Many people out there think that thin-clients are the wave of the future. This means that instead of spending $500 on your Dell, and running all applications locally, you spend $50 on a thin device that has nothing but a web browser and an internet connection. All applications are run over the internet.
It's an interesting concept, and this could be the wave of the future, but in order for that future to arrive, a lot of things need to happen first...
1. High speed internet in every home. And not just 3MB/s DSL, I'm talking fiber. Computing power won't be your limiting factor, but rather bandwidth.
2. Availablility of application service providers, or hosted applications. I can't switch to a thin client, if all of the software out there is run locally.
3. People accepting the thin-client way and giving up their fat clients. Fiscally the move makes sense. The equipment is cheaper and very low maintenence (if it breaks, toss it and buy a new one). As for software, you pay for what you use even down to the feature level. Don't use pivot tables in Excel? Then you don't have to pay for that functionality until you do use them. (Yes I know I'd rather not pay anything as in FOSS, but I don't see a 100% FOSS world anytime soon).
Bandwidth is getting there. The US seems to be behind, but give it some time and at least more urban users can begin adopting this. The next thing is the hosted applications. This is what these office suites are trying to do. Given that office suites are some of the most popular software (widest user base) and that it is also a business tool, it's a good place to start if you want to achieve step 3, winning the hearts and minds of the users.
Now should the world go thin, or stay fat? I don't know. Thin clients seem compelling to me. It makes sense to move in this direction. Sort of back to the future. In the beginning there were mainframes with dumb terminals. This is the same idea, but on a global scale. We'll just have to see where this goes, but if it does happen, it won't be immediate. It will be a very slow transition, if it transitions at all.
That's the problem, it's too easy. Robbers spam bank customers with phishing attack. Out of the thousands of customers, 121 dumbasses fall for it. Robbers transfer funds. Robbers go on vacation and buy a car. End of story.
You're missing all of the critical pieces of a Hollywood heist movie. No hostages? No hereos? No fictional wonder tool fabricated out of duct tape a an old microwave oven? There's not even room for a car chase or an explosion.
On another note, there's nothing really ingenious about this scam anyway. Well, maybe the first successful phishing attack might have been ingenious, but this is just more of the same, but the scammers got lucky and made a lot of money. Maybe they did something that made their scam more profitable than others, but I don't think it's anything ingenious, just close attention to details and flawless execution.
Actually, as a New Jersey taxpayer, I'm not livid, and neither is the rest of New Jersey. Why? Because we voted for this. In the last election, New Jersey had three proposals on the ballot. If memory serves me correctly, all of which had some environmental impact. At least one of which involved a tax increase that would be allocating specifically for the purpose of researching alternative energy. So I'm glad that the state government is following through with this.
To those calling this a "stupid project" and does not show anything new, or even worthwhile, you are wrong. While this may seem to you like a crazy geek project by someone who could afford it himself, I see it as a proof of concept. Not just the solar bit, but the hydrogen piece as well. Not too many people with solar panels on their roof are also producing their own hydrogen, not only for energy storage, but to run his hydrogen fuel cell car. If this guy is successful in creating this concept, and people show a genuine interest in this kind of energy production, then much good will come. Costs will definitely drop once demand goes up and the economies of scale kick in. By keeping interest high, more innovations in this technology will come about.
I would even suggest a commitee to discuss possible scenarios for doing a mass roll-out of this type of energy. There are a lot of different things to consider, such as distributed or central hydrogen storage, or some kind of compromise of distributed central storage facilities. The fact that this man can run his entire house from the solar panels alone is significant and the publicity for it alone is a step closer to this becoming a reality for everyone.
Regarding nvidia, it's actually gotten easier. If you add one of the third party repositories like Livna, the nvidia drivers are available through yum. Under the method you spelled out (which I used to do myself) everytime you update the kernel, you have to reinstall the nvidia drivers for that kernel. Sometimes, the latest drivers and the latest kernel don't play well together and the install fails. With the yum method, as far as I know, you don't have to keep reinstalling the nvidia drivers with every kernel update. I could be wrong though since I've been using Ubuntu lately. In Ubuntu if you add the nvidia kernel modules through apt, the kernel upgrades work seemlessly with the nvidia drivers.
