I *despise* Sony nowadays and keep saying I'll never buy a PS3. FF13 would come close to swaying me to the dark side (providing FF12 gets exciting... I'm probably half-way through and it's failed to do so thus far), but I've been hoping, praying and begging for S.E. to bring it to another platform - fingers are suitably crossed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no angel (let he without sin blah blah) and have done my fair share of "borrowing" software myself.
But are we supposed to feel sorry for this guy or something? I mean it's one thing downloading Photoshop for your personal use (arguably strengthening the brand for when you're in a position to buy it at work etc), but actually making money and getting rich from ripping off other people's work... he acquired his wealth dishonestly, so surely he has no right to complain when he loses what he 'stole' in the first place.
A better business survival tip might be to, you know, earn it?
ufraw and rawstudio were a bit too simplistic for my tastes (have a go at the trial for Bibble - or better still Breezebrowser Pro if you have a Windows box - and you'll get an idea of what I mean)
kipi I haven't tried (not keen on KDE, personal choice)
Lightroom.... hehe, nothing like dreaming:) Adobe are wedded to Microsoft and Apple (bloody bigamists!) and so won't even remotely consider Linux out of political issues let alone market share.
I'm assuming you mean Lightzone. Yeah, it's not bad, I found it a little odd in places and some standard features (can't recall what) were missing. Definitely the best of the freebies though.
Sadly I doubt any of them will do the colour 'magic' that Canon SDK based software will do, such as how it somehow enhances the blue in the skies wiithout affecting the rest of the image. I'm not sure what Canon's licensing is like, but I suspect that'll be the cause of the issue - and therefore not technically the fault of the Linux crowd.
All is not lost though, I still run Ubuntu on a second system, it's just suitable for me to replace Windows. Yet.
Crossover does actually advertise WoW support, and had a free trial (whilst Transgaming doesn't, you buy it and take the risk) but I didn't get that far due to the photography issues.
I have a Powerbook, it's one of the last PPC models and pig slow. It's pretty, but it can't handle more than a few apps open without chugging to death (with 768MB) so it doesn't appeal to me for the image stuff. Now, when I'm rich I'll consider a Mac Pro and it'll be a different story:)
Gave Ubuntu a fair trial myself - bought Vista
on
30 Days With Ubuntu Linux
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I ask that instead of automatically going "OMG he went with Microsoft he must be stupid / evil / a troll / whatever" - you think seriously and constructively about the pros and cons of each platform and why the MS route was more suitable for me. And perhaps, how Linux can cater to my type in future.
I've been interested in Linux for a long time, but as yet I haven't found it suitable to be a *complete replacement* for Windows; and unfortunately because it's so inconvenient switching back and forth, I might as well use the platform which works for me. I find myself facing Compromises quite a lot with Linux, and this is fine for a secondary machine but not a primary one. The compromises are fully understandable - most of the software is written by unpaid volunteers in their small amounts of free time, there are patent/DMCA issues holding back certain areas and many hardware and software manufacturers simply refuse to develop for Linux. However the fact remains that there are still compromises to be made - and ones which I'm not willing to make when I can pay £67 and do everything and never have any compatibility problems, compromises or headaches.
I have a long log of my experience with Ubuntu somewhere, but basically it boils down to this:
- Installation itself was ridiculously easy - on par with Vista. It was after installation that things went downhill...
- It didn't recognise my 1Gb network port (Asus P5B) so I had to use the 100Mb one until I *recompiled the kernel with patches* (messy, and getting the bits together for compiling it was a bitch)
- I never got wireless networking going, it would see the access points and connect to them but not get any data through and signal quality read '0'. I knew what I was doing and it was clearly a bug. Even ndiswrapper with the win98 drivers didn't work. There were endless other people encountering exactly the same problem in the Ubuntu Forums (network section) but nobody coming up with working answers. I am not willing to accept "well you have a wire connection, use that" as an answer.
- I got bluetooth kind-of working, although it was flaky to say the least (to be fair, the same usually applies in Windows. I only know of Macs and other non-PCs that have decent, reliable bluetooth support)
- Getting something other than 60Hz on my monitor, required hacking xorg.conf manually... I can do this so it's not a problem, but really I shouldn't have had to. A flaw with Ubuntu rather than Linux itself (and a long standing flaw as I had the same problem with early versions) as other distros handle monitor detection and configuration perfectly.
- Getting things like java, flash, etc were a ballache, as ever, due to all the licensing/patent issues.
- World of Warcraft didn't work in WINE or Crossover when I tried it. I didn't get around to messing with it much, to be fair, but I expected the latter to work as it's advertised as one of their primary supported products.
- I'm a keen photographer, and photography in Linux is "pants", to say the least. The only decent, configurable RAW converter (not dcraw, which only does the basics) was the commercial Bibble, and even then - due to it not using Canon's SDK - it's not a patch on Breezebrowser Pro or Canon's own DPP in Windows when the results are put side by side. Photography was essentially the deal-killer with me: there are many things I'm willing to compromise on or 'live with' - but I am not willing to compromise on my photos, otherwise I wouldn't have bought a 30D.
