Waitress: Morning! Man: Well, what've you got? Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and meatspace; egg bacon and meatspace; egg bacon sausage and meatspace; meatspace bacon sausage and meatspace; meatspace egg meatspace meatspace bacon and meatspace; meatspace sausage meatspace meatspace bacon meatspace tomato and meatspace; Vikings: meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace... Waitress:...meatspace meatspace meatspace egg and meatspace; meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace baked beans meatspace meatspace meatspace... Vikings: meatspace! Lovely meatspace! Lovely meatspace! Waitress:...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and meatspace. Wife: Have you got anything without meatspace? Waitress: Well, there's meatspace egg sausage and meatspace, that's not got much meatspace in it. Wife: I don't want ANY meatspace!
No, Vista was shit when it came out. There were several serious bugs, one involving file copying, performance issues, incredible amounts of driver issues (graphics drivers especially), and the whole 'vista ready' mess.
I'll grant that the situation is much improved now.
Whether or not IT media is shit, the initial reports on Vista were extremely positive, from the betas to shortly after the release. I presume Microsoft paid for a good many of those, but the point is more that the bad press started after Vista had been released and in use for a while.
If you're doing it right, it shouldn't be a big deal if the disk dies. If you have an internet connection, it should be trivial to ensure that you have your data backed up in multiple places that are widely distributed geographically. I've had drives die, disasters take out all of my hardware. I've never lost data.
Straw man. Fallacious argument. Gee, that was easy.
Now, try actually arguing the position.
As an example:
Despite the ease of copying information on the Internet, it poses a moral and economic dilemma. Namely, it undermines the principles of copyright that have existed in one form or another for several centuries now. Copyright, despite possibly being flawed, is still a vital protection for creative works, and few creators/artists would willingly be without it. The various 'copyleft' licenses are in function identical to copyright, save that they encourage derivative works.
Business models based on the distribution of intellectual property may eventually go the way of the buggy whip, but for now they're here to stay, and in fact a vital part of today's economy. We should not be so quick---especially in these troubled times---to call for the eradication of such a vital market, nor to support anything that undermines it.
Then we have the moral argument. There are very few people who would be willing to say that artists and other content creators should be expected to work for free. Copyright laws are like democracy: the very worst system there is, except for all the others that have been tried. We should support copyright laws for the sake of artists, and take the good with the bad. It might even be considered unpatriotic to infringe upon the rights of local or national artists....and so on in that vein. Really this is more stream of thought; you should be able to prepare a lucid, well structured argument with a little more preparation, since you don't have to respond to the actual content of the article per se. But hey, it's pretty easy to copy and paste a troll post, and it feels pretty good, doesn't it? It's somewhat odd to see people here complaining about the quality of the trolls having declined, or that the discussions here aren't as good as they used to be. Perhaps we're just mourning the loss of anyone who could play the Devil's Advocate with any ability.
Ah, so you are trolling. I have both the alpha and the beta installed on my Eee. On the whole, I like the alpha better, but I'm keeping track of where the beta's headed.
The alpha's repo file is incorrect and needs to be edited to get updates. Otherwise, it's an XFCE spin of Fedora that boots in 8-10s.
Hey, I've got a great new idea! What if the interface allowed for some way for minimized applications to notify the user of something! It would be awesome if--get this--when someone IM'ed me, I would have some way to know, so I could switch to that window and respond!
It does support notifications, through libnotify. It didn't have an IM client last I checked.
Ooh! And another! What if they made it so every time I tried to reach the upper toolbar of my application, a giant black bar didn't come down, grey out my screen, and interrupt me!
Waaaaah, I don't like the UI! Deal with it, rewrite it, or use the terminal like God intended. It may also still have Xfce running underneath the Clutter UI. If not, you could download the alpha, which was perfectly functional.
Wait... what if I had some way of knowing which applications were open and where they were located at any time, instead of having to manage my desktop in my mind??
What, did you miss the pane that was intended for that purpose?
Question: do you actually own a netbook? If so, you probably are all too familiar with full-screen mode in your web browser of choice. 600 vertical pixels is not a whole hell of a lot.
The point of a netbook is primarily to get on the internet. How you can be railing against a project designed to make that easier is somewhat bizarre.
Do not say stupid things like "11th most numerous element in the ocean". (a It's a pain in the ass to extract the first two. (b relative abundance != abundance, and (c it's meaningless to determine how easy it will be to extract.
A much better number would be.1 to.2 parts per million (source: wikipedia). So to obtain 1 kg of lithium, you'd only have to process 5,000,000-10,000,000 kg of seawater. Gee, I wonder why no one is doing this?
