Server farms tend to use identical hardware also, or at least large groups of identical hardware. A few linux images would be easily manageable, it's when you need to manage dozens of images that it becomes unwieldy.
PXE is a bios level protocol by Intel, all it does is provide a network framework to connect a PC to a server pre-boot, and as far as I know the protocol itself has nothing at all to do with Linux. There are both Linux and Microsoft, and I'm sure Apple server-side solutions for PXE. It's usually used for remote image deployment, as far as I know, but I don't think there is anything stopping someone from using it to do other things.
My point was not about base windows installs, which OEMs haven't used in probably 10 years or more, it's about disk imaging, which OEMs do use. The two are worlds apart.
I know because building and installing images was my job for the last two years. Windows OS installs never have a problem if the drivers are available and accessable. If the drivers aren't available for Linux, well good luck. It's probably not going to be as simple as finding and downloading the drivers to fix the problem. However, that is all moot with imaging, because if you are using a deployment image configured for your hardware you will never have an install problem ever. Period.
What makes sysprep powerful is, if you know how to configure it properly, you can build an image that is 100% complete (all software, custom security settings, networking options, etc.)- just gather all the drivers you need, and in about 20 minutes it is ready to deploy on virtually ANY computer (ignoring machine setup, that will take time no matter what OS you use, but it is only done once for thousands of machines). It takes about 10 minutes to deploy an image.
While I use Linux at home, I don't have experience making images for multiple machines for it like I do windows, so you may be right about the difference in the way Linux operates and the way Windows operates which could make my point moot, but I don't think so. Linux still uses different HALs, and while you can use an older HAL to get your image to run on almost anything, it sure as hell isn't going to run well on anything new. I also don't think the driver issue is as trivial as you make it out to be, they still need to be in the correct location and correctly configured, else why wouldn't the Ubuntu install be a simple format>copy operation?
I have used a number of linux installs and distros over the years (off and on about 15 years) including the last few Ubuntu releases, as well as played around with some smaller distros, and I have yet to have a single install go off with everything working 100%.
Windows has the same problem if drivers aren't available on install, but this is usually easily remedied via the imaging/sysprep method or with a driver CD. The solutions for Linux hardware install issues are rarely that simple (they do seem to be getting better though).
Also, as I mentioned in my post, scripted installs are significantly more time consuming than image installs. Scripted installs (the basic install with an unattended setup, the fastest way to do a basic install) are fine for one-off machines and small environments, but the more machines you have the greater the cost as you scale up your operation.
To demonstrate what this means for someone like Dell, lets do a little math:
Say Dell sells 500 windows machines in a day, once the hardware is configured, those machines need to be prepped with a Windows OS. In my experience a well configured image deployment using imagex (which is what Dell uses for their windows deployments now) takes about ten minutes per machine. 500*10=5,000 minutes/60=83.3(rounded) hours/8= about 10(rounded) work days to image all 500 machines from one day's order. This can be cut further, obviously, by imaging many at once, but in the 10 days of imaging there will be new orders, so after a while it works out to be a wash and it takes about 10 days to fulfill one day's order. Assuming three people can manage all 500 images for that 10 day period, at a measly $10 pay rate (probably more like 2 or 3 at 50% higher) that is about $2500, or $5 per machine. Not bad.
Now, lets say they can't use disk imaging, and must use an unattended install (i.e. Linux). In my experience that usually takes a lot longer than 30 minutes, but lets use 30 minutes just to be nice and round. Now, there are also software install scripts that must be run after the OS is installed, since they couldn't package this in with the install like they could with disk imaging. That likely takes an extra 15-20 minutes, we'll go with 15 again to be nice, for a total of 45 minutes from start to finish. 500*45=22,500 minutes/60=375 hours/8=47(rounded) work days!! Assuming 3 people at $10 per hour, that is $11,250, or $23 per machine.
That's $18 more expensive per machine, just to set up. And that's being very kind to the Linux setup, in truth with more accurate labor and time the cost difference is probably more like $7.50 vs $34.50-$45 per machine, a disparity of $27-$37.50.
There are additional hidden costs for the second option, namely that a month and a half wait time is unacceptable for many people and businesses, so Dell will have to hire more people and lease more warehouse space to get that wait time down to a reasonable number, all of which will significantly add to the costs of a Linux option.
Disk imaging probably is an option for Linux, however I don't think the tools are as developed as they are for Windows, so I imagine you would not be able to do many hardware configurations with a single image. The more configurations you have to have, the bigger your image dev team has to be, and too the larger your deployment team has to be to manage the different images. This one is a little more complicated for me to do an armchair cost analysis on. It's probably cheaper than the unattended setup, but I know it's going to be more expensive than the windows imaging option.
Right now I'd expect about a $50-$75 difference in price between a Linux option and the Windows option, assuming OEM and crapware deals get the windows license price down to about $100 per machine. However, the more Linux machines they sell, the smaller that price gap because it is the scale that causes problems.
Actually, as far as imaging goes, it's very different. Linux is notoriously finicky when it comes to hardware, windows has always been more forgiving, and even Vista at release had fewer hardware issues than Linux has always been stuck with.
MS also has a number of free tools - the most basic and essential being sysprep which finds and installs all drivers on boot and resets SIDs among other things - to make mass imaging deployments really worthwhile starting around windows 2000, and starting with Vista it is so easy to create images that work on a huge variety of hardware it's almost rediculous. I know of no Linux equivalent, and that's a bigger issue than you may realize.
MS even got rid of the standard windows setup procedure in Vista and moved even non-oem OS installs (i.e. from disc) to the imaging model. If you look on a Vista install DVD you'll see a number of.wim files and a.iso or two. Properly configured, WinPE (comes with Vista) + ImageX (free download, comes with Vista) + Sysprep (not sure if it actually comes with Vista officially, but with ImageX you can dig around in the Vista wim file and copy it out of there, or you can download it from MS for free) all add up to an image that works on virtually any hardware.
My company uses just one image for at least 50,000 pc's, maybe more, about 10 different manufacturers and about 20 models apiece. So, yeah. It's harder to set up in Vista, but it is doable. I can't wait till Windows7 gets cleared for my environment so I can start playing with the server side tools, since Vista will never be approved and the server tools don't work for making XP images (they work for deployment though).
This also may be a reason for the reluctance to push Linux. If there aren't effective tools for mass-imaging both OEM and enterprise level deployments for Linux it could easilly add significant costs to the sale of Linux PCs. Theoretically you could use MS imaging tools (which, gotta say again, are awesome, Ghost aint shit no more), but you can't use sysprep, which is the bread and butter of OEM windows installs. I don't know what a linux equivalent would be, and without it you are limited to one image per each individual hardware configuration. You may be able to script some of it, but eventually you are just installing a straight up Linux install. The cost savings in time and manpower of the image deployment model vs the scripted install model is really, very significant. We are talking a machine is ready to package and ship in 5-10 minutes verses 30 minutes or an hour or even more depending on what had to be done to the install. That's huge.
If you try to go with imagine for Linux without a mass deployment tool to save time (and therefore money), you are talking hundreds of images to deploy Linux vs just one for Windows. I guess you'd have to be rolling your own mass produced images (like I do, heh) to understand how much manpower that is going to add to the sale of a Linux PC. Just trust me that it is significant. That $200 gap really starts to dwindle if you have image deployment inefficiencies. Coupled with crapware savings, and it could easilly be a wash or worse for Linux.
This is actually the first time I've thought about the whole problem like that, and I think I finally get why you don't see massive savings for linux PCs except in situations where the hardware pool is small and constant (i.e. OLPC, initial EEEPC, etc).
