Why? Because I don't bullshit you with all the fairy tales about how easy it is to understand computers? Sorry but it's not. I think it's cool that you are a new Linux user, keep at it please, but why do the mad rantings of a little more experienced Linux user (like I said, it's been about 2 1/2 years now) put you off from living a life in software freedom? I don't get it. If it's because of my attitude in argument against Windows I doubt you'd be much happier if someone explained to you what you mean to Microsoft or Apple (look in your wallet, there's your soul right there). They care much less for you as a person than I do.
My attitude? What's wrong with my god damn fucking attitude?:P
No seriously, I resort to profane language usually when I'm confronted with ignorance towards progress and/or reasonable solutions. A person that goes out to buy a Linux Netbook w/o knowing what Linux is and then returning it complaining about how they can't operate something they've never heard of without ever asking anyone? Sorry but it's hard to argue that those people aren't idiots. Hello? I go out buy a Netbook that costs a hundred dollars less than the Windows version and I'm wondering why the operating system isn't a clone of Windows? Huh?
I say meatsack because for Microsoft as a corporation that's what you are. A meatsack that is supposed to operate in a way they want you to be, there's no change, no real options and not even a good approach to what they're supposed to be doing. It was meant as a provocative term for people that are too lazy to change but want to take the benefits anyhow. In Open Source at least there isn't a barrier for participation. You don't need to be a big player to have stuff fixed or changed. And to me... that's awesome.
I'll assume that your run-on sentence was intended to have a semicolon after "manual". But I don't know how wiki explanations can be so useful if you don't already have networking up.
Yes sorry my punctuation is quite bad when I write online. Also, English is not my first language and I do as much as I can to write it properly. In Ubuntu networking is on out-of-the box, in fact everything except for my Webcam works right out of the box. That's why I installed it. I put in the first LiveCD of Dapper back then and I could use Firefox to surf, sound worked and I could easily manipulate my files and partitions.
Most people buying netbooks don't have access to you. Who will train them?
That's what I'm saying. More people need to know how to use Linux so they can teach other people. How do Windows virgins start? What if you buy your very first computer? You need some friends or relatives or colleagues that show you how to get around and the rest is trial and error. That's how I learned at least. There are some great Screencasts/Podcasts out there that teach you the basic workings of Linux and I find the Ubuntu Wikis really helpful. The only difference is that with Windows someone who's been through all the reading explains the stuff you need to know. With Linux you usually go through all that yourself BUT you pick up a lot of cool knowledge on the way. In the end most people can only be bothered to learn one set of software to operate (instead of understanding what it is about and thus being able to operate all types of programs) and this is where I want Linux or at least "Technology" as a form of understanding software to come in front of Microsofts strange locked in view of the world.
Mac OS and GNOME put Cancel (brake) on the left and OK (gas) on the right. Windows and some other environments do it the other way around.
I personally find the GUI of GNOME much more intuitive than any Mac OS or Windows I've ever used. In a European language, English for that matter, the reader scans the line from left to right. "OK" being the right hand side so closer to the end of the sentence ergo a psychological bridge for the decision to actually read through the error message and click then. In Windows where OK is on the left hand side you don't even bother to look at the text, you usually just click because the button is closer to the beginning of the sentence anyway. I think when you have to look at least a bit to the right and move your hand in that direction your brain will scan the sentence and you are much more likely to prevent wrong clicks. But that's just my theory.
I think it would make for a great marketing campaign...especially with all the toxic products coming out of China (toys, milk...etc).
Again. toxic products like electronics. That precious iPhone would be a thousand bucks w/o the carrier contract if it was made in the US. You don't believe that Microsoft could stem that whole Xbox360 project with even higher hardware manufacturing costs? Imagine every RROD cost 50-100 dollars in labor alone to repair.
I agree with your idea of local production I personally prefer that too but 20-30 years ago the US was the main innovator in technology and many big companies produced in the country. Nowadays we heavily rely on other countries that do the dirty work for us. I'm from Europe and we have huge parts of our industry that are almost completely outsourced. I doubt that we can just "move back" simply because the system we have established is founded on the idea that we can use the resources we don't use for production to add value to our work which enables us to pay for outsourcing production in the first place.
And if you think about it, this situation of dependence has huge benefits. Not only monetary but social and political also. If you rely on a country for production of goods you are less likely to attack that country for military reasons and you can see all the time that nations like the U.S. shape their foreign policy according to these factors.
Take human rights in China, during the olympics there have been terrible scenes but the mainstream media overall didn't even touch that iron because any conflict with the producing nations could lead to export stops and rising prices. Criticize the wrong ruler and your trade connections go down the drain. Why do you think nobody attacks Saudi Arabia? It's the role model society of Islam and several "terorrist" groups are said to have ties let alone organisations there. Hey isn't bin Ladens family Saudi? If the OPEC wasn't so important don't you think there would already be tanks over there? If economy is good for one thing, then it's connecting different peoples and cultures in a relationship of (peaceful) trade.
