You re-enforce a couple of negative perceptions of the Linux brand.
My post was purely looking at things from a branding point of view. I am one of those technical users who switched to Ubuntu because it has great hardware support and defaults to something closer to what I want than others I have tried including several years of Debian unstable. I still go in and change things because I know how, I build some of my own drivers and I help friends who are less technically savvy. I enjoy that I can install a powerful system with defaults I mostly like and then customise it in a matter of hours instead of the days it used to take me which is of course all down to personal preference.
So My attitude is not about shielding users from the system completely, but about providing a friendly experience to those who are not confident with a powerful back end system. Ubuntu has that BRAND PERCEPTION amongst a load of people I know while Linux has the BRAND PERCEPTION of being difficult. Understand?
Next time you have a build up of energy, try wanking in private. You'll enjoy it more, and you won't annoy others.
Speaking as someone from the country with the largest territorial claim over Antarctica, I think it's better not to do any studies or drilling there. That way, when all of the mindless idiots in the world have finished wasting their oil as fuel, we will still have some to make useful and durable things like plastics.
Linux is the OS that propeller heads use. If a noob tries to install it, encounters a problem and asks for help, they get the standard "RTFM" response, or perhaps a lecture on why something that doesn't work for them or is difficult to use is actually what they want. Ubuntu is the free alternative to windows which is heaps easier to use and has community support which is friendly, welcoming and extremely helpful.
Yeah, yeah, I know Ubuntu uses a Linux kernel and gnu tools, but it has established a brand which is seen as friendlier to non technical users than the Linux brand. The fact that one is an essential part of the other doesn't matter to people who don't no any better or care.
Slashdot Mirror
That's right. Communism is a plague. Oh and which country's federal government is spending billions buying up bad debt? There's a piece of blatant socialism right there, whereas China is a capitalist country. It's only people too stupid to realise that the US is one of the poorest nations who don't seem to get that.
But I agree, you should keep on this rant and try and convince as many other Americans as possible you are right. Then maybe China will get pissed off and call in the debt.
I'd find it kind of funny telling my son that he has to eat all his vegetables because there are children starving in the US of A.
Idiot
I'd like to point out that if you don't understand the ? : op, you shouldn't be programming in a language that uses it. It is an elegant and perfectly valid way of expressing an idea.
Seriously, what is so hard to read about it? I find it amazing that people who can handle complex programming tasks can't somehow figure out how to replace the ":" character with the word "otherwise". If you understand the word otherwise you've got it, otherwise piss off.
Or:
Look buddy, I got nothing against the ? : ternary, but the line ends with 0; which looks at best like someone with a droopy eye lookingh surprised and at worst someone bawling their eyes out. If you read code like that all day, you will get very upset. It's bad enough that so many lines of code end in );
Seriously, the one important piece of advice I have for anyone who is gouing to write code in one of these langauges with brackets and semi colons all over the place is this: the language is designed to briong you down, you gotta work hard to make it happy. That is why a good for loop goes like this:
The trick is to remember that someone will have to maintain the code after you. It is your duty to make reading the code a happy experience.
Are you in Australia? Because that is very interesting. They said that they could provide a destruction disk (they call them recovery disks, I call them destruction disks because they recover nothing) but I said that the OS they provide is not Vista Home Premium as advertised by MS.
I also agree entirely that ALSA is a load of shite. I would much prefer something like an improved OSS (as in capabale of the rt performance on Linux) to alsa any day. But I thought I would point out that there is no reason for your sound cards to shuffle themselves. Mine never do.
You need to force alsa to load particular drivers and particular indices and everything is sweet. I have some onboard shite card which acts as default playback, an MAudio thing for doing realtime jack stuff and a USB MIDI thing. They always load into the same places everytime I boot.
Unfortunately I'm posting this from an XP machine away from home and I can't remember the details of how it's set up off the top of my head. If I remember when I get home, I'll post something.
According to MS, Windows Vista Home Premium requires a minimum of 40GB of hdd. The OS I was supplied could only install on a 150GB partition.
According to MS, Vista comes with repair tools to help you repair an installation and rescue corrupt files from a hard disk. The OS I was supplied could only be restored to factory condition, meaning that if my disk was slightly corrupted, my only choice was to lose all of my data and settings and wipe the entire system clean, losing any partitions I had created for other OSes, include others from Microsoft I may have rights to use. This was actually a bone of contention with HP support in that they kept referring to a "recovery partition" and I kept calling it a "destruction" or "wipe" partition. The fact that they choose to call it recovery in their marketing means nothing because it recovers nothing.