- What with all the other bits of software and games for Windows which are not ported to Linux or supported in WINE, and the sheer amounts of time you *still* have to invest in getting anything out-of-the-ordinary working (not nice after a hard day at work when all you want to do is spend the few available hours having fun) I'm afraid I went with the horned devil. £67 (Home Premium OEM) seems like a very reasonable amount to pay after all the wrestling with Ubuntu:)
Some person: "Blah blah blah blah" Link:...... Another person: "Blah de blah de blah blah" Link: (gestures) Some person: "So you must blah de blah blah" Link: (nods) Another person: "What do you think about xyz?" Link: (shrugs)
I've seen people say that it's not enough exercise, that it's a sad state of society that it takes games to get people to move (whatever... society never is pretty), that one shouldn't use the Wii as a substitute for proper exercise etc etc.
But that's just it. First off, for many people any exercise is good exercise. Many people these days get *none* (other than walking to the fridge) so this is a major improvement.
Secondly - it's not about what exercise the Wii gives you. It's about getting you on track. Since getting mine I got the "fitness bug" and have been doing other exercise activities (such as a brisk walk at lunchtime) and eating far more healthily. I'm even tempted to try some of the sports in reality. All of that was inspired by the Wii, and whoever thought up this idea needs a medal.
Thirdly - even if you only count the Wii exercise, every little helps. It may not be much on its own, but when combined with using the stairs instead of the elevator on the way to work or whatever, parking further away and walking further, etc etc... it all adds up.
We use it on quite a few machines at work (in addition to a properly licensed MS Outlook, as nothing is quite up there yet) and people accept it readily. It does what everyone needs, and for free - perfect!
Ironically, where I used to work - a charitable organisation struggling for money - nobody would accept OpenOffice. "No no, it's got to be the Microsoft one, that's standard". But then this kind of money-wasting went on with lots of things... part of the reason I left. They're busy being threatened with liquidation by the charity commission as we speak...
Recently there was a manager of a local shop, he'd been shipped in from another part of the country to open a new store in the town where I work. Or I should say, used to work as I just moved onto another job myself.
On his own private MySpace, he described the town as a "shithole". Somehow (mostly because it's one of those towns where everyone knows everyone else offline and online) this myspace entry got passed around and eventually quoted in the local newspaper. He subsequently received death threats from residents, caused a massive public outcry and got sent back to his hometown to be "dealt with internally" (presumably, lost his job.) Even though these were his own personal opinions on his own personal MySpace, those were the consequences.
It wasn't just him hurt - the general public being as stupid as they always are, they chose to harass other employees from the same shop who had nothing to do with his views and didn't necessarily agree.
One could easily argue that said town *is* a shithole, especially given the retarded way that its residents responded to what was a personal opinion on a social networking site that had nothing to do with the person professionally or his company. But in case anyone traces me back too (extremely trivial, I've given my website) - no, I'm not saying that it is;)
The lesson? I don't know. I guess it would be - lifestyle choices, getting drunk etc really shouldn't be a major problem. Everyone acts stupidly now and again. But think extremely carefully before you openly slag off other people or places online because without the appropriate care it has a good chance of getting back to them and you will suffer the consequences. By all means call the town you work in a shithole, but for goodness sake do it using a screen name on a site where you can't easily be traced back to yourself as an individual. The more sensitive the comment, the more precautions you should put in place.
For the ultimate protection, never ever under any circumstances say anything that you don't want the entire world to hear and misinterpret. Now, that's practically impossible (I try to keep my personal website as close to that as possible though, and just a couple of weeks ago my interviewer commented on my weblog in the interview itself - I knew this was always likely due to the email address I use. It was positive. I got the job.) It's about weighing up the risks and whether you are prepared for the worst case scenario. If fragments of my previous paragraph got quoted (out of context) in the same paper, I'd be looking at similar problems - however given how late I am in posting a comment to this discussion, how few non-nerds bother to read Slashdot let alone the comments etc, I have made that calculated risk. In that worst case scenario, I'm ready to reply to the newspaper and point them to the full comment and make any necessary clarifications.
The bottom line is that it's all about judgement. You should think about how your comment can be taken by different people, what the consequences would be, what the likelihood of that comment being used against you actually *is* and either don't make the comment in the first place or take a *calculated* risk. Not just go spouting anything and everything on the most public site on the internet. Kids are not so good at making those judgements, but then nobody should be having a go at you later in life for something that you wrote when you were 13 anyway. I'm talking about adults here.
Whole thing was £16 (yeah, got to love the $ to £ conversion as usual) but this included postage and tools. From ipoddoctor.co.uk
Following the instructions on the video on the website, it took about 5 minutes to do the whole thing, and now I've gone from an almost-useless iPod to one that is good as new.
