You're argument has been countered already by many, but they all seem to forget the finest example of Sony flopping on a media format. Perhaps it was too obvious, but no one should EVER forget the quintessential example of what happens in a format war.
MythTV can do it, but it's probably more of a commitment than other solutions. If you set up a MythTV backend system to record tv, you can set up MythTV frontend clients on other machines (like your gf's laptop). Don't worry, the clients do not have to be dedicated. The client will connect to the backend machine and either stream live tv straight from one of the capture cards, or stream a previously recorded show. I have MythTV running in my living room right now, but it is both a frontend and backend all in one. I have yet to connect a separate client to it, but I do have plans to do so in the future.
I assume you're thinking along the lines of Microsoft Plus! (you know the extra desktop themes you could pay extra for).
I agree, adding an exclamation point on the end of your product name is one of the gayest naming conventions out there (Top of the Muffin TO YOU!), but you can't forget about some at least decent products carrying that flaming point of exclamation...
Yahoo!
Creative Sound Blaster Live!
While I prefer Google over Yahoo!, (notice awkward punctuation) it's still a very popular search engine with a lot of other tools available. I've always felt that Creative made pretty good sound cards, so no complaints for the Sound Blaster Live!.
Ok so basically you say that drug companies are only interested in profits, not in helping people, so they will do whatever will earn them more money. While yes chemotherapy makes them a lot of money, drug companies live for releasing blockbuster drugs, especially the smaller companies. The first company to release a real cure for cancer will make record breaking profits. Their stock price alone will go through the roof. If I were an executive with company stock options, I would sell my options off right after releasing the cure for cancer and then retire to my own private continent, because that's how much money I would make. I interned for a small biotech company amidst a launch of a new cancer treatment drug. As soon as the FDA gave approval for it's US release, the companies stock price went through the roof and a couple months later split. Even given the short amount of time I was working at the company, had I bought stock the day I started and then sold it all the day I left, I would have a pretty nice pile of cash.
Don't kid yourself. A cure for cancer will make more money than chemotherapy.
Ok so as the posts above me illustrate, yes there is a need for more and more storage. Datacenters are probably the biggest reason. However, I'm right with you on the home PC market. Yes there are the oddballs the do need lots of storage. In fact, I recently became one of them after I built a MythTV box. It really sucks when you only get half of the movie because the hard drive filled up. But on my regular desktop, I've got 40GB and don't plan on expanding that anytime soon. I used to store all of my mp3's on there until I built the MythTV box, but even then, 40GB was plenty.
My real complaint isn't so much that I don't need it, or you don't need it. My complaint is that Dell, HP, etc. are telling Joe Sixpack that he DOES need it. Call up Dell and order a PC. They are going to ask you some questions in order to build a PC that "fits your needs" (read "fits Dell's need to make money). They will ask what you are going to use the computer for and Joe Sixpack will say "for the intarwebs and that e-mail thingy." Dell will then say "Oh well you're going to need some extra storage. We can upgrade you to 160GB for only $50!" Joe Sixpack doesn't know better so he goes along with it and never uses more than 10GB ever. The idea that more is better is not true if you don't need it. I normally don't recommend any more than 80GB for anybody unless they have a very special need for it (i.e. video editing, massive image archives, way too into porn) and even still that seems to be pushing it.
I agree that most schoolteachers are not very savvy when it comes to good internet habits, let alone computers themselves, but my hopes at least are that the technology/computer teachers at least have a good understanding of this. They don't need to be up to date on the latest and greatest Windows or IE exploit, but they should be able to understand viruses and spyware, phishing, identity theft, and what social engineering is. The reason I say teachers and not parents should teach this sort of thing is because of the reason you stated above with your parents. They don't know anything about it, so those who do know, need to teach the younger generations so that when they become parents, they can help enforce these behaviors at home.
I think a great way to combat issues like this is to start teaching safe browsing in school. We are already teaching them how to use the computer and how to find information over the internet, but are they teaching them how to use the technology responsibly. When I learned how to use a computer in school, we learned what bugs and viruses were, but they weren't as widespread then, so there was no lesson on how you might get a virus, how to prevent getting that virus, and if you do get a virus, how do you repair your machine. This was also before spyware was understood as well as phishing and identity theft. We all saw the movie "The Net", but no one really thought that could happen to them, and could only be pulled off by some elite hacker out to get you, and only you.
