And I'm guessing that their customer base will not be needing that much support, because the people who buy a Dell with linux pre-installed are probably the same people who buy a computer preloaded with MS, nuke the drive, and install their favorite linux distro all by themselves.
If this was really the end goal, why should Dell bother pre-installing Linux in the first place? Dell needs a good support infrastructure around Linux because they are going to be selling it to people who know next to nothing about computers except that Windows has malware and Linux doesn't. They're also going to get the parents of people who use Linux and order their parents a new Linux Dell, then are too busy to support it.
Face it, if you want to see Linux make gains on the desktop, it has to be sold to non-techies. Dell can accomplish that, but not without the capability to support them. If they do this half-assed, it will tarnish Linux not help it.
So a browser would fix this by not allowing programmatic access to focus() for file uploads?
Actually, the proper fix would be to have any focus() call from an keypress event process cancel the event processing by the browser. That way this script would just change the focus to the hidden file input, but the browser won't process the keypress event on that input. It makes logical sense, changing the keyboard focus should kill the keypress event.
It's not so much the amount of effort, but the amount of time. We could probably move Mars closer to the sun, even add an atmosphere to it, it would just take on the order of thousands of years. Maybe once we can extend the human lifespan to hundreds of years, we as a species can start thinking and planning on the order of thousands of years.
You can transmit information this way, but not faster than light.
The problem is that whenever you observe one atom, the super-position collapses instantaneously for both. That means the receiver needs to know that the sender has already measured the atom on the sending end before observing their atom on the receiving end, this would have to be done by a standard, non-FTL signal. You also have the problem of not being able to collapse the super-position into a specific value (say 0 or 1), so while the receiver would know what state the sender's atom is in, that state is a random value (0 or 1), so no data is actually conveyed.
The first problem may be overcome with some time-based scheme, where the sender and receiver have syncronized clocks, and have agreed at what time the sender will measure his atom. The problem with random waveform collapse, however, would be harder to overcome, though I think the quantum computers in recent articles have managed to make it slightly less-random.
RFC 1149 already documents how IP can be implemented with high latency low reliability environments. You don't really need to be re-inventing the wheel. Although I'll admit, a spacegoing pigeon would present an engineering challenge, so you might just want to stick with something a little more conventional like radio. But you can probably adapt the latency part...
I don't remember where I read it, but I once found a theory that there is a maximum distance any civilization can expand before it is consuming resources faster than it can expand, and will therefore go extinct at some maximum distance from it's origin. It was based on assumptions like the doubling of a population every X many years, and that the speed of light was the maximum expansion rate of colonization. At some point, the population growth is faster than the expansion rate of the sphere of colonization, and they run out of resources.
So that could solve Fermi's paradox, aliens do exist (or did exist), but have a limited time and space of influence that may not have an overlap with out own.
Until Linux is completely compatible with ALL DEVICES...
By this of course you mean all devices designed specifically for Microsoft Windows compatibility. I wonder if you hold any other products to these same requirements. Do you demand that your Ford be compatible with all GM parts? Or that your Diesel engine be compatible with all gasoline grades?
Linux runs on hardware that is not designed for Linux. Not all of the hardware out there, but a very large quantity of it. In contrast, neither Windows nor Mac OSX will run on the majority of hardware not designed for those systems. Windows may be known for its compatibility, but that is due to the effort of the hardware manufacturers, not the Windows developers. Linux compatibility is largely due to the effort of the Linux developers, not the hardware manufacturers.
So while you may not be able to use your cheap web cam in Linux, give credit where credit is due, and blame where blame is due. And while you're at it, give some information about your web cam problems to the Linux developers, and maybe it'll work in the next release.
Yes, future disks can be made without this particular player's key, meaning another player will need to be used to decrypt new disks. This is not like DECSS, the encryption mechanism was not compromised, only the keys were compromised, and those can be changed on future disks.
The problem for the recording industry now is one of politics and partnerships. Basically, are they willing to cause financial harm to the maker of the software player that allowed their key to be found? If they revoke that player's key in future disks, they force the maker to provide free updates to all their current customers, or risk having many very irate customers who can't play their new movies.
Now the maker of a software player can rather easily offer a free patch on their website that fixes the compromise and installs a new device key that will be used in future movies. But imagine if someone does this for a hardware player, would the content companies be willing to revoke the device key used in a widely adopted hardware player, causing huge customer outrage and financial fallout?