Replying more to all the repliers above me than the parent: you people are completely misunderstanding what was meant by "inalienable rights".
It does NOT mean that it is impossible to infringe on "inalienable rights". What it means is that there are a set of basic rights that apply to all human beings. They are "inalienable" because we desearve these rights by our very existance. However, just because they exist does not make them un-infringeable. What the constitution did by spelling those rights out in the Bill of Rights was make a promise that the US government would not infringe on those 10 basic rights.
The system for discovering violations of these rights tends to be slow, since the government is large and things tend to escape notice for a while or simply take time to become sizeable enough to be noticed. However despite it's slow nature (or perhaps because of it?) the system is very effective, and we have essentially the same freedoms - more in some ways, in fact - that we had at the nation's founding.
Our system was designed around protecting these basic, inalienable rights. Even if the mightiest of the mighty in this land - our elected officials, president, and SCOTUS - manage to screw up the Bill of Rights, there is always a do-over. Laws are constantly neutered or bolstered by the courts, SCOTUS decisions can and have been overturned by other SCOTUS decisions, Amendments to the Constitution can and have been supplanted by new amendments, and the President can and has been impeached.
All this to protect our basic human rights (plus others, sure).
That said, the promise (i.e. the Constitution) was not made to non-US citizens and so US actions outside the US territory are often ignored, and the oppression of other people is always ignored unless it somehow represents a direct threat to the freedom of US citizens.
Everybody knows cuddly Tux isn't ready for neck-space! They are still only good for you stuffed animal geeks who prefer their own hand-sewn plushies to mass produced teddybears and beanie babies. Open source sewing machines are helping, but there are still too many situations where hand-sewing is the only option, and that is just not acceptable.
She isn't dumb, she has made a few gaffs but she has done a better job than most of our other governors in recent history.
She is also someone we can count on as being nigh incorruptable. She has a history of not bowing to the will of her party on any sort of questionable issues. It's actually how she became famous up here, and primarily what won her the election. It's easy to know where she stands, and you can be sure that what she stands for she fights for aggressively. I mean, how often does a staunch republican replace a very unpopular republican incumbant?
I think, when you say dumb, you really mean "slick" or maybe "slimy" or a "fast talker" like so many politicians are these days.
Er, I don't know if you realize this but Wilson was married to his wife. He knew things about what she did that were classified, and used that knowledge and influence to get himself sent on a self important mission to look for WMD materials.
Frankly, what Armitage says falls neatly in line with what is known to be true, and assuming he is lying "just cause" without any actual evidence kinda shows your bias a little bit, doesn't it?
He didn't ban an entire field, only the small portion of the field where he and many others have moral objections to the harvesting methods. It was originally thought that the stem cells from unborn babies were "super" stem cells (they could be made to turn into any cell in the body), however much more useful stem cells are being found elsewhere. Placental stem-cells are significantly better, if what I remember reading recently is correct.
BTW, since this is turning into a "bash Bush for stem cells" thread, it's worth noting that Obama's plan bans even more lines of stem cells than Bush's did, including lines that were perfectly fine under Bush.
Downloading files does not deprive anybody of anything, whether you consider it property or not, in the same sense that disconnecting someone's internet access does.
What downloading files may deprive someone of is potential profit. This, I don't know if you realize it or not, is why Copyright law exists, and it is this potential that copyright law protects in order to promote the production of creative and innovative materials.
If you look at copyright law and the cases that have been decided around music and movie downloads, you'll see that th person who receives the copied material - be it a file via download, a photocopied piece of sheet music, or a hand copied priceless painting - has been consistantly been judged to have commited no crime. It is the person who distributed the copy who has commited the copyright violation, because copyright specificaly relates to the distribution of copyrighted materials.
So no, considering internet access a property right but not considering downloaded files "property" is not hypocritical. They are not remotely the same thing, and there are laws that govern both. A tomato may seem like a vegetable, but it's really a fruit no matter how hypocritical you may think it is.;) Personally I think they both should fall under "liberty" and/or "the pursuit of happiness" rather than "property", but it doesn't matter because they fall under one of the three regardless, and the constitution strictly prohibits restricting them without due process.
Quit buying the bullshit and look into some of this for yourself man, the RIAA and the MPAA are two of the most hypocritical organizations that exist. If downloading music and movies is stealing, why the hell has there never once been a criminal case of Grand Theft relating to any sort of music or movie downloads? Yet the **AA continually calls it theft, stealing, and piracy. The copyright code even uses the terms "piracy" and "theft", however there are no provisions for digital "theft" or "piracy" in either the Grand Theft laws nor the Piracy laws, only under Copyright laws. Even then, if you'll notice, the only people who have ever been convicted were distributing the material themselves, and it was the distribution they were convicted of (and producing copies for distribution, which falls under counterfeiting).
Today, the primary source of antipiracy law is title 18, chapter 81, of the United States Code, although numerous other antipiracy provisions are scattered throughout the code. Additionally, international cooperation has shaped a unique form of jurisdictional agreement among nations. Significant in bringing about this cooperation was the geneva convention on the High Seas of April 29, 1958 and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The primary effect of such agreements is to allow pirates to be apprehended on the high seas--meaning outside of territorial limits--by the authorities of any nation and punished under its own law. This standard is unique because nations are generally forbidden by International Law from interfering with the vessels of another nation on the high seas. It arose because piracy itself has never vanished; in fact, since the 1970s, it has appeared to have undergone a resurgence.
The problem with that point of view is that the MAFIAA doesn't care if you're DOWNLOADING music at all. It's what files you are making available for download that they will be looking for.
IANAL, of course, but you obviously haven't been listening to the MAFIAA and all of their adds targeted at "illegal" downloaders. You also haven't been paying attention to the RIAA cases that have been going on, or their public statements about piracy. The fact that they call it piracy just emphasizes my point, because downloading copyrighted material has nothing at all to do with theft or piracy, nor even does distributing it. Sites like ThePirateBay don't help the image, but it's still not piracy in the slightest.
Some of the first lawsuits involved mix-tapes, VCRs, media-shifting, time-shifting, etc. Ripping CDs to mp3s, recording live TV to watch on your own schedule (TiVo went through hell, if you don't recall, to solidify their legality), making backup copies of your DVDs and CDs, they've all been in court because the media companies don't want ANY of it. They want you to pay for each and every copy you own, and further they would love for you to pay for each and every person who hears their music each and every time they hear it. A CEO of one RIAA company (I don't recall which, unfortunately) even stated that ripping CDs was stealing, and had to backtrack the statement.
What they are left with now is pretty much the only thing that is actually demonstrably illegal: distributing copyrighted material without authorization. It's all that is left, and that's why they are desperate. They want to shut all of that other stuff down by convincing the legislature to create a law to force ISPs to shut down users downloading copyrighted material - an activity that has been demonstrated in court to be completely legal.
What makes it really sick is there is an express denial of due process. That makes the proposed law not only morally wrong, but unconstitutional as well. I wonder how long it would take to get to the SCOTUS?
Actually, if they are pictures of her person legal use requires the permission of both the copyright holder (i.e. the person who took the photograph or the person they sold the copyright to photo to) and the model in the photograph.
This is why candid-camera TV shows and the like must blur the faces of anybody who doesn't sign a consent form. They can still distribute their film/photos, but they can't legally show a person who hasn't given them consent.
Note that there may be fair use situations that would allow the use of the photos without consent, but these photos probably don't fall under that.
Civil suits (aka lawsuits) have a much lower burden of proof than criminal cases. You only have to show that it was more likely than not the person you claim it is - i.e. there are not alternatives more substantial than a "yeah, but what if ". If the only one who had motive for the action was the defendant, and the action wasn't for some reason impossible for him, he'll probably lose the case.