According to MS, Vista Home Premium will install on Intel processors with (I think) 750MB of RAM. The OS I was supplied only installs on my AMD machine with 2GB of RAM.
These are just a few off the top of my head, but probably enough to show a breach of statutory warranty in Australia, certainly enough to covince HP that they should bite the bullet and pay up.
Not quite true. The hardware vendors are only allowed to sell modified "OEM" Windows disks because that is all MS chooses to allow.
At least that's the case with the HP lappy I bought here in OZ. When I complained that the OS they gave me didn't have the same features as Windows Vista Home Premium as described on the MS site and demanded remedy, they weren't allowed to ship a full install because their contract with MS precludes it. I had to get MS to ship a disk and get HP to send me a cheque.
So I don't blame the OEMs for putting crapware on systems, they need that extra money to deal with arseholes like me who hold them to their pre-sales claims. If they claim to offer a Windows Vista Home Premium machine but MS won't actually let them supply it, they are screwed. MS has created this issue.
Most large organisations including government provide 90% of their own tech support. Microsoft, in practice, provides none. At least it's like that where I am. The only "support" they provide is helping to ensure all of the machines are licensed properly.
So if a local government can't figure out that they can take save the $25 million they have spent on licenses by training their IT staff or supporting local business, they really aren't intelligent enough to be working for the government.
That whole support argument is bullshit, as is the TCO argument that gets bandied about.
Actually chimps do kill each other, they do seem to do it in tribal groups and it seems to be related to territorial claims. No one knows, or perhaps can know, the true reason behind it, although it does look similar to warfare.
A quick search here turned up plenty of information.
Interesting that Homo Sapiens only developed warfare after discovering bows and arrows. Chimpanzees make war, or at least violent tribal conflict, and as far as I know they don't use bows and arrows. We share a lot of DNA with chimps.
This argument is a bit like a judge saying "You killed the guy, but no one liked him, so, not guilty". The quality of their products has nothing to do with the case at hand.
You don't need a monopoly to engage in anti-competitive behaviour. The existance or not of a monopoly has nothing to do with whether Apple has engaged in anti-competitive behaviour.
So which practices are those? Are you saying Apple engages in anti-competitive behaviour? If so, Apple should lose, regardless of how much anyone likes their products. If a judge found in favour of Apple for any of the "reasons" you have listed, I would hope that they are not a judge for very long, having shown gross incompetence.
We're in a group that plays music and we often share files at rehearsal via bluetooth so we can get to know them. The one guy that has an iPhone is left out of that one. All the Nokias, Motorolas and Sony Ericssons are happy to exchange and play mp3s, iPhone isn't.
Anything that is done over a network has to be done through Telstra and just about every application involves using the network. My current phone pretends to be a flash drive and lets me read/write whatever I want over usb. Would an iPhone? My current phone lets me use whatever wifi point I can configure. iPhone?
These things are all really simple and I would expect these things to be possible on an iPhone, without even touching on how easy it is for me to make my own apps. Seriously, these things aren't apples, they're lemons.
You're right.
In fact Mars is teaming with life, including large amounts of the red weed which gives Mars it's distinctive appearance. Europa also supports life, but seeing as all these worlds are ours except Europa, I don't think we should attempt landing there.
Can't speak for Canadians myself, but I know a few non techy Apple fans that won't buy the iPhone because it is too locked down, they don't feel confident to crack it themselves and they are sick of otherwise good phones being rendered shitty by rude business practices. These are die hard Apple fans who don't know or care what open source is - computers work because plug them in and turn them on and there are two kinds, Macs or PCs which all run windows. They are starting to understand that their toys can't do certain things you'd think they should because they are deliberately made that way.
So if OpenMoko does eventually get out of the pre alpha stage and provide something useful and pretty, I'm sure it would sell like hotcakes to these non-tech types. The fact that it's open source is irrelevant, the fact that it's open isn't.
I wouldn't be so hard on them. Looking at the W.E. Appliance, I think you should be proud. There's a simple and cheap product that I find quite tempting for some applications.
Yeah, I find the BSD and Koran thing a bit of a stretch but the suggestion that someone feels that the Koran is offensive in the current political climate makes me want to go out and piss on a Bible. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all belief systems fundamentally based on the same fairy stories from Africa. Just because the current enemy the neo cons have created to galvanise the population is Islam, doesn't mean you have to buy into it. Intelligent people, particularly intelligent Christians who follow the actual teaching of their prophet certainly wouldn't. Objectively, the Koran is just as holy/evil as the Bible.