Removing 1 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere is easy, keeping it from going back is the tricky part. I suggest we build a 1 mile long circular pipe. At one end, we put a fan that will suck in all that nasty CO2 from the air, and pump it down the pipe. Now, Branson wants this to have no impact on the environment, so we need to replace that CO2 in roughly the same quantity and location, so at the other end of the 1 mile circular tube (roughly 10 feet away), we have a CO2 exhaust vent. Where can I claim my $25 million?
You keep making universal declarations of windows offering a better user experience, even when I stated explicitly that my linux desktop experience is more appealing to me than my windows desktop experience. Maybe you don't like it, maybe it doesn't feel polished to you. To me, Clearlooks feels more polished than Windows Classic or Windows XP themes. I didn't say VNC is more resposive than native windows, I said that Gnome is more responsive than native windows, even when used over VNC.
Again, I'm not famility with NX, but would that require you to have an X server on windows? How does NX handle apps that don't use X?
So you didn't like your Linux experience, fine, stick with windows. But don't act like just because you didn't like something, nobody else should or would like it. If you handed me 2 CDs, one with a complete stack of WindowsXP, MS Office, Visual Studio and Terminal Server (thats what, $1000 or more?) completely legal and free of charge, the other a Ubuntu LiveCD, I'd take Ubuntu.
About 6 months ago I installed Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) on a spare PC, that was about at the same level as my Dell which came pre-installed with Windows XP. I only have monitor, so Ubuntu loads vncserver at startup (3 sessions actually, running gnome, KDE and XFCE respectively), and I connect to it either from my Dell or an old Gateway laptop using a vnc viewer. Now because of VNC, I can't comment on sound issues, but I will comment from experience on some of your other complaints:
OpenOffice works, but it just feels clunky - it feels like the versino of word I used on win 3.1 so long ago.
On windows I have Office 97, which also feels like the win3.1 version. Infact, office 2007 is the only real change in MS Office since then.
The big difference is that file is called xorg.conf now. What the fuck is up with that? Are people still using monitors without EDID? Even if a handful are, why are we still designing for that outside case? Why cant I just have " Section Montior / EDID True / End Section" or something like that?
I actually had the exact opposite problem with Ubuntu. It expected EDID from a monitor, but as mentioned above I did not have one connected, so it defaulted to 640x480 when vncserver started X. Easy enough to fix, and again the default expects EDID info from the monitor.
The one thing that's gotten me excited is NX, and when I can migrate a session from windows to unix and back, and hijack the local desktop, then maybe I'll be a bit happier and find a little more use for my linux machine. Of course, Windows already does all of this.
I'm not sure what exactly NX does, or how it differs from X11. Like I said, I can connect from any computer with a vncviewer client (or I can use the java applet that comes with vncserver with just a browser on the client). I can connect to 3 different desktop sessions that are all constantly running (and running different desktop environments), I can even share display 0 if I enable the VNC module for X. Windows does not do all that.
Now, for my own personal experience, I prefer Ubuntu and hardly ever use my windows desktop. Even over VNC, my Ubuntu desktop is more responsive than Windows XP on the Dell, and much better than Windows 2k on the laptop. Infact, the only thing that runs on the laptop anymore is vncviewer, so it's essentially a dumb terminal. Since installing Dapper, I upgraded to Edgy with no problems, and plan on upgrading to Feisty as soon as the upgrade path gets tested. Edgy performs better on the same hardware than Dapper did, and Feisty looks to accomplish the same thing. When was the last time a Windows upgrade resulted in better performance on the same hardware?
Ok, I stand corrected, it does ask me for my user password. However, that is only because I have sudo access, and I do have to enter my password. A code execution exploit on a program I run as my username will not have root access to anything, and unless it knows my password it can't elevate itself to root. I have two other accounts on my home desktop, neither of which have sudo access. Again, I don't see this situation as being insecure.
Oh, and the security on Ubuntu? Are you shittin me? The "user is root is user" thing alarmed the shit out of me. Uh uh.
I think you're confused about something. At one point, Linspire was configured such that the user always ran as root. Ubuntu does not, and to my knowledge never has. Perhaps you are thinking sudo/gksudo? Ubuntu is not the only system that has this ability. Every day I run Ubuntu as a non-root user. When I need to perform administrative tasks, I am prompted for the root password, which elevates the process to run as root. I don't understand how you can think this is insecure.
