Well, I guess if ppl get stuff really hosed up... The one that I don't understand your point on is nVidia drivers. There's no way to keep those separate, nor is there really any point to rm'ing them before installing a pkg manager version.. its all overwriting the same files, and the nVidia shell script (for the latest versions) doesn't come with an uninstall.
In my case, I had to use a newer version than was in the edgy universe repos (or was that multiverse.. I don't know cuz I've always had both enabled to be able to do what I want with my box) so I d/l'd it from the nVidia website. When I upgraded to Feisty, I took a crack at the ones out of the "restricted drivers manager" and shazam, better performance out of my card than I had under edgy with the latest drivers....
It never ceases to amaze me how well Ubuntu does when it gets things right (nor how hairy it gets when you're ahead of their curve). Also just did the same thing with ndiswrapper.. installed my custom made one's first, and its a kernel driver, so again no way to separate. Decided to take a crack at the new repo version, so I just reinstalled ye olde kernel image from synaptic (not bothering to reboot since it is the same kernel after all) rmmod'd my ndiswrapper, -r'd my driver, -i'd it, modprobed, and away it went (although it still fails to connect the first time it tries every time.... which was why I decided to try the repo version anyhow)
Anyway I'm done rambling.. but yeah, maybe I'm one of the smart ones.
Hate to tell you guys this, but this is OEM's screwing you, not M$. My dad's a reseller, and the independent resellers can still sell 2000 licenses if need be. The OEM's are pocketing more cash by forcing the Vista upgrade. They DO have the option. Don't believe the FUD.
MS sucks, don't worry about my opinion on that one, but its the large OEM's (who by the way forced my dad out of a successful business supporting small to medium businesses who didn't want an in house IT department, now he works as a one-man show out of his basement, but he had to put 5 or 6 good people out of work to make it viable)who are screwing us.
Well, if you installed some stuff making it yourself, wouldn't you just want to make it again after installing the new headers that come with the next dist version? I have had to./configure make && sudo make install a few things on this edgy box, and I expect I'll have to do the same thing after the upgrad e completes.
Correct me if I'm completely off base here, I'm a relatively new linux user, but I can google my problems when I run into them (which has worked so far).
Except you're assuming that the cost to PRODUCE the transistor is the same per fab. The operating costs of inkjet printers are far lower than the sputtering chambers, CMP equipment, lithography equipment, doping equipment, and any of the other high power, high cost materials that go into operating a traditional semiconductor fab. (I've worked in them for years)
That would only be true if the motor vehicle were "operating" itself. Also, the motor vehicle in that boneheaded misinterpretation would be the one violating the statute, and thus nothing could be charged with a crime (since only people can be charged with crimes).
Not to mention the fact that you are taking a partial quote to be the whole sentence in the statute (which you can tell by the partial quote that its not).
Please drive thru.
I said the same thing (won't buy a PC with Vista) until I wanted a laptop. I'm a budget buyer at the moment, and wanted something with a decent video chipset (for a laptop) that would run WoW under Ubuntu.
So I looked over at System76.. great, Ubuntu preinstalled lappys... wait a minute, these laptops are all $1000+ to get anything with an nVidia chipset...
Well off to Best Buy, and my laptop has never booted into Vista... but given the fact that Dell has shown that M$ subsidizes THEM to keep Windows on their machines, I don't mind taking some of Micosofts Vista checks.
Well, my experience varies. I can d/l from my portage rsync mirror at the U of Wisconsin Madison's Chemistry department at a full 1.2 MB/s yet when I connect to ANYTHING else, I pull maybe 100 KB/s.... the stuff folk bitch about is just the simple fact that you're limited by what the server can cough up that you're connected to.
Anytime I need to remind myself of this, I simply pull a file directly off the U of W server and watch it reliably pull the full 1.2 MB/s... even when google and any other site take 10s of sitting there to pull up a home page.
Explain that one to me.
Not to feed the trolls, but in Ubuntu, you don't have to know any of those things, just open Synaptic and use the nice spiffy GUI to do the same thing.
Sorry that in the digital age, the ability to type is something that we can't expect of a user.
They run their own local rsync server containing only binary builds targeted for their architectures, and set up scripts on the target machines under vixie-cron or whatever they prefer to get updates from that rsync server every so often. Also, they don't particularly HAVE to update that often (the big misunderstanding about Gentoo in a production environment), the just CAN update often.
