I couldn't agree more. It took me a long time to figure this out. I spoke to people about merging the installer with the manager (as a sort of "Advanced" mode), and I was just ridiculed for not understanding it in the first place. Ubuntu's total disregard for KDE is really getting on my nerves; I've been meaning to move to Gentoo for a while, and this may be the icing on the cake.
Add/Remove Programs (Adept Installer) is not supposed to show you everything in the repositories. It's supposed to be a minor subset of the available software.
You're looking for Adept Manager, not Adept Installer; they're not the same thing. Click K -> System -> Adept Manager. It's basically the equivalent of Synaptic for KDE.
You should know that Debian's "Just Work" does not apply to Joe User, it applies to Joe Sysadmin. Debian's "Just Work" in contrast to Slackware was in reference to the lack of a package management system and dependency checking; but this "Just Work" is not Debian's main goal, because Debian places software freedom above ease of use. If you want your Atheros wireless card to work, for example, you're going to need to *compile your own kernel*, a ludicrous process for an end user to undertake for something that can work out of the box (and does quite well in Ubuntu).
While I agree that a truly free distribution is important, you can't currently market a truly free distribution to ordinary end users. There is simply too much missing (mainly drivers and codecs), and that's not going to change until Linux gains some market share on the home PC. Debian is not going to do that, but Ubuntu might.
I don't know where you got the idea that Ubuntu cares about software freedom. Ubuntu exists solely to tear market share from Microsoft any way it can.
Don't try to force your FOSS views on people who have no knowledge or care about the situation; you'll only entrench them further into Windows. If an ordinary end-user asks you to recommend a Linux distribution, you should absolutely recommend Ubuntu. Ubuntu is the only distribution that actually tries to Just Work, and it does a damn good job of it.
To beat that hammer brother, the key is not to try to actually kill him; just jump over him and wait. What you do is, immediately as you exit the pipe, run towards the right, jump up onto the second pipe and jump as high as you can over him, then land directly to the right of him. You have to do this as soon as possible so that there are no hammers threatening the second pipe. Then stay standing a couple squares to his right, and don't move. He'll turn to face you, but he won't be able to hit you, because he'll throw his hammers too far. You can stand there all day if you want. Inch closer to the right to activate the lava fireball, then simply wait for a gap in the hammers and go.
This works 100% of the time. It never, ever fails.
I can beat the game pretty consistently (I'd say about 75% of games) in 6-7 minutes, and about 10% of those times without losing a life. I've also beaten several marathons (whole game without warps), but I've never beaten a marathon without losing a life. This is one of the things on my to-do list before I die; I still play my original NES regularly trying to beat this.
My turn to ask a question. In World 5-3 (possibly 6-3), there is one part where there are two tiny platforms in succession and you need to jump from one to the other. Now if you run through the level at top speed, sometimes the second platform just DOESN'T SHOW UP. You jump off the first platform, the second one is just not there, and you fall to your death. What's the deal? Even if you notice the second platform isn't there before jumping, you're screwed, because you can't actually jump from the first platform to the solid mushroom cap. It's too far; at that point you have no choice but to suicide and hope it's there when you come back.
What triggers this? I haven't been able to figure out what causes it other than 'running fast'. Right now I've resorted to slowly making my way through the level up until that point, and that seems to summon the second platform, but it's a huge inconvenience when it already takes 25-30 minutes to marathon the game. If you guys know how to avoid this, let me know!
If that's how you define "LEO" then of course -- you've defined the orbital debris problem out of existence by adopting my proposed solution. Accepted definitions of "LEO" do, however, vary from altitudes where resistance from upper atmosphere is significant to altitudes where it is _not_ significant.
Yes, and where the ISS is now, it is already significant. It costs enough fuel as it is, making a lower orbit impractical. I don't understand what you're trying to argue here; the simple fact is the space station can't practically orbit any lower because it would cost too much fuel.
No one said "free" but the cost is "very low" to gain altitude. The cost to place mass in a 200km LEO orbit is about 1/2 the cost to place mass in a 20,000km GEO orbit. Do the math. Moreover, the potential gains in economy are even greater by using higher Isp technologies with lower thrust and yes this is directly due to the absence of atmosphere at perigee, where you do the transfer burns.