It's open source. If there is some piece of code that causes it to produce bad ODF files, you can fix it yourself, and make the fix available for anyone else. If they refuse to merge it back into the the main branch, you can fork it and then fix it, and again make it available to anyone else.
As for the profit motive, more and more governments are starting to talk about mandating non-proprietary file formats. Microsoft doesn't want to include this in Word, obviously, but if a city, state, or even national government decides it wants to use ODF, Microsoft doesn't want to be the only Office suite on the block that can't handle it.
The biggest problem I've heard about the touch screen machines is that even if the voter DOES know what to do, the machine doesn't. For example, if the instruction says to touch the name of the candidate you wish to vote for, sometimes touching the name of Candidate A doesn't register as a selection, or worse registers as a selection for Candidate B. This has nothing to do with the intelligence of the voter. I'd rather have a voting machine that lets dumb people make mistakes, than one that prevents smart people from voting correctly.
I mean, we all know that Florida voters have a perfect track record of meaningfully, unambiguously, carefully, and thoughtfully placing a mark next to the right name.
In the 2000 election recount, counties who already had these optical mark scanners where the ones that didn't have any problems.
Thanks for the math, the 2 million average viewers in much lower than my assumption. I would be very surprised if they could produce BSG for an average of $150,000 per episode, I'm guessing that if they only bring in that much in advertising and subscription fees, BSG is spending money brought in by other SciFi shows, which are mostly syndications anyway.
I RTFA, and the guy is doing the math from the consumer side, not the production side. Consider the ramifications of paying $0.12 per episode for television. Since people here seem to like Battle Star Galactica, and the article's author mentioned is specifically as something he watches, we'll use that as the example. Here we go:
1.) Assume that an average episode of BSG attracts 10 million viewers.
2.) Each viewer pays $0.12 per episode.
10 million X $0.12 = $1.2 million per episode.
Now I'm guessing that the average episode of BSG costs much more than $1.2 million to produce. Therefore, if we use the $0.12/episode cost the author is asking for, BSG could not be made. At $0.12/episode, we will only be producing crappy sitcoms that can appeal to a wide enough audience, and only a few of these total so as not to distribute the viewer pool too widely. So you can pay $100/month to watch the 4 shows you like with the option to watch hundreds more at no extra charge, or $10 a month for maybe 10 shows you don't like and will only watch because nothing good gets made anymore.
Now the numbers above are completely fictional, I have no idea what the average viewership of BSG is, or the average cost per episode. If anyone can find these two items of information, we can calculate the minimum cost per episode to a viewer for BSG to be produced. I'm guessing it'll be closer to $1.99/episode than $0.12/episode.
Yes, but when they contact something, the act like a particle. Even in a dual slit experiment, a single photon will produce only a single contact, not a pattern. The pattern arises from the non-uniform distribution of multiple single photon contacts. The original comment's confusion was thinking that the hologram was produced by a single photon, rather than a succession of individual photons.
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If this was really the end goal, why should Dell bother pre-installing Linux in the first place? Dell needs a good support infrastructure around Linux because they are going to be selling it to people who know next to nothing about computers except that Windows has malware and Linux doesn't. They're also going to get the parents of people who use Linux and order their parents a new Linux Dell, then are too busy to support it.
Face it, if you want to see Linux make gains on the desktop, it has to be sold to non-techies. Dell can accomplish that, but not without the capability to support them. If they do this half-assed, it will tarnish Linux not help it.
Yes, Upstart seems to have greatly reduced the boot time, and the new Gnome is also noticeably faster also.
Actually, the proper fix would be to have any focus() call from an keypress event process cancel the event processing by the browser. That way this script would just change the focus to the hidden file input, but the browser won't process the keypress event on that input. It makes logical sense, changing the keyboard focus should kill the keypress event.
It's not so much the amount of effort, but the amount of time. We could probably move Mars closer to the sun, even add an atmosphere to it, it would just take on the order of thousands of years. Maybe once we can extend the human lifespan to hundreds of years, we as a species can start thinking and planning on the order of thousands of years.
What with all the Ubuntu stories of late, far outnumbering the Red Hat/Fedora stories, shouldn't we get a Ubuntu logo on these articles now?
You can transmit information this way, but not faster than light.