Using that model you have a few machines that are your prototyping and building environment before you roll to your production machines, you set up a reasonable schedule to update, and roll it in when its working. Pretty simple and gives the admin control over exactly what environment he wants to run on his network....
People don't seem to get that the choices in Gentoo are just that, they let the admin of a system run the system however he sees fit, and tends to make a very lean mean system that is well suited for large homogenous networks.
Just use binary packages that you build yourself.:)
Umm.. may I just point out the irony of your sig compared to the subject of your post? You disagree with DRM, yet you purchased Vista, which is the biggest vehicle to take the control of your hardware out of your hands via DRM?
FYI, there's a really easy way to not be tracked by shopper cards. Get the card, don't fill out the form. Sure they know what "a shopper" is doing. But they don't have your info.
And there are FAR better reasons to not use credit cards than privacy. Like that fact that very few of us actually own our lives any more. Car, house, any major purchase... how many things do you own?
Umm.. how bout the kids that come in and pull every license number out of the registry and use them for the pirate installs they hack together? That's a pretty common problem for public LAN's that let teenage "hackers" pay for time on them.
Whereas before I purged my house of M$ products, I successfully validated an install from a Dell OEM disk on my homebuilt computer activated with a reseller's Key. Granted, it was legal, but I wouldn't expect a validation tool to let it through.
And at the amounts where you'd make any money over commissions/fees the stocks will be too thinly traded and you'll lose your ass by driving the price up as you buy and down as you sell. This (I'm sure) is why the spammers choose nothing stocks. There's ABSOLUTELY nothing that anyone can do in the market to make money with them.
Remember, you have a finite amount of shares, and a finite demand. If you're trying to pull too many shares off the market, the price goes north.
The problem with this, unfortunately if you follow the hardware market, is that M$ has bullied all of the hardware manufacturers by saying "Do this or we won't let your drivers into our OS". Sorry, but that removes my choice to "find an alternative". I plan on not buying any DRM enabled hardware, and thus not picking up any new hardware till this whole mess blows over and voting with my wallet.
Unfortunately most people don't keep up with what it is they're buying, and don't particularly care. I have brought a few people over, and I wish that someone more organized than I would get some sort of hardware boycott/alternative market/something going. Unfortunately, I have too much on my plate already, and much like movie theaters that are open on Holidays, I'm the only person that I can control and my wallet is the only vote I have.
Its just sad to watch the sheep get trampled.
Actually, oh condescending one, I am in fact a user and not connected to IT at all. I simply keep informed about what this little grey box under my desk does for me. I'm talking about what's best for myself, and all "users". I didn't speak for anyone else except myself. I said that my rights to use my own equipment as I see fit were on the way out.
Sorry if you don't care, but there are a growing number who do.
I personally don't buy DRM'd material. I think it's worthwhile to inform people about what they're losing if they give in to DRM (especially given the mess that is Vista and its currently propagating effects on the hardware market).
Once its reached this level, where I, no matter whether I consume DRM'd products or not, am now paying for the RIAA/MPAA's bs encryption overhead in any new hardware I buy, it is in fact infringing on my rights. My rights to use my hardware to the fullest of its ability given that I own it. My right to have my demand shape the market. My right to do what I wish with the information contained on devices I wholly own.
Licensing software is one thing. Essentially licensing hardware that I own is quite another. No one seems to see the line that is currently being crossed. If you don't want your equipment to do what you tell it to, continue down this path. If, on the other hand, you want to be sure you have control over what your equipement does under the hood, fight against DRM, its the first step on a slippery slope to controlling data flow in and out of your computer (and other electronics). You won't like the way the world looks at the bottom of that slope.
I agree with enderandrew and you on this. I waited to make the Linux jump to see MacroShaft make the mistakes it made with XP then Vista. XP I was able to do what I wanted to do with, so I didn't jump because of the perceived inconvenience of re-learning. In the end I chose the hardest distro to jump into because I weighed the advantages of each and figured I could handle it. After four days of hair pulling, I had a fully configured, working system, that had exactly the software running on it that I wanted.