Now, even criminal cases don't require "proof" in the sense that you are 100% positive the defendant is guilty. It simply needs to be unreasonable that anybody else could have done it.
Look at OJ Simpson, he won his criminal case because there was enough doubt that he might not have done it, but he lost the civil suit because he more than likely did it.
To put it into numbers, civil cases require 51%+ assurance that the defendant is guilty, while criminal cases require 90%+ assurance. Both numbers are subjective to the Jury, but it's a good rule of thumb.
1. Multiple desktops. Stop the clutter at the bottom of the screen. Organising your work is as easy as pressing Ctrl-Alt-E (IIRC) or just Ctrl-(Alt)-.
You can do this in Windows too, with an add-on. And before you say "yeah, but it's with an add-on", well, everything in Linux is an add-on already. Not all distros come with multiple desktops in the GUI.
2. Mouse wheel works on item however, not item focused. Want to scroll that document in a background window? Just move the mouse there and scroll away! You can also use the scrollwheel to cycle between desktops, tabs, windows, comboboxes and more.
You realise this is just an option that can be enabled/disabled in both Linux AND Windows, right? I have my Windows laptop setup this way, but other machines I don't bother because it's not all that incredibly amazing.
3. An 'always on top' item in the window menu. If you need to copy data from app A to app B put app B at the top with two clicks (or a right mouse drag). No external bloatware required.
Again, it's a Linux add-on that doesn't exist on many distros. You can get this in Windows as well, it just is not a default function.
4. Middle click pasting. Now that app B is on top, select stuff normally from app A and middle click on the destination in app B. Voila': copy paste with the mouse only. And your Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V buffer (aka clipboard) stays untouched!
Again, another add-on that you can also get in Windows. While not default, most mouse software allows this. I'm not sure I see the point of not having to use the clipboard, it's kinda what it is there for...
5. Notifications that get out of the way. Ubuntu 9.04 doesn't need no frikkin' baloons (and currently the method to bring them back doesn't work for me:D). Message boxes are done the right way -- (almost) no generic yes/no choices.
So, a broken feature on your distro is a bonus? I do like that the baloons can be easily disabled, but honestly the method of removing them in Windows, while difficult for windows, is still significantly simpler than many regular maintenance functions in Ubuntu.
6. If virtualization is good enough for videogames on a Mac (it is), then it is good enough for videogames on a Linux. (Non free; dunno about the free) versions of virtual box are able to use the processors' virtualization extensions and offer inbuilt OpenGL support. DirectX support is in the works. Hell, the (free) Ubuntu supported enterprise virtualization support doesn't even work without it.
This is getting better, I'll grant you, but it is still a workaround that is not nearly as simple as double-clicking the installer for your chosen game. OpenGL is nowhere near DirectX, not by a mile.
7. Dual booting. You don't need to wipe Windows for that app you NEED to run in native Windows. Since you won't use it that much you can even not care on Windows to install all the damn bloatware like firewalls and antiviruses.
Why dual boot when I can just run Windows? Also, if you think a firewall is bloatware, I don't want you near my network, linux or no. That's just foolish. The only reason Linux is safe from viruses/trojans is because it has has no market share. If it had just 10% market share, AV software would be necessary, and you are already foolish not to run a firewall. Other bloatware can be unistalled, and it is indeed a pain. But it's better than software that only works if your system is configured "just so".
8. Installing, uninstalling and updating applications. So long as you keep true to installing EVERYTHING through whatever your distro uses to manage packages, 95% of that stuff is as hard as respectively checking boxes on, checking boxes off and clicking on "Install updates". No, you don't even need to mindlessly pound through wizards on the Ne
Seriously, as much as I want to love Linux, and as much as I hate Microsoft, Windows gets the user experience down better than anybody except maybe MacOS. I've stopped using Linux on my personal laptop - installed because I got fed up with Vista's little quirks (should have rolled back to XP not Linux though) - in favor of my slower work laptop with WinXP on it because it just tends to work and I know how to do what I need it to do.
Linux is perfect for a home user as long as you meet a few criteria: - You want to run servers but don't have the hundreds/thousands of dollars to lay down for a simple, effective solution (i.e. Microsoft). - You are very technically inclined - "Free" is significantly more important to you than "Easy" or "Simple". - You are willing to put in the many, many hours you will need to learn the OS and how to configure it to do what you need - You don't need or want any software or hardware that does not have a good Linux implementation/equivalent
There are others of course, but those are the big ones that come to mind for me. The last two in particular are why I can't use Linux. The first two are me, the third is true for me as well but not completely, and the last two don't fit me at all. I have a lot of better things I can be doing than spending hours trying to figure out why my sound doesn't work when I upgraded to a new version of my distro, discovering I have six different audio implimentations installed and only one of them will work.
Honestly, I could have copied my data and installed XP with less time and effort than it took to fix my sound in Linux, which broke after an update because things are not unified even in distros. There is a reason *nix admins are few and highly paid in the server world, and it isn't because *nix is simple and easy. It's because *nix is very powerful for certain implimentations but it is notoriously difficult to manage. Until "notoriously difficult" becomes "easy" we won't see Linux on the desktop in any big scale. Ubuntu is better than any Linux I've used (and I've tried a bunch in the last 15 years), but it still doesn't touch XP, or really Win98 even. 95 it probably has beat though, heh.
My little theory is that TV/Movies started it, initially. They like to sound technical without having to sit down and explain anything related to what they are trying to sound technical about. I've often heard the term "hard drive" used in older movies/shows and gone "wha?" because it was just wrong. They didn't necessarily call the whole machine a "hard drive", but it was at least confusing.
The problem grows exponentially when a non-technical person attempts to use the terms like "hard drive" that they heard in a movie, and it is reinforced by either other non-technical people - to whom they sound more knowledgeable than themselves, so they pick up the term as well. Technical people who don't want to make the person look dumb exacerbate the problem by letting them use the term instead of informing them.
What makes it explode is the fact that most of the time, these people aren't refering to the computer as a "hard drive" in front of people who know better, they are talking about it to other similarly un-knowledgeable people, which further reinforces the term in their own mind when they aren't corrected, and contributes greatly to other people using the term incorrectly. They'll say things like "Yeah, my hard drive crashed. I had to have a guy come out and replace the memory". All he knows is the tech said he replaced the memory, and that is what fixed his "hard drive". He also happens to sound like he knows what he is talking about to anybody who doesn't know better.
Seriously, if you hear someone use the jargon so incredibly incorrectly, you should correct them. They already want to sound like the know a little bit about it, why would they be opposed to actually learning a little bit about it? Then when another know-nothing numbnuts uses the term incorrectly, they can be smug when they correct them.
For the longest time I heard the term "CPU" used for the PC, and still do on occasion. I think this one actually started as technical jargon first - old CPUs were huge, and I believe big cabinets that housed the mainframes were actually called CPUs because... that's where the central processing took place. As machines shrunk and with the release of the first PCs things got confused for a while. However, since CPUs are now such a physically small part of the PC, the mistake should have been corrected but has been allowed to continue for a long time.
Sure, it's not necessarily representative of their entire coverage, but when it comes to events that truly matter Fox News is overwhelmingly more fair than most any other news outlet. All the others showed heavy favoritism to the Obama campaign.
In contrast, the Fox News Channel treated both candidates to roughly the same level of good and bad press, with Obama earning just slightly better press than McCain. One-fourth of Obama stories on Fox (25%) were positive, compared to 22% of McCain's coverage. Both candidates received exactly the same proportion of negative stories on FNC, 40%.