The problem is that whenever you observe one atom, the super-position collapses instantaneously for both. That means the receiver needs to know that the sender has already measured the atom on the sending end before observing their atom on the receiving end, this would have to be done by a standard, non-FTL signal. You also have the problem of not being able to collapse the super-position into a specific value (say 0 or 1), so while the receiver would know what state the sender's atom is in, that state is a random value (0 or 1), so no data is actually conveyed.
The first problem may be overcome with some time-based scheme, where the sender and receiver have syncronized clocks, and have agreed at what time the sender will measure his atom. The problem with random waveform collapse, however, would be harder to overcome, though I think the quantum computers in recent articles have managed to make it slightly less-random.
I don't remember where I read it, but I once found a theory that there is a maximum distance any civilization can expand before it is consuming resources faster than it can expand, and will therefore go extinct at some maximum distance from it's origin. It was based on assumptions like the doubling of a population every X many years, and that the speed of light was the maximum expansion rate of colonization. At some point, the population growth is faster than the expansion rate of the sphere of colonization, and they run out of resources.
So that could solve Fermi's paradox, aliens do exist (or did exist), but have a limited time and space of influence that may not have an overlap with out own.
By this of course you mean all devices designed specifically for Microsoft Windows compatibility. I wonder if you hold any other products to these same requirements. Do you demand that your Ford be compatible with all GM parts? Or that your Diesel engine be compatible with all gasoline grades?
Linux runs on hardware that is not designed for Linux. Not all of the hardware out there, but a very large quantity of it. In contrast, neither Windows nor Mac OSX will run on the majority of hardware not designed for those systems. Windows may be known for its compatibility, but that is due to the effort of the hardware manufacturers, not the Windows developers. Linux compatibility is largely due to the effort of the Linux developers, not the hardware manufacturers.
So while you may not be able to use your cheap web cam in Linux, give credit where credit is due, and blame where blame is due. And while you're at it, give some information about your web cam problems to the Linux developers, and maybe it'll work in the next release.
Yes, future disks can be made without this particular player's key, meaning another player will need to be used to decrypt new disks. This is not like DECSS, the encryption mechanism was not compromised, only the keys were compromised, and those can be changed on future disks.
The problem for the recording industry now is one of politics and partnerships. Basically, are they willing to cause financial harm to the maker of the software player that allowed their key to be found? If they revoke that player's key in future disks, they force the maker to provide free updates to all their current customers, or risk having many very irate customers who can't play their new movies.
Now the maker of a software player can rather easily offer a free patch on their website that fixes the compromise and installs a new device key that will be used in future movies. But imagine if someone does this for a hardware player, would the content companies be willing to revoke the device key used in a widely adopted hardware player, causing huge customer outrage and financial fallout?
Removing 1 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere is easy, keeping it from going back is the tricky part. I suggest we build a 1 mile long circular pipe. At one end, we put a fan that will suck in all that nasty CO2 from the air, and pump it down the pipe. Now, Branson wants this to have no impact on the environment, so we need to replace that CO2 in roughly the same quantity and location, so at the other end of the 1 mile circular tube (roughly 10 feet away), we have a CO2 exhaust vent. Where can I claim my $25 million?
Not for me, anything accessing the network is slower since I upgraded to SP2
You keep making universal declarations of windows offering a better user experience, even when I stated explicitly that my linux desktop experience is more appealing to me than my windows desktop experience. Maybe you don't like it, maybe it doesn't feel polished to you. To me, Clearlooks feels more polished than Windows Classic or Windows XP themes. I didn't say VNC is more resposive than native windows, I said that Gnome is more responsive than native windows, even when used over VNC.
Again, I'm not famility with NX, but would that require you to have an X server on windows? How does NX handle apps that don't use X?
So you didn't like your Linux experience, fine, stick with windows. But don't act like just because you didn't like something, nobody else should or would like it. If you handed me 2 CDs, one with a complete stack of WindowsXP, MS Office, Visual Studio and Terminal Server (thats what, $1000 or more?) completely legal and free of charge, the other a Ubuntu LiveCD, I'd take Ubuntu.
Now, for my own personal experience, I prefer Ubuntu and hardly ever use my windows desktop. Even over VNC, my Ubuntu desktop is more responsive than Windows XP on the Dell, and much better than Windows 2k on the laptop. Infact, the only thing that runs on the laptop anymore is vncviewer, so it's essentially a dumb terminal. Since installing Dapper, I upgraded to Edgy with no problems, and plan on upgrading to Feisty as soon as the upgrade path gets tested. Edgy performs better on the same hardware than Dapper did, and Feisty looks to accomplish the same thing. When was the last time a Windows upgrade resulted in better performance on the same hardware?