We need to teach the kids that not everyone on the internet is your friend. Not everyone on the internet is who they say they are. You can protect yourself from malware by using safe browsing behavior (don't click OK at every message that pops up, smiley face add-ons are not so smiley). Never give out personal information on the internet unless you are absolutely positive that the person you are giving it to is in fact who they say they are, and there is a legitimate reason for it. This means no SSN, phone number, credit card/bank numbers, address, etc.
Like I said earlier, when I was in school, all of this was not really a concern, so I'm not sure if schools are actually teaching this kind of stuff.
In the beginning, yes your situation may play out as you described, but in the long run, the dual format player will change the front of the war. Right now, the war is over which is the superior technology (both technically and fiscally). Blue-Ray has more storage capacity, which means better quality video can fit on the disk. HD-DVD is still a quality improvement over DVD, and costs a lot less than Blue-Ray. So the question is, are you a fiscally responsible early adopter, or are you a videophile early adopter? The dual format player takes away the significance of that choice for the consumer, and now places the choice in the hands of the content providers - the film distributers like Warner Bros, Universal, Sony, etc.
If everyone who goes out and buys a next generation DVD player decides to go dual-format, instead of picking a side, it should play out like this....
Consumer buys dual format high definition dvd player. Consumer then goes shopping for some movies at a retailer or at their rental store. Consumer sees some movies in Blue-Ray, some in HD-DVD, and some in the good old DVD. Some movies are in all formats, some are in one format. The consumer doesn't care what format the movie he/she picks because the player will play anything. The consumer picks a movie based on the movie, not on the format.
So the choice is now in the hands of the distributer. Sony will obviously back Blue-Ray, but others have a choice to make. Which one is cheaper to produce? DRM may be an issue, in favor or against. Companies that have not firmly committed themselves will choose which is better for the industry as a whole, and a standard is born. It's similar to what happened with VHS. It was more convenient for the distributers, so the distributers hopped on the VHS bandwagon, despite what technological benefits Betamax may have had.
If we're talking the security of your data, and if we are also talking about having both a built in flash drive and a standard spinning hard drive, then I'd rather put the OS on the spinner and put my valuable data on the flasher. The OS is easy to restore. The OS is generally unchanging from when you first set it up, and if you require a highly customized OS setup, you can always take a once time backup image once you get it just the way you want it. You're valuable data, on the other hand, isn't so easy to restore unless you have been making backups. Making frequent backups also becomes more difficult on a laptop, where the machine may be disconnected from its backup storage for extended periods of time.
Ideally, though, going all flash is the way to go. It's expensive now, but the price will come down. It always does. And the fewer moving parts directly affecting your data on a machine that is very prone to bumps and falls the better.
Well in the eyes of the Mozilla foundation, gopher may still be alive and well, but according to Microsoft, it's dead. I just tried accessing the sites you linked with IE and none could be displayed. Mozilla may still support it because they like fuzzy animals like foxes and gophers.
...ways to capitalise on the presence of sites such as youtube and myspace
The thing is, they already are (in theory at least). The RIAA and MPAA need to understand that everything on YouTube that is copyrighted, is really just an advertisement for the full copyrighted work. YouTube has placed a lenght limit in order to prevent the entire two hours of a movie from being posted. So any movie on there is bits a pieces. Same with TV shows. Sure, lots of people split the 30 min. shows into three ten minute clips, but that's not exactly convenient to watch, and plus, the show has already aired. Chances are, a person will watch a bunch of clips from a TV show, realize that the show is really good, and then start watching it when it airs on TV. Isn't this what networks do during commercials? Show all of the best clips in a row in the hopes that you will watch the whole thing. If TV networks advertise their TV shows in the banner ads on YouTube, whenever someone plays a clip from "The Office", an ad will display on the side saying "Watch the Office on Thursdays at 8:30pm on NBC!" Now that I have discovered how funny The Office is, I now know where I can see more of it. The same goes for movies. Music videos are a whole other can of worms. The main reason is that a music video is also known as a "promotional video." A music video is designed to be a commercial for the entire album. While MTV gets ad revenue when they show videos, they may now lose ad revenue because people are watching them on YouTube instead, but MTV hasn't shown a music video in its entirety since 1983, I don't think that's a problem. So everyone should be happy about YouTube and those like it. Unless there is some other content that I'm forgetting that would be detrimental, but it would have to fit the following criteria: 1) Be short enough to fit in one single clip on YouTube. 2) Not be an advertisement for another product, whether that be a promotion for an album, tv show, movie, or other consumer product/service. 3) Actually hold a copyright by a corporation or individual with the expectation of being paid for the rights to show the content.