I'd like to see a similar study comparing right/left topics in general, perhaps weighted with the importance of the stories (difficult, the importance would have to be relatively subjective). Fox wouldn't fair as well, unless you consider the fact that most of their right-wing shows seem to be trash news for the most part. You could probably toss the talk shows from all the networks and get a decent look at how they stand on actual reporting.
Perhaps Fox only seems so far right because everything else is so far left?
Capitalism does not always work for everything, markets fail more often than your libertarian econ profs tell you.
Markets "fail" because demand for them decreases. That's not a failure of Capitalism, that is capitalism doing its job. And, in capitalism, nothing truly dies if there is a smidgeon of a market for it (i.e. a few people want it).
We have a certain amount of money, so the more you have, the less I have...
That idea shows a complete lack of understanding of what money is and where it came from.
Money is actually created all the time, and is constantly being created. It is a representation of effort and value for trade. As long as new effort is put into objects/services then new money will always be created, since those items can be traded for a value. Since there is no set limit to how much value and effort can be produced by people, there is no set limit to money. The monetary system replaced the barter system for all large economies because of its flexibility, however it also introduces complexities. In a barter system, wealth is judged by how much stuff you have plus how much extra stuff you have available for trade. Just because one person has a lot of stuff for trade does not mean someone else cannot have produced other stuff for trade. One does not negate the other. If it did trade would not exist, as things could only be consumed and not created. Now replace "stuff for trade" with "money" and you have our system in a very small nutshell.
What causes money to seem limited (only so much to go around) is we have a lot of people who's only contribution is to move and collect money. It is a service that is, in my opinion, over-valued. They gamble, win, and lose and the wins and losses inflate or deflate the value of goods and services. Eventually there is a collapse, money is devalued and it seems like there is a finite limit. But money is not really a thing, it's an idea represented by paper and coins, and the idea it is based on is limitless. New Things are created, money is generated, and things move again and grow in a different sector. In fact, the potential for creation of value and money increases as the population increases, and the only way to limit it is by eliminating the people or their will to create items and services of value.
Not trying to discount your story, I think the problem is BS and the companies are selling products with known failure problems and not making that clear, but the battery issue is industry-wide. Every company that uses a traditional li-ion battery that has been stretched to capacity limits has severe failure issues. Most new Dell batteries are the same way (which happen to be manufactured by Sony, btw). That particular branch of li-ion was maxed a long time ago, and instead they began to make tradeoffs of longevity for initial capacity. They begin to lose capacity slowly after the very first charge.
The thinner materials used in these batteries, which create more surface area and thus more capacity, also deteriorate much more quickly. The average fail rate* is about 1 year, but it can be much earlier (I've seen 6 months on a laptop with very heavy use and many many charges), so you'll never see more than a one year warranty on one of these batteries.
Newer li-ion, like the li-polymer types don't have the deterioration issues, but also don't have the same capacity yet. Though they are close. Unfortunately you have to be on the ball to get your battery replaced, as they fail like clockwork after 1 year with normal use. Frankly, I'd recommend doing anything you can to abuse that battery to make sure it fails within the 1 year period so you can get it replaced. If you try to be good to your Sony battery, you'll be left out in the cold when it doesn't fail till a year and 3 days after you got it.
*By fail rate I mean the battery capacity is so poor as to make it unuseable. It is usually accompanied with a battery end of life message, suggesting replacement.
For example, I personally would be happy to pay something like $0.15 / track for the privilege of upgrading the audio on my aging LPs to compressed digital quality --- but there is no way for me to actually do that, legally.
What the hell are you talking about? That has already been established as legal. Unless of course they managed to sneak some copy protection on to your LP's when you weren't looking.
If you look at all the recent copyright cases, you'll see that they consistantly decide that copyright infringement only happens when you choose to distribute your copy of the work. The copy you make for yourself is legal*, the copy you give to someone else is illegal.
Get it?
IANAL of course, but just look at all the recent court cases and it seems pretty well established what specifically is and is not legal, at least in regards to personal use. Even the person downloading an illegaly distributed copy seems to be in the clear, though that's not as well established as personal use copies. It's the DMCA and copy protection that get you, and such things don't exist on old LPs, only DVDs, newer CDs, and other newer media distribution methods like downloaded music with DRM.
*The exception, of course, is if there is some form of copy protection. Since the DMCA made circumvention of copy protection illegal, it comes in to play whenever copy protection is present.
Copyright was never about preventing anybody from using another person's work for their own profit. There are in fact plenty of provisions for doing just that in Copyright law.
Copyright is about preventing people from copying another person's work and distributing it for their own gain. It's a specific method of profiting from a work that is restricted. It's no accident that it happens to be the most direct and (usually) most profitable method of using a work, and it makes a lot of sense.
It's built into the name, for one thing, but also it is very well established that copyright law grants the creator a (theoretically) limited monopoly on the distribution of their work. That's it. Once it has been legally distributed, copyright grants no control over the copy which was distributed. The person who recieved the copy can cross out parts, re-write parts, even make dozens of copies for themselves and then poop on them if they want. It's up to them as far as copyright law is concerned.*
What they can't do is distribute their copies of the work without either having the copyright holder's express permission or making sufficient changes in the content to warrant an exception under the copyright code.
Not one bit of that has to do with any kind of Piracy**, and the only way it should be called such is if the original copy was, in fact, stolen. If it was purchased legally, then you are dealing with copyright infringement, which is a crime (note that it is become more well established that recieving the illegal copy is not a crime, only the distribution of the copy is a crime). It is not, however, theft. The property was more than likely legally purchased originally, and then copied and distributed illegaly. Copyright infringement, not theft.
You're off on your criminal analogy as well. There is nothing illegal about sharing a DVD with all your buddies. It's illegal to shoplift the initial DVD, but that isn't normally how things spread. Usually the DVD rips you find are from legally purchased copies, they are simply illegally distributed**. That's not theft, and it's a far cry from piracy.
A real, honest to goodness analogy of what happens in the digital world with DVD rips and their distribution, would be sheet music. Often times sheet music is purchased legally, and then copied (via a copy machine) and distributed dozens of times. This happens a lot in school music programs, and most music teachers who do this don't realize that when they give little Johnny a photo-copy of Little Drummer Boy to take home and practice, they are committing a crime.
It's -still- not theft. You don't go to jail for stealing the photocopied music, because you didn't steal anything. You copied it. You get sued for copyright infringement and have to pay shittons of money. And probably lose your job. But guess what? Such cases, where the works are illegaly distributed but not for direct profit, are hard to track down and usually aren't worth it. Sound at all familiar?
We don't call clueless music teachers thieves or pirates, why the hell should we call DVD rippers thieves or pirates? They do break one more law than infringing music teachers, but it's still not theft in any way, shape, or form, and it sure as hell isn't any kind of piracy.
I'm starting to get really sick of people calling copyright infringement, which has nothing to do with theft or piracy, theft and piracy. It's like calling a money launderer an arsonist. It doesn't make sense (unless that specific money launderer is in fact an arsonist as well, but that's different). The whole idea of it is buying into big media corporation bull shit to make their case sound more legitimate and scary. It's legit enough already, they just don't like how limited their rights are, and want more rights to control the content they distribute.
Damn this rant went long.
*There are other laws, like the DMCA, which DO dictate the use of a copy after it has been distributed, but that is not copyright,
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Server farms tend to use identical hardware also, or at least large groups of identical hardware. A few linux images would be easily manageable, it's when you need to manage dozens of images that it becomes unwieldy.
PXE is a bios level protocol by Intel, all it does is provide a network framework to connect a PC to a server pre-boot, and as far as I know the protocol itself has nothing at all to do with Linux. There are both Linux and Microsoft, and I'm sure Apple server-side solutions for PXE. It's usually used for remote image deployment, as far as I know, but I don't think there is anything stopping someone from using it to do other things.