Again, that's my point. By placing a mass in GEO orbit this way, you still spend quite a bit of time in LEO. While this is currently obviously not comparable to spending years in LEO, if we continue to litter LEO to the point of making permanent orbit there impossible, then reaching LEO orbit to do a transfer burn would still pose a significant risk. Your original example implied you avoid LEO orbit by simply boosting past it, which would cost vastly more than twice the fuel.
Going lower than LEO is not really practical. There's already enough air resistance there as it is. The ISS needs regular boosts (a couple times a week?) just to stay in orbit. And the cost of additional altitude is not actually that low; gravity in LEO is still 88% of what it is on earth. Sure air resistance is a big factor, but that doesn't make drastic orbit changes free, especially considering installations already in place (such as the ISS) are not fitted to just move around.
More importantly though, the danger this debris poses is not avoided by simply orbiting outside of LEO; you still need to drive through it, and that can cause lots of damage on your way. Say you want to park your spaceship in geosynchronous orbit. Do you just point to the sky and go until you reach 35000 km, then turn at a 90 degree angle and accelerate to orbital velocity? Heck no. You curve your rocket up into LEO orbit (at 300 km), then you do a Hohmann transfer. By staying in orbit, you don't burn any fuel to maintain your altitude; you only burn fuel to increase it, essentially canceling out gravity. This takes a lot of time, which conserves a lot of fuel.
This poses a danger to anything we want to put in orbit or in space, regardless of altitude. A few more satellites get shattered in LEO, and launching into space would be like driving your car through a hurricane.
People seem to have a very Star-Trek view of orbital dynamics. You can't just drive around willy-nilly. You said it yourself: Space is big... really really big.
The GTK+ file dialog is one of the most controversial components of GNOME. Good and consistent interfaces is one thing that Windows excels at, and it's one thing that KDE clones well; the KDE file dialog is pretty much identical to that of Windows.
KDE is quite painless to use and has beautiful interfaces for most everything. You should give it a try.
This is impressive and shows that Vista can squeeze a lot of performance out of the hardware and games beyond what any other OS, including XP has been able to acheive.
Here's a screenshot of my computer running Beryl and Call of Duty. By the way, this is with an NVIDIA card on Linux.
I just don't understand where you're coming from. Are you just a plant, or do you seriously believe what you're saying? Your post basically degrades into an advertisement for Vista.
I've been using Beryl/Compiz since September. Why do people still say Vista is "new" and "impressive"? There is nothing new. There is nothing impressive. People like you just don't know any better.
This is terrible advice. "Free" does not mean good; I'd give you a free kick in the pants, but I doubt you'd want it.
99% of computer users got Windows preloaded. They think Windows is already free; telling them it wasn't and then trying to convince them to drop what they already paid for will only make things worse. Mention Linux is free once, but don't compare it to Windows in any way; just tell them that it won't cost them anything to switch.
Free is a factor in new users, but it's totally irrelevant in getting people to switch because they already have Windows. There are many good reasons to switch to Linux, but "free" is not one of them.
With standardized APIs like OpenGL, it's far easier to make a cross-platform game today than it was back in 1995, especially since things like Wine can do much of the work for you. I'd say having to port code to a variety of processor architectures is a larger problem for game developers than different operating systems, and that's unavoidable regardless of how strongly Microsoft maintains its monopoly.
Having symlinks in the Vista kernel is nice and all, but Vista doesn't seem to offer a way to create these in Explorer. Who wants to break open a command line just to create a symlink?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't people criticize Linux all the time of a lack of GUI utilities in comparison to Windows? Yet when I drag a file somewhere in KDE, I can just click on "Link Here" and poof, I've got a symlink. Why have I not heard a single complaint about the lack of a user-friendly way to do this in Vista?
Furthermore, you need to have Administrator access (or use Administrator to give yourself the priviledge) to create a symlink, "because not all applications may handle symbolic links correctly". Doesn't this seem broken to anyone? Or at the very least, worrysome?
Everytime I read anything about Vista's new features, I hear myself saying "fucking finally" like half a dozen times. Symlinks? Cancelling I/O? These are things other, better operating systems have had for over a decade.
Anyone wanna start a pool for when they'll roll out a patent for symlinks?
"Sony" does not mean "console", genius. Sony is backing Blu-ray, and that statement says Blu-ray will win; it doesn't really say anything about consoles, except that the PS3 is currently Sony's main Blu-ray player.
"I'm Feeling Lucky" was never the problem with googlebombs. While googlebombs still worked, if you did a regular search on "miserable failure", you'd still get George Bush at top of the list. Are you sure you know what that button actually does?