This article does a great job in highlighting one of the biggest flaws in the RIAA's logic...
Those who download a couple songs off a peer to peer network are more likely to do one or all of the following:
a) Purchase more music from the artist
b) Attend a performance featuring said artists
c) Recomend said artist to a friend
The more exposure an artist receives, the more money an artist will make. In fact artists make more money off of live performances than they do off of record sales. Personally, I have bought more CD's because I illegally downloaded some of the songs on the album first. Why would I spend money on something if it was crap. I am simply researching the product before I buy so that I don't waste my money. These mixtapes do the exact same thing that an "illegal" fileshareing network does. The record companies should be praising them, just as they used to praise mixtapes. Not sure what happened to that though.
Here's what all of the bead artisan's should have done...
Upon noticing that China is not only mass producing the beads that you put so much effort into, but they are doing it very cheaply by cutting corners and using inferior materials, the bead makers band together and compete directly with the cheap bead manufacturers by mass producing high quality beads. This does a couple things. First, it ensures that high quality beads are available to all artists/designers/etc. They can still buy the cheap stuff, but if what you say about the cheap beads are true, the professionals won't use the cheap stuff, only the high quality beads to ensure that they are producing a high quality product. The cheap beads would be used mostly by non-professionals like the Martha Stewarts and first grade art classes. Second, it ensures that the price of beads stays reasonable. The Chinese can't artificially raise the price on a poor quality product because then the low quality beads will be more expensive than the high quality beads. Naturally, the better quality beads will be more expensive, but they are higher quality and last longer and shine brighter, etc. Mass producing the beads does not mean that you have to necessarily lose the "tradition" of bead making. The independant bead craftsmen is now a bead designer. Instead of selling each bead personally, the artist designs a bead, then the manufacturer can mass produce it and distribute it.
The moral of this story is to change with the times or be left behind.
How about if this is a business that affects your life in some way? For instance, what if the New York Stock Exchange had a vulnerability it didn't know about, but you do (not gonna ask how you found it)? Now think about what could happen if the NYSE got hacked. Worst case scenario, the US economy collapses. Now how does this affect you? Well, your job could be in jeaopardy, hyper-inflation could make the cost of living to sky rocket. Happy times are not in the cards for you. This is a pretty extreme example, but still, it's something to think about.
A less extreme example could involve the bank that you use. But maybe it's not just your bank, but it affects almost every bank. It's not longer a matter of switching banks, and your money is at stake.
So Steve Jobs is to Steve Wozniak
as Tony Clifton is to Andy Kaufman?
It's possible. I don't think it was until after Andy had died that it became known that the two were one in the same. Maybe the whole Apple v. Microsoft feud is fake too like the whole Jerry Lawler stunt.
If people here truly hate DRM for the right reasons, then they should protest Apple and demand that users do not buy iPods or OSX, the two most DRMed products currently in existence.
I don't own an iPod, but as far as I know (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the the iPod itself is not DRMed, it's iTunes (or at least the iTunes Music Store) that has the DRM. Owning an iPod does not mean that you must use the iTMS. You can rip your CD's to mp3 and load them onto your iPod. These files you have ripped yourself contain no DRM. If you're into the whole p2p or bittorrent thing, you can load up your iPod with illegally downloaded mp3's. You can put any file on there that is supported by the iPod.
The other thing, is that you rope all slashdotters into one category of DRM hating iPod lovers, when it is clear that there is plenty of debate over everything posted. Yes there are lots of iPod fans here. Yes there are lots of DRM haters here. But they are not necessarily one in the same. I'm sure you are right to an extent. There probably are people who paradoxically fit into both categories, but for the most part, the most vocal DRM haters wouldn't touch iTunes with a ten foot pole.
Because it's just more interesting that way. The code name doesn't really mean anything and there is no reason they can't call it "Firefox 3". But that's kinda boring. I gather the Mozilla team has a good sense of humor and like to keep their project fun, whether they have to invent the fun via funny code names or not.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing that one of the previous firefox code names was "The Ocho", even though the release had nothing to do with the number eight. I think the developers had just seen the movie "Dodgeball" and were still quoting lines and laughing about it.