Yes Leica is a really good camera maker, but they are not golden. We got my mom a Leica point and shoot 35mm maybe eight years ago, just before the major digital push, and frankly, the pictures weren't that great on it.
On another note, one positive thing about the camera section of the article was that they finally pointed out that the main factor that makes a digital camera great is the same thing that made film cameras great...THE LENS! I'm tired of all of these megapixel wars. An 8 megapixel credit card sized camera is NOT better than a 5 megapixel SLR. On the point and shoots, you should be looking for optical zooms, not digital zooms. My dad just got a FujiFilm digital. It's a point and shoot, but it's got a larger than average lens and the pictures are amazing.
This place must have some really fucked up setup, because I have never had any problem ever connecting a USB memory stick in Linux. Not in Fedora, Ubuntu, VectorLinux, and others. In fact it is the exact same steps as in windows.
1. Plug USB stick into USB port
2. Drive automatically mounts on the Desktop (or in Windows, My Computer, thus necesitating an extra click)
3. Double click drive to open
4. Do your stuff
5. Close Window
6. right click drive's icon and select "Unmount" (or in Windows click the "Safely Remove Hardware Icon and jump through two more hoops)
7. Remove USB stick
Comparing 6 years ago to today, Linux has made just about zero progress on improving user experience when it comes to hardware configuration, software installation, and system maintenance.
What are you smoking? I started using Linux three years ago and the number of improvements are endless as far as user experience is concerned. When I began with Fedora Core 2, installing software was a pain in the ass. Yum was still frowned upon so it was all up to the RPM. Hunting down the packages on various sites and then hunting once again for their dependencies, and the dependency's dependencies, and so on. Now, in the Fedora realm, not only do you have a very functional Yum that takes care of all of the dependency issues and keeps things up to date, but there are GUI versions. Even still, in FC2, if you double clicked on a RPM file in GNOME, you got an error message. Now, it brings up a GUI RPM installer. When I began with FC2, getting my sound card to work was next to impossible and took hours. Now, thanks to ALSA being built directly into the kernel, it works right out of the box. Then enter Ubuntu, and the entire user experience is even more improved, from driver issues, to critical software updates. If I had started using Linux 6 years ago, I probably would not have gotten too far and gone back to Windows very quickly. I came in at a time where there was the beginnings of usability, and now, only three years later, I almost have the grumpy old man attitude of "In MY day, we didn't have your fancing package management systems that easily installed your software. We had to bother with dependencies, AND WE LIKED IT! You kids have it way to easy!"
Agreed. My first pocket knife was a simple Swiss Army knife with just a blade, a saw and a screwdriver/canopener/etc. combo piece. It was one of the real deal Swiss Army knives. Not a Vic, but I think Gerber. The first thing I did with it was put a really deep slice in my finger. That thing was sharp as hell. Other knockoffs that have come out of random Boy Scout catalogues and such couldn't cut through butter even if you heated it over an open flame. Even other higher quality folding knives I've had don't match the quality of the true Swiss Army blades. My Leatherman is a great tool, but the blade is no match for the Swiss.
I mean I know he's not a real penguin, but a hypothetical cat got on the list. Every linux user (which is some form of geek, myself included) has a special place in his or her (mostly his) heart for that happy little penguin.
I'm no expert, but there is another shortcoming in WiMAX. The college I went to did a mini-pilot for WiMAX on campus, but ran into a big problem with it. The WiMAX signal couldn't penetrate the walls of some of the very old stone buildings that are all over campus. In order for WiMAX to work, they would need some kind of hybrid infrastructure of WiMAX and traditional WiFi so that a wireless internet connection could be picked up from any building on campus. I'm not sure if this problem has really been addressed by the WiMAX powers that be. This could pose a big problem for older cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston, where most of the city is made up of old stone buildings.