My point was not about base windows installs, which OEMs haven't used in probably 10 years or more, it's about disk imaging, which OEMs do use. The two are worlds apart.
I know because building and installing images was my job for the last two years. Windows OS installs never have a problem if the drivers are available and accessable. If the drivers aren't available for Linux, well good luck. It's probably not going to be as simple as finding and downloading the drivers to fix the problem. However, that is all moot with imaging, because if you are using a deployment image configured for your hardware you will never have an install problem ever. Period.
What makes sysprep powerful is, if you know how to configure it properly, you can build an image that is 100% complete (all software, custom security settings, networking options, etc.)- just gather all the drivers you need, and in about 20 minutes it is ready to deploy on virtually ANY computer (ignoring machine setup, that will take time no matter what OS you use, but it is only done once for thousands of machines). It takes about 10 minutes to deploy an image.
While I use Linux at home, I don't have experience making images for multiple machines for it like I do windows, so you may be right about the difference in the way Linux operates and the way Windows operates which could make my point moot, but I don't think so. Linux still uses different HALs, and while you can use an older HAL to get your image to run on almost anything, it sure as hell isn't going to run well on anything new. I also don't think the driver issue is as trivial as you make it out to be, they still need to be in the correct location and correctly configured, else why wouldn't the Ubuntu install be a simple format>copy operation?
I have used a number of linux installs and distros over the years (off and on about 15 years) including the last few Ubuntu releases, as well as played around with some smaller distros, and I have yet to have a single install go off with everything working 100%.
Windows has the same problem if drivers aren't available on install, but this is usually easily remedied via the imaging/sysprep method or with a driver CD. The solutions for Linux hardware install issues are rarely that simple (they do seem to be getting better though).
Also, as I mentioned in my post, scripted installs are significantly more time consuming than image installs. Scripted installs (the basic install with an unattended setup, the fastest way to do a basic install) are fine for one-off machines and small environments, but the more machines you have the greater the cost as you scale up your operation.
To demonstrate what this means for someone like Dell, lets do a little math:
Say Dell sells 500 windows machines in a day, once the hardware is configured, those machines need to be prepped with a Windows OS. In my experience a well configured image deployment using imagex (which is what Dell uses for their windows deployments now) takes about ten minutes per machine. 500*10=5,000 minutes/60=83.3(rounded) hours/8= about 10(rounded) work days to image all 500 machines from one day's order. This can be cut further, obviously, by imaging many at once, but in the 10 days of imaging there will be new orders, so after a while it works out to be a wash and it takes about 10 days to fulfill one day's order. Assuming three people can manage all 500 images for that 10 day period, at a measly $10 pay rate (probably more like 2 or 3 at 50% higher) that is about $2500, or
$5 per machine. Not bad.
Now, lets say they can't use disk imaging, and must use an unattended install (i.e. Linux). In my experience that usually takes a lot longer than 30 minutes, but lets use 30 minutes just to be nice and round. Now, there are also software install scripts that must be run after the OS is installed, since they couldn't package this in with the install like they could with disk imaging. That likely takes an extra 15-20 minutes, we'll go with 15 again to be nice, for a total of 45 minutes from start to finish. 500*45=22,500 minutes/60=375 hours/8=47(rounded) work days!! Assuming 3 people at $10 per hour, that is $11,250, or $23 per machine.
That's $18 more expensive per machine, just to set up. And that's being very kind to the Linux setup, in truth with more accurate labor and time the cost difference is probably more like $7.50 vs $34.50-$45 per machine, a disparity of $27-$37.50.
There are additional hidden costs for the second option, namely that a month and a half wait time is unacceptable for many people and businesses, so Dell will have to hire more people and lease more warehouse space to get that wait time down to a reasonable number, all of which will significantly add to the costs of a Linux option.
Disk imaging probably is an option for Linux, however I don't think the tools are as developed as they are for Windows, so I imagine you would not be able to do many hardware configurations with a single image. The more configurations you have to have, the bigger your image dev team has to be, and too the larger your deployment team has to be to manage the different images. This one is a little more complicated for me to do an armchair cost analysis on. It's probably cheaper than the unattended setup, but I know it's going to be more expensive than the windows imaging option.
Right now I'd expect about a $50-$75 difference in price between a Linux option and the Windows option, assuming OEM and crapware deals get the windows license price down to about $100 per machine. However, the more Linux machines they sell, the smaller that price gap because it is the scale that causes problems.
Actually, as far as imaging goes, it's very different. Linux is notoriously finicky when it comes to hardware, windows has always been more forgiving, and even Vista at release had fewer hardware issues than Linux has always been stuck with.
MS also has a number of free tools - the most basic and essential being sysprep which finds and installs all drivers on boot and resets SIDs among other things - to make mass imaging deployments really worthwhile starting around windows 2000, and starting with Vista it is so easy to create images that work on a huge variety of hardware it's almost rediculous. I know of no Linux equivalent, and that's a bigger issue than you may realize.
MS even got rid of the standard windows setup procedure in Vista and moved even non-oem OS installs (i.e. from disc) to the imaging model. If you look on a Vista install DVD you'll see a number of .wim files and a .iso or two. Properly configured, WinPE (comes with Vista) + ImageX (free download, comes with Vista) + Sysprep (not sure if it actually comes with Vista officially, but with ImageX you can dig around in the Vista wim file and copy it out of there, or you can download it from MS for free) all add up to an image that works on virtually any hardware.
My company uses just one image for at least 50,000 pc's, maybe more, about 10 different manufacturers and about 20 models apiece. So, yeah. It's harder to set up in Vista, but it is doable. I can't wait till Windows7 gets cleared for my environment so I can start playing with the server side tools, since Vista will never be approved and the server tools don't work for making XP images (they work for deployment though).
This also may be a reason for the reluctance to push Linux. If there aren't effective tools for mass-imaging both OEM and enterprise level deployments for Linux it could easilly add significant costs to the sale of Linux PCs. Theoretically you could use MS imaging tools (which, gotta say again, are awesome, Ghost aint shit no more), but you can't use sysprep, which is the bread and butter of OEM windows installs. I don't know what a linux equivalent would be, and without it you are limited to one image per each individual hardware configuration. You may be able to script some of it, but eventually you are just installing a straight up Linux install. The cost savings in time and manpower of the image deployment model vs the scripted install model is really, very significant. We are talking a machine is ready to package and ship in 5-10 minutes verses 30 minutes or an hour or even more depending on what had to be done to the install. That's huge.
If you try to go with imagine for Linux without a mass deployment tool to save time (and therefore money), you are talking hundreds of images to deploy Linux vs just one for Windows. I guess you'd have to be rolling your own mass produced images (like I do, heh) to understand how much manpower that is going to add to the sale of a Linux PC. Just trust me that it is significant. That $200 gap really starts to dwindle if you have image deployment inefficiencies. Coupled with crapware savings, and it could easilly be a wash or worse for Linux.
This is actually the first time I've thought about the whole problem like that, and I think I finally get why you don't see massive savings for linux PCs except in situations where the hardware pool is small and constant (i.e. OLPC, initial EEEPC, etc).
Replying more to all the repliers above me than the parent: you people are completely misunderstanding what was meant by "inalienable rights".
It does NOT mean that it is impossible to infringe on "inalienable rights". What it means is that there are a set of basic rights that apply to all human beings. They are "inalienable" because we desearve these rights by our very existance. However, just because they exist does not make them un-infringeable. What the constitution did by spelling those rights out in the Bill of Rights was make a promise that the US government would not infringe on those 10 basic rights.