This has been a particularly tough year for the snow angel industry. This has been a very mild winter and many ski resorts are suffering because of it. If this keeps up, and global warming fully comes to fruition, then I don't think snow angels will be a very good investment. Now SCUBA gear, that's a solid investment!
So now since MS is going to spend a ton of money on marketing the idea of home users running file servers, I think this is a perfect opportunity for the likes of Dell and HP to sell their own, less expensive HomeNAS. They take a NAS device, that they already make for the enterprise, throw on a lightweight Linux. Throw on some Samba, Apache, etc. Write some easy to use "Wizards" to make it really easy for the normal Windows user to connect their PC's, upload files, and do things like schedule backups, and you have a much lower cost solution than the likes of Microsoft. On top of that, it's more secure, more stable, and the software is OSS!
Dead on. I was just going to say the same thing, but you beat me to it.
I'd like to add, though, that far too often, those who were given specific training in something like MS Office, are completely lost when they are introduced to anything else. For example, Lotus Notes vs. MS Outlook. On job postings for a lot of administrative type jobs, you see "Must be proficient in " An applicant who was tought specifically how to do Outlook, will not even apply to a job that asks for Lotus. The idea that they are both just basically the same thing doesn't really stick. The same goes for any other piece of software. Operating systems are a good example, because I have observed the use of all 3 by n00bs. It's mostly a fear factor than anything really. I use Linux, the girlfriend used Windows (not anymore:)). When she was at my place and needed to check something on the internet, she just sat down and did it. She didn't even think about the fact that this wasn't familiar until she had already fired up Firefox. She knew nothing about Linux prior to this, but when you sit down at the screen and you see "Applications" menu, and under that menu, there's an "Internet" menu, and in that menu, there's a web browser that you know and love from Windows (Firefox), there is nothing really to think about. The transition to OpenOffice was seemless as well. She uses it full time, yet I have never given her any kind of training in it. It's all there, it's just a matter of finding out where, and that only takes about 2 seconds of your time.
The bean counters only reinforce the fear factor. They reason that we must teach our kids on the same thing they will be using in the "real world." Unfortunately, you are only creating a robot, who is programmed to do one thing and cannot think and learn for itself.
Packet prioritization can be done in a neutral way, and I think that this is something that is necessary. Take VOIP, for example. In order to ensure that voice calls can get through and also that they are smooth and have little, if any, delay, VOIP packets need to have precedence over HTML packets. The 911 call is much more important than pictures of Aunt Sally's vacation. If the 911 call is unclear or does not get through at all, lives could be at stake. If Aunt Sally's vacation pictures take an extra few seconds to download, no one is going to care, or even notice. IPTV also has a large QoS factor, and there will be many unhappy customers if the TV signal is choppy. Priority needs to be given to packets that require a high QoS level
Now the important factor here is that this prioritzation is done neutrally. A VOIP call from a Comcast customer should receive the same priority as a VOIP call from a Vonage customer. Comcast should not be able to "sub-prioritize" in favor of its own services. Afterall, a VOIP call that is long distance will travel across multiple ISP's before it gets to its destination, and all of those ISP's should treat the call equally.
In a perfect world, prioritization neutrality wouldn't even be necessary, because the ISP's would be separate from the content providers. I would like it if say Verizon provided me with a working fiber link and nothing else. I would then subscribe to VOIP service and TV service from third party content providers who would all be able to compete on a level playing field for my business.
Wow you could be making so much more. I charge $25 per hour for that. Considering Windows takes forever to install (especially the disk formatting. What's with that? I formatted 220GB in about ten minutes the other day with FC6) and then there is all of the extra tweaking and data restore that comes after it, it sometimes takes me about three hours. Add on top of that the time for the initial consultation and and diagnosis, you've got a nice chunk of change. And if they have more than one computer in the house, they usually want to you do the same to the other one cause the first is like new again. Your revenue just doubled.