Besides, lots of people (such as myself) use that button all the time, and it's especially useful when the information is widely available and more important than the page that hosts it. For example, need song lyrics? Type in "lyrics [song] [artist]", click IFL. Boom, instant lyrics.
Ottawa here, and it's exactly the same situation. Stock sells out in minutes; it's kind of disgusting. Maybe they're just not sending enough systems to Canada. I'm quite sick of having this money burning a hole in my pocket, and I've pretty much decided that I'll spend the money on something else and wait until mid-summer (when I get a summer job and some income) to buy one. Pretty sad, actually.
This will also be my first gaming system since the original NES, which I still play regularly (at least once a week). It's the only device hooked up to the TV in my living room; I don't even have cable or a DVD player.
To be fair Linux doesn't have full screen font anti aliasing, but it does have everything else.
Good lord, what version of Linux are you running? Haven't GTK+ and Qt had this for years? The only thing I know on Linux that doesn't do font anti-aliasing is the latest stable release of Tk. I'm currently using Tk 8.5 alpha5, which does have anti-aliasing and works quite well; a stable 8.5 should be released sometime this year.
I couldn't get over how bad the "Top 10 reasons to upgrade" were. Is that really the best that Vista can offer me? I posted this as a comment to the article:
First off, reasons 2 and 3 are not reasons at all. The general populous already has XP installed; the fact that the upgrade is (supposedly) easy is no reason to actually do it.
Reasons 1, 4, 6, 7, and 8 have been in other, better operating systems, some for many years. These aren't reasons to upgrade, they're reasons to switch.
And reasons 9 and 10 are not only incredibly bad reasons to upgrade, but they're downright insulting. I'm actually offended that you consider the fact that they don't even offer you a choice as a reason to stick with Microsoft.
As for reason 5, I feel compelled to point out that Windows' ACPI support is only due to Microsoft's influence in developing a deliberately convoluted standard to hinder competing operating systems, a monopolistic business practice that borders on antitrust; however that's irrelevant to users. What is relevant, however, is the fact that I know dozens of Windows users, and Sleep works fine for all of them. Sleep works fine for me too, on both XP and Linux. There's nothing here that Vista could offer me.
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't agree more. It took me a long time to figure this out. I spoke to people about merging the installer with the manager (as a sort of "Advanced" mode), and I was just ridiculed for not understanding it in the first place. Ubuntu's total disregard for KDE is really getting on my nerves; I've been meaning to move to Gentoo for a while, and this may be the icing on the cake.
Add/Remove Programs (Adept Installer) is not supposed to show you everything in the repositories. It's supposed to be a minor subset of the available software. You're looking for Adept Manager, not Adept Installer; they're not the same thing. Click K -> System -> Adept Manager. It's basically the equivalent of Synaptic for KDE.
Only if you pass O'Reilly Genuine Advantage. *hides*
I want to give them a piece of my mind, namely to tell them they can't have it both ways:
They don't. "Unauthorized copying" is legal for personal use in Canada.
You should know that Debian's "Just Work" does not apply to Joe User, it applies to Joe Sysadmin. Debian's "Just Work" in contrast to Slackware was in reference to the lack of a package management system and dependency checking; but this "Just Work" is not Debian's main goal, because Debian places software freedom above ease of use. If you want your Atheros wireless card to work, for example, you're going to need to *compile your own kernel*, a ludicrous process for an end user to undertake for something that can work out of the box (and does quite well in Ubuntu).
While I agree that a truly free distribution is important, you can't currently market a truly free distribution to ordinary end users. There is simply too much missing (mainly drivers and codecs), and that's not going to change until Linux gains some market share on the home PC. Debian is not going to do that, but Ubuntu might.
So we get more ways to easier install proprietary stuff on that OS that was originally proposing to 'support free software'. Sigh.
You seem confused. Let me refresh your memory:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1
I don't know where you got the idea that Ubuntu cares about software freedom. Ubuntu exists solely to tear market share from Microsoft any way it can.
Don't try to force your FOSS views on people who have no knowledge or care about the situation; you'll only entrench them further into Windows. If an ordinary end-user asks you to recommend a Linux distribution, you should absolutely recommend Ubuntu. Ubuntu is the only distribution that actually tries to Just Work, and it does a damn good job of it.
I also hit a wall in 7th Guest. I could never beat the damn canned food puzzle. But I refused to look it up, because I didn't want to cheat.