The thing is, Windows was ubiquitous because it was installed on all "regular" machines. It was the cheapest way to get to know an operating system because it was already there. Now recently Linux has improved user experience significantly and now it's the most affordable thing there is. Unless you buy a new computer every time MS finishes a product cycle you'll have to fork over some extra cash to get the latest Windows (or pirate it with all the known side effects). Linux on the other hand is free today, not only as in beer but as in speech as well.
I think the faster people realize that you only need the latest hardware for gaming and high-end processing the faster Linux will continue to grow. Regular users ask themselves why they should spend 500 bucks on a new OS or even more on a new computer when they could install a free OS that does most things equally well. I personally used free Linux distros to give some old machines a new purpose and would have never done that (or would have been capable of doing so) if I had to buy a Microsoft license for each. After all there's no use in trying to sell Vista to someone who still uses his offline Windows 98 SE machine to type recipes or something.
We see more and more people who are interested in tinkering with their systems, develop small apps and do all kinds of weird stuff to the OS. Microsoft and Apple both generously avoid that by locking everything down and so the only real alternative for people who want to dive into the internals of an OS will have to use an open OS sooner or later. After all, there's no www.windows-kernel.org.
Like I explained briefly in the comment before there can't be a successful boycott of Chinese-made/foreign-made products. Even if you boycott one you would have to buy it from another. And in our world today... sorry to break this to you... no one can produce solely by themselves. Even if we boycotted China on a large scale someone would have stuff produced in China and then sell it to us branding it "Made in Belarus" or whatever. Since people are used to a certain standard, can't be forced to buy something more expensive, there's no way you could regulate the market in a way that would equalize prices in a fashion that you could sustain your quality of life -not without using totalitarian control structures. It's simply impossible in todays world to produce the quantities of goods for the prices people are willing/able to pay all by yourself. No one in the US has the capacities to produce enough electronics let alone clothes to supply the entire US market and all their economic partners. You COULD maybe, but none of the business people is willing to give up his profit and work cost-effective only. We live in interdependency. Our systems have developed into hybridized solutions. China can't live without the money from the US, the US can't live without the range of affordable products from China. Without China/Asia the US/Europe wouldn't have any affordable consumer electronics. What you're talking about is a post-dystopian world where only rich people can afford the few expensive goods that can be produced locally. That's not how our market works and it's nothing that I want to try imposing on the world. Sorry.
What you mean by "successful boycott" and "correct itself" is large scale economic breakdown, inflation, famine and death. Maybe not for Americans but at least for the poor factory workers in China. Read something about economic interdependency. The "we will be autonomous, fuck everyone else" position doesn't work here anymore if you want to keep up. Look at North Korea or Cuba... two totalitarian states that locked themselves out and through boycotts, embargoes and their own stupidity are largely separated from the world. They're not exactly the top of the economic success spectrum and their people aren't to fortunate either. A "boycott" in the classical sense nowadays can mostly only be a very specific, small range, short term means to signal the market. I doubt the US could survive even half a decade all by themselves. No imports whatsoever... good luck with that success story.
Lol what? Ever seen a noob windows user sitting in front of a computer? Windows is far more confusing than Linux especially since you learn a lot of stuff working on Linux while with Windows you're just doing stuff that other people tell you. No learning curve beyond "how to keep that shit from crashing". At least in Linux the error messages MEAN something. I've corrected multiple problems already just by reading the errors in the shell and then reacting to it. Even a noob can understand that "missing library blabla" means "I need to install library blabla". Windows tells me "Wow, we fucked up, here's where. Since we can't tell you what we did this information is useless so just pass it on to us so we can pretend to actually know what went wrong.". The problem here is simply that Windows has been established in larger circles for longer, people grow up around Windows machines and then take that as the only feasible OS effectively conditioning themselves to a certain manufacturer. Same goes for Apple users, grow up in a Mac house, use a couple of Macs until you're in your mid-twenties and everything else will look like the devil to you. I know people that can't even properly type on a PC keyboard because of that. These are the kind of people that buy cars according to the button layout they're used to and color regardless of specs and mileage.
It's not that they don't want to learn, they learned the wrong stuff and now can't/don't wanna adapt because they're lazy. So I blame the people for not learning "technology" but learning "Microsoft technology" which is kinda sad.
Read a user manual? Not ready for the Desktop? Hard to use? I don't know what Linux you are talking about but the one I've been using for over two years now is easy to use, has tons of software does everything that XP did for me before and I never needed a manual I chose to read Wiki explanations for specific tasks. I had never used Linux before and I will certainly never buy windows after.
Linux IS ready for the Desktop, it's that meatsack sitting behind it that isn't. The problem with the Linux adaption is that most people are idiots who get used to Windows as the one and only way user interaction should be presented. These are the same people that don't know how to get their microwave to show the time because they had a hard enough time to learn how to do that to the VCR and now can't be bothered anymore. In that sense Linux is improving the situation because it teaches those that use it that computers are computers and the interfaces are exchangeable. I got my brother a computer with Ubuntu on it, he's 23 and doesn't know much about computers but after I told him the things he needed to know everything works just fine. Which just goes to show if you're not biased by getting used to crap for the best part of your life you can actually adapt to changes.