Actually, whether Nouveau successfully releases an open nvidia driver, or nvidia decides to open theirs up, the goal of all of this will have been reached. What the community desperately needs is an open driver for nvidia cards. A large project, like what Nouveau is undertaking, may garner the kind of press necessary to make nvidia change their minds. If nvidia wants any kind of control over what passes as an nvidia driver, it is in their best interests to stop Nouveau by beating them to the punch. You may think that Nouvou had just wasted their time, working on a driver that won't be released, but I see it as Nouveau working on get an open driver released, whether it come from their own developers or nvidia's. It's a win win situation
Thanks for reminding me of the reason I chose Fedora in the first place! Back when I first decided to take the plunge into the world of Linux, I asked my friend what distro he recommended. He said he liked debian the best, but since I didn't have broadband, that Fedora would be better since it comes with so many applications right on the discs. He burned some FC2 discs for me and led me through the install and there was little else I had to download. Since it was my first taste, I chose the option of installing everything, which was great because I could play around with all kinds of software whether I "needed" them or not. It was a great introduction.
Now that I'm a little savier, I know what I want when I do an install, and usually there are bits a pieces spread out across five discs, even if it is only one or two packages from discs 2 through 5. For my purposes, I would really like a live CD that did nothing more than connect to the internet and open up yum (or yumex for the graphical types) and do the entire install over the internet. This of course would not work for those on dial-up.
The Fedora team is on the right track though. What they need to do is offer a single base install disc, preferably a live cd like Ubuntu's. This would give you a minimal install, plus some favorites like firefox and OpenOffice just to start you out on the right track. The rest is available in the Fedora repositories through yum, but at the same time, have the ability to download the entire repository onto muliple CD's for the broadband impaired.
Ok so when I heard that the iPhone was finally being released, what I expected really didn't excite me. I was expecting an iPod that has a built in phone and not much more. But then I went and actually looked at the thing. Wow! Not only does this thing look like nothing else out there, but it's so much more than just an iPod with a phone. It is literally a tablet computer, shrunk down even further to pocket size. It's running a full blown operating system (OSX). So it isn't an iPod phone, it's a Mac phone, which is pretty impressive. My only issue is that I don't really have a need or want for such a device (I don't have or want an mp3 player, I don't need a blackberry type device [yet], and generally I'm a Linux guy). As far as a phone goes, my little quad band LG flip phone suits me perfectly (although the camera is excessive). And then there is the price. $499 for the base model. That's pretty steep. When you compare it feature to feature with similarly priced objects the price makes a little more sense, but you have to keep in mind that Apple is expecting this to be as widespread and popular as the iPod, which means it needs to be priced more like an iPod and less like a Dell computer, or an XBOX 360. I'm not sure what Apples plans are for price drops once demand starts catching up, but for now, it's mostly just a wet dream for most geeks.
Slashdot Mirror
Still!? The first thing I did after intalling Ubuntu was change the background. Yuck!
Many people out there think that thin-clients are the wave of the future. This means that instead of spending $500 on your Dell, and running all applications locally, you spend $50 on a thin device that has nothing but a web browser and an internet connection. All applications are run over the internet.
It's an interesting concept, and this could be the wave of the future, but in order for that future to arrive, a lot of things need to happen first...
1. High speed internet in every home. And not just 3MB/s DSL, I'm talking fiber. Computing power won't be your limiting factor, but rather bandwidth.
2. Availablility of application service providers, or hosted applications. I can't switch to a thin client, if all of the software out there is run locally.
3. People accepting the thin-client way and giving up their fat clients. Fiscally the move makes sense. The equipment is cheaper and very low maintenence (if it breaks, toss it and buy a new one). As for software, you pay for what you use even down to the feature level. Don't use pivot tables in Excel? Then you don't have to pay for that functionality until you do use them. (Yes I know I'd rather not pay anything as in FOSS, but I don't see a 100% FOSS world anytime soon).
Bandwidth is getting there. The US seems to be behind, but give it some time and at least more urban users can begin adopting this. The next thing is the hosted applications. This is what these office suites are trying to do. Given that office suites are some of the most popular software (widest user base) and that it is also a business tool, it's a good place to start if you want to achieve step 3, winning the hearts and minds of the users.
Now should the world go thin, or stay fat? I don't know. Thin clients seem compelling to me. It makes sense to move in this direction. Sort of back to the future. In the beginning there were mainframes with dumb terminals. This is the same idea, but on a global scale. We'll just have to see where this goes, but if it does happen, it won't be immediate. It will be a very slow transition, if it transitions at all.
You're missing all of the critical pieces of a Hollywood heist movie. No hostages? No hereos? No fictional wonder tool fabricated out of duct tape a an old microwave oven? There's not even room for a car chase or an explosion.