The system for discovering violations of these rights tends to be slow, since the government is large and things tend to escape notice for a while or simply take time to become sizeable enough to be noticed. However despite it's slow nature (or perhaps because of it?) the system is very effective, and we have essentially the same freedoms - more in some ways, in fact - that we had at the nation's founding.
Our system was designed around protecting these basic, inalienable rights. Even if the mightiest of the mighty in this land - our elected officials, president, and SCOTUS - manage to screw up the Bill of Rights, there is always a do-over. Laws are constantly neutered or bolstered by the courts, SCOTUS decisions can and have been overturned by other SCOTUS decisions, Amendments to the Constitution can and have been supplanted by new amendments, and the President can and has been impeached.
All this to protect our basic human rights (plus others, sure).
That said, the promise (i.e. the Constitution) was not made to non-US citizens and so US actions outside the US territory are often ignored, and the oppression of other people is always ignored unless it somehow represents a direct threat to the freedom of US citizens.
That's just the way it goes.
...cuddly Tux for all.
Yeah, that'll happen.
Everybody knows cuddly Tux isn't ready for neck-space! They are still only good for you stuffed animal geeks who prefer their own hand-sewn plushies to mass produced teddybears and beanie babies. Open source sewing machines are helping, but there are still too many situations where hand-sewing is the only option, and that is just not acceptable.
Science prefers you use the term "symbiot".
Parasite has a negative connotation.
She isn't dumb, she has made a few gaffs but she has done a better job than most of our other governors in recent history.
She is also someone we can count on as being nigh incorruptable. She has a history of not bowing to the will of her party on any sort of questionable issues. It's actually how she became famous up here, and primarily what won her the election. It's easy to know where she stands, and you can be sure that what she stands for she fights for aggressively. I mean, how often does a staunch republican replace a very unpopular republican incumbant?
I think, when you say dumb, you really mean "slick" or maybe "slimy" or a "fast talker" like so many politicians are these days.
Er, I don't know if you realize this but Wilson was married to his wife. He knew things about what she did that were classified, and used that knowledge and influence to get himself sent on a self important mission to look for WMD materials.
Frankly, what Armitage says falls neatly in line with what is known to be true, and assuming he is lying "just cause" without any actual evidence kinda shows your bias a little bit, doesn't it?
What, you think other minorities aren't racist as well?
Don't be stupid, of course minorities can't be racist!
Everybody knows the safest place for a white kid to grow up is in predominantly black neighborhoods in Detroit.
This is because only white people can be racist. Duh. Don't you watch TV?
He didn't ban an entire field, only the small portion of the field where he and many others have moral objections to the harvesting methods. It was originally thought that the stem cells from unborn babies were "super" stem cells (they could be made to turn into any cell in the body), however much more useful stem cells are being found elsewhere. Placental stem-cells are significantly better, if what I remember reading recently is correct.
BTW, since this is turning into a "bash Bush for stem cells" thread, it's worth noting that Obama's plan bans even more lines of stem cells than Bush's did, including lines that were perfectly fine under Bush.
Cheers.
Downloading files does not deprive anybody of anything, whether you consider it property or not, in the same sense that disconnecting someone's internet access does.
What downloading files may deprive someone of is potential profit. This, I don't know if you realize it or not, is why Copyright law exists, and it is this potential that copyright law protects in order to promote the production of creative and innovative materials.
If you look at copyright law and the cases that have been decided around music and movie downloads, you'll see that th person who receives the copied material - be it a file via download, a photocopied piece of sheet music, or a hand copied priceless painting - has been consistantly been judged to have commited no crime. It is the person who distributed the copy who has commited the copyright violation, because copyright specificaly relates to the distribution of copyrighted materials.
So no, considering internet access a property right but not considering downloaded files "property" is not hypocritical. They are not remotely the same thing, and there are laws that govern both. A tomato may seem like a vegetable, but it's really a fruit no matter how hypocritical you may think it is. ;) Personally I think they both should fall under "liberty" and/or "the pursuit of happiness" rather than "property", but it doesn't matter because they fall under one of the three regardless, and the constitution strictly prohibits restricting them without due process.
Quit buying the bullshit and look into some of this for yourself man, the RIAA and the MPAA are two of the most hypocritical organizations that exist. If downloading music and movies is stealing, why the hell has there never once been a criminal case of Grand Theft relating to any sort of music or movie downloads? Yet the **AA continually calls it theft, stealing, and piracy. The copyright code even uses the terms "piracy" and "theft", however there are no provisions for digital "theft" or "piracy" in either the Grand Theft laws nor the Piracy laws, only under Copyright laws. Even then, if you'll notice, the only people who have ever been convicted were distributing the material themselves, and it was the distribution they were convicted of (and producing copies for distribution, which falls under counterfeiting).
Today, the primary source of antipiracy law is title 18, chapter 81, of the United States Code, although numerous other antipiracy provisions are scattered throughout the code. Additionally, international cooperation has shaped a unique form of jurisdictional agreement among nations. Significant in bringing about this cooperation was the geneva convention on the High Seas of April 29, 1958 and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The primary effect of such agreements is to allow pirates to be apprehended on the high seas--meaning outside of territorial limits--by the authorities of any nation and punished under its own law. This standard is unique because nations are generally forbidden by International Law from interfering with the vessels of another nation on the high seas. It arose because piracy itself has never vanished; in fact, since the 1970s, it has appeared to have undergone a resurgence.
The problem with that point of view is that the MAFIAA doesn't care if you're DOWNLOADING music at all. It's what files you are making available for download that they will be looking for.
IANAL, of course, but you obviously haven't been listening to the MAFIAA and all of their adds targeted at "illegal" downloaders. You also haven't been paying attention to the RIAA cases that have been going on, or their public statements about piracy. The fact that they call it piracy just emphasizes my point, because downloading copyrighted material has nothing at all to do with theft or piracy, nor even does distributing it. Sites like ThePirateBay don't help the image, but it's still not piracy in the slightest.
Some of the first lawsuits involved mix-tapes, VCRs, media-shifting, time-shifting, etc. Ripping CDs to mp3s, recording live TV to watch on your own schedule (TiVo went through hell, if you don't recall, to solidify their legality), making backup copies of your DVDs and CDs, they've all been in court because the media companies don't want ANY of it. They want you to pay for each and every copy you own, and further they would love for you to pay for each and every person who hears their music each and every time they hear it. A CEO of one RIAA company (I don't recall which, unfortunately) even stated that ripping CDs was stealing, and had to backtrack the statement.
What they are left with now is pretty much the only thing that is actually demonstrably illegal: distributing copyrighted material without authorization. It's all that is left, and that's why they are desperate. They want to shut all of that other stuff down by convincing the legislature to create a law to force ISPs to shut down users downloading copyrighted material - an activity that has been demonstrated in court to be completely legal.
What makes it really sick is there is an express denial of due process. That makes the proposed law not only morally wrong, but unconstitutional as well. I wonder how long it would take to get to the SCOTUS?
So a law dictating that an ISP must disconnect a user without due process is somehow not "by the government"?
I'm not sure I follow your logic...
Actually, if they are pictures of her person legal use requires the permission of both the copyright holder (i.e. the person who took the photograph or the person they sold the copyright to photo to) and the model in the photograph.
This is why candid-camera TV shows and the like must blur the faces of anybody who doesn't sign a consent form. They can still distribute their film/photos, but they can't legally show a person who hasn't given them consent.
Note that there may be fair use situations that would allow the use of the photos without consent, but these photos probably don't fall under that.