The problem here is an old one, dumbshit learns Word for a couple of years and when you show him OpenOffice they go "But the printer icon doesn't look quite like the one I'm used to" and can't use it. Why? Because they are fucking stupid! I can press any type of buttons no matter what they look like as long as I understand that it's what I have to do to get the machine to do what I want. If you really can't make the connection between printer icon = printing or navigate a menu that is slightly different from what you've used before maybe these people shouldn't be working with computers. It's like with a car. If you drive your old car for a couple of years and the new one has the AC knob in a different place will you sweat? If you're dumb and ignorant you will because you refuse to learn how to work the new thing. If you're smart you'll realize that stuff needs to be operated no matter how it looks.
Firms will move to supply the increased demand for those things once the source is cut off. We have unemployment issues over here anyway.
Help me real quick, how can you keep building a TV that is sold for 600 bucks including margin when your employees cost dozens of times more than what you are currently paying? Don't you think that before someone says "Great I'll just sell my stuff for ten times the price, people will know it's the right thing" someone else simply co-operates with the Chinese or other country to get cheap-labor done? This has no impact whatsoever on your local employment market. Well, unless you live in India, Pakistan or the Ukraine.
It's not like we don't know how to make that stuff. We just built the factories elsewhere.
Uhm yeah? Because the companies didn't want to pay for all that health insurance stuff. In my country, companies threaten the government to move production out of the country and the laws are made accordingly. Tax cuts on revenue tax and corporate taxes are forced on us that way.
It's not like we don't know how to make that stuff... it's just too fucking expensive to make the kind of profits that we're used to and have promised to the investors.
They are doing by legal fiat what the open source community has failed to do through voluntary cooperation, namely, boycotting products that don't provide their source code. Ironically, this autocratic move could be a boon to open source.
Wha wha whaat? The open source community says:
"Hey we're writing tools, everyone should be able to participate so we release the code for free"
Companies say: "We build specialized applications and machines that would ruin us if everybody knew how we do it, under no circumstances will we give away the implementation of X that we've spent millions of R&D on."
So you say the second one will be happy to give it's source code to the Chinese? You must be bleeding from both eyes right now. The reason why China does this is clear: Cheap technology, you cut out the research and development costs and go straight to production. That's what they mainly do anyway, all the stuff we send there to have produced cheaply now backfires. You got the manpower and the facilities all you need is something to build. They did the same thing with the Maglev train from Germany. They send engineers to work with the ICE speed train team, the team went to China to do material research and quality checks etc. and once the Chinese had enough the contact was interrupted and a couple of months later they introduced their own Maglev train... that looks almost exactly like the one from Germany, bases on the very same technology. That's your altruistic Open Source project right there. *shakes head*
Somehow OOXML has managed to survive long enough sucking on the juices of the ISO host and now it's time to swallow the better performing competitor. True market forces at play, except it's no market forces and it will ruin everything. But who ever cared about that at Microsoft.
This could seriously be one step forward on the way towards all-electric cars in the mainstream. The current problem, literally, is that the available batteries can provide fairly good performance but take way too long to recharge. Maybe there'll be loading stations that fill up your batteries in under 15 minutes which could be a short enough time for people actually to put up with it.
I think the manufacturers should agree on a standardized "battery-bay" that holds specific types of batteries which are replaced as they reach their capacity/performance limit. They could establish a nice model here that would still allow them to use their old infrastructure and keep the customers in a closed cycle. That's what businesses in the automotive industry are all about right now, right?
You drive up to the station, dock in the loading arm, the system checks your batteries:
More than 20-50 cycles left? (Or even less)
No: Replace battery pack with one stored at the site. Store/Ship old one to manufacturing plant for reworking. Load new battery.
Yes: Refill Battery
Yes, owner wants a new one: Charge early replacement fee in addition to the electricity/service cost.
Maybe multiple cylindrical shaped batteries (maybe AAAA?) that fit into ports in the side of the car would be an appropriate solution. You could incorporate that in many cars design, the loading socket (removing one battery at a time) didn't have to be much bigger than the regular gas cap we're already used to. Since the batteries would need replacement only every so often you could time the replacement cycle to avoid getting stuck in a battery loading frenzy on your way to an important meeting.
The "dead" batteries then go back for refurbishment and are again "rented" out to customers to run them in their vehicle. I would prefer such a thing over hard-wired batteries in all the cars that, when they die, have to be replaced expensively.
I really don't like Penny Arcade comics that much. I ended up paying for the game because the demo was really fun and I like to give my money to people that support my OS directly. It's so rare these days and I can't see why. WINE is nice and all but I really like that unfiltered performance and compatibility of native versions. So give Hothead your money they are already spreading the word that they were surprised by the number of sold Linux versions (in a good way).
I would be totally impressed, judging by the sheer incompetency of the UK government, if anything like 1984 happens.
Sure they may try, but frankly, its just not going to happen.
Allow me to break your spirit. I personally believe if there is any nation that will achieve 1984-dom first then it's Great Britain. What says "Not Orwellian" about this:
4 Million surveillance cameras (avg. person gets filmed 300 times a day)
Citizens have to agree to full biometric scan and filing in order to apply for a passport (quote by government: If you don't want to give us your prints that's fine, you don't NEED a passport, you can stay at home).