On another note, there's nothing really ingenious about this scam anyway. Well, maybe the first successful phishing attack might have been ingenious, but this is just more of the same, but the scammers got lucky and made a lot of money. Maybe they did something that made their scam more profitable than others, but I don't think it's anything ingenious, just close attention to details and flawless execution.
Actually, as a New Jersey taxpayer, I'm not livid, and neither is the rest of New Jersey. Why? Because we voted for this. In the last election, New Jersey had three proposals on the ballot. If memory serves me correctly, all of which had some environmental impact. At least one of which involved a tax increase that would be allocating specifically for the purpose of researching alternative energy. So I'm glad that the state government is following through with this.
To those calling this a "stupid project" and does not show anything new, or even worthwhile, you are wrong. While this may seem to you like a crazy geek project by someone who could afford it himself, I see it as a proof of concept. Not just the solar bit, but the hydrogen piece as well. Not too many people with solar panels on their roof are also producing their own hydrogen, not only for energy storage, but to run his hydrogen fuel cell car. If this guy is successful in creating this concept, and people show a genuine interest in this kind of energy production, then much good will come. Costs will definitely drop once demand goes up and the economies of scale kick in. By keeping interest high, more innovations in this technology will come about.
I would even suggest a commitee to discuss possible scenarios for doing a mass roll-out of this type of energy. There are a lot of different things to consider, such as distributed or central hydrogen storage, or some kind of compromise of distributed central storage facilities. The fact that this man can run his entire house from the solar panels alone is significant and the publicity for it alone is a step closer to this becoming a reality for everyone.
Regarding nvidia, it's actually gotten easier. If you add one of the third party repositories like Livna, the nvidia drivers are available through yum. Under the method you spelled out (which I used to do myself) everytime you update the kernel, you have to reinstall the nvidia drivers for that kernel. Sometimes, the latest drivers and the latest kernel don't play well together and the install fails. With the yum method, as far as I know, you don't have to keep reinstalling the nvidia drivers with every kernel update. I could be wrong though since I've been using Ubuntu lately. In Ubuntu if you add the nvidia kernel modules through apt, the kernel upgrades work seemlessly with the nvidia drivers.
This article does a great job in highlighting one of the biggest flaws in the RIAA's logic...
Those who download a couple songs off a peer to peer network are more likely to do one or all of the following:
a) Purchase more music from the artist
b) Attend a performance featuring said artists
c) Recomend said artist to a friend
The more exposure an artist receives, the more money an artist will make. In fact artists make more money off of live performances than they do off of record sales. Personally, I have bought more CD's because I illegally downloaded some of the songs on the album first. Why would I spend money on something if it was crap. I am simply researching the product before I buy so that I don't waste my money. These mixtapes do the exact same thing that an "illegal" fileshareing network does. The record companies should be praising them, just as they used to praise mixtapes. Not sure what happened to that though.
Here's what all of the bead artisan's should have done...
Upon noticing that China is not only mass producing the beads that you put so much effort into, but they are doing it very cheaply by cutting corners and using inferior materials, the bead makers band together and compete directly with the cheap bead manufacturers by mass producing high quality beads. This does a couple things. First, it ensures that high quality beads are available to all artists/designers/etc. They can still buy the cheap stuff, but if what you say about the cheap beads are true, the professionals won't use the cheap stuff, only the high quality beads to ensure that they are producing a high quality product. The cheap beads would be used mostly by non-professionals like the Martha Stewarts and first grade art classes. Second, it ensures that the price of beads stays reasonable. The Chinese can't artificially raise the price on a poor quality product because then the low quality beads will be more expensive than the high quality beads. Naturally, the better quality beads will be more expensive, but they are higher quality and last longer and shine brighter, etc. Mass producing the beads does not mean that you have to necessarily lose the "tradition" of bead making. The independant bead craftsmen is now a bead designer. Instead of selling each bead personally, the artist designs a bead, then the manufacturer can mass produce it and distribute it.
The moral of this story is to change with the times or be left behind.