Civil suits (aka lawsuits) have a much lower burden of proof than criminal cases. You only have to show that it was more likely than not the person you claim it is - i.e. there are not alternatives more substantial than a "yeah, but what if ". If the only one who had motive for the action was the defendant, and the action wasn't for some reason impossible for him, he'll probably lose the case.
Now, even criminal cases don't require "proof" in the sense that you are 100% positive the defendant is guilty. It simply needs to be unreasonable that anybody else could have done it.
Look at OJ Simpson, he won his criminal case because there was enough doubt that he might not have done it, but he lost the civil suit because he more than likely did it.
To put it into numbers, civil cases require 51%+ assurance that the defendant is guilty, while criminal cases require 90%+ assurance. Both numbers are subjective to the Jury, but it's a good rule of thumb.
1. Multiple desktops. Stop the clutter at the bottom of the screen. Organising your work is as easy as pressing Ctrl-Alt-E (IIRC) or just Ctrl-(Alt)-.
You can do this in Windows too, with an add-on. And before you say "yeah, but it's with an add-on", well, everything in Linux is an add-on already. Not all distros come with multiple desktops in the GUI.
2. Mouse wheel works on item however, not item focused. Want to scroll that document in a background window? Just move the mouse there and scroll away! You can also use the scrollwheel to cycle between desktops, tabs, windows, comboboxes and more.
You realise this is just an option that can be enabled/disabled in both Linux AND Windows, right? I have my Windows laptop setup this way, but other machines I don't bother because it's not all that incredibly amazing.
3. An 'always on top' item in the window menu. If you need to copy data from app A to app B put app B at the top with two clicks (or a right mouse drag). No external bloatware required.
Again, it's a Linux add-on that doesn't exist on many distros. You can get this in Windows as well, it just is not a default function.
4. Middle click pasting. Now that app B is on top, select stuff normally from app A and middle click on the destination in app B. Voila': copy paste with the mouse only. And your Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V buffer (aka clipboard) stays untouched!
Again, another add-on that you can also get in Windows. While not default, most mouse software allows this. I'm not sure I see the point of not having to use the clipboard, it's kinda what it is there for...
5. Notifications that get out of the way. Ubuntu 9.04 doesn't need no frikkin' baloons (and currently the method to bring them back doesn't work for me :D). Message boxes are done the right way -- (almost) no generic yes/no choices.
So, a broken feature on your distro is a bonus? I do like that the baloons can be easily disabled, but honestly the method of removing them in Windows, while difficult for windows, is still significantly simpler than many regular maintenance functions in Ubuntu.
6. If virtualization is good enough for videogames on a Mac (it is), then it is good enough for videogames on a Linux. (Non free; dunno about the free) versions of virtual box are able to use the processors' virtualization extensions and offer inbuilt OpenGL support. DirectX support is in the works. Hell, the (free) Ubuntu supported enterprise virtualization support doesn't even work without it.
This is getting better, I'll grant you, but it is still a workaround that is not nearly as simple as double-clicking the installer for your chosen game. OpenGL is nowhere near DirectX, not by a mile.
7. Dual booting. You don't need to wipe Windows for that app you NEED to run in native Windows. Since you won't use it that much you can even not care on Windows to install all the damn bloatware like firewalls and antiviruses.
Why dual boot when I can just run Windows? Also, if you think a firewall is bloatware, I don't want you near my network, linux or no. That's just foolish. The only reason Linux is safe from viruses/trojans is because it has has no market share. If it had just 10% market share, AV software would be necessary, and you are already foolish not to run a firewall. Other bloatware can be unistalled, and it is indeed a pain. But it's better than software that only works if your system is configured "just so".
8. Installing, uninstalling and updating applications. So long as you keep true to installing EVERYTHING through whatever your distro uses to manage packages, 95% of that stuff is as hard as respectively checking boxes on, checking boxes off and clicking on "Install updates". No, you don't even need to mindlessly pound through wizards on the Ne
Why would one who has windows license use linux?
They are masochistic?
There, fixed that for you.
Seriously, as much as I want to love Linux, and as much as I hate Microsoft, Windows gets the user experience down better than anybody except maybe MacOS. I've stopped using Linux on my personal laptop - installed because I got fed up with Vista's little quirks (should have rolled back to XP not Linux though) - in favor of my slower work laptop with WinXP on it because it just tends to work and I know how to do what I need it to do.
Linux is perfect for a home user as long as you meet a few criteria:
- You want to run servers but don't have the hundreds/thousands of dollars to lay down for a simple, effective solution (i.e. Microsoft).
- You are very technically inclined
- "Free" is significantly more important to you than "Easy" or "Simple".
- You are willing to put in the many, many hours you will need to learn the OS and how to configure it to do what you need
- You don't need or want any software or hardware that does not have a good Linux implementation/equivalent
There are others of course, but those are the big ones that come to mind for me. The last two in particular are why I can't use Linux. The first two are me, the third is true for me as well but not completely, and the last two don't fit me at all. I have a lot of better things I can be doing than spending hours trying to figure out why my sound doesn't work when I upgraded to a new version of my distro, discovering I have six different audio implimentations installed and only one of them will work.
Honestly, I could have copied my data and installed XP with less time and effort than it took to fix my sound in Linux, which broke after an update because things are not unified even in distros.
There is a reason *nix admins are few and highly paid in the server world, and it isn't because *nix is simple and easy. It's because *nix is very powerful for certain implimentations but it is notoriously difficult to manage. Until "notoriously difficult" becomes "easy" we won't see Linux on the desktop in any big scale. Ubuntu is better than any Linux I've used (and I've tried a bunch in the last 15 years), but it still doesn't touch XP, or really Win98 even. 95 it probably has beat though, heh.
My little theory is that TV/Movies started it, initially. They like to sound technical without having to sit down and explain anything related to what they are trying to sound technical about. I've often heard the term "hard drive" used in older movies/shows and gone "wha?" because it was just wrong. They didn't necessarily call the whole machine a "hard drive", but it was at least confusing.
The problem grows exponentially when a non-technical person attempts to use the terms like "hard drive" that they heard in a movie, and it is reinforced by either other non-technical people - to whom they sound more knowledgeable than themselves, so they pick up the term as well. Technical people who don't want to make the person look dumb exacerbate the problem by letting them use the term instead of informing them.
What makes it explode is the fact that most of the time, these people aren't refering to the computer as a "hard drive" in front of people who know better, they are talking about it to other similarly un-knowledgeable people, which further reinforces the term in their own mind when they aren't corrected, and contributes greatly to other people using the term incorrectly. They'll say things like "Yeah, my hard drive crashed. I had to have a guy come out and replace the memory". All he knows is the tech said he replaced the memory, and that is what fixed his "hard drive". He also happens to sound like he knows what he is talking about to anybody who doesn't know better.
Seriously, if you hear someone use the jargon so incredibly incorrectly, you should correct them. They already want to sound like the know a little bit about it, why would they be opposed to actually learning a little bit about it? Then when another know-nothing numbnuts uses the term incorrectly, they can be smug when they correct them.
For the longest time I heard the term "CPU" used for the PC, and still do on occasion. I think this one actually started as technical jargon first - old CPUs were huge, and I believe big cabinets that housed the mainframes were actually called CPUs because... that's where the central processing took place. As machines shrunk and with the release of the first PCs things got confused for a while. However, since CPUs are now such a physically small part of the PC, the mistake should have been corrected but has been allowed to continue for a long time.
Just pointing something out.
Sure, it's not necessarily representative of their entire coverage, but when it comes to events that truly matter Fox News is overwhelmingly more fair than most any other news outlet. All the others showed heavy favoritism to the Obama campaign.