Engage in terrorism (call me what you want but that the 07/07/07 attacks on the London commuter busses overlapped with a terror training session on the exact same day, in the exact same place at the exact same time according to the government speaks of an inside job to me, at least they knew what was going to happen) and torture (if all "Allied" forces in the Bush coalition used the CIA flights and EU torture prisons why would the Brits not do so?)
To me that all sounds very much like an upcoming police state, sure they don't YET force people to work for government businesses and undergo brain washes but that can't be too far off in UK security policy.
Idiot, that doesn't solve your problem that YOUR FINGERPRINT is now associated with crimes. Who cares if my official passport has my pinkie print when every time they check my name a "terrorist warning" pops up because my index fingerprint was stolen? That's just bullcrap.
And tell that to the nice customs officer that gets all fidgety just when people talk to him that he should check again and explain to him why you had to change the fingerprints and "just this time" you would need to catch your plane. Like they never heard anything like that before.
I wanna see you tell unfunny jokes the next time you get pulled out of the airport and dropped in a detention cell because your "pulled" fingerprints appeared on an IED in Iraq or a burglarized weapons depot somewhere in the Ukraine. It's really easy to land on the "no-fly/terror suspect" list nowadays and by granting authorities the right to distribute your data all over the world you basically WANT to be on one of those lists.
Good thing about sensors though: They don't aks no quest'ns to 'dem dangerous peepol!
What if a sensor decided you were bad and hit the automatic firing system? Or does a light go on and you're quickly and politely escorted out... out of the range of human rights?
Maybe you would be just pissed at someone but it would still take 12 hours of flight to beat their ass. Can't one even have a violent pen pal anymore?
Congrats, you prove to us every day that the Terrorists have won.
Just as I expected, once the holy nation of America gets "attacked" everyone is modding down.
I could go about writing a page long explanation of where exactly they lied like Iraq twice, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cuba, etc.
where they cheated: Banking system (the federal rescue plan is something like a God Mode for bankers), does the word "Watergate" mean anything to you?
where they deceive: can you say Noriega kids? What about WMDs in Iraq again? How about "we are protecting our citizens that's why we need to listen to their telephone conversations and stuff", how about "Sure those people were all communists and had to be put away Mr. Carter"
And I don't even want to start quoting the places where the US should have looked at their own doorstep first before dealing with other people's affairs and make everything worse: Like say Vietnam, or the Kuwait crisis, Panama, the entire WTO, look in a book of recent history, I doubt you won't be able to find something.
You mod me troll because I tell you what you don't want to hear, the US make enemies for themselves by behaving like greedy bastards that are supposed to rule the world while in reality they are more like making a monkey with a bazooka president of the world. An incredibly stupid idea executed poorly but you can't argue with it because... well, it's got a bazooka. And don't tell me "But we develop so much of the technology" well maybe you can get Microsoft to design a new brain for your leaders because they are full of shit and make you look bad.
The little cultural history that their nation has developed in the 250 years the nation exists is immature and not well thought through, not all problems can be solved with more money and bigger tanks. It worked for a while, but so did yelling for your mommy. Now it's over, grow up. That's all I'm saying, not ALL Americans are like that, not every politician is like that but their nation as a whole seems to be utterly proud of this bullshit. Sure NOW there are voices against the Bush regime and such but it can't be too many people complaining because it would have changed if they did, wouldn't it?
You over patriotic apologetic S-O-Bs, wake up, there is no reason to be proud to be an American these days. Technology doesn't immediately count as a proper qualification for civilized human beings in case you didn't know. Before that nation gets is ass up and starts changing, really changing, for the better you have no right to defend your puny little bastard military/business party because basically that's all that matters about your country as of now. And to be honest, nobody cares what YOU think about yourselves dimwits... it's the OTHER PEOPLE that make your image. And to them, you make yourself look like retards... on steroids. It doesn't matter what good intentions you put BEHIND whatever you do to justify it, all that counts is what EVERYONE ELSE is seeing.
Mod me down, but at least make it count put me on "Offtopic" or something only because I exactly answered his question in the first place.
And btw. I'm from Germany, we got huge problems when we let the military/industrial complex take over our country. Then some nation, I forgot who, had to jump in besides dozens that were already fighting to save our ass. Thanks for that, but open your god damn eyes and realize that what happened to Hitler-Germany can might as well happen to you. Even today, wait, especially today since you have come to a point where no one really dares to argue with you anymore because you get all bitchy and pull out the guns. Oh and I forgot: no one will be able to stop YOU from becoming a Fourth Reich because you got the biggest guns. Who's gonna jump in? China? I doubt it they'll have to make the iPods for your troops.
And there we are with the "why so much war" question again. Well by now you should have seen the answer. And if not: Go fuck yourself.
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Why? Because I don't bullshit you with all the fairy tales about how easy it is to understand computers? Sorry but it's not. I think it's cool that you are a new Linux user, keep at it please, but why do the mad rantings of a little more experienced Linux user (like I said, it's been about 2 1/2 years now) put you off from living a life in software freedom? I don't get it. If it's because of my attitude in argument against Windows I doubt you'd be much happier if someone explained to you what you mean to Microsoft or Apple (look in your wallet, there's your soul right there). They care much less for you as a person than I do.