Actually the photo processing comment isn't entirely true. I used to work in a photo processing shop (fancy word for 1 hour photo or photo-hut). We looked at every single picture that came out of our machine. We were mostly looking at color balance and also weeding out blank frames and the occasionl finger covering the lense. The only thing we had to report to the police was child pornography. In fact we had one customer who skated that line so closely it was scary, but he skated the line on the legal side (unfortunatly). As for other illegal activity, I used to see it all the time, but we weren't obligated to report anything. These were usually the more interesting photos. Parties with underage drinking and drug use were the most common "illegal" photos. And of course every now and then, when the stars were perfectly aligned, you get the nudes. Unfortunately, most of the time it was not the people you wanted to see nude, and when they came to pick up their pictures, you would feel really uncomfortable, because you got a glimpse into a part of that person's life that nobody should be forced to see.
Agreed. Reading the server pick was insulting to my intelligence. I see the picture, and it's not too impressive. Looks like a 1U standard server from a company I've never heard of. I start reading the overview and they state why it's so great: "It's small! Only 1U but has dual processors!" This is where I step back and say, but that's nothing new, and what about blades. If you want to talk small, you better be talking blades. Oh but they have an answer for that. "Blades are expensive and you can fit five of these in the space of one bladecenter for less money." To which I reply, but the IBM bladecenter has 14 blades in that same space. 14 is greater than 5. So unless you compare 14 of these things to the price of a bladecenter with 14 blades, don't talk to me about price and space.
Seriously though, I know it's been said, but this list just smells funny. I mean set aside the whole Vista pick, the Notebook pick was based completely on the fact that you could customize it. So why not Dell, Lenovo, or any other laptop for that matter? What was it about the HP that made it so much better than the others? Nothing, no comparison data at all. Not even any evidence that the notebook was even tried out. The rest of the list was made up of stuff I had never even heard of. You'd think that a best of the year that is about to end list would include things that created a lot of buzz during said year. This seems to be more of a list of clearance items. Top Ten items we couldn't sell and need to get rid of because they are taking up space of 2006!
You are absolutely right. While the grandparent is correct in his saying that corelation does not imply causation, the scientists who did the study never said that this corelation implied a causation. The study reads very plainly that they found a corelation between mood and cold symptoms. That's pretty much all they said. The questions brought up by the grandparent and some of the replies to it are probably the same questions these scientists are asking and would probably like to do further study to figure out if there was in fact causation, or if positive people don't complain much. In my experience, mood seems to sometimes cause sickness. I know people with depression who are always getting sick. I even once faked sick to stay home from school. My performance was so convincing that I actually did get sick and got to stay home a second day, except I felt like crap. Anxiety and stress can certainly make you feel like crap, even vomit, even if you don't actually have any virus/infection/etc.
That would be a better idea if it weren't for the fact that satelite radio is commercial free. Although I've heard there are some commercials on XM, Sirius has a firm "No Ads" policy. I just hope it stays that way and doens't do what cable tv did. I still can't understand why I pay a subscription to Comcast every month, yet I am still force-fed billions of commercials on the networks they carry.
Thank You. That was one of the most insightful and well thought out submissions regarding the RIAA, record companies, and the overall issue of downloadable music I have read here on Slashdot in a long time. You're post hits the core of the problem: Stupid business models and greedy decisions by the record companies. I haven't heard a lot of REALLY great music come out in a while, but recently I did. I heard a piece of it on the radio, and the DJ identified the group and said to check them out, so I did. I checked them out by downloading (illegally) a couple of their songs. I was blown away, and downloaded (illegally) even more of their songs. Then I found out their album had yet to be released in the US, so on the day it did release, I went to Best Buy and bought that album and was shocked at how cheap it was ($8). Because of how cheap it was, and because of how even more blown away I was by this band, I told all of my friends who have similar tastes that they should really BUY this album. Almost every song on the album was great. This is the kind of group that these companies need to sign and hopefully they can create really good buzz about the ALBUM, not just a single. On the downside, this band is not getting as much recognition in the States that they deserve. Their singles are played on the radio, but not much (which might be a good thing. Radio can kill songs just as fast as they make them famous). However, the band is featured in movies, commercials, some TV shows, and video games. Almost everyone has heard them, but hardly anyone has heard of them.
I digress, but once again want to thank you for a truly great and insightful post.