I'm setting up a computer recycling project at work - I'm still wondering if it's going to be workable in the long run due to all the legalities and associated costs.
* Need to register as a Waste Carrier (we got a note back saying we're exempt as a charity) * Register as a Hazardous Waste Producer, due to things like the lead in CRTs. Cost £18 (but for us, closer to £30 because we can't get a debit card and have to do it by snail mail + cheque) * Make sure that the donor is either a household, or a business which only throws away the equivalent of 6 computers per year - anything else and they have to register as a Hazardous Waste Producer and give us a premises code * Each time we take something away or pass it on to a waste management company, we have to do a waste transfer consignment note with details of the category of waste, weight of kilogrammes etc. This needs to be 100% spot on, and copies kept by all parties for 3 years. * Every quarter, we have to do a Consignee Return to the environment agency which costs £10 PER COLLECTION (or £19 for us, because we can't do it online) - this cost will add up very quickly. I'm working with the EA to see if there's any way around this as a charity, but initally they said it was per ITEM, which would be miles worse!
Considering there's so much pressure to reuse and recycle, they sure do put a lot of legal and financial hurdles in the way.
I'm the IT manager for a small charitable organisation (but in such a position that it needs someone like me)
If I tried to put Linux on the desktops, erm I'd probably be sacked.
There are sooo many little 'bits and pieces' we use in this organisation which simply wouldn't work in Linux. Funders often provide their own software, for example, that we are expected to use in order to capture data and return facts and figures. Sometimes it's written in Access, sometimes VB or something else - but 99 times out of 100 it's for Windows.
Just recently we had to roll out some health and safety training software for our young trainees who we get paid good money for. Interestingly it's mostly written in Shockwave which is available for Linux I believe, but it's all wrapped in a.exe file. Windows.
OpenOffice isn't quite there yet either - we did try it a few years ago (to be fair it'll have improved since), and aside from the staff saying "I'm not using this because I'm not used to it, put Office back on please" there were often so many little formatting/translation issues that didn't work properly when people took work home to their MS Office based computers.
Digital cameras are a big part of our work, for collecting training evidence. Unfortunately the departments were 'let loose' in buying their own digital cameras from those above me and so inevitably we ended up with a bunch that have a proprietary USB interface (as opposed to mass storage) and are not supported in Linux.
With the diversity of our projects, the project leaders just so often need a piece of custom software. Until Linux becomes more widely adopted, or WINE something resembling useful (sorry but it *still* doesn't run most of the software I throw at it) it is simply not viable. As much as we'd love to save the money, it turns out that the money is actually worth spending.
Unfortunately, although there is a religious crusade behind the basic existence of our charity, it's the one called Christianity - not the one called Linusanity:)
Whilst it's bad to feed trolls, I'd just like to add that I'm another who has required dust removing from the sensor. My Canon 30D had dust on it from the moment I bought it - now, technically speaking I could probably have returned it for another, but considering I change lenses from time to time, dust *will* get on there again eventually so I simply bought a rocket blower and -poof-, problem solved.
Dust on the sensor is very bad if ever the specks are up in the same area of the film as the sky on a bright day (for example). If it weren't for Photoshop, my first batch of photos - taken on a hike on a sunny day - would've been ruined with the 3 very visible and unsightly grey/black blobs that were on most of the shots. If it weren't for the rocket blower, I'd be cranking up Photoshop and editing out blobs all the time.
As to the effectiveness of the self-cleaning sensors - they're a new technology so only time will tell I guess.
Hehe you sure got jumped on from all directions for the "no-one takes them hiking" comment:) This is the one major occasion when I really want my 30D with me, too. P&S aren't anywhere near as good for getting detailed, bright and colourful landscape shots.
However I agree entirely with your basic reasoning - especially bars. When I'm out getting pissed with some mates, I'm not going to lug a DSLR around - if I'm drunk I'm all the more likely drop it, there's a greater likelihood of getting mugged for it, and there's the plain old social side too. Nobody wants to see someone pointing a big SLR camera around when everyone else is just larking around being drunk and sociable - you'd get mocked senseless.
It's often highly tempting to carry the DSLR around 24/7 no matter where and when, but it's just not always practical or socially acceptable. Anyone serious about photography is *not* going to be impressed by current phone cameras. So something pocketable like a digital Ixus is a great idea - in fact I also have a Powershot G2 as 3rd camera for a compromise - useful when I need the artistic modes that the Ixus and other small P&S cameras don't provide without the hugeness of the 30D.
So long as we get to keep the two we have in town. The last thing I want to do after 6 pints is trek all the way to the moon.
Sorry, couldn't resist...
The more the merrier in terms of getting people into space. The whole idea seems to have stagnated, and a bit of competition from other countries would go a *long* way to kicking off some sort of space race again. After all, the likes of Columbus didn't discover the new continents by dipping their toes in the water and then saying "well that was cool, but I can't be arsed now". If competition from other countries is what's needed to get the US's motivation back up again, so be it.