My attitude? What's wrong with my god damn fucking attitude? :P
... that's awesome.
No seriously, I resort to profane language usually when I'm confronted with ignorance towards progress and/or reasonable solutions. A person that goes out to buy a Linux Netbook w/o knowing what Linux is and then returning it complaining about how they can't operate something they've never heard of without ever asking anyone? Sorry but it's hard to argue that those people aren't idiots. Hello? I go out buy a Netbook that costs a hundred dollars less than the Windows version and I'm wondering why the operating system isn't a clone of Windows? Huh?
I say meatsack because for Microsoft as a corporation that's what you are. A meatsack that is supposed to operate in a way they want you to be, there's no change, no real options and not even a good approach to what they're supposed to be doing. It was meant as a provocative term for people that are too lazy to change but want to take the benefits anyhow. In Open Source at least there isn't a barrier for participation. You don't need to be a big player to have stuff fixed or changed. And to me
I'll assume that your run-on sentence was intended to have a semicolon after "manual". But I don't know how wiki explanations can be so useful if you don't already have networking up.
Yes sorry my punctuation is quite bad when I write online. Also, English is not my first language and I do as much as I can to write it properly. In Ubuntu networking is on out-of-the box, in fact everything except for my Webcam works right out of the box. That's why I installed it. I put in the first LiveCD of Dapper back then and I could use Firefox to surf, sound worked and I could easily manipulate my files and partitions.
Most people buying netbooks don't have access to you. Who will train them?
That's what I'm saying. More people need to know how to use Linux so they can teach other people. How do Windows virgins start? What if you buy your very first computer? You need some friends or relatives or colleagues that show you how to get around and the rest is trial and error. That's how I learned at least. There are some great Screencasts/Podcasts out there that teach you the basic workings of Linux and I find the Ubuntu Wikis really helpful. The only difference is that with Windows someone who's been through all the reading explains the stuff you need to know. With Linux you usually go through all that yourself BUT you pick up a lot of cool knowledge on the way. In the end most people can only be bothered to learn one set of software to operate (instead of understanding what it is about and thus being able to operate all types of programs) and this is where I want Linux or at least "Technology" as a form of understanding software to come in front of Microsofts strange locked in view of the world.
Mac OS and GNOME put Cancel (brake) on the left and OK (gas) on the right. Windows and some other environments do it the other way around.
I personally find the GUI of GNOME much more intuitive than any Mac OS or Windows I've ever used. In a European language, English for that matter, the reader scans the line from left to right. "OK" being the right hand side so closer to the end of the sentence ergo a psychological bridge for the decision to actually read through the error message and click then. In Windows where OK is on the left hand side you don't even bother to look at the text, you usually just click because the button is closer to the beginning of the sentence anyway. I think when you have to look at least a bit to the right and move your hand in that direction your brain will scan the sentence and you are much more likely to prevent wrong clicks. But that's just my theory.
I think it would make for a great marketing campaign...especially with all the toxic products coming out of China (toys, milk...etc).
Again. toxic products like electronics. That precious iPhone would be a thousand bucks w/o the carrier contract if it was made in the US. You don't believe that Microsoft could stem that whole Xbox360 project with even higher hardware manufacturing costs? Imagine every RROD cost 50-100 dollars in labor alone to repair.
I agree with your idea of local production I personally prefer that too but 20-30 years ago the US was the main innovator in technology and many big companies produced in the country. Nowadays we heavily rely on other countries that do the dirty work for us. I'm from Europe and we have huge parts of our industry that are almost completely outsourced. I doubt that we can just "move back" simply because the system we have established is founded on the idea that we can use the resources we don't use for production to add value to our work which enables us to pay for outsourcing production in the first place.
And if you think about it, this situation of dependence has huge benefits. Not only monetary but social and political also. If you rely on a country for production of goods you are less likely to attack that country for military reasons and you can see all the time that nations like the U.S. shape their foreign policy according to these factors.
Take human rights in China, during the olympics there have been terrible scenes but the mainstream media overall didn't even touch that iron because any conflict with the producing nations could lead to export stops and rising prices. Criticize the wrong ruler and your trade connections go down the drain. Why do you think nobody attacks Saudi Arabia? It's the role model society of Islam and several "terorrist" groups are said to have ties let alone organisations there. Hey isn't bin Ladens family Saudi? If the OPEC wasn't so important don't you think there would already be tanks over there? If economy is good for one thing, then it's connecting different peoples and cultures in a relationship of (peaceful) trade.
The thing is, Windows was ubiquitous because it was installed on all "regular" machines. It was the cheapest way to get to know an operating system because it was already there. Now recently Linux has improved user experience significantly and now it's the most affordable thing there is. Unless you buy a new computer every time MS finishes a product cycle you'll have to fork over some extra cash to get the latest Windows (or pirate it with all the known side effects). Linux on the other hand is free today, not only as in beer but as in speech as well.