The funny thing is, I grew up in NJ. :)
How about if this is a business that affects your life in some way? For instance, what if the New York Stock Exchange had a vulnerability it didn't know about, but you do (not gonna ask how you found it)? Now think about what could happen if the NYSE got hacked. Worst case scenario, the US economy collapses. Now how does this affect you? Well, your job could be in jeaopardy, hyper-inflation could make the cost of living to sky rocket. Happy times are not in the cards for you. This is a pretty extreme example, but still, it's something to think about.
A less extreme example could involve the bank that you use. But maybe it's not just your bank, but it affects almost every bank. It's not longer a matter of switching banks, and your money is at stake.
So Steve Jobs is to Steve Wozniak
as Tony Clifton is to Andy Kaufman?
It's possible. I don't think it was until after Andy had died that it became known that the two were one in the same. Maybe the whole Apple v. Microsoft feud is fake too like the whole Jerry Lawler stunt.
So does that mean drunk-driving and cocaine use are legal?
The other thing, is that you rope all slashdotters into one category of DRM hating iPod lovers, when it is clear that there is plenty of debate over everything posted. Yes there are lots of iPod fans here. Yes there are lots of DRM haters here. But they are not necessarily one in the same. I'm sure you are right to an extent. There probably are people who paradoxically fit into both categories, but for the most part, the most vocal DRM haters wouldn't touch iTunes with a ten foot pole.
The parent is right. Global warming argument aside, no one wants to live in a garabage dump.
p.s. No offense to the residents of Staten Island
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing that one of the previous firefox code names was "The Ocho", even though the release had nothing to do with the number eight. I think the developers had just seen the movie "Dodgeball" and were still quoting lines and laughing about it.
Those hotel movies are expensive.
Unfortunately for me, the consulting company I joined (Accenture's biggest competitor) failed to mention this until Orientation.
"Welcome to Initech! We got you, you dumb bastards! Ah ha hah ha!"
This has been a particularly tough year for the snow angel industry. This has been a very mild winter and many ski resorts are suffering because of it. If this keeps up, and global warming fully comes to fruition, then I don't think snow angels will be a very good investment. Now SCUBA gear, that's a solid investment!
So now since MS is going to spend a ton of money on marketing the idea of home users running file servers, I think this is a perfect opportunity for the likes of Dell and HP to sell their own, less expensive HomeNAS. They take a NAS device, that they already make for the enterprise, throw on a lightweight Linux. Throw on some Samba, Apache, etc. Write some easy to use "Wizards" to make it really easy for the normal Windows user to connect their PC's, upload files, and do things like schedule backups, and you have a much lower cost solution than the likes of Microsoft. On top of that, it's more secure, more stable, and the software is OSS!
Dead on. I was just going to say the same thing, but you beat me to it.
:)). When she was at my place and needed to check something on the internet, she just sat down and did it. She didn't even think about the fact that this wasn't familiar until she had already fired up Firefox. She knew nothing about Linux prior to this, but when you sit down at the screen and you see "Applications" menu, and under that menu, there's an "Internet" menu, and in that menu, there's a web browser that you know and love from Windows (Firefox), there is nothing really to think about. The transition to OpenOffice was seemless as well. She uses it full time, yet I have never given her any kind of training in it. It's all there, it's just a matter of finding out where, and that only takes about 2 seconds of your time.
I'd like to add, though, that far too often, those who were given specific training in something like MS Office, are completely lost when they are introduced to anything else. For example, Lotus Notes vs. MS Outlook. On job postings for a lot of administrative type jobs, you see "Must be proficient in " An applicant who was tought specifically how to do Outlook, will not even apply to a job that asks for Lotus. The idea that they are both just basically the same thing doesn't really stick. The same goes for any other piece of software. Operating systems are a good example, because I have observed the use of all 3 by n00bs. It's mostly a fear factor than anything really. I use Linux, the girlfriend used Windows (not anymore
The bean counters only reinforce the fear factor. They reason that we must teach our kids on the same thing they will be using in the "real world." Unfortunately, you are only creating a robot, who is programmed to do one thing and cannot think and learn for itself.