Despite David Chamelion's "being green" phase, the Tories - and people who act like them i.e. the Telegraph - have generally been known to be less than caring about silly leftie issues like the environment. They will manipulate all sorts of "facts" to try and encourage more in the way of industry and wealth and such.
I guess that's sort-of similar to how Illustrator works.
Why should they be separate? Because every other painting/photo tool in existance has them separate, therefore it's consistency (an important part of usability). Also they're two different functions as far as the non-programming mind thinks - however like many Linux-based creations it seems to be made By Programmers For Programmers with that usual sprinkle of programmer laziness:)
I understand completely. I'm really not fond of the GIMP's interface, Photoshop is so much easier to use and seems a lot more powerful (I couldn't even figure out how to draw a box in GIMP?)
Don't even get me started on the 3 days I spent getting what turned out to be a fairly half-finished interface running for converting RAW (CR2) files from Canon cameras. Linux is, basically, not for photography professionals.
I thought that was quite ironic too. Not only is SL only single threaded, it's *extremely slow* on dual core systems. If you go into the secondlife.exe service in the task manager and set the CPU affinity to just 1 core, the framerate rockets (it about triples on mine). Try it in windowed mode.
There's a lot of inevitable talk of how this is where Linux should take over on the desktop etc. And believe me, I do long for the day that it happens. Assuming the truth hasn't been bent somewhat by the biased reporting of Slashdot, this is an absolutely terrible move by Microsoft and one that will cause most entheusiasts to either pirate the OS or switch to the Mac or Linux.
But Linux (by 'Linux' I mean the people developing and promoting it too) has a lot of growing up to do if you expect it to take over on the desktop.
I've studied HCI and know the philosphies behind it and completely believe it. Most computer users are not geeks or politicians. They don't care how their software works. They don't care about the political reasoning behind whatever's inconveniencing them or stopping them from playing their DVD or whatever. They don't care that there are 5000 different distros with different versions of GTK+ and GLIBC and the developer of their app can't be expected to maintain packages for them all. They don't want to hear "you can't use x because its license is incompatible with y". They don't even want to hear "you can't use x because it's illegal", generally speaking. Heck, they don't even care about the "well, it's free, what do you damn well expect?!" argument (they'd sooner pay for something better). They just want to install a piece of software and have it running and working in the shortest possible space of time in the easiest way they can. Period. End of story. The rest of it is the developers' problem, not theirs.
IMO, until the Linux advocates finally understand this, Linux is not going to get far past its 3%-or-so share on the desktop.
What's more it's also a victim of its own diversity. When you think about it, it's not one OS with a 3% share. It's mostly 3 OSes (Mandrake, SuSE and Ubuntu) with just under a 1% share and a shedload of smaller ones (Fedora, Gentoo etc) with 0.01% shares. In a sense, Linux is competing against itself! It wouldn't be so bad if they were compatible, but because of differing desktop environments and library versions and whatnot they're like completely different OSes and have to be supported separately - a complete nightmare for developers.
I'm willing to bet that a large chunk of people would rather just turn a blind eye to the license agreement or even just out-and-out pirate it, rather than mess around with Linux as it currently stands. It's still not even easy to install software; okay, it's fanstastic when "apt-get foo" works. But what about when it's a non-mainstream piece of software that doesn't have a binary package for that distro? What about when someone did maintain a package at version 0.3, but now you need 1.2 in order to get your new camera working? Suddenly you're sunk, you either switch to a distro that has a recent version of it (possibly losing something else) or learn how to compile - either way, I refer you back to the HCI paragraph. It's just not acceptable.
Now, Ubuntu has hit the nail right on the head. They get the idea. They even seem to be marketing it as an OS in its own right, rather than just "another Linux". If it continues gaining ground and popularity the way it has been doing, there *is* hope, although it needs a bit more polish before I'd call it acceptable (e.g. if it misdetects the capabilities of your monitor, you still have to hack xorg.conf manually) but it's completely on the right track and the right philosophy.
If Google buy Ubuntu, and I think that's a reasonably likely scenario, I'd put money on it gaining an incredible desktop share. It'd give the Linux base some proper direction, and some real professional backing by someone who wants to see it succeed on the desktop, which is *exactly* what it needs.
Or you could keep Linux as an OS by geeks, for geeks. A lot of people would rather see that happen. In which case, Linux in general is on completely the right track:)
Slashdot Mirror
Knowing the way this country's going, the brain implants will be there to monitor your thoughts... once upon a time I might've even been kidding!
I *despise* Sony nowadays and keep saying I'll never buy a PS3. FF13 would come close to swaying me to the dark side (providing FF12 gets exciting... I'm probably half-way through and it's failed to do so thus far), but I've been hoping, praying and begging for S.E. to bring it to another platform - fingers are suitably crossed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no angel (let he without sin blah blah) and have done my fair share of "borrowing" software myself.