I think the faster people realize that you only need the latest hardware for gaming and high-end processing the faster Linux will continue to grow. Regular users ask themselves why they should spend 500 bucks on a new OS or even more on a new computer when they could install a free OS that does most things equally well. I personally used free Linux distros to give some old machines a new purpose and would have never done that (or would have been capable of doing so) if I had to buy a Microsoft license for each. After all there's no use in trying to sell Vista to someone who still uses his offline Windows 98 SE machine to type recipes or something.
We see more and more people who are interested in tinkering with their systems, develop small apps and do all kinds of weird stuff to the OS. Microsoft and Apple both generously avoid that by locking everything down and so the only real alternative for people who want to dive into the internals of an OS will have to use an open OS sooner or later. After all, there's no www.windows-kernel.org.
Like I explained briefly in the comment before there can't be a successful boycott of Chinese-made/foreign-made products. Even if you boycott one you would have to buy it from another. And in our world today ... sorry to break this to you ... no one can produce solely by themselves. Even if we boycotted China on a large scale someone would have stuff produced in China and then sell it to us branding it "Made in Belarus" or whatever. Since people are used to a certain standard, can't be forced to buy something more expensive, there's no way you could regulate the market in a way that would equalize prices in a fashion that you could sustain your quality of life -not without using totalitarian control structures. It's simply impossible in todays world to produce the quantities of goods for the prices people are willing/able to pay all by yourself. No one in the US has the capacities to produce enough electronics let alone clothes to supply the entire US market and all their economic partners. You COULD maybe, but none of the business people is willing to give up his profit and work cost-effective only. We live in interdependency. Our systems have developed into hybridized solutions. China can't live without the money from the US, the US can't live without the range of affordable products from China. Without China/Asia the US/Europe wouldn't have any affordable consumer electronics. What you're talking about is a post-dystopian world where only rich people can afford the few expensive goods that can be produced locally. That's not how our market works and it's nothing that I want to try imposing on the world. Sorry.
... two totalitarian states that locked themselves out and through boycotts, embargoes and their own stupidity are largely separated from the world. They're not exactly the top of the economic success spectrum and their people aren't to fortunate either. A "boycott" in the classical sense nowadays can mostly only be a very specific, small range, short term means to signal the market. I doubt the US could survive even half a decade all by themselves. No imports whatsoever ... good luck with that success story.
What you mean by "successful boycott" and "correct itself" is large scale economic breakdown, inflation, famine and death. Maybe not for Americans but at least for the poor factory workers in China. Read something about economic interdependency. The "we will be autonomous, fuck everyone else" position doesn't work here anymore if you want to keep up. Look at North Korea or Cuba
Lol what? Ever seen a noob windows user sitting in front of a computer? Windows is far more confusing than Linux especially since you learn a lot of stuff working on Linux while with Windows you're just doing stuff that other people tell you. No learning curve beyond "how to keep that shit from crashing". At least in Linux the error messages MEAN something. I've corrected multiple problems already just by reading the errors in the shell and then reacting to it. Even a noob can understand that "missing library blabla" means "I need to install library blabla". Windows tells me "Wow, we fucked up, here's where. Since we can't tell you what we did this information is useless so just pass it on to us so we can pretend to actually know what went wrong.". The problem here is simply that Windows has been established in larger circles for longer, people grow up around Windows machines and then take that as the only feasible OS effectively conditioning themselves to a certain manufacturer. Same goes for Apple users, grow up in a Mac house, use a couple of Macs until you're in your mid-twenties and everything else will look like the devil to you. I know people that can't even properly type on a PC keyboard because of that. These are the kind of people that buy cars according to the button layout they're used to and color regardless of specs and mileage.
It's not that they don't want to learn, they learned the wrong stuff and now can't/don't wanna adapt because they're lazy. So I blame the people for not learning "technology" but learning "Microsoft technology" which is kinda sad.
Read a user manual? Not ready for the Desktop? Hard to use? I don't know what Linux you are talking about but the one I've been using for over two years now is easy to use, has tons of software does everything that XP did for me before and I never needed a manual I chose to read Wiki explanations for specific tasks. I had never used Linux before and I will certainly never buy windows after.
Linux IS ready for the Desktop, it's that meatsack sitting behind it that isn't. The problem with the Linux adaption is that most people are idiots who get used to Windows as the one and only way user interaction should be presented. These are the same people that don't know how to get their microwave to show the time because they had a hard enough time to learn how to do that to the VCR and now can't be bothered anymore. In that sense Linux is improving the situation because it teaches those that use it that computers are computers and the interfaces are exchangeable. I got my brother a computer with Ubuntu on it, he's 23 and doesn't know much about computers but after I told him the things he needed to know everything works just fine. Which just goes to show if you're not biased by getting used to crap for the best part of your life you can actually adapt to changes.
The problem here is an old one, dumbshit learns Word for a couple of years and when you show him OpenOffice they go "But the printer icon doesn't look quite like the one I'm used to" and can't use it. Why? Because they are fucking stupid! I can press any type of buttons no matter what they look like as long as I understand that it's what I have to do to get the machine to do what I want. If you really can't make the connection between printer icon = printing or navigate a menu that is slightly different from what you've used before maybe these people shouldn't be working with computers. It's like with a car. If you drive your old car for a couple of years and the new one has the AC knob in a different place will you sweat? If you're dumb and ignorant you will because you refuse to learn how to work the new thing. If you're smart you'll realize that stuff needs to be operated no matter how it looks.
