I wonder the same thing about ASUS and/or Best Buy. I'm typing this on an Asus Eee 900A I bought from Best Buy which came with a 4 GB SSD and Xandros using UnionFS--which, once it automatically downloaded a dozen updates to various packages, promptly rendered itself unusable by consuming all remaining space on the SSD after I installed a couple of said packages.
I knew enough to look around on the web, grab Ubuntu Eee (now Easy Peasy), wipe Xandros, and install a different distro. Joe Average won't, and will stomp back to the dealer and want his money back or a different {net, note}book. They'll cheerfully upsell him to a more expensive one running Windows, and he'll blame Linux for ASUS's at best heavily misguided, at worst intentionallly bad choice.
Maybe not a riding mower, but farm equipment is very sophisticated these days. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if quite a bit of it ran Linux, or maybe eCos.
Among others. It ran on many machines using the SS-50 and SS-50C bus (remember SWTPC, GIMIX, and Smoke Signal Broadcasting?) before there was a version for the CoCo, not to mention the amazing Fujitsu FM-7, FM-77, and variants.
Yup. I don't have my CoCo 2, but I do have my CoCo 3, now with a Hitachi 6309 running NitrOS9 (OS-9/6809 Level 2 heavily optimized and customized for the 6309 by an insanely talented group of programmers, many from Canada BTW), with a SCSI Zip drive instead of the clunky old RLL-encoded 30 MB drive I originally used.
Tomorrow I head to Elgin, IL for the 18th Annual "Last" Chicago CoCoFest. I'm hoping to see and perhaps to buy one of the new Bluetooth cartridges for the CoCo.
It's not in now, never was. As the FAQ says--it was thought to be a bug. (Not only is the user the enemy, the POV is that any configurable screensaver is by definition broken.)
Same here (KDE 4 is getting there, and I'm immensely impressed by the look of MoonOS using E17), but you don't have it quite right. Strangely enough, while the "it should just work" is part of the rationalization, the major reason given is that you, the user, can't be trusted.
The justification for taking essentially all customization away from the user is that if you're given that ability, you're going to put obscene or insulting messages in GLText, or make the screensaver display your pr0n collection.
To quote the FAQ: "If they didn't want someone to put 'The CEO is a bastard' in rotating, 3D text on a publicly available computer the only option was to remove it form [sic] the system."
I look forward to a future GNOME release in which the user cannot adjust the volume because someone could turn it all the way up in a library, or that denies you the ability to set the wallpaper lest you put up something offensive.
If anyone other than the developer of gnome-screensaver had a say in this high-handed, arrogant decision, which, like DRM, considers the user the enemy, I'm not aware of it.
That's true. OTOH, I am curious about how fast the connection has to be to make the difference in rendering significant. If "faster" means 0.2 seconds instead of 0.3, I can't say I would care much. Guess it's time to RTFA.
OK... let's go with the converse of the way I'm tempted to put it, i.e. "If Candian artists are so great, why does the government have to force broadcasters to feature their work?" So... I know there are fine Canadian artists--so why don't Canadians choose to view/listen to their work, in which case you wouldn't need the government to get involved--it would be in broadcasters' financial interest to showcase Canadian artists.
"Jefferson, a strong proponent of equality among all people, was not sure if it was fair or even constitutional to grant what was essentially a monopoly to an inventor, who would then be able to grant the use of his idea only to those who could afford it. His feeling that all should have total access to new technology was one of the reasons he never took out a patent on his own inventions."
"Seriously, who can repair digital electronics nearly as easily as the analog counterparts?"
Nobody, but how much does that have to do with current NTSC TV technology? I expect that if you open up a recent NTSC TV, you'll see ICs and surface mount technology used as much as possible, and relatively few things that are don't cost more to repair than to replace.
Same here. About a year ago, I got a letter from Mediacom touting their eventual move to an all-digital network.
Translation: all those lulled into a false sense of security by those commercials saying that if you have cable, your NTSC TV will continue to work will find that they have no choice but to rent a digital cable box.
...on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site, which states at the top of the page, "The Presidential Inaugural Committee, at the direction of President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden, will organize an inclusive and accessible inauguration..."
Then there was my small donation of $5... or rather, Bertrand Russell's, because that's the name I put on it, along with saying he works for NotElementsOfThemselves.com as a philospher, and other such fanciful data.
The charge went through with no trouble, because the Obama campaign had explicitly turned off address checking on credit card donations on their web site. The companies that do credit card processing of that sort charge extra for turning it off, because of the increased fraud that results from doing so, and customers have to explicitly turn it off, so it had to have been done knowingly.
I'd say "overrated" would be more appropriate. Is there any chance for a knob to twist to block all Hans Reiser "jokes"? The first aleph-null of them were kind of funny.
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It's an old jingle for Armour hot dogs:
"Hot dogs, Armour hot dogs,
What kind of kids eat Armour hot dogs?..."
Neat story; I hope I'm as open to new things when I am that old.
I wonder the same thing about ASUS and/or Best Buy. I'm typing this on an Asus Eee 900A I bought from Best Buy which came with a 4 GB SSD and Xandros using UnionFS--which, once it automatically downloaded a dozen updates to various packages, promptly rendered itself unusable by consuming all remaining space on the SSD after I installed a couple of said packages.