But are we supposed to feel sorry for this guy or something? I mean it's one thing downloading Photoshop for your personal use (arguably strengthening the brand for when you're in a position to buy it at work etc), but actually making money and getting rich from ripping off other people's work... he acquired his wealth dishonestly, so surely he has no right to complain when he loses what he 'stole' in the first place.
A better business survival tip might be to, you know, earn it?
Hmm, thanks for the suggestions.
:) Adobe are wedded to Microsoft and Apple (bloody bigamists!) and so won't even remotely consider Linux out of political issues let alone market share.
ufraw and rawstudio were a bit too simplistic for my tastes (have a go at the trial for Bibble - or better still Breezebrowser Pro if you have a Windows box - and you'll get an idea of what I mean)
kipi I haven't tried (not keen on KDE, personal choice)
Lightroom.... hehe, nothing like dreaming
I'm assuming you mean Lightzone. Yeah, it's not bad, I found it a little odd in places and some standard features (can't recall what) were missing. Definitely the best of the freebies though.
Sadly I doubt any of them will do the colour 'magic' that Canon SDK based software will do, such as how it somehow enhances the blue in the skies wiithout affecting the rest of the image. I'm not sure what Canon's licensing is like, but I suspect that'll be the cause of the issue - and therefore not technically the fault of the Linux crowd.
All is not lost though, I still run Ubuntu on a second system, it's just suitable for me to replace Windows. Yet.
Read the thread in context :o)
I was in no way trying to get WINE working on OSX/PPC. That would just be silly.
Yeah...
:)
Crossover does actually advertise WoW support, and had a free trial (whilst Transgaming doesn't, you buy it and take the risk) but I didn't get that far due to the photography issues.
I have a Powerbook, it's one of the last PPC models and pig slow. It's pretty, but it can't handle more than a few apps open without chugging to death (with 768MB) so it doesn't appeal to me for the image stuff. Now, when I'm rich I'll consider a Mac Pro and it'll be a different story
I ask that instead of automatically going "OMG he went with Microsoft he must be stupid / evil / a troll / whatever" - you think seriously and constructively about the pros and cons of each platform and why the MS route was more suitable for me. And perhaps, how Linux can cater to my type in future.
:)
I've been interested in Linux for a long time, but as yet I haven't found it suitable to be a *complete replacement* for Windows; and unfortunately because it's so inconvenient switching back and forth, I might as well use the platform which works for me. I find myself facing Compromises quite a lot with Linux, and this is fine for a secondary machine but not a primary one. The compromises are fully understandable - most of the software is written by unpaid volunteers in their small amounts of free time, there are patent/DMCA issues holding back certain areas and many hardware and software manufacturers simply refuse to develop for Linux. However the fact remains that there are still compromises to be made - and ones which I'm not willing to make when I can pay £67 and do everything and never have any compatibility problems, compromises or headaches.
I have a long log of my experience with Ubuntu somewhere, but basically it boils down to this:
- Installation itself was ridiculously easy - on par with Vista. It was after installation that things went downhill...
- It didn't recognise my 1Gb network port (Asus P5B) so I had to use the 100Mb one until I *recompiled the kernel with patches* (messy, and getting the bits together for compiling it was a bitch)
- I never got wireless networking going, it would see the access points and connect to them but not get any data through and signal quality read '0'. I knew what I was doing and it was clearly a bug. Even ndiswrapper with the win98 drivers didn't work. There were endless other people encountering exactly the same problem in the Ubuntu Forums (network section) but nobody coming up with working answers. I am not willing to accept "well you have a wire connection, use that" as an answer.
- I got bluetooth kind-of working, although it was flaky to say the least (to be fair, the same usually applies in Windows. I only know of Macs and other non-PCs that have decent, reliable bluetooth support)
- Getting something other than 60Hz on my monitor, required hacking xorg.conf manually... I can do this so it's not a problem, but really I shouldn't have had to. A flaw with Ubuntu rather than Linux itself (and a long standing flaw as I had the same problem with early versions) as other distros handle monitor detection and configuration perfectly.
- Getting things like java, flash, etc were a ballache, as ever, due to all the licensing/patent issues.
- World of Warcraft didn't work in WINE or Crossover when I tried it. I didn't get around to messing with it much, to be fair, but I expected the latter to work as it's advertised as one of their primary supported products.
- I'm a keen photographer, and photography in Linux is "pants", to say the least. The only decent, configurable RAW converter (not dcraw, which only does the basics) was the commercial Bibble, and even then - due to it not using Canon's SDK - it's not a patch on Breezebrowser Pro or Canon's own DPP in Windows when the results are put side by side. Photography was essentially the deal-killer with me: there are many things I'm willing to compromise on or 'live with' - but I am not willing to compromise on my photos, otherwise I wouldn't have bought a 30D.