Then why did they introduce them with linux in the first place? If XP support was so important, why didn't we wait until XP could run on them?
The original concept was for a cheap internet appliance, not a general purpose computer. It didn't matter if it ran linux or windows 98; the point of linux was that it could run a recent version of a web browser.
Nobody was sitting around thinking about how to get XP onto a smaller form factor. XP is not some sort of license to print money--at least, not for anyone except Microsoft. People were (and are) wanting to get the Internet on a smaller form factor device, therefore netbooks were invented.
Now, if you want to say that XP subsequently provided a better user experience, feel free; the default OS provided with Asus, Acer, and MSI's linux netbooks were half-assed to say the least.
Good post. I have a 900A linux Eee (posting on it right now), and I supplement its SSD with SD cards. 4GB is not a lot to run an OS in, but it's certainly possible with linux.
However, the default OS shipped with this thing was pretty worthless, as well as bloated. It was clearly intended to be useful for only a few specific tasks. It was also not intended, apparently, that you store anything on the disk---including software updates. It preserved the original system as shipped, making it extremely quick and easy to revert to that image, but updating package X would create an entirely new copy of that package, rapidly filling up the disk.
Fedora and Ubuntu both fit quite nicely into 4GB, and make for a much better solution. Dell and HP seem to have chosen the latter to much better results, but I am terribly excited by the Moblin project: the interface is extremely fast and intuitive. It's the simplified 'internet appliance' OS that Asus/Acer/MSI were looking for, but done right. If Intel can get the system manufacturers on board, I think there's a huge market for Moblin netbooks, with one caveat.
The other thing that happened with the netbook market, besides what you mentioned, is that the sytem manufacturers immediately started trying to cram as much as they could into the form factor (and increasing the form factor) to the point that the distinction between a high-end netbook and a low-end laptop is fairly arbitrary. I believe that happened mostly because of the perception of netbooks as a general-purpose computer rather than an internet appliance. That's all well and good, but the original idea was for the latter, and I think that there's (as I said) a huge market for what would essentially be the iPhone with a keyboard, provided that it is priced low enough.
If people are spending $300 or more on something that looks like a computer, they think they're getting a computer. They want a Computer, so that drives the market towards larger, more powerful, more expensive machines, and Windows. All of those things will hopefully prove to be unecessary.
How exactly are you proposing to do that? Why don't you read this before answering. I would argue that internet service is a natural monopoly, that this state is likely to continue indefinitely, and that the current market forces are ensuring that we have the worst of all possible worlds: slow, expensive networks, per-byte billing, and a near-total lack of infrastructure investment.
The upshot of this is that I am paying $150 per month for 1.5Mbps cable, capped at 20GB monthly, and this will never change, even if and when the cost of laying fiber to some obscure corner of Alaska is recouped. There's no reason to provide better service or lower prices, and no regulation saying that they can't do it.
So, in my view, we should either recognize the monopoly situation and regulate it heavily, or nationalize the pipes.
Well, the alternatives to dark matter/energy suck. Either there's more matter and energy out in the universe than we can observe directly, or gravity doesn't work the same on large scales as it does on small scales. Dark energy is hypothesized because we have not observed anything to account for the accelerating expansion of the universe.
The theories of dark matter and dark energy require the fewest assumptions, and best explain the observed phenomena, so it's they're working theories du jour. We don't like them, though, so if your theory is better, please do let us know what it is.
If you don't have a better theory, please try to post informed criticism rather than inflammatory nonsense.
It's cases like this, and that damn gun-toting panda that remind us of the need for proper use of punctuation. Though it's always puzzled me how people can write code all day long and then fail to use analogous typographical rules correctly in communication. Or maybe there's more "Hello,Wrold!" code than I'm aware of.
Oh well. I, for one, welcome our new anatidaen overlords!
I am extremely offended by your signature. We are a nation of religious tolerance, first and foremost. Secondarily we can be said to be a Christian people, but there are significant minorities of other belief systems. One of the most important parts of having a constitutional republic (in general) and the separation of church and state clause (in specific) is to prevent such minorities from the 'tyranny of the majority'. We must not allow the erosion of rights for any segment of our population, else we can no longer consider ourselves citizens of a free country.
Do note that while there is mention of God in our currency etc., there is no mention of Christ--nor should there be. Also, the values that formed this country weren't terribly Christian: excellence in warfare and technology, the 'pioneer spirit', the 'manifest destiny' philosophy. If we owe anything to Christianity for our government and/or culture, we owe just as much to the ancient Greeks, and the thinkers of the Enlightenment. And if we consider the ultimate expression of Christian morality to be found in Matthew 22:34-40, then it's hard to believe that a nation with our history of racism, prejudice, and warfare to be at all Christian, no matter how strongly we might profess it. Indeed, most people claiming to be Christians here wouldn't know Christ's teachings if they bit them.