Packet prioritization can be done in a neutral way, and I think that this is something that is necessary. Take VOIP, for example. In order to ensure that voice calls can get through and also that they are smooth and have little, if any, delay, VOIP packets need to have precedence over HTML packets. The 911 call is much more important than pictures of Aunt Sally's vacation. If the 911 call is unclear or does not get through at all, lives could be at stake. If Aunt Sally's vacation pictures take an extra few seconds to download, no one is going to care, or even notice. IPTV also has a large QoS factor, and there will be many unhappy customers if the TV signal is choppy. Priority needs to be given to packets that require a high QoS level
Now the important factor here is that this prioritzation is done neutrally. A VOIP call from a Comcast customer should receive the same priority as a VOIP call from a Vonage customer. Comcast should not be able to "sub-prioritize" in favor of its own services. Afterall, a VOIP call that is long distance will travel across multiple ISP's before it gets to its destination, and all of those ISP's should treat the call equally.
In a perfect world, prioritization neutrality wouldn't even be necessary, because the ISP's would be separate from the content providers. I would like it if say Verizon provided me with a working fiber link and nothing else. I would then subscribe to VOIP service and TV service from third party content providers who would all be able to compete on a level playing field for my business.
Wow you could be making so much more. I charge $25 per hour for that. Considering Windows takes forever to install (especially the disk formatting. What's with that? I formatted 220GB in about ten minutes the other day with FC6) and then there is all of the extra tweaking and data restore that comes after it, it sometimes takes me about three hours. Add on top of that the time for the initial consultation and and diagnosis, you've got a nice chunk of change. And if they have more than one computer in the house, they usually want to you do the same to the other one cause the first is like new again. Your revenue just doubled.
Actually, whether Nouveau successfully releases an open nvidia driver, or nvidia decides to open theirs up, the goal of all of this will have been reached. What the community desperately needs is an open driver for nvidia cards. A large project, like what Nouveau is undertaking, may garner the kind of press necessary to make nvidia change their minds. If nvidia wants any kind of control over what passes as an nvidia driver, it is in their best interests to stop Nouveau by beating them to the punch. You may think that Nouvou had just wasted their time, working on a driver that won't be released, but I see it as Nouveau working on get an open driver released, whether it come from their own developers or nvidia's. It's a win win situation
Thanks for reminding me of the reason I chose Fedora in the first place! Back when I first decided to take the plunge into the world of Linux, I asked my friend what distro he recommended. He said he liked debian the best, but since I didn't have broadband, that Fedora would be better since it comes with so many applications right on the discs. He burned some FC2 discs for me and led me through the install and there was little else I had to download. Since it was my first taste, I chose the option of installing everything, which was great because I could play around with all kinds of software whether I "needed" them or not. It was a great introduction.
Now that I'm a little savier, I know what I want when I do an install, and usually there are bits a pieces spread out across five discs, even if it is only one or two packages from discs 2 through 5. For my purposes, I would really like a live CD that did nothing more than connect to the internet and open up yum (or yumex for the graphical types) and do the entire install over the internet. This of course would not work for those on dial-up.
The Fedora team is on the right track though. What they need to do is offer a single base install disc, preferably a live cd like Ubuntu's. This would give you a minimal install, plus some favorites like firefox and OpenOffice just to start you out on the right track. The rest is available in the Fedora repositories through yum, but at the same time, have the ability to download the entire repository onto muliple CD's for the broadband impaired.
Ok so when I heard that the iPhone was finally being released, what I expected really didn't excite me. I was expecting an iPod that has a built in phone and not much more. But then I went and actually looked at the thing. Wow! Not only does this thing look like nothing else out there, but it's so much more than just an iPod with a phone. It is literally a tablet computer, shrunk down even further to pocket size. It's running a full blown operating system (OSX). So it isn't an iPod phone, it's a Mac phone, which is pretty impressive. My only issue is that I don't really have a need or want for such a device (I don't have or want an mp3 player, I don't need a blackberry type device [yet], and generally I'm a Linux guy). As far as a phone goes, my little quad band LG flip phone suits me perfectly (although the camera is excessive). And then there is the price. $499 for the base model. That's pretty steep. When you compare it feature to feature with similarly priced objects the price makes a little more sense, but you have to keep in mind that Apple is expecting this to be as widespread and popular as the iPod, which means it needs to be priced more like an iPod and less like a Dell computer, or an XBOX 360. I'm not sure what Apples plans are for price drops once demand starts catching up, but for now, it's mostly just a wet dream for most geeks.