In contrast, the Fox News Channel treated both candidates to roughly the same level of good and bad press, with Obama earning just slightly better press than McCain. One-fourth of Obama stories on Fox (25%) were positive, compared to 22% of McCain's coverage. Both candidates received exactly the same proportion of negative stories on FNC, 40%.
I'd like to see a similar study comparing right/left topics in general, perhaps weighted with the importance of the stories (difficult, the importance would have to be relatively subjective). Fox wouldn't fair as well, unless you consider the fact that most of their right-wing shows seem to be trash news for the most part. You could probably toss the talk shows from all the networks and get a decent look at how they stand on actual reporting.
Perhaps Fox only seems so far right because everything else is so far left?
My 2 cents anyway.
Capitalism does not always work for everything, markets fail more often than your libertarian econ profs tell you.
Markets "fail" because demand for them decreases. That's not a failure of Capitalism, that is capitalism doing its job. And, in capitalism, nothing truly dies if there is a smidgeon of a market for it (i.e. a few people want it).
Case in point: Buggy Whip Manufacturers, Drive-in Theaters, and The Buffalo.
We have a certain amount of money, so the more you have, the less I have...
That idea shows a complete lack of understanding of what money is and where it came from.
Money is actually created all the time, and is constantly being created. It is a representation of effort and value for trade. As long as new effort is put into objects/services then new money will always be created, since those items can be traded for a value. Since there is no set limit to how much value and effort can be produced by people, there is no set limit to money. The monetary system replaced the barter system for all large economies because of its flexibility, however it also introduces complexities. In a barter system, wealth is judged by how much stuff you have plus how much extra stuff you have available for trade. Just because one person has a lot of stuff for trade does not mean someone else cannot have produced other stuff for trade. One does not negate the other. If it did trade would not exist, as things could only be consumed and not created. Now replace "stuff for trade" with "money" and you have our system in a very small nutshell.
What causes money to seem limited (only so much to go around) is we have a lot of people who's only contribution is to move and collect money. It is a service that is, in my opinion, over-valued. They gamble, win, and lose and the wins and losses inflate or deflate the value of goods and services. Eventually there is a collapse, money is devalued and it seems like there is a finite limit. But money is not really a thing, it's an idea represented by paper and coins, and the idea it is based on is limitless. New Things are created, money is generated, and things move again and grow in a different sector. In fact, the potential for creation of value and money increases as the population increases, and the only way to limit it is by eliminating the people or their will to create items and services of value.
Not trying to discount your story, I think the problem is BS and the companies are selling products with known failure problems and not making that clear, but the battery issue is industry-wide. Every company that uses a traditional li-ion battery that has been stretched to capacity limits has severe failure issues. Most new Dell batteries are the same way (which happen to be manufactured by Sony, btw). That particular branch of li-ion was maxed a long time ago, and instead they began to make tradeoffs of longevity for initial capacity. They begin to lose capacity slowly after the very first charge.
The thinner materials used in these batteries, which create more surface area and thus more capacity, also deteriorate much more quickly. The average fail rate* is about 1 year, but it can be much earlier (I've seen 6 months on a laptop with very heavy use and many many charges), so you'll never see more than a one year warranty on one of these batteries.
Newer li-ion, like the li-polymer types don't have the deterioration issues, but also don't have the same capacity yet. Though they are close. Unfortunately you have to be on the ball to get your battery replaced, as they fail like clockwork after 1 year with normal use. Frankly, I'd recommend doing anything you can to abuse that battery to make sure it fails within the 1 year period so you can get it replaced. If you try to be good to your Sony battery, you'll be left out in the cold when it doesn't fail till a year and 3 days after you got it.
*By fail rate I mean the battery capacity is so poor as to make it unuseable. It is usually accompanied with a battery end of life message, suggesting replacement.
For example, I personally would be happy to pay something like $0.15 / track for the privilege of upgrading the audio on my aging LPs to compressed digital quality --- but there is no way for me to actually do that, legally.
What the hell are you talking about? That has already been established as legal. Unless of course they managed to sneak some copy protection on to your LP's when you weren't looking.
If you look at all the recent copyright cases, you'll see that they consistantly decide that copyright infringement only happens when you choose to distribute your copy of the work. The copy you make for yourself is legal*, the copy you give to someone else is illegal.
Get it?
IANAL of course, but just look at all the recent court cases and it seems pretty well established what specifically is and is not legal, at least in regards to personal use. Even the person downloading an illegaly distributed copy seems to be in the clear, though that's not as well established as personal use copies. It's the DMCA and copy protection that get you, and such things don't exist on old LPs, only DVDs, newer CDs, and other newer media distribution methods like downloaded music with DRM.
*The exception, of course, is if there is some form of copy protection. Since the DMCA made circumvention of copy protection illegal, it comes in to play whenever copy protection is present.
Copyright was never about preventing anybody from using another person's work for their own profit. There are in fact plenty of provisions for doing just that in Copyright law.
Copyright is about preventing people from copying another person's work and distributing it for their own gain. It's a specific method of profiting from a work that is restricted. It's no accident that it happens to be the most direct and (usually) most profitable method of using a work, and it makes a lot of sense.
It's built into the name, for one thing, but also it is very well established that copyright law grants the creator a (theoretically) limited monopoly on the distribution of their work. That's it. Once it has been legally distributed, copyright grants no control over the copy which was distributed. The person who recieved the copy can cross out parts, re-write parts, even make dozens of copies for themselves and then poop on them if they want. It's up to them as far as copyright law is concerned.*
What they can't do is distribute their copies of the work without either having the copyright holder's express permission or making sufficient changes in the content to warrant an exception under the copyright code.
Not one bit of that has to do with any kind of Piracy**, and the only way it should be called such is if the original copy was, in fact, stolen. If it was purchased legally, then you are dealing with copyright infringement, which is a crime (note that it is become more well established that recieving the illegal copy is not a crime, only the distribution of the copy is a crime). It is not, however, theft. The property was more than likely legally purchased originally, and then copied and distributed illegaly. Copyright infringement, not theft.
You're off on your criminal analogy as well. There is nothing illegal about sharing a DVD with all your buddies. It's illegal to shoplift the initial DVD, but that isn't normally how things spread. Usually the DVD rips you find are from legally purchased copies, they are simply illegally distributed**. That's not theft, and it's a far cry from piracy.
A real, honest to goodness analogy of what happens in the digital world with DVD rips and their distribution, would be sheet music. Often times sheet music is purchased legally, and then copied (via a copy machine) and distributed dozens of times. This happens a lot in school music programs, and most music teachers who do this don't realize that when they give little Johnny a photo-copy of Little Drummer Boy to take home and practice, they are committing a crime.
It's -still- not theft. You don't go to jail for stealing the photocopied music, because you didn't steal anything. You copied it. You get sued for copyright infringement and have to pay shittons of money. And probably lose your job. But guess what? Such cases, where the works are illegaly distributed but not for direct profit, are hard to track down and usually aren't worth it. Sound at all familiar?
We don't call clueless music teachers thieves or pirates, why the hell should we call DVD rippers thieves or pirates? They do break one more law than infringing music teachers, but it's still not theft in any way, shape, or form, and it sure as hell isn't any kind of piracy.
I'm starting to get really sick of people calling copyright infringement, which has nothing to do with theft or piracy, theft and piracy. It's like calling a money launderer an arsonist. It doesn't make sense (unless that specific money launderer is in fact an arsonist as well, but that's different). The whole idea of it is buying into big media corporation bull shit to make their case sound more legitimate and scary. It's legit enough already, they just don't like how limited their rights are, and want more rights to control the content they distribute.
Damn this rant went long.
*There are other laws, like the DMCA, which DO dictate the use of a copy after it has been distributed, but that is not copyright,