Now there is no M$haft software in my household except for my X360 (damn games). But I acknowledge wholeheartedly that I'm not the average user. If I had the trouble I did with getting it going, I can't imagine someone who wants to turn their comp on and be greeted with a fuzzy warm feeling doing it.
Those users will only be accessible when we have OEM support. OEM's will only come on board with a workable business model and a critical mass of users and developers. I definitely think Linux is headed this way.
End of ramble.
I completely agree that those are the distros that work best for end users, but take a look at the installs, huge bloated OS's that aren't stable and don't have good package management. With the built in bloat they just don't run as fast as the hardware could/should. The flexibility and optimizations for my hardware are what led me to Gentoo. Although it may not have been the most user friendly (In my view Gentoo's biggest "drawback") I was able to get it going with the documentation (80 page install guide) available and there's a HOWTO for everything you want to do to get it running and then tweak it.
And that fact that almost everything is compiled from source optimized for my architecture and not including support for hardware/features I don't need makes up (to me) for the fact that its a bit of a shooting match getting things correctly configured.
But anyway, there's a good reason there are different distros, and that's because there are different user bases. But like we've said already, there isn't a magic bullet. I would hate to get a call from someone who doesn't know what they're doing trying to set up Gentoo, but I don't know that I'd recommend Ubuntu or openSUSE because of the lack of effective package management when they're trying to get a new application running.
Only problem with that is the VAST difference in philosophy between distro's. I run Gentoo because its scalable, portable, and has the best package manager out there. However as any new Gentoo user will tell you, it's a bitch to get going the first time.
It made me learn though. I had a technical background in computers and networking in the Windows environment and bloatware holds you by the hand so much that when you're faced with an OS that can do anything you want it to, you cry out for help.
Once I got through the pain, I'm now running my system the way I want it to be run. The average user can't do this. The average user wants to click Yes and have everything run. There are a few distros out there for this, but they have their problems as well (security, portability, package management).
There (at present) isn't a magic bullet out there in the Linux world for an end user's home PC. You have to be techinical to run a Linux system properly, and most people want an appliance, not a computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Google is trying too hard today.
This is also on their login screen. Caught me for a moment as a.. how dumb of a new feature is that. Then I remembered..
Decent laptops for under $1000 w/an nvidia chipset.
Well, I guess if ppl get stuff really hosed up... The one that I don't understand your point on is nVidia drivers. There's no way to keep those separate, nor is there really any point to rm'ing them before installing a pkg manager version.. its all overwriting the same files, and the nVidia shell script (for the latest versions) doesn't come with an uninstall.
In my case, I had to use a newer version than was in the edgy universe repos (or was that multiverse.. I don't know cuz I've always had both enabled to be able to do what I want with my box) so I d/l'd it from the nVidia website. When I upgraded to Feisty, I took a crack at the ones out of the "restricted drivers manager" and shazam, better performance out of my card than I had under edgy with the latest drivers....
It never ceases to amaze me how well Ubuntu does when it gets things right (nor how hairy it gets when you're ahead of their curve). Also just did the same thing with ndiswrapper.. installed my custom made one's first, and its a kernel driver, so again no way to separate. Decided to take a crack at the new repo version, so I just reinstalled ye olde kernel image from synaptic (not bothering to reboot since it is the same kernel after all) rmmod'd my ndiswrapper, -r'd my driver, -i'd it, modprobed, and away it went (although it still fails to connect the first time it tries every time.... which was why I decided to try the repo version anyhow)
Anyway I'm done rambling.. but yeah, maybe I'm one of the smart ones.
Hate to tell you guys this, but this is OEM's screwing you, not M$. My dad's a reseller, and the independent resellers can still sell 2000 licenses if need be. The OEM's are pocketing more cash by forcing the Vista upgrade. They DO have the option. Don't believe the FUD.
MS sucks, don't worry about my opinion on that one, but its the large OEM's (who by the way forced my dad out of a successful business supporting small to medium businesses who didn't want an in house IT department, now he works as a one-man show out of his basement, but he had to put 5 or 6 good people out of work to make it viable)who are screwing us.
Well, if you installed some stuff making it yourself, wouldn't you just want to make it again after installing the new headers that come with the next dist version? I have had to ./configure make && sudo make install a few things on this edgy box, and I expect I'll have to do the same thing after the upgrad e completes.