I knew enough to look around on the web, grab Ubuntu Eee (now Easy Peasy), wipe Xandros, and install a different distro. Joe Average won't, and will stomp back to the dealer and want his money back or a different {net, note}book. They'll cheerfully upsell him to a more expensive one running Windows, and he'll blame Linux for ASUS's at best heavily misguided, at worst intentionallly bad choice.
Maybe not a riding mower, but farm equipment is very sophisticated these days. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if quite a bit of it ran Linux, or maybe eCos.
A shame they didn't type
sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts
before they generated that image.
Come to think of it, isn't "Ichiro" a popular name in Japan?
Right here in River City!
With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Prompt!
Among others. It ran on many machines using the SS-50 and SS-50C bus (remember SWTPC, GIMIX, and Smoke Signal Broadcasting?) before there was a version for the CoCo, not to mention the amazing Fujitsu FM-7, FM-77, and variants.
Yup. I don't have my CoCo 2, but I do have my CoCo 3, now with a Hitachi 6309 running NitrOS9 (OS-9/6809 Level 2 heavily optimized and customized for the 6309 by an insanely talented group of programmers, many from Canada BTW), with a SCSI Zip drive instead of the clunky old RLL-encoded 30 MB drive I originally used.
Tomorrow I head to Elgin, IL for the 18th Annual "Last" Chicago CoCoFest. I'm hoping to see and perhaps to buy one of the new Bluetooth cartridges for the CoCo.
It's not in now, never was. As the FAQ says--it was thought to be a bug. (Not only is the user the enemy, the POV is that any configurable screensaver is by definition broken.)
Wrong, with the sole exception of those xscreensaver hacks that display the window and hence could display sensitive information.
The FAQ gives the developer's justification for denying the user all configurability. It's worth a look.
Same here (KDE 4 is getting there, and I'm immensely impressed by the look of MoonOS using E17), but you don't have it quite right. Strangely enough, while the "it should just work" is part of the rationalization, the major reason given is that you, the user, can't be trusted.
The justification for taking essentially all customization away from the user is that if you're given that ability, you're going to put obscene or insulting messages in GLText, or make the screensaver display your pr0n collection.
To quote the FAQ: "If they didn't want someone to put 'The CEO is a bastard' in rotating, 3D text on a publicly available computer the only option was to remove it form [sic] the system."
I look forward to a future GNOME release in which the user cannot adjust the volume because someone could turn it all the way up in a library, or that denies you the ability to set the wallpaper lest you put up something offensive.
If anyone other than the developer of gnome-screensaver had a say in this high-handed, arrogant decision, which, like DRM, considers the user the enemy, I'm not aware of it.
That's true. OTOH, I am curious about how fast the connection has to be to make the difference in rendering significant. If "faster" means 0.2 seconds instead of 0.3, I can't say I would care much. Guess it's time to RTFA.
OK... let's go with the converse of the way I'm tempted to put it, i.e. "If Candian artists are so great, why does the government have to force broadcasters to feature their work?" So... I know there are fine Canadian artists--so why don't Canadians choose to view/listen to their work, in which case you wouldn't need the government to get involved--it would be in broadcasters' financial interest to showcase Canadian artists.
See http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/winter2000/jefferson.html for info on Jefferson and patents. Note in particular:
"Jefferson, a strong proponent of equality among all people, was not sure if it was fair or even constitutional to grant what was essentially a monopoly to an inventor, who would then be able to grant the use of his idea only to those who could afford it. His feeling that all should have total access to new technology was one of the reasons he never took out a patent on his own inventions."
I watched too much I Love Lucy when I was a kid; I was thinking Babalubuntu.
"Seriously, who can repair digital electronics nearly as easily as the analog counterparts?"
Nobody, but how much does that have to do with current NTSC TV technology? I expect that if you open up a recent NTSC TV, you'll see ICs and surface mount technology used as much as possible, and relatively few things that are don't cost more to repair than to replace.
Same here. About a year ago, I got a letter from Mediacom touting their eventual move to an all-digital network.
Translation: all those lulled into a false sense of security by those commercials saying that if you have cable, your NTSC TV will continue to work will find that they have no choice but to rent a digital cable box.
...on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site, which states at the top of the page, "The Presidential Inaugural Committee, at the direction of President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden, will organize an inclusive and accessible inauguration..."
There, fixed that for you.
Then there was my small donation of $5... or rather, Bertrand Russell's, because that's the name I put on it, along with saying he works for NotElementsOfThemselves.com as a philospher, and other such fanciful data.
The charge went through with no trouble, because the Obama campaign had explicitly turned off address checking on credit card donations on their web site. The companies that do credit card processing of that sort charge extra for turning it off, because of the increased fraud that results from doing so, and customers have to explicitly turn it off, so it had to have been done knowingly.
I'd say "overrated" would be more appropriate. Is there any chance for a knob to twist to block all Hans Reiser "jokes"? The first aleph-null of them were kind of funny.
Surely sharks will like "Santa Jaws". (mp3 here).
"...it's surprising how little of Isaac Asimov's work has made it to the big screen."
I, Robot sure as hell didn't.
I figured that they were tired of hearing about the BSOD, and "Azure screen of death" would at least sound nicer.
"...a candidate that not only uses technology to its fullest potential..."
Yeah, like turning off all the validity checking on credit card donations via his web site to facilitate illegal donations.