P.S. Checkout Wolfmother. They are, in my opinion, awesome.
I think it is more of a problem of redundancy. Most third party repositories are additional packages that are not included in the "core" and "extras" repositories. Most of these third party repositories contain most of the same packages. So if you have Livna and Freshrpms, and both contain libxine, you might have a conflict. When you say, yum install xine, which repository should it install from? Maybe you can set up a preference, but for the average user, this could start to become trouble. The whole point of these repositories and shared libraries is to reduce redundancy, so that every time you intall an app, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
I was a long time Fedora user, and still have two machines running various versions of it, but I now personally use Ubuntu on my main desktop. The things that impress me the most about Ubuntu when compared to Fedora is package management. HOWEVER, this is not a preference of deb over rpm, this is a preference of apt/Synaptic over yum/Yumex. There is a big difference, and it is one that has been iterated over and over again in this discussion. I like apt with Synaptic because it is just plain faster than yum, and I like Synaptics interface better than Yumex. I also find that updates are handled much better in Ubuntu than Fedora. The utility is easy to use and it is fast and stable. Fedora's has a poor GUI (in my opinion) is also very slow and often unstable. I could care less what package format is being used. All it is to me, the user, is a three letter extension. The user experience you speak of is the dependency solving capabilities presented by apt and yum.
And by the way, apt-rpm, is just the dependency solving ability of apt, applied to an rpm based package format. Your Fedora friends using apt-rpm, are not using deb, or dpkg, they are still using rpms.
Slashdot Mirror
I am speaking, of course, about Betamax
MythTV can do it, but it's probably more of a commitment than other solutions. If you set up a MythTV backend system to record tv, you can set up MythTV frontend clients on other machines (like your gf's laptop). Don't worry, the clients do not have to be dedicated. The client will connect to the backend machine and either stream live tv straight from one of the capture cards, or stream a previously recorded show. I have MythTV running in my living room right now, but it is both a frontend and backend all in one. I have yet to connect a separate client to it, but I do have plans to do so in the future.
I assume you're thinking along the lines of Microsoft Plus! (you know the extra desktop themes you could pay extra for).
I agree, adding an exclamation point on the end of your product name is one of the gayest naming conventions out there (Top of the Muffin TO YOU!), but you can't forget about some at least decent products carrying that flaming point of exclamation...
Yahoo!
Creative Sound Blaster Live!
While I prefer Google over Yahoo!, (notice awkward punctuation) it's still a very popular search engine with a lot of other tools available. I've always felt that Creative made pretty good sound cards, so no complaints for the Sound Blaster Live!.
Ok so basically you say that drug companies are only interested in profits, not in helping people, so they will do whatever will earn them more money. While yes chemotherapy makes them a lot of money, drug companies live for releasing blockbuster drugs, especially the smaller companies. The first company to release a real cure for cancer will make record breaking profits. Their stock price alone will go through the roof. If I were an executive with company stock options, I would sell my options off right after releasing the cure for cancer and then retire to my own private continent, because that's how much money I would make. I interned for a small biotech company amidst a launch of a new cancer treatment drug. As soon as the FDA gave approval for it's US release, the companies stock price went through the roof and a couple months later split. Even given the short amount of time I was working at the company, had I bought stock the day I started and then sold it all the day I left, I would have a pretty nice pile of cash.
Don't kid yourself. A cure for cancer will make more money than chemotherapy.
Ok so as the posts above me illustrate, yes there is a need for more and more storage. Datacenters are probably the biggest reason. However, I'm right with you on the home PC market. Yes there are the oddballs the do need lots of storage. In fact, I recently became one of them after I built a MythTV box. It really sucks when you only get half of the movie because the hard drive filled up. But on my regular desktop, I've got 40GB and don't plan on expanding that anytime soon. I used to store all of my mp3's on there until I built the MythTV box, but even then, 40GB was plenty.
My real complaint isn't so much that I don't need it, or you don't need it. My complaint is that Dell, HP, etc. are telling Joe Sixpack that he DOES need it. Call up Dell and order a PC. They are going to ask you some questions in order to build a PC that "fits your needs" (read "fits Dell's need to make money). They will ask what you are going to use the computer for and Joe Sixpack will say "for the intarwebs and that e-mail thingy." Dell will then say "Oh well you're going to need some extra storage. We can upgrade you to 160GB for only $50!" Joe Sixpack doesn't know better so he goes along with it and never uses more than 10GB ever. The idea that more is better is not true if you don't need it. I normally don't recommend any more than 80GB for anybody unless they have a very special need for it (i.e. video editing, massive image archives, way too into porn) and even still that seems to be pushing it.