Correct me if I'm completely off base here, I'm a relatively new linux user, but I can google my problems when I run into them (which has worked so far).
Except you're assuming that the cost to PRODUCE the transistor is the same per fab. The operating costs of inkjet printers are far lower than the sputtering chambers, CMP equipment, lithography equipment, doping equipment, and any of the other high power, high cost materials that go into operating a traditional semiconductor fab. (I've worked in them for years)
thank you :), I just didn't have the mental energy to diagram it..
That would only be true if the motor vehicle were "operating" itself. Also, the motor vehicle in that boneheaded misinterpretation would be the one violating the statute, and thus nothing could be charged with a crime (since only people can be charged with crimes). Not to mention the fact that you are taking a partial quote to be the whole sentence in the statute (which you can tell by the partial quote that its not). Please drive thru.
I said the same thing (won't buy a PC with Vista) until I wanted a laptop. I'm a budget buyer at the moment, and wanted something with a decent video chipset (for a laptop) that would run WoW under Ubuntu. So I looked over at System76.. great, Ubuntu preinstalled lappys... wait a minute, these laptops are all $1000+ to get anything with an nVidia chipset... Well off to Best Buy, and my laptop has never booted into Vista... but given the fact that Dell has shown that M$ subsidizes THEM to keep Windows on their machines, I don't mind taking some of Micosofts Vista checks.
Well, my experience varies. I can d/l from my portage rsync mirror at the U of Wisconsin Madison's Chemistry department at a full 1.2 MB/s yet when I connect to ANYTHING else, I pull maybe 100 KB/s.... the stuff folk bitch about is just the simple fact that you're limited by what the server can cough up that you're connected to. Anytime I need to remind myself of this, I simply pull a file directly off the U of W server and watch it reliably pull the full 1.2 MB/s... even when google and any other site take 10s of sitting there to pull up a home page. Explain that one to me.
Not to feed the trolls, but in Ubuntu, you don't have to know any of those things, just open Synaptic and use the nice spiffy GUI to do the same thing. Sorry that in the digital age, the ability to type is something that we can't expect of a user.
They run their own local rsync server containing only binary builds targeted for their architectures, and set up scripts on the target machines under vixie-cron or whatever they prefer to get updates from that rsync server every so often. Also, they don't particularly HAVE to update that often (the big misunderstanding about Gentoo in a production environment), the just CAN update often. Using that model you have a few machines that are your prototyping and building environment before you roll to your production machines, you set up a reasonable schedule to update, and roll it in when its working. Pretty simple and gives the admin control over exactly what environment he wants to run on his network.... People don't seem to get that the choices in Gentoo are just that, they let the admin of a system run the system however he sees fit, and tends to make a very lean mean system that is well suited for large homogenous networks. Just use binary packages that you build yourself. :)
Umm.. may I just point out the irony of your sig compared to the subject of your post? You disagree with DRM, yet you purchased Vista, which is the biggest vehicle to take the control of your hardware out of your hands via DRM?
FYI, there's a really easy way to not be tracked by shopper cards. Get the card, don't fill out the form. Sure they know what "a shopper" is doing. But they don't have your info. And there are FAR better reasons to not use credit cards than privacy. Like that fact that very few of us actually own our lives any more. Car, house, any major purchase... how many things do you own?
Umm.. how bout the kids that come in and pull every license number out of the registry and use them for the pirate installs they hack together? That's a pretty common problem for public LAN's that let teenage "hackers" pay for time on them.
Whereas before I purged my house of M$ products, I successfully validated an install from a Dell OEM disk on my homebuilt computer activated with a reseller's Key. Granted, it was legal, but I wouldn't expect a validation tool to let it through.
These are in Pink Sheet securities where there is no such thing as "investor confidence". Why do you think they're trading for pennies?
And at the amounts where you'd make any money over commissions/fees the stocks will be too thinly traded and you'll lose your ass by driving the price up as you buy and down as you sell. This (I'm sure) is why the spammers choose nothing stocks. There's ABSOLUTELY nothing that anyone can do in the market to make money with them. Remember, you have a finite amount of shares, and a finite demand. If you're trying to pull too many shares off the market, the price goes north.