- What with all the other bits of software and games for Windows which are not ported to Linux or supported in WINE, and the sheer amounts of time you *still* have to invest in getting anything out-of-the-ordinary working (not nice after a hard day at work when all you want to do is spend the few available hours having fun) I'm afraid I went with the horned devil. £67 (Home Premium OEM) seems like a very reasonable amount to pay after all the wrestling with Ubuntu
Some person: "Blah blah blah blah" ......
Link:
Another person: "Blah de blah de blah blah"
Link: (gestures)
Some person: "So you must blah de blah blah"
Link: (nods)
Another person: "What do you think about xyz?"
Link: (shrugs)
etc
I've seen people say that it's not enough exercise,
that it's a sad state of society that it takes games to get people to move (whatever... society never is pretty),
that one shouldn't use the Wii as a substitute for proper exercise
etc etc.
But that's just it. First off, for many people any exercise is good exercise. Many people these days get *none* (other than walking to the fridge) so this is a major improvement.
Secondly - it's not about what exercise the Wii gives you. It's about getting you on track. Since getting mine I got the "fitness bug" and have been doing other exercise activities (such as a brisk walk at lunchtime) and eating far more healthily. I'm even tempted to try some of the sports in reality. All of that was inspired by the Wii, and whoever thought up this idea needs a medal.
Thirdly - even if you only count the Wii exercise, every little helps. It may not be much on its own, but when combined with using the stairs instead of the elevator on the way to work or whatever, parking further away and walking further, etc etc... it all adds up.
We use it on quite a few machines at work (in addition to a properly licensed MS Outlook, as nothing is quite up there yet) and people accept it readily. It does what everyone needs, and for free - perfect!
Ironically, where I used to work - a charitable organisation struggling for money - nobody would accept OpenOffice. "No no, it's got to be the Microsoft one, that's standard". But then this kind of money-wasting went on with lots of things... part of the reason I left. They're busy being threatened with liquidation by the charity commission as we speak...
Recently there was a manager of a local shop, he'd been shipped in from another part of the country to open a new store in the town where I work. Or I should say, used to work as I just moved onto another job myself.
;)
On his own private MySpace, he described the town as a "shithole". Somehow (mostly because it's one of those towns where everyone knows everyone else offline and online) this myspace entry got passed around and eventually quoted in the local newspaper. He subsequently received death threats from residents, caused a massive public outcry and got sent back to his hometown to be "dealt with internally" (presumably, lost his job.) Even though these were his own personal opinions on his own personal MySpace, those were the consequences.
It wasn't just him hurt - the general public being as stupid as they always are, they chose to harass other employees from the same shop who had nothing to do with his views and didn't necessarily agree.
One could easily argue that said town *is* a shithole, especially given the retarded way that its residents responded to what was a personal opinion on a social networking site that had nothing to do with the person professionally or his company. But in case anyone traces me back too (extremely trivial, I've given my website) - no, I'm not saying that it is
The lesson? I don't know. I guess it would be - lifestyle choices, getting drunk etc really shouldn't be a major problem. Everyone acts stupidly now and again. But think extremely carefully before you openly slag off other people or places online because without the appropriate care it has a good chance of getting back to them and you will suffer the consequences. By all means call the town you work in a shithole, but for goodness sake do it using a screen name on a site where you can't easily be traced back to yourself as an individual. The more sensitive the comment, the more precautions you should put in place.
For the ultimate protection, never ever under any circumstances say anything that you don't want the entire world to hear and misinterpret. Now, that's practically impossible (I try to keep my personal website as close to that as possible though, and just a couple of weeks ago my interviewer commented on my weblog in the interview itself - I knew this was always likely due to the email address I use. It was positive. I got the job.) It's about weighing up the risks and whether you are prepared for the worst case scenario. If fragments of my previous paragraph got quoted (out of context) in the same paper, I'd be looking at similar problems - however given how late I am in posting a comment to this discussion, how few non-nerds bother to read Slashdot let alone the comments etc, I have made that calculated risk. In that worst case scenario, I'm ready to reply to the newspaper and point them to the full comment and make any necessary clarifications.
The bottom line is that it's all about judgement. You should think about how your comment can be taken by different people, what the consequences would be, what the likelihood of that comment being used against you actually *is* and either don't make the comment in the first place or take a *calculated* risk. Not just go spouting anything and everything on the most public site on the internet. Kids are not so good at making those judgements, but then nobody should be having a go at you later in life for something that you wrote when you were 13 anyway. I'm talking about adults here.
I just did one today on my 3rd gen.
Whole thing was £16 (yeah, got to love the $ to £ conversion as usual) but this included postage and tools. From ipoddoctor.co.uk
Following the instructions on the video on the website, it took about 5 minutes to do the whole thing, and now I've gone from an almost-useless iPod to one that is good as new.
At least in the UK.