If you somehow feel that minority religions are wrong, please work to change that in some way that does not involve our government or legal system. If you want a theocracy, go to Iran.
We're not saying you're wrong. Well, I'm not. Everyone, though, agrees that it would be really nice if you turned out to be right. We're just a bit skeptical of any cold fusion claims at this point. Show us an actual working model and we'll applaud. Show us neutron tracks, and you'll pardon us if we don't rush to invest.
Reread your quote again. Your 'expert' isn't exactly singing praises. He, and we, are hopeful. You are jumping the gun.
Then you should be happy! Global warming will turn Nunavut into Nassau eventually. It's doing you a favor!
Myself, I am a proud member of AFGW: Alaskans for Global Warming. We couldn't wait for plate tectonics to bring California up here, so we're bringing the mountain to Muhammed. Drill, baby, drill!
Good example. You're calling for these online casinos to be legalized and regulated. Collusion is extremely easy to detect if you're running the game and can see all the cards. If you're worried about rigged games, you should audit the casino, and fine the hell out of anyone running a bad table.
By not collecting the winnings, they're attempting to fix the symptom and not the problem. It's disturbingly similar to the DEA's program to seize assets of those suspected of drug crimes. You know, the one that robs and kills people.
Oh yes, I can clearly see how that's the same thing as the Aryan Brotherhood and the KKK. Their offices are like, right next to each other. Those of you with both Caucasian and Hispanic heritage can pick up a pamphlet from each booth!
Your doctor called, the x-rays show you're missing a sense of perspective and have an absurd inflammation of the spleen. For the former, he recommends you look up 'racism' in the dictionary, and for the latter, turn off Fox News.
Slashdot Mirror
Really?
Then again, I'm from Alaska. Maybe there are a bunch of gray, gooey, congealed whales up here, and I've never noticed.
Waitress: Morning! ...meatspace meatspace meatspace egg and meatspace; meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace baked beans meatspace meatspace meatspace... ...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and meatspace.
Man: Well, what've you got?
Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and meatspace; egg bacon and meatspace; egg bacon sausage and meatspace; meatspace bacon sausage and meatspace; meatspace egg meatspace meatspace bacon and meatspace; meatspace sausage meatspace meatspace bacon meatspace tomato and meatspace;
Vikings: meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace...
Waitress:
Vikings: meatspace! Lovely meatspace! Lovely meatspace!
Waitress:
Wife: Have you got anything without meatspace?
Waitress: Well, there's meatspace egg sausage and meatspace, that's not got much meatspace in it.
Wife: I don't want ANY meatspace!
No, Vista was shit when it came out. There were several serious bugs, one involving file copying, performance issues, incredible amounts of driver issues (graphics drivers especially), and the whole 'vista ready' mess.
I'll grant that the situation is much improved now.
Whether or not IT media is shit, the initial reports on Vista were extremely positive, from the betas to shortly after the release. I presume Microsoft paid for a good many of those, but the point is more that the bad press started after Vista had been released and in use for a while.
If you're doing it right, it shouldn't be a big deal if the disk dies. If you have an internet connection, it should be trivial to ensure that you have your data backed up in multiple places that are widely distributed geographically. I've had drives die, disasters take out all of my hardware. I've never lost data.
Straw man. Fallacious argument. Gee, that was easy.
Now, try actually arguing the position.
As an example:
Despite the ease of copying information on the Internet, it poses a moral and economic dilemma. Namely, it undermines the principles of copyright that have existed in one form or another for several centuries now. Copyright, despite possibly being flawed, is still a vital protection for creative works, and few creators/artists would willingly be without it. The various 'copyleft' licenses are in function identical to copyright, save that they encourage derivative works.
Business models based on the distribution of intellectual property may eventually go the way of the buggy whip, but for now they're here to stay, and in fact a vital part of today's economy. We should not be so quick---especially in these troubled times---to call for the eradication of such a vital market, nor to support anything that undermines it.
Then we have the moral argument. There are very few people who would be willing to say that artists and other content creators should be expected to work for free. Copyright laws are like democracy: the very worst system there is, except for all the others that have been tried. We should support copyright laws for the sake of artists, and take the good with the bad. It might even be considered unpatriotic to infringe upon the rights of local or national artists. ...and so on in that vein. Really this is more stream of thought; you should be able to prepare a lucid, well structured argument with a little more preparation, since you don't have to respond to the actual content of the article per se. But hey, it's pretty easy to copy and paste a troll post, and it feels pretty good, doesn't it? It's somewhat odd to see people here complaining about the quality of the trolls having declined, or that the discussions here aren't as good as they used to be. Perhaps we're just mourning the loss of anyone who could play the Devil's Advocate with any ability.