The Koran is more like Ubuntu - respects the prophet to a point but says he wasn't really god and has another updated profit (Shuttleworth) that has something extra to offer in a modern setting (Usability).
BSD is probably more like Buddhism. Perhaps even Taoism.
I fill my ink cartridges with liquid paper and print on green card, you insensitive clod!
yahoo pulled the site - or someone pulled it. It's gone
I was able to get 20 something tunes earlier. I was humanly selective - probably stupid on my part - and now I wish I could get more. No RIAA, I don't want you getting rich off graves, I wont pay you for this.
Yahoo: 1 /.: nil
or is that...?
Current hybrids are not the answer. They are more efficient in urban areas, but the efficiency gain is roughly equivalent to the difference between electronic fuel injected and old fashioned carburettor engines - they are just slightly more efficient oil burners. They suck for longer distances.
Trains and trams (you call them cable cars I think) are a lot better, A good bus network is also good, but if you really must have individual transport, get on a bike and burn some fat that you have created rather than the fossilised variety.
And I was hoping for ponies. And winning 60 billion on the lottery.
Seriously, when a country is prepared to invade another purely over oil supplies and have a enough of the population support it to vote the idiot back in, how in hell are they going to take the lead on something like this. California maybe, but really Europe is already way ahead on this stuff. The rest of the US will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Don't want to do a gratuitous anti US troll thing, but seriously, get real.
Depending on what renewable energy systems are used, manufacturing can be pretty neutral. Windmills take a relatively small amount of energy to produce compared to photovoltaic, or even gas and coal for that matter. Solar thermal is also generally lower input than photovoltaic.
This does raise an interesting counter to the whole capitalism/free market FTW crap that gets spewed by a lot of people. As soon as you start looking at a community or society genuinely taking responsibility for anything, the system fails to deliver. It puts too much power in the hands of a few and the few are usually in that position thanks to their selfishness. Not that I'm completely for government control, mind, I actually find both extremes equally laughable.
There are of course simple things that everyone can do to reduce our impact, but a lot of people don't want to change, are lazy or ignorant.
So let me get this straight... the fact that there are people out their that perceive Linux and Ubuntu as different brands has nothing to do with whether or not they are perceived as different brands, computer OSes are easy for non-technical users to use unless they do something which is not easy and don't expect any old sound card to work. How does that have anything to do with my attitude and how does my attitude have anything to do with the product development of windows.
If you are drunk or stoned, that's cool, just try re-reading my post when you aren't. If you're one of those knee jerk reactionary open source zealots, don't bother re-reading the post and also please avoid user forums frequented by noobs and also avoid technical positions where your clients are non technical unless they are insulated by an experienced business analyst. You re-enforce a couple of negative perceptions of the Linux brand.
My post was purely looking at things from a branding point of view. I am one of those technical users who switched to Ubuntu because it has great hardware support and defaults to something closer to what I want than others I have tried including several years of Debian unstable. I still go in and change things because I know how, I build some of my own drivers and I help friends who are less technically savvy. I enjoy that I can install a powerful system with defaults I mostly like and then customise it in a matter of hours instead of the days it used to take me which is of course all down to personal preference.
So My attitude is not about shielding users from the system completely, but about providing a friendly experience to those who are not confident with a powerful back end system. Ubuntu has that BRAND PERCEPTION amongst a load of people I know while Linux has the BRAND PERCEPTION of being difficult. Understand?
Next time you have a build up of energy, try wanking in private. You'll enjoy it more, and you won't annoy others.
Yank? The US has no territorial claim on Antarctica.
A claim would of course fit right in to the sick joke that is US international relations....
Speaking as someone from the country with the largest territorial claim over Antarctica, I think it's better not to do any studies or drilling there. That way, when all of the mindless idiots in the world have finished wasting their oil as fuel, we will still have some to make useful and durable things like plastics.
Idiot.
Linux is the OS that propeller heads use. If a noob tries to install it, encounters a problem and asks for help, they get the standard "RTFM" response, or perhaps a lecture on why something that doesn't work for them or is difficult to use is actually what they want. Ubuntu is the free alternative to windows which is heaps easier to use and has community support which is friendly, welcoming and extremely helpful.
Yeah, yeah, I know Ubuntu uses a Linux kernel and gnu tools, but it has established a brand which is seen as friendlier to non technical users than the Linux brand. The fact that one is an essential part of the other doesn't matter to people who don't no any better or care.
*JTU NOOB!
*Just Try Ubuntu