I'm setting up a computer recycling project at work - I'm still wondering if it's going to be workable in the long run due to all the legalities and associated costs.
* Need to register as a Waste Carrier (we got a note back saying we're exempt as a charity)
* Register as a Hazardous Waste Producer, due to things like the lead in CRTs. Cost £18 (but for us, closer to £30 because we can't get a debit card and have to do it by snail mail + cheque)
* Make sure that the donor is either a household, or a business which only throws away the equivalent of 6 computers per year - anything else and they have to register as a Hazardous Waste Producer and give us a premises code
* Each time we take something away or pass it on to a waste management company, we have to do a waste transfer consignment note with details of the category of waste, weight of kilogrammes etc. This needs to be 100% spot on, and copies kept by all parties for 3 years.
* Every quarter, we have to do a Consignee Return to the environment agency which costs £10 PER COLLECTION (or £19 for us, because we can't do it online) - this cost will add up very quickly. I'm working with the EA to see if there's any way around this as a charity, but initally they said it was per ITEM, which would be miles worse!
Considering there's so much pressure to reuse and recycle, they sure do put a lot of legal and financial hurdles in the way.
I'm the IT manager for a small charitable organisation (but in such a position that it needs someone like me)
.exe file. Windows.
:)
If I tried to put Linux on the desktops, erm I'd probably be sacked.
There are sooo many little 'bits and pieces' we use in this organisation which simply wouldn't work in Linux. Funders often provide their own software, for example, that we are expected to use in order to capture data and return facts and figures. Sometimes it's written in Access, sometimes VB or something else - but 99 times out of 100 it's for Windows.
Just recently we had to roll out some health and safety training software for our young trainees who we get paid good money for. Interestingly it's mostly written in Shockwave which is available for Linux I believe, but it's all wrapped in a
OpenOffice isn't quite there yet either - we did try it a few years ago (to be fair it'll have improved since), and aside from the staff saying "I'm not using this because I'm not used to it, put Office back on please" there were often so many little formatting/translation issues that didn't work properly when people took work home to their MS Office based computers.
Digital cameras are a big part of our work, for collecting training evidence. Unfortunately the departments were 'let loose' in buying their own digital cameras from those above me and so inevitably we ended up with a bunch that have a proprietary USB interface (as opposed to mass storage) and are not supported in Linux.
With the diversity of our projects, the project leaders just so often need a piece of custom software. Until Linux becomes more widely adopted, or WINE something resembling useful (sorry but it *still* doesn't run most of the software I throw at it) it is simply not viable. As much as we'd love to save the money, it turns out that the money is actually worth spending.
Unfortunately, although there is a religious crusade behind the basic existence of our charity, it's the one called Christianity - not the one called Linusanity
Whilst it's bad to feed trolls, I'd just like to add that I'm another who has required dust removing from the sensor. My Canon 30D had dust on it from the moment I bought it - now, technically speaking I could probably have returned it for another, but considering I change lenses from time to time, dust *will* get on there again eventually so I simply bought a rocket blower and -poof-, problem solved.
Dust on the sensor is very bad if ever the specks are up in the same area of the film as the sky on a bright day (for example). If it weren't for Photoshop, my first batch of photos - taken on a hike on a sunny day - would've been ruined with the 3 very visible and unsightly grey/black blobs that were on most of the shots. If it weren't for the rocket blower, I'd be cranking up Photoshop and editing out blobs all the time.
As to the effectiveness of the self-cleaning sensors - they're a new technology so only time will tell I guess.
Hehe you sure got jumped on from all directions for the "no-one takes them hiking" comment :) This is the one major occasion when I really want my 30D with me, too. P&S aren't anywhere near as good for getting detailed, bright and colourful landscape shots.
However I agree entirely with your basic reasoning - especially bars. When I'm out getting pissed with some mates, I'm not going to lug a DSLR around - if I'm drunk I'm all the more likely drop it, there's a greater likelihood of getting mugged for it, and there's the plain old social side too. Nobody wants to see someone pointing a big SLR camera around when everyone else is just larking around being drunk and sociable - you'd get mocked senseless.
It's often highly tempting to carry the DSLR around 24/7 no matter where and when, but it's just not always practical or socially acceptable. Anyone serious about photography is *not* going to be impressed by current phone cameras. So something pocketable like a digital Ixus is a great idea - in fact I also have a Powershot G2 as 3rd camera for a compromise - useful when I need the artistic modes that the Ixus and other small P&S cameras don't provide without the hugeness of the 30D.
So long as we get to keep the two we have in town. The last thing I want to do after 6 pints is trek all the way to the moon.
Sorry, couldn't resist...
The more the merrier in terms of getting people into space. The whole idea seems to have stagnated, and a bit of competition from other countries would go a *long* way to kicking off some sort of space race again. After all, the likes of Columbus didn't discover the new continents by dipping their toes in the water and then saying "well that was cool, but I can't be arsed now". If competition from other countries is what's needed to get the US's motivation back up again, so be it.