Firms will move to supply the increased demand for those things once the source is cut off. We have unemployment issues over here anyway.
Help me real quick, how can you keep building a TV that is sold for 600 bucks including margin when your employees cost dozens of times more than what you are currently paying? Don't you think that before someone says "Great I'll just sell my stuff for ten times the price, people will know it's the right thing" someone else simply co-operates with the Chinese or other country to get cheap-labor done? This has no impact whatsoever on your local employment market. Well, unless you live in India, Pakistan or the Ukraine.
It's not like we don't know how to make that stuff. We just built the factories elsewhere.
Uhm yeah? Because the companies didn't want to pay for all that health insurance stuff. In my country, companies threaten the government to move production out of the country and the laws are made accordingly. Tax cuts on revenue tax and corporate taxes are forced on us that way. It's not like we don't know how to make that stuff ... it's just too fucking expensive to make the kind of profits that we're used to and have promised to the investors.
Bunch of idiots. Boycott chinese products and don't export anything to China.
Uhhhm, good luck shopping for clothes then. Or furniture, or kitchen appliances, or electronics.
They are doing by legal fiat what the open source community has failed to do through voluntary cooperation, namely, boycotting products that don't provide their source code. Ironically, this autocratic move could be a boon to open source.
Wha wha whaat? The open source community says:
... that looks almost exactly like the one from Germany, bases on the very same technology. That's your altruistic Open Source project right there.
"Hey we're writing tools, everyone should be able to participate so we release the code for free"
Companies say: "We build specialized applications and machines that would ruin us if everybody knew how we do it, under no circumstances will we give away the implementation of X that we've spent millions of R&D on."
So you say the second one will be happy to give it's source code to the Chinese? You must be bleeding from both eyes right now.
The reason why China does this is clear: Cheap technology, you cut out the research and development costs and go straight to production. That's what they mainly do anyway, all the stuff we send there to have produced cheaply now backfires. You got the manpower and the facilities all you need is something to build. They did the same thing with the Maglev train from Germany. They send engineers to work with the ICE speed train team, the team went to China to do material research and quality checks etc. and once the Chinese had enough the contact was interrupted and a couple of months later they introduced their own Maglev train
*shakes head*
Somehow OOXML has managed to survive long enough sucking on the juices of the ISO host and now it's time to swallow the better performing competitor. True market forces at play, except it's no market forces and it will ruin everything. But who ever cared about that at Microsoft.
It sets up fairly easily and once you've got it running no one will ever come near you again ... to harm you.
This could seriously be one step forward on the way towards all-electric cars in the mainstream. The current problem, literally, is that the available batteries can provide fairly good performance but take way too long to recharge. Maybe there'll be loading stations that fill up your batteries in under 15 minutes which could be a short enough time for people actually to put up with it.
I think the manufacturers should agree on a standardized "battery-bay" that holds specific types of batteries which are replaced as they reach their capacity/performance limit. They could establish a nice model here that would still allow them to use their old infrastructure and keep the customers in a closed cycle. That's what businesses in the automotive industry are all about right now, right?
You drive up to the station, dock in the loading arm, the system checks your batteries:
More than 20-50 cycles left? (Or even less)
No: Replace battery pack with one stored at the site. Store/Ship old one to manufacturing plant for reworking. Load new battery.
Yes: Refill Battery
Yes, owner wants a new one: Charge early replacement fee in addition to the electricity/service cost.
Maybe multiple cylindrical shaped batteries (maybe AAAA?) that fit into ports in the side of the car would be an appropriate solution. You could incorporate that in many cars design, the loading socket (removing one battery at a time) didn't have to be much bigger than the regular gas cap we're already used to. Since the batteries would need replacement only every so often you could time the replacement cycle to avoid getting stuck in a battery loading frenzy on your way to an important meeting. The "dead" batteries then go back for refurbishment and are again "rented" out to customers to run them in their vehicle. I would prefer such a thing over hard-wired batteries in all the cars that, when they die, have to be replaced expensively.
I agree, the combat was really fun and just for the weird storyline and dialogs this is worth playing. Even if you are not a PA fan.
I really don't like Penny Arcade comics that much. I ended up paying for the game because the demo was really fun and I like to give my money to people that support my OS directly. It's so rare these days and I can't see why. WINE is nice and all but I really like that unfiltered performance and compatibility of native versions. So give Hothead your money they are already spreading the word that they were surprised by the number of sold Linux versions (in a good way).
We're closing for lunch. Oh, yes, uh ... the DRM? What's wrong with it?
I always thought DRM was a parrot ...
I would be totally impressed, judging by the sheer incompetency of the UK government, if anything like 1984 happens.
Sure they may try, but frankly, its just not going to happen.