Well, then get a bigger pot of water and find PETA's hive.
Ah, so you are trolling. I have both the alpha and the beta installed on my Eee. On the whole, I like the alpha better, but I'm keeping track of where the beta's headed.
The alpha's repo file is incorrect and needs to be edited to get updates. Otherwise, it's an XFCE spin of Fedora that boots in 8-10s.
Hey, I've got a great new idea! What if the interface allowed for some way for minimized applications to notify the user of something! It would be awesome if--get this--when someone IM'ed me, I would have some way to know, so I could switch to that window and respond!
It does support notifications, through libnotify. It didn't have an IM client last I checked.
Ooh! And another! What if they made it so every time I tried to reach the upper toolbar of my application, a giant black bar didn't come down, grey out my screen, and interrupt me!
Waaaaah, I don't like the UI!
Deal with it, rewrite it, or use the terminal like God intended. It may also still have Xfce running underneath the Clutter UI. If not, you could download the alpha, which was perfectly functional.
Wait... what if I had some way of knowing which applications were open and where they were located at any time, instead of having to manage my desktop in my mind??
What, did you miss the pane that was intended for that purpose?
Question: do you actually own a netbook? If so, you probably are all too familiar with full-screen mode in your web browser of choice. 600 vertical pixels is not a whole hell of a lot.
The point of a netbook is primarily to get on the internet. How you can be railing against a project designed to make that easier is somewhat bizarre.
Do not say stupid things like "11th most numerous element in the ocean". (a It's a pain in the ass to extract the first two. (b relative abundance != abundance, and (c it's meaningless to determine how easy it will be to extract.
A much better number would be .1 to .2 parts per million (source: wikipedia). So to obtain 1 kg of lithium, you'd only have to process 5,000,000-10,000,000 kg of seawater. Gee, I wonder why no one is doing this?
And, as I always say, give me the greater of two evils.
Your candidate has arrived.
Yeah, it looks like the beta version of that disease is not terribly full-featured. The project has potential, but it needs more dev time.
I'll definitely sign up for the final release, though!
Posting the Halting Problem to GetACoder? Someone deserves a medal.
The best part of that is someone named "BusyBeaver" offering to solve the problem 'in the most productive manner possible'.
Post your email. Alternately, respond to mine, but if you're trolling for a /. hookup, you should probably have some way of letting people contact you.
Then why did they introduce them with linux in the first place? If XP support was so important, why didn't we wait until XP could run on them?
The original concept was for a cheap internet appliance, not a general purpose computer. It didn't matter if it ran linux or windows 98; the point of linux was that it could run a recent version of a web browser.
Nobody was sitting around thinking about how to get XP onto a smaller form factor. XP is not some sort of license to print money--at least, not for anyone except Microsoft. People were (and are) wanting to get the Internet on a smaller form factor device, therefore netbooks were invented.
Now, if you want to say that XP subsequently provided a better user experience, feel free; the default OS provided with Asus, Acer, and MSI's linux netbooks were half-assed to say the least.
Good post. I have a 900A linux Eee (posting on it right now), and I supplement its SSD with SD cards. 4GB is not a lot to run an OS in, but it's certainly possible with linux.
However, the default OS shipped with this thing was pretty worthless, as well as bloated. It was clearly intended to be useful for only a few specific tasks. It was also not intended, apparently, that you store anything on the disk---including software updates. It preserved the original system as shipped, making it extremely quick and easy to revert to that image, but updating package X would create an entirely new copy of that package, rapidly filling up the disk.
Fedora and Ubuntu both fit quite nicely into 4GB, and make for a much better solution. Dell and HP seem to have chosen the latter to much better results, but I am terribly excited by the Moblin project: the interface is extremely fast and intuitive. It's the simplified 'internet appliance' OS that Asus/Acer/MSI were looking for, but done right. If Intel can get the system manufacturers on board, I think there's a huge market for Moblin netbooks, with one caveat.
The other thing that happened with the netbook market, besides what you mentioned, is that the sytem manufacturers immediately started trying to cram as much as they could into the form factor (and increasing the form factor) to the point that the distinction between a high-end netbook and a low-end laptop is fairly arbitrary. I believe that happened mostly because of the perception of netbooks as a general-purpose computer rather than an internet appliance. That's all well and good, but the original idea was for the latter, and I think that there's (as I said) a huge market for what would essentially be the iPhone with a keyboard, provided that it is priced low enough.