Despite David Chamelion's "being green" phase, the Tories - and people who act like them i.e. the Telegraph - have generally been known to be less than caring about silly leftie issues like the environment. They will manipulate all sorts of "facts" to try and encourage more in the way of industry and wealth and such.
I guess that's sort-of similar to how Illustrator works.
:)
Why should they be separate? Because every other painting/photo tool in existance has them separate, therefore it's consistency (an important part of usability). Also they're two different functions as far as the non-programming mind thinks - however like many Linux-based creations it seems to be made By Programmers For Programmers with that usual sprinkle of programmer laziness
I understand completely. I'm really not fond of the GIMP's interface, Photoshop is so much easier to use and seems a lot more powerful (I couldn't even figure out how to draw a box in GIMP?)
Don't even get me started on the 3 days I spent getting what turned out to be a fairly half-finished interface running for converting RAW (CR2) files from Canon cameras. Linux is, basically, not for photography professionals.
Those who understand binary and those who don't.
:P
:)
*ahem*
Anyway, aren't there already 2... males and females... might as well be completely different species sometimes
Or, to take the controversial line, perhaps the two will be natives and immigrants
I thought that was quite ironic too. Not only is SL only single threaded, it's *extremely slow* on dual core systems. If you go into the secondlife.exe service in the task manager and set the CPU affinity to just 1 core, the framerate rockets (it about triples on mine). Try it in windowed mode.
Del Dayton
There's a lot of inevitable talk of how this is where Linux should take over on the desktop etc. And believe me, I do long for the day that it happens. Assuming the truth hasn't been bent somewhat by the biased reporting of Slashdot, this is an absolutely terrible move by Microsoft and one that will cause most entheusiasts to either pirate the OS or switch to the Mac or Linux.
:)
But Linux (by 'Linux' I mean the people developing and promoting it too) has a lot of growing up to do if you expect it to take over on the desktop.
I've studied HCI and know the philosphies behind it and completely believe it. Most computer users are not geeks or politicians. They don't care how their software works. They don't care about the political reasoning behind whatever's inconveniencing them or stopping them from playing their DVD or whatever. They don't care that there are 5000 different distros with different versions of GTK+ and GLIBC and the developer of their app can't be expected to maintain packages for them all. They don't want to hear "you can't use x because its license is incompatible with y". They don't even want to hear "you can't use x because it's illegal", generally speaking. Heck, they don't even care about the "well, it's free, what do you damn well expect?!" argument (they'd sooner pay for something better). They just want to install a piece of software and have it running and working in the shortest possible space of time in the easiest way they can. Period. End of story. The rest of it is the developers' problem, not theirs.
IMO, until the Linux advocates finally understand this, Linux is not going to get far past its 3%-or-so share on the desktop.
What's more it's also a victim of its own diversity. When you think about it, it's not one OS with a 3% share. It's mostly 3 OSes (Mandrake, SuSE and Ubuntu) with just under a 1% share and a shedload of smaller ones (Fedora, Gentoo etc) with 0.01% shares. In a sense, Linux is competing against itself! It wouldn't be so bad if they were compatible, but because of differing desktop environments and library versions and whatnot they're like completely different OSes and have to be supported separately - a complete nightmare for developers.
I'm willing to bet that a large chunk of people would rather just turn a blind eye to the license agreement or even just out-and-out pirate it, rather than mess around with Linux as it currently stands. It's still not even easy to install software; okay, it's fanstastic when "apt-get foo" works. But what about when it's a non-mainstream piece of software that doesn't have a binary package for that distro? What about when someone did maintain a package at version 0.3, but now you need 1.2 in order to get your new camera working? Suddenly you're sunk, you either switch to a distro that has a recent version of it (possibly losing something else) or learn how to compile - either way, I refer you back to the HCI paragraph. It's just not acceptable.
Now, Ubuntu has hit the nail right on the head. They get the idea. They even seem to be marketing it as an OS in its own right, rather than just "another Linux". If it continues gaining ground and popularity the way it has been doing, there *is* hope, although it needs a bit more polish before I'd call it acceptable (e.g. if it misdetects the capabilities of your monitor, you still have to hack xorg.conf manually) but it's completely on the right track and the right philosophy.
If Google buy Ubuntu, and I think that's a reasonably likely scenario, I'd put money on it gaining an incredible desktop share. It'd give the Linux base some proper direction, and some real professional backing by someone who wants to see it succeed on the desktop, which is *exactly* what it needs.
Or you could keep Linux as an OS by geeks, for geeks. A lot of people would rather see that happen. In which case, Linux in general is on completely the right track
Rather than an alert, keep it silent and fit the Blackberry device with a Sony battery. Trigger a little "accident"
Only, it might be a good idea to remember to turn it off...
Which decade do we get to see it, and on what channel?