Hmph. I still have the CD on my shelf. Maybe I'll beat it someday.
To beat that hammer brother, the key is not to try to actually kill him; just jump over him and wait. What you do is, immediately as you exit the pipe, run towards the right, jump up onto the second pipe and jump as high as you can over him, then land directly to the right of him. You have to do this as soon as possible so that there are no hammers threatening the second pipe. Then stay standing a couple squares to his right, and don't move. He'll turn to face you, but he won't be able to hit you, because he'll throw his hammers too far. You can stand there all day if you want. Inch closer to the right to activate the lava fireball, then simply wait for a gap in the hammers and go.
This works 100% of the time. It never, ever fails.
I can beat the game pretty consistently (I'd say about 75% of games) in 6-7 minutes, and about 10% of those times without losing a life. I've also beaten several marathons (whole game without warps), but I've never beaten a marathon without losing a life. This is one of the things on my to-do list before I die; I still play my original NES regularly trying to beat this.
My turn to ask a question. In World 5-3 (possibly 6-3), there is one part where there are two tiny platforms in succession and you need to jump from one to the other. Now if you run through the level at top speed, sometimes the second platform just DOESN'T SHOW UP. You jump off the first platform, the second one is just not there, and you fall to your death. What's the deal? Even if you notice the second platform isn't there before jumping, you're screwed, because you can't actually jump from the first platform to the solid mushroom cap. It's too far; at that point you have no choice but to suicide and hope it's there when you come back.
What triggers this? I haven't been able to figure out what causes it other than 'running fast'. Right now I've resorted to slowly making my way through the level up until that point, and that seems to summon the second platform, but it's a huge inconvenience when it already takes 25-30 minutes to marathon the game. If you guys know how to avoid this, let me know!
If that's how you define "LEO" then of course -- you've defined the orbital debris problem out of existence by adopting my proposed solution. Accepted definitions of "LEO" do, however, vary from altitudes where resistance from upper atmosphere is significant to altitudes where it is _not_ significant.
Yes, and where the ISS is now, it is already significant. It costs enough fuel as it is, making a lower orbit impractical. I don't understand what you're trying to argue here; the simple fact is the space station can't practically orbit any lower because it would cost too much fuel.
No one said "free" but the cost is "very low" to gain altitude. The cost to place mass in a 200km LEO orbit is about 1/2 the cost to place mass in a 20,000km GEO orbit. Do the math. Moreover, the potential gains in economy are even greater by using higher Isp technologies with lower thrust and yes this is directly due to the absence of atmosphere at perigee, where you do the transfer burns.
Again, that's my point. By placing a mass in GEO orbit this way, you still spend quite a bit of time in LEO. While this is currently obviously not comparable to spending years in LEO, if we continue to litter LEO to the point of making permanent orbit there impossible, then reaching LEO orbit to do a transfer burn would still pose a significant risk. Your original example implied you avoid LEO orbit by simply boosting past it, which would cost vastly more than twice the fuel.
Going lower than LEO is not really practical. There's already enough air resistance there as it is. The ISS needs regular boosts (a couple times a week?) just to stay in orbit. And the cost of additional altitude is not actually that low; gravity in LEO is still 88% of what it is on earth. Sure air resistance is a big factor, but that doesn't make drastic orbit changes free, especially considering installations already in place (such as the ISS) are not fitted to just move around.
More importantly though, the danger this debris poses is not avoided by simply orbiting outside of LEO; you still need to drive through it, and that can cause lots of damage on your way. Say you want to park your spaceship in geosynchronous orbit. Do you just point to the sky and go until you reach 35000 km, then turn at a 90 degree angle and accelerate to orbital velocity? Heck no. You curve your rocket up into LEO orbit (at 300 km), then you do a Hohmann transfer. By staying in orbit, you don't burn any fuel to maintain your altitude; you only burn fuel to increase it, essentially canceling out gravity. This takes a lot of time, which conserves a lot of fuel.
This poses a danger to anything we want to put in orbit or in space, regardless of altitude. A few more satellites get shattered in LEO, and launching into space would be like driving your car through a hurricane.
People seem to have a very Star-Trek view of orbital dynamics. You can't just drive around willy-nilly. You said it yourself: Space is big... really really big.
Woah. I actually own this game on the original Playstation. I had no idea it had been open sourced.
Why on earth would you ban PDFs?