Allow me to break your spirit. I personally believe if there is any nation that will achieve 1984-dom first then it's Great Britain. What says "Not Orwellian" about this:
4 Million surveillance cameras (avg. person gets filmed 300 times a day)
Citizens have to agree to full biometric scan and filing in order to apply for a passport (quote by government: If you don't want to give us your prints that's fine, you don't NEED a passport, you can stay at home).
Engage in terrorism (call me what you want but that the 07/07/07 attacks on the London commuter busses overlapped with a terror training session on the exact same day, in the exact same place at the exact same time according to the government speaks of an inside job to me, at least they knew what was going to happen) and torture (if all "Allied" forces in the Bush coalition used the CIA flights and EU torture prisons why would the Brits not do so?)
To me that all sounds very much like an upcoming police state, sure they don't YET force people to work for government businesses and undergo brain washes but that can't be too far off in UK security policy.
Idiot, that doesn't solve your problem that YOUR FINGERPRINT is now associated with crimes. Who cares if my official passport has my pinkie print when every time they check my name a "terrorist warning" pops up because my index fingerprint was stolen? That's just bullcrap. And tell that to the nice customs officer that gets all fidgety just when people talk to him that he should check again and explain to him why you had to change the fingerprints and "just this time" you would need to catch your plane. Like they never heard anything like that before.
I wanna see you tell unfunny jokes the next time you get pulled out of the airport and dropped in a detention cell because your "pulled" fingerprints appeared on an IED in Iraq or a burglarized weapons depot somewhere in the Ukraine. It's really easy to land on the "no-fly/terror suspect" list nowadays and by granting authorities the right to distribute your data all over the world you basically WANT to be on one of those lists.
This just in: World Record saved by giant slingshot!
It's the marketing representative for Ryan Air.
I thought they were called "Soldiers".
... out of the range of human rights?
Good thing about sensors though: They don't aks no quest'ns to 'dem dangerous peepol!
What if a sensor decided you were bad and hit the automatic firing system? Or does a light go on and you're quickly and politely escorted out
Maybe you would be just pissed at someone but it would still take 12 hours of flight to beat their ass. Can't one even have a violent pen pal anymore? Congrats, you prove to us every day that the Terrorists have won.
Just as I expected, once the holy nation of America gets "attacked" everyone is modding down.
... well, it's got a bazooka. And don't tell me "But we develop so much of the technology" well maybe you can get Microsoft to design a new brain for your leaders because they are full of shit and make you look bad.
... it's the OTHER PEOPLE that make your image. And to them, you make yourself look like retards ... on steroids. It doesn't matter what good intentions you put BEHIND whatever you do to justify it, all that counts is what EVERYONE ELSE is seeing.
I could go about writing a page long explanation of where exactly they lied like Iraq twice, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cuba, etc.
where they cheated: Banking system (the federal rescue plan is something like a God Mode for bankers), does the word "Watergate" mean anything to you?
where they deceive: can you say Noriega kids? What about WMDs in Iraq again? How about "we are protecting our citizens that's why we need to listen to their telephone conversations and stuff", how about "Sure those people were all communists and had to be put away Mr. Carter"
And I don't even want to start quoting the places where the US should have looked at their own doorstep first before dealing with other people's affairs and make everything worse: Like say Vietnam, or the Kuwait crisis, Panama, the entire WTO, look in a book of recent history, I doubt you won't be able to find something.
You mod me troll because I tell you what you don't want to hear, the US make enemies for themselves by behaving like greedy bastards that are supposed to rule the world while in reality they are more like making a monkey with a bazooka president of the world. An incredibly stupid idea executed poorly but you can't argue with it because
The little cultural history that their nation has developed in the 250 years the nation exists is immature and not well thought through, not all problems can be solved with more money and bigger tanks. It worked for a while, but so did yelling for your mommy. Now it's over, grow up. That's all I'm saying, not ALL Americans are like that, not every politician is like that but their nation as a whole seems to be utterly proud of this bullshit. Sure NOW there are voices against the Bush regime and such but it can't be too many people complaining because it would have changed if they did, wouldn't it?
You over patriotic apologetic S-O-Bs, wake up, there is no reason to be proud to be an American these days. Technology doesn't immediately count as a proper qualification for civilized human beings in case you didn't know. Before that nation gets is ass up and starts changing, really changing, for the better you have no right to defend your puny little bastard military/business party because basically that's all that matters about your country as of now. And to be honest, nobody cares what YOU think about yourselves dimwits
Mod me down, but at least make it count put me on "Offtopic" or something only because I exactly answered his question in the first place. And btw. I'm from Germany, we got huge problems when we let the military/industrial complex take over our country. Then some nation, I forgot who, had to jump in besides dozens that were already fighting to save our ass. Thanks for that, but open your god damn eyes and realize that what happened to Hitler-Germany can might as well happen to you. Even today, wait, especially today since you have come to a point where no one really dares to argue with you anymore because you get all bitchy and pull out the guns. Oh and I forgot: no one will be able to stop YOU from becoming a Fourth Reich because you got the biggest guns. Who's gonna jump in? China? I doubt it they'll have to make the iPods for your troops.
And there we are with the "why so much war" question again. Well by now you should have seen the answer. And if not: Go fuck yourself.