Kindof unpleasant experiencing a total system lockup when you are presenting to 200 scientists. People in the audience actually said: "I can't believe you attempted this using Libre!", "Why are you using Linux for this?"
For me: automatic backups cause images and objects to randomly disappear, frequent LibreOffice crashes cause files to be locked in an infinite repair loop (easy to fix with a terminal, but...), animations lock up. Bugs which have apparently been known for > 10 years. How could any large organization could be expected to depend on this software?
They will lose this vote.
(And I will be sad that they lost.)
The state of LibreOffice is a huge reason why linux on the desktop is unviable.
If Dell is targeting these laptops for "developers", then why are they only offering laptops with lowest-common-denominator aesthetic features that many developers (myself at least) could not care less about? "Thin", "Beautiful Design" "Fast Startup", tiny hard drive, tiny screen, low RAM?
Serious? Hardware specifications of every ubuntu-bundled dell machine I've ever seen are entry-level and honestly quite terrible for development work. (For for my work at least. I write simulation and bioinformatics software). For years, the lack of graphics acceleration, and a tiny hard drive has been a deal killer. I can't speak for others, but I think it's safe to say that "developers" are not the kinds of people who (only) use laptops to give powerpoint/libre-office presentations or check facebook.
We actually know what a dedicated graphics card is. We need reasonable hardware.
I'm not trying to raise alarms, but I had the same question. Everyone's heard about therapeutic resistance for treatments like penicillin. (And I sometimes wonder whether AZT was released prematurely: Could we have saved more lives if we had waited for a more effective anti-retroviral cocktail to be distributed with AZT? Who knows. Probably not worth worrying about now.)
I also confess to being totally ignorant about how the immune system works, or why vaccines would be different from penicillin. I've never heard ANY evidence at all suggesting that over-vaccination has created super-bugs. For the record, I literally know next to nothing about this topic. I'm not trying to insinuate FUD against vaccines (or AZT). If VortexCortex and I are concerned for nothing, then great! Anyway, there were some interesting comments (that were reassuring), and I enjoyed reading them. (Keep them coming.)
"If used widely a universal flu vaccine could prevent pandemics, such as the swine flu outbreaks of recent years, and end the need for a seasonal flu jab."
I didn't read the journal article, but it sounds as though somebody's advocating distributing this vaccine every year during flu season (prophylactically).
If a vaccine is successful, shouldn't we hold on to it and only distribute it during potential emergencies such as the emergence of H1N1? I would think the last thing we should be doing is breeding super vaccine-resistant flu viruses by over-medicating. It seems like whenever a new treatment is discovered, we deploy it immediately. Suppose if we deployed this new flu vaccine, in the best case scenario, we could save a hundred thousand lives per year, every year, for a decade or two, (and there's probably a lot of profit to be made in the process). But if we distribute the vaccine sparingly, perhaps it would remain effective for longer, and we could save tens of millions of lives when the next pandemic hits.
It's an interesting mathematical dilemma, but I've never seen anybody bring this up. What is the best solution?
(I've had this question for a while. It seems like a great question for the slashdot crowd.)
"what is less obvious is why, when automatic upgrades are available on modern desktops, most people are not upgrading as soon as new packages are detected -- or perhaps not at all."
It's a chore to remember to log in to a privileged account periodically and click on the update button. (Sudo is disabled on my regular account.) I haven't looked into this, but it's got to be trivial to configure a linux machine to update itself automatically (without needing to log in at all). That is not the default setup (in ubuntu). Should it be?
Most of the Chinese people I have known gave me the impression that they were either deeply apolitical. The others expressed sentiments that would be mistaken as sarcasm, or dismissed as flame-bait if ever expressed on slashdot.
"That westerners are so blindly obsessed with democracy, free speech, free religion, makes you appear brainwashed in our eyes." (-a graduate student I know. I left out the inflammatory stuff.)