If people are spending $300 or more on something that looks like a computer, they think they're getting a computer. They want a Computer, so that drives the market towards larger, more powerful, more expensive machines, and Windows. All of those things will hopefully prove to be unecessary.
How exactly are you proposing to do that? Why don't you read this before answering. I would argue that internet service is a natural monopoly, that this state is likely to continue indefinitely, and that the current market forces are ensuring that we have the worst of all possible worlds: slow, expensive networks, per-byte billing, and a near-total lack of infrastructure investment.
The upshot of this is that I am paying $150 per month for 1.5Mbps cable, capped at 20GB monthly, and this will never change, even if and when the cost of laying fiber to some obscure corner of Alaska is recouped. There's no reason to provide better service or lower prices, and no regulation saying that they can't do it.
So, in my view, we should either recognize the monopoly situation and regulate it heavily, or nationalize the pipes.
One would assume subhadronic matter == things smaller than hadrons == quarks and leptons
Well, the alternatives to dark matter/energy suck. Either there's more matter and energy out in the universe than we can observe directly, or gravity doesn't work the same on large scales as it does on small scales. Dark energy is hypothesized because we have not observed anything to account for the accelerating expansion of the universe.
The theories of dark matter and dark energy require the fewest assumptions, and best explain the observed phenomena, so it's they're working theories du jour. We don't like them, though, so if your theory is better, please do let us know what it is.
If you don't have a better theory, please try to post informed criticism rather than inflammatory nonsense.
ZFS rules ducks?
It's cases like this, and that damn gun-toting panda that remind us of the need for proper use of punctuation. Though it's always puzzled me how people can write code all day long and then fail to use analogous typographical rules correctly in communication. Or maybe there's more "Hello ,Wrold!" code than I'm aware of.
Oh well. I, for one, welcome our new anatidaen overlords!
I am extremely offended by your signature. We are a nation of religious tolerance, first and foremost. Secondarily we can be said to be a Christian people, but there are significant minorities of other belief systems. One of the most important parts of having a constitutional republic (in general) and the separation of church and state clause (in specific) is to prevent such minorities from the 'tyranny of the majority'. We must not allow the erosion of rights for any segment of our population, else we can no longer consider ourselves citizens of a free country.
Do note that while there is mention of God in our currency etc., there is no mention of Christ--nor should there be. Also, the values that formed this country weren't terribly Christian: excellence in warfare and technology, the 'pioneer spirit', the 'manifest destiny' philosophy. If we owe anything to Christianity for our government and/or culture, we owe just as much to the ancient Greeks, and the thinkers of the Enlightenment. And if we consider the ultimate expression of Christian morality to be found in Matthew 22:34-40, then it's hard to believe that a nation with our history of racism, prejudice, and warfare to be at all Christian, no matter how strongly we might profess it. Indeed, most people claiming to be Christians here wouldn't know Christ's teachings if they bit them.
If you somehow feel that minority religions are wrong, please work to change that in some way that does not involve our government or legal system. If you want a theocracy, go to Iran.
We're not saying you're wrong. Well, I'm not. Everyone, though, agrees that it would be really nice if you turned out to be right. We're just a bit skeptical of any cold fusion claims at this point. Show us an actual working model and we'll applaud. Show us neutron tracks, and you'll pardon us if we don't rush to invest.
Reread your quote again. Your 'expert' isn't exactly singing praises. He, and we, are hopeful. You are jumping the gun.
Then you should be happy! Global warming will turn Nunavut into Nassau eventually. It's doing you a favor!
Myself, I am a proud member of AFGW: Alaskans for Global Warming. We couldn't wait for plate tectonics to bring California up here, so we're bringing the mountain to Muhammed. Drill, baby, drill!
Good example. You're calling for these online casinos to be legalized and regulated. Collusion is extremely easy to detect if you're running the game and can see all the cards. If you're worried about rigged games, you should audit the casino, and fine the hell out of anyone running a bad table.
By not collecting the winnings, they're attempting to fix the symptom and not the problem. It's disturbingly similar to the DEA's program to seize assets of those suspected of drug crimes. You know, the one that robs and kills people.
Mod parent up, +1 Funny.
Oh yes, I can clearly see how that's the same thing as the Aryan Brotherhood and the KKK. Their offices are like, right next to each other. Those of you with both Caucasian and Hispanic heritage can pick up a pamphlet from each booth!
Your doctor called, the x-rays show you're missing a sense of perspective and have an absurd inflammation of the spleen. For the former, he recommends you look up 'racism' in the dictionary, and for the latter, turn off Fox News.