The problem with this, unfortunately if you follow the hardware market, is that M$ has bullied all of the hardware manufacturers by saying "Do this or we won't let your drivers into our OS". Sorry, but that removes my choice to "find an alternative". I plan on not buying any DRM enabled hardware, and thus not picking up any new hardware till this whole mess blows over and voting with my wallet. Unfortunately most people don't keep up with what it is they're buying, and don't particularly care. I have brought a few people over, and I wish that someone more organized than I would get some sort of hardware boycott/alternative market/something going. Unfortunately, I have too much on my plate already, and much like movie theaters that are open on Holidays, I'm the only person that I can control and my wallet is the only vote I have. Its just sad to watch the sheep get trampled.
Actually, oh condescending one, I am in fact a user and not connected to IT at all. I simply keep informed about what this little grey box under my desk does for me. I'm talking about what's best for myself, and all "users". I didn't speak for anyone else except myself. I said that my rights to use my own equipment as I see fit were on the way out. Sorry if you don't care, but there are a growing number who do.
I personally don't buy DRM'd material. I think it's worthwhile to inform people about what they're losing if they give in to DRM (especially given the mess that is Vista and its currently propagating effects on the hardware market).
Once its reached this level, where I, no matter whether I consume DRM'd products or not, am now paying for the RIAA/MPAA's bs encryption overhead in any new hardware I buy, it is in fact infringing on my rights. My rights to use my hardware to the fullest of its ability given that I own it. My right to have my demand shape the market. My right to do what I wish with the information contained on devices I wholly own.
Licensing software is one thing. Essentially licensing hardware that I own is quite another. No one seems to see the line that is currently being crossed. If you don't want your equipment to do what you tell it to, continue down this path. If, on the other hand, you want to be sure you have control over what your equipement does under the hood, fight against DRM, its the first step on a slippery slope to controlling data flow in and out of your computer (and other electronics). You won't like the way the world looks at the bottom of that slope.
I agree with enderandrew and you on this. I waited to make the Linux jump to see MacroShaft make the mistakes it made with XP then Vista. XP I was able to do what I wanted to do with, so I didn't jump because of the perceived inconvenience of re-learning. In the end I chose the hardest distro to jump into because I weighed the advantages of each and figured I could handle it. After four days of hair pulling, I had a fully configured, working system, that had exactly the software running on it that I wanted. Now there is no M$haft software in my household except for my X360 (damn games). But I acknowledge wholeheartedly that I'm not the average user. If I had the trouble I did with getting it going, I can't imagine someone who wants to turn their comp on and be greeted with a fuzzy warm feeling doing it. Those users will only be accessible when we have OEM support. OEM's will only come on board with a workable business model and a critical mass of users and developers. I definitely think Linux is headed this way. End of ramble.
I completely agree that those are the distros that work best for end users, but take a look at the installs, huge bloated OS's that aren't stable and don't have good package management. With the built in bloat they just don't run as fast as the hardware could/should. The flexibility and optimizations for my hardware are what led me to Gentoo. Although it may not have been the most user friendly (In my view Gentoo's biggest "drawback") I was able to get it going with the documentation (80 page install guide) available and there's a HOWTO for everything you want to do to get it running and then tweak it. And that fact that almost everything is compiled from source optimized for my architecture and not including support for hardware/features I don't need makes up (to me) for the fact that its a bit of a shooting match getting things correctly configured. But anyway, there's a good reason there are different distros, and that's because there are different user bases. But like we've said already, there isn't a magic bullet. I would hate to get a call from someone who doesn't know what they're doing trying to set up Gentoo, but I don't know that I'd recommend Ubuntu or openSUSE because of the lack of effective package management when they're trying to get a new application running.
Only problem with that is the VAST difference in philosophy between distro's. I run Gentoo because its scalable, portable, and has the best package manager out there. However as any new Gentoo user will tell you, it's a bitch to get going the first time. It made me learn though. I had a technical background in computers and networking in the Windows environment and bloatware holds you by the hand so much that when you're faced with an OS that can do anything you want it to, you cry out for help. Once I got through the pain, I'm now running my system the way I want it to be run. The average user can't do this. The average user wants to click Yes and have everything run. There are a few distros out there for this, but they have their problems as well (security, portability, package management). There (at present) isn't a magic bullet out there in the Linux world for an end user's home PC. You have to be techinical to run a Linux system properly, and most people want an appliance, not a computer.