To insinuate that Chinese people responding in these opinion polls do so out of fear, or because they are brainwashed or not in their right mind is a bit insulting.
These polls do seem to reflect the honest opinion of a number of Chinese students I met in university. (An extremely limited sample, I know.)
Slashdot Mirror
Kindof unpleasant experiencing a total system lockup when you are presenting to 200 scientists. People in the audience actually said: "I can't believe you attempted this using Libre!", "Why are you using Linux for this?"
For me: automatic backups cause images and objects to randomly disappear, frequent LibreOffice crashes cause files to be locked in an infinite repair loop (easy to fix with a terminal, but...), animations lock up. Bugs which have apparently been known for > 10 years. How could any large organization could be expected to depend on this software?
They will lose this vote.
(And I will be sad that they lost.)
The state of LibreOffice is a huge reason why linux on the desktop is unviable.
If Dell is targeting these laptops for "developers", then why are they only offering laptops with lowest-common-denominator aesthetic features that many developers (myself at least) could not care less about? "Thin", "Beautiful Design" "Fast Startup", tiny hard drive, tiny screen, low RAM?
Serious? Hardware specifications of every ubuntu-bundled dell machine I've ever seen are entry-level and honestly quite terrible for development work. (For for my work at least. I write simulation and bioinformatics software). For years, the lack of graphics acceleration, and a tiny hard drive has been a deal killer. I can't speak for others, but I think it's safe to say that "developers" are not the kinds of people who (only) use laptops to give powerpoint/libre-office presentations or check facebook. We actually know what a dedicated graphics card is. We need reasonable hardware.
I also confess to being totally ignorant about how the immune system works, or why vaccines would be different from penicillin. I've never heard ANY evidence at all suggesting that over-vaccination has created super-bugs. For the record, I literally know next to nothing about this topic. I'm not trying to insinuate FUD against vaccines (or AZT). If VortexCortex and I are concerned for nothing, then great! Anyway, there were some interesting comments (that were reassuring), and I enjoyed reading them. (Keep them coming.)
"If used widely a universal flu vaccine could prevent pandemics, such as the swine flu outbreaks of recent years, and end the need for a seasonal flu jab." I didn't read the journal article, but it sounds as though somebody's advocating distributing this vaccine every year during flu season (prophylactically). If a vaccine is successful, shouldn't we hold on to it and only distribute it during potential emergencies such as the emergence of H1N1? I would think the last thing we should be doing is breeding super vaccine-resistant flu viruses by over-medicating. It seems like whenever a new treatment is discovered, we deploy it immediately. Suppose if we deployed this new flu vaccine, in the best case scenario, we could save a hundred thousand lives per year, every year, for a decade or two, (and there's probably a lot of profit to be made in the process). But if we distribute the vaccine sparingly, perhaps it would remain effective for longer, and we could save tens of millions of lives when the next pandemic hits. It's an interesting mathematical dilemma, but I've never seen anybody bring this up. What is the best solution? (I've had this question for a while. It seems like a great question for the slashdot crowd.)
It's a chore to remember to log in to a privileged account periodically and click on the update button. (Sudo is disabled on my regular account.) I haven't looked into this, but it's got to be trivial to configure a linux machine to update itself automatically (without needing to log in at all). That is not the default setup (in ubuntu). Should it be?
Never underestimate the power of laziness.
Most of the Chinese people I have known gave me the impression that they were either deeply apolitical. The others expressed sentiments that would be mistaken as sarcasm, or dismissed as flame-bait if ever expressed on slashdot. "That westerners are so blindly obsessed with democracy, free speech, free religion, makes you appear brainwashed in our eyes." (-a graduate student I know. I left out the inflammatory stuff.) To insinuate that Chinese people responding in these opinion polls do so out of fear, or because they are brainwashed or not in their right mind is a bit insulting. These polls do seem to reflect the honest opinion of a number of Chinese students I met in university. (An extremely limited sample, I know.)