I have no doubt that VMWare is a good product but the UI is terrible, and performance can be a bit iffy. On the other hand I've had nothing but a good experience with VirtualBox. Performance is excellent and the UI is nice and friendly too. I'm sure I might think different if I were some admin with a whole bank of these to run and other requirements, but for personal use VirtualBox has been far better than VMWare.
It's too bad that no VM tool seems to support OS X as a guest. I'm sure it must be possible.
Every user has their own particular browsing habits - the terms they search for, the sites they favour, the number of results they browse through, the time between searches, the hours of the day they search, the frequency of performing the same searches, other places on google they visit. I'm sure even in the absence of a tracking cookie that in many cases, especially households that google could distinguish between particular users emanating from one IP. Maybe not for large companies but for 3 or 4 users. Even if you wiped your cookies between sessions your behaviour might be sufficiently unique that google could reinstate the same tracking cookie with a measure of confidence.
Therefore it isn't safe to assume that just because one browser is in privacy mode and the other isn't that Google has no way of associating those two windows. Furthermore, these browsers could inadvertently expose themselves as running from the same account. For example Flash player stores shared objects (glorified cookies) in just one place no matter what browser you ran it through. If you loaded the same domain in two browsers it may be possible for the flash app running on that domain to link both browsers together. Google doesn't use a huge amount of flash controls but it has some (e.g. in the financials) that would certainly allow them to do this if they were feeling particularly evil. It doesn't have to be a Google domain either of course since lots of sites run Google originated advertising.
You'd probably have to use two computers (or a VM) with one browser running Tor and preferably all plugins disabled to remove all chance of browsing behaviour from being associated.
Now if only textbooks came as e-books, then this whole tech would be un necessary.
Not if the the books are DRM'd or locked to one device. Or as long as there are freeloaders prepared to avoid paying for the material.
In a few years we'll be hearing about people who've hooked up their Kindle DXs / Sony Readers up to a flatbed scanner so that they can automatically scan content straight off the device and OCR it. It should be pretty trivial to do too - just pop the page turn buttons and wire them up to some kind of computer controlled switch instead. Scan turn page, scan, turn page, scan etc. Could probably do most books in under 40 minutes with no user interaction.
That's ridiculous. What's Microsoft's presence in the netbook space? Is it Vista? Is it Win7, the much-ballyhooed "Linux netbook killer?"
Currently its XP which is doing just fine clawing back market share from Linux, and soon it will be Windows 7 starter. There is nothing ridiculous about it, it's a reality. What is notable about both offerings is that they run fine on netbooks, provide a familiar experience and also work great with 3G modems and other attachments that people are likely to attach to them. Microsoft badly screwed up with Vista's system requirements but even using XP as a stopgap proved to be sufficient to stop Linux making further inroads.
I know from bitter experience the sort of obstacles Linux throws up that don't even occur on Windows. I started with an EeePC 701 running Asus' homebrew Linux. The support was terrible, no doubt caused by using unionfs on the ssd - every patch actually gobbled up user storage space. So I reinstalled with Ubuntu. The first couple of iterations didn't even support the netbook's hardware but eventually I got a basic working netbook. The pain didn't stop since I bought a 3G modem which worked fine on Windows. Did it work fine on Linux? Of course not since the kernel didn't even support usb modems, or usb devices that switch modes. So I spent hours rebuilding the kernel to include usbserial, and crafting scripts to flip the modem into modem mode, invoke wvdial etc. I had basic working network connectivity even if it meant dropping to a shell to get stuff running. Finally Ubuntu caught up with 3G so now I can use the network tool. This is a major advance but it's still very flakey, lacking signal strength info and dropping