I agree that most schoolteachers are not very savvy when it comes to good internet habits, let alone computers themselves, but my hopes at least are that the technology/computer teachers at least have a good understanding of this. They don't need to be up to date on the latest and greatest Windows or IE exploit, but they should be able to understand viruses and spyware, phishing, identity theft, and what social engineering is. The reason I say teachers and not parents should teach this sort of thing is because of the reason you stated above with your parents. They don't know anything about it, so those who do know, need to teach the younger generations so that when they become parents, they can help enforce these behaviors at home.
I think a great way to combat issues like this is to start teaching safe browsing in school. We are already teaching them how to use the computer and how to find information over the internet, but are they teaching them how to use the technology responsibly. When I learned how to use a computer in school, we learned what bugs and viruses were, but they weren't as widespread then, so there was no lesson on how you might get a virus, how to prevent getting that virus, and if you do get a virus, how do you repair your machine. This was also before spyware was understood as well as phishing and identity theft. We all saw the movie "The Net", but no one really thought that could happen to them, and could only be pulled off by some elite hacker out to get you, and only you.
We need to teach the kids that not everyone on the internet is your friend. Not everyone on the internet is who they say they are. You can protect yourself from malware by using safe browsing behavior (don't click OK at every message that pops up, smiley face add-ons are not so smiley). Never give out personal information on the internet unless you are absolutely positive that the person you are giving it to is in fact who they say they are, and there is a legitimate reason for it. This means no SSN, phone number, credit card/bank numbers, address, etc.
Like I said earlier, when I was in school, all of this was not really a concern, so I'm not sure if schools are actually teaching this kind of stuff.
In the beginning, yes your situation may play out as you described, but in the long run, the dual format player will change the front of the war. Right now, the war is over which is the superior technology (both technically and fiscally). Blue-Ray has more storage capacity, which means better quality video can fit on the disk. HD-DVD is still a quality improvement over DVD, and costs a lot less than Blue-Ray. So the question is, are you a fiscally responsible early adopter, or are you a videophile early adopter? The dual format player takes away the significance of that choice for the consumer, and now places the choice in the hands of the content providers - the film distributers like Warner Bros, Universal, Sony, etc.
If everyone who goes out and buys a next generation DVD player decides to go dual-format, instead of picking a side, it should play out like this....
Consumer buys dual format high definition dvd player. Consumer then goes shopping for some movies at a retailer or at their rental store. Consumer sees some movies in Blue-Ray, some in HD-DVD, and some in the good old DVD. Some movies are in all formats, some are in one format. The consumer doesn't care what format the movie he/she picks because the player will play anything. The consumer picks a movie based on the movie, not on the format.
So the choice is now in the hands of the distributer. Sony will obviously back Blue-Ray, but others have a choice to make. Which one is cheaper to produce? DRM may be an issue, in favor or against. Companies that have not firmly committed themselves will choose which is better for the industry as a whole, and a standard is born. It's similar to what happened with VHS. It was more convenient for the distributers, so the distributers hopped on the VHS bandwagon, despite what technological benefits Betamax may have had.
If we're talking the security of your data, and if we are also talking about having both a built in flash drive and a standard spinning hard drive, then I'd rather put the OS on the spinner and put my valuable data on the flasher. The OS is easy to restore. The OS is generally unchanging from when you first set it up, and if you require a highly customized OS setup, you can always take a once time backup image once you get it just the way you want it. You're valuable data, on the other hand, isn't so easy to restore unless you have been making backups. Making frequent backups also becomes more difficult on a laptop, where the machine may be disconnected from its backup storage for extended periods of time.
Ideally, though, going all flash is the way to go. It's expensive now, but the price will come down. It always does. And the fewer moving parts directly affecting your data on a machine that is very prone to bumps and falls the better.
Well in the eyes of the Mozilla foundation, gopher may still be alive and well, but according to Microsoft, it's dead. I just tried accessing the sites you linked with IE and none could be displayed. Mozilla may still support it because they like fuzzy animals like foxes and gophers.
Yes Leica is a really good camera maker, but they are not golden. We got my mom a Leica point and shoot 35mm maybe eight years ago, just before the major digital push, and frankly, the pictures weren't that great on it.
On another note, one positive thing about the camera section of the article was that they finally pointed out that the main factor that makes a digital camera great is the same thing that made film cameras great...THE LENS! I'm tired of all of these megapixel wars. An 8 megapixel credit card sized camera is NOT better than a 5 megapixel SLR. On the point and shoots, you should be looking for optical zooms, not digital zooms. My dad just got a FujiFilm digital. It's a point and shoot, but it's got a larger than average lens and the pictures are amazing.
This place must have some really fucked up setup, because I have never had any problem ever connecting a USB memory stick in Linux. Not in Fedora, Ubuntu, VectorLinux, and others. In fact it is the exact same steps as in windows.
1. Plug USB stick into USB port 2. Drive automatically mounts on the Desktop (or in Windows, My Computer, thus necesitating an extra click) 3. Double click drive to open 4. Do your stuff 5. Close Window 6. right click drive's icon and select "Unmount" (or in Windows click the "Safely Remove Hardware Icon and jump through two more hoops) 7. Remove USB stick
Agreed. My first pocket knife was a simple Swiss Army knife with just a blade, a saw and a screwdriver/canopener/etc. combo piece. It was one of the real deal Swiss Army knives. Not a Vic, but I think Gerber. The first thing I did with it was put a really deep slice in my finger. That thing was sharp as hell. Other knockoffs that have come out of random Boy Scout catalogues and such couldn't cut through butter even if you heated it over an open flame. Even other higher quality folding knives I've had don't match the quality of the true Swiss Army blades. My Leatherman is a great tool, but the blade is no match for the Swiss.
I mean I know he's not a real penguin, but a hypothetical cat got on the list. Every linux user (which is some form of geek, myself included) has a special place in his or her (mostly his) heart for that happy little penguin.
I'm no expert, but there is another shortcoming in WiMAX. The college I went to did a mini-pilot for WiMAX on campus, but ran into a big problem with it. The WiMAX signal couldn't penetrate the walls of some of the very old stone buildings that are all over campus. In order for WiMAX to work, they would need some kind of hybrid infrastructure of WiMAX and traditional WiFi so that a wireless internet connection could be picked up from any building on campus. I'm not sure if this problem has really been addressed by the WiMAX powers that be. This could pose a big problem for older cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston, where most of the city is made up of old stone buildings.
Actually the photo processing comment isn't entirely true. I used to work in a photo processing shop (fancy word for 1 hour photo or photo-hut). We looked at every single picture that came out of our machine. We were mostly looking at color balance and also weeding out blank frames and the occasionl finger covering the lense. The only thing we had to report to the police was child pornography. In fact we had one customer who skated that line so closely it was scary, but he skated the line on the legal side (unfortunatly). As for other illegal activity, I used to see it all the time, but we weren't obligated to report anything. These were usually the more interesting photos. Parties with underage drinking and drug use were the most common "illegal" photos. And of course every now and then, when the stars were perfectly aligned, you get the nudes. Unfortunately, most of the time it was not the people you wanted to see nude, and when they came to pick up their pictures, you would feel really uncomfortable, because you got a glimpse into a part of that person's life that nobody should be forced to see.
Agreed. Reading the server pick was insulting to my intelligence. I see the picture, and it's not too impressive. Looks like a 1U standard server from a company I've never heard of. I start reading the overview and they state why it's so great: "It's small! Only 1U but has dual processors!" This is where I step back and say, but that's nothing new, and what about blades. If you want to talk small, you better be talking blades. Oh but they have an answer for that. "Blades are expensive and you can fit five of these in the space of one bladecenter for less money." To which I reply, but the IBM bladecenter has 14 blades in that same space. 14 is greater than 5. So unless you compare 14 of these things to the price of a bladecenter with 14 blades, don't talk to me about price and space.
Seriously though, I know it's been said, but this list just smells funny. I mean set aside the whole Vista pick, the Notebook pick was based completely on the fact that you could customize it. So why not Dell, Lenovo, or any other laptop for that matter? What was it about the HP that made it so much better than the others? Nothing, no comparison data at all. Not even any evidence that the notebook was even tried out. The rest of the list was made up of stuff I had never even heard of. You'd think that a best of the year that is about to end list would include things that created a lot of buzz during said year. This seems to be more of a list of clearance items. Top Ten items we couldn't sell and need to get rid of because they are taking up space of 2006!
You are absolutely right. While the grandparent is correct in his saying that corelation does not imply causation, the scientists who did the study never said that this corelation implied a causation. The study reads very plainly that they found a corelation between mood and cold symptoms. That's pretty much all they said. The questions brought up by the grandparent and some of the replies to it are probably the same questions these scientists are asking and would probably like to do further study to figure out if there was in fact causation, or if positive people don't complain much. In my experience, mood seems to sometimes cause sickness. I know people with depression who are always getting sick. I even once faked sick to stay home from school. My performance was so convincing that I actually did get sick and got to stay home a second day, except I felt like crap. Anxiety and stress can certainly make you feel like crap, even vomit, even if you don't actually have any virus/infection/etc.
That would be a better idea if it weren't for the fact that satelite radio is commercial free. Although I've heard there are some commercials on XM, Sirius has a firm "No Ads" policy. I just hope it stays that way and doens't do what cable tv did. I still can't understand why I pay a subscription to Comcast every month, yet I am still force-fed billions of commercials on the networks they carry.
Thank You. That was one of the most insightful and well thought out submissions regarding the RIAA, record companies, and the overall issue of downloadable music I have read here on Slashdot in a long time. You're post hits the core of the problem: Stupid business models and greedy decisions by the record companies. I haven't heard a lot of REALLY great music come out in a while, but recently I did. I heard a piece of it on the radio, and the DJ identified the group and said to check them out, so I did. I checked them out by downloading (illegally) a couple of their songs. I was blown away, and downloaded (illegally) even more of their songs. Then I found out their album had yet to be released in the US, so on the day it did release, I went to Best Buy and bought that album and was shocked at how cheap it was ($8). Because of how cheap it was, and because of how even more blown away I was by this band, I told all of my friends who have similar tastes that they should really BUY this album. Almost every song on the album was great. This is the kind of group that these companies need to sign and hopefully they can create really good buzz about the ALBUM, not just a single. On the downside, this band is not getting as much recognition in the States that they deserve. Their singles are played on the radio, but not much (which might be a good thing. Radio can kill songs just as fast as they make them famous). However, the band is featured in movies, commercials, some TV shows, and video games. Almost everyone has heard them, but hardly anyone has heard of them.
I digress, but once again want to thank you for a truly great and insightful post.
P.S. Checkout Wolfmother. They are, in my opinion, awesome.
zzzz{snarf}wwha...what? Who's there? Oh yeah rap sucks, Zeppelin rules, i'm going back to be...zzzzzzzz
I think it is more of a problem of redundancy. Most third party repositories are additional packages that are not included in the "core" and "extras" repositories. Most of these third party repositories contain most of the same packages. So if you have Livna and Freshrpms, and both contain libxine, you might have a conflict. When you say, yum install xine, which repository should it install from? Maybe you can set up a preference, but for the average user, this could start to become trouble. The whole point of these repositories and shared libraries is to reduce redundancy, so that every time you intall an app, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
I was a long time Fedora user, and still have two machines running various versions of it, but I now personally use Ubuntu on my main desktop. The things that impress me the most about Ubuntu when compared to Fedora is package management. HOWEVER, this is not a preference of deb over rpm, this is a preference of apt/Synaptic over yum/Yumex. There is a big difference, and it is one that has been iterated over and over again in this discussion. I like apt with Synaptic because it is just plain faster than yum, and I like Synaptics interface better than Yumex. I also find that updates are handled much better in Ubuntu than Fedora. The utility is easy to use and it is fast and stable. Fedora's has a poor GUI (in my opinion) is also very slow and often unstable. I could care less what package format is being used. All it is to me, the user, is a three letter extension. The user experience you speak of is the dependency solving capabilities presented by apt and yum.
And by the way, apt-rpm, is just the dependency solving ability of apt, applied to an rpm based package format. Your Fedora friends using apt-rpm, are not using deb, or dpkg, they are still using rpms.