Ok, I stand corrected, it does ask me for my user password. However, that is only because I have sudo access, and I do have to enter my password. A code execution exploit on a program I run as my username will not have root access to anything, and unless it knows my password it can't elevate itself to root. I have two other accounts on my home desktop, neither of which have sudo access. Again, I don't see this situation as being insecure.
I think you're confused about something. At one point, Linspire was configured such that the user always ran as root. Ubuntu does not, and to my knowledge never has. Perhaps you are thinking sudo/gksudo? Ubuntu is not the only system that has this ability. Every day I run Ubuntu as a non-root user. When I need to perform administrative tasks, I am prompted for the root password, which elevates the process to run as root. I don't understand how you can think this is insecure.
It's open source. If there is some piece of code that causes it to produce bad ODF files, you can fix it yourself, and make the fix available for anyone else. If they refuse to merge it back into the the main branch, you can fork it and then fix it, and again make it available to anyone else.
As for the profit motive, more and more governments are starting to talk about mandating non-proprietary file formats. Microsoft doesn't want to include this in Word, obviously, but if a city, state, or even national government decides it wants to use ODF, Microsoft doesn't want to be the only Office suite on the block that can't handle it.
I'm sure someone can port it to Vista. Tell me again about how Windows has better hardware support than Linux.
The biggest problem I've heard about the touch screen machines is that even if the voter DOES know what to do, the machine doesn't. For example, if the instruction says to touch the name of the candidate you wish to vote for, sometimes touching the name of Candidate A doesn't register as a selection, or worse registers as a selection for Candidate B. This has nothing to do with the intelligence of the voter. I'd rather have a voting machine that lets dumb people make mistakes, than one that prevents smart people from voting correctly.
Thanks for the math, the 2 million average viewers in much lower than my assumption. I would be very surprised if they could produce BSG for an average of $150,000 per episode, I'm guessing that if they only bring in that much in advertising and subscription fees, BSG is spending money brought in by other SciFi shows, which are mostly syndications anyway.
I RTFA, and the guy is doing the math from the consumer side, not the production side. Consider the ramifications of paying $0.12 per episode for television. Since people here seem to like Battle Star Galactica, and the article's author mentioned is specifically as something he watches, we'll use that as the example. Here we go:
1.) Assume that an average episode of BSG attracts 10 million viewers.
2.) Each viewer pays $0.12 per episode.
10 million X $0.12 = $1.2 million per episode.
Now I'm guessing that the average episode of BSG costs much more than $1.2 million to produce. Therefore, if we use the $0.12/episode cost the author is asking for, BSG could not be made. At $0.12/episode, we will only be producing crappy sitcoms that can appeal to a wide enough audience, and only a few of these total so as not to distribute the viewer pool too widely. So you can pay $100/month to watch the 4 shows you like with the option to watch hundreds more at no extra charge, or $10 a month for maybe 10 shows you don't like and will only watch because nothing good gets made anymore.
Now the numbers above are completely fictional, I have no idea what the average viewership of BSG is, or the average cost per episode. If anyone can find these two items of information, we can calculate the minimum cost per episode to a viewer for BSG to be produced. I'm guessing it'll be closer to $1.99/episode than $0.12/episode.
Yes, but when they contact something, the act like a particle. Even in a dual slit experiment, a single photon will produce only a single contact, not a pattern. The pattern arises from the non-uniform distribution of multiple single photon contacts. The original comment's confusion was thinking that the hologram was produced by a single photon, rather than a succession of individual photons.
In home entertainment news...
...because more people use them
Standard televisions are superior to HDTVs, because more people use it
In automotive news...
Gasoline is superior to Diesel and Electric, because more people use it*
In scientific news...
Imperial measurements are superior to Metric, because more people use it*
In Technology news...
MS Paint is the superior graphics editor...
IE6 is the superior web browser...
notepad is the superior text editor...
I now invite all slashdotters to post their own satirical "news" based on appeals to popularity, the only true way to gauge quality.
(* May be isolated to the USA, but I'm guessing the submitter is also isolated to the USA, so the satire still works).