If it's just a matter of hating Adobe Reader, there are free open-source alternatives out there.
The GTK+ file dialog is one of the most controversial components of GNOME. Good and consistent interfaces is one thing that Windows excels at, and it's one thing that KDE clones well; the KDE file dialog is pretty much identical to that of Windows.
KDE is quite painless to use and has beautiful interfaces for most everything. You should give it a try.
This is impressive and shows that Vista can squeeze a lot of performance out of the hardware and games beyond what any other OS, including XP has been able to acheive.
l ofdutyuu5.jpg
Here's a screenshot of my computer running Beryl and Call of Duty. By the way, this is with an NVIDIA card on Linux.
http://img372.imageshack.us/my.php?image=berylcal
I just don't understand where you're coming from. Are you just a plant, or do you seriously believe what you're saying? Your post basically degrades into an advertisement for Vista.
I've been using Beryl/Compiz since September. Why do people still say Vista is "new" and "impressive"? There is nothing new. There is nothing impressive. People like you just don't know any better.
Congratulations. Welcome to the wonderful world of package management.
Now do yourself a favor: type "yum install k3b". You'll never look back.
This is terrible advice. "Free" does not mean good; I'd give you a free kick in the pants, but I doubt you'd want it.
99% of computer users got Windows preloaded. They think Windows is already free; telling them it wasn't and then trying to convince them to drop what they already paid for will only make things worse. Mention Linux is free once, but don't compare it to Windows in any way; just tell them that it won't cost them anything to switch.
Free is a factor in new users, but it's totally irrelevant in getting people to switch because they already have Windows. There are many good reasons to switch to Linux, but "free" is not one of them.
That's just painful!
With standardized APIs like OpenGL, it's far easier to make a cross-platform game today than it was back in 1995, especially since things like Wine can do much of the work for you. I'd say having to port code to a variety of processor architectures is a larger problem for game developers than different operating systems, and that's unavoidable regardless of how strongly Microsoft maintains its monopoly.
Having symlinks in the Vista kernel is nice and all, but Vista doesn't seem to offer a way to create these in Explorer. Who wants to break open a command line just to create a symlink?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't people criticize Linux all the time of a lack of GUI utilities in comparison to Windows? Yet when I drag a file somewhere in KDE, I can just click on "Link Here" and poof, I've got a symlink. Why have I not heard a single complaint about the lack of a user-friendly way to do this in Vista?
Furthermore, you need to have Administrator access (or use Administrator to give yourself the priviledge) to create a symlink, "because not all applications may handle symbolic links correctly". Doesn't this seem broken to anyone? Or at the very least, worrysome?
Everytime I read anything about Vista's new features, I hear myself saying "fucking finally" like half a dozen times. Symlinks? Cancelling I/O? These are things other, better operating systems have had for over a decade. Anyone wanna start a pool for when they'll roll out a patent for symlinks?
"Sony" does not mean "console", genius. Sony is backing Blu-ray, and that statement says Blu-ray will win; it doesn't really say anything about consoles, except that the PS3 is currently Sony's main Blu-ray player.
"I'm Feeling Lucky" was never the problem with googlebombs. While googlebombs still worked, if you did a regular search on "miserable failure", you'd still get George Bush at top of the list. Are you sure you know what that button actually does?
Besides, lots of people (such as myself) use that button all the time, and it's especially useful when the information is widely available and more important than the page that hosts it. For example, need song lyrics? Type in "lyrics [song] [artist]", click IFL. Boom, instant lyrics.
Ottawa here, and it's exactly the same situation. Stock sells out in minutes; it's kind of disgusting. Maybe they're just not sending enough systems to Canada. I'm quite sick of having this money burning a hole in my pocket, and I've pretty much decided that I'll spend the money on something else and wait until mid-summer (when I get a summer job and some income) to buy one. Pretty sad, actually.
This will also be my first gaming system since the original NES, which I still play regularly (at least once a week). It's the only device hooked up to the TV in my living room; I don't even have cable or a DVD player.
To be fair Linux doesn't have full screen font anti aliasing, but it does have everything else.
Good lord, what version of Linux are you running? Haven't GTK+ and Qt had this for years? The only thing I know on Linux that doesn't do font anti-aliasing is the latest stable release of Tk. I'm currently using Tk 8.5 alpha5, which does have anti-aliasing and works quite well; a stable 8.5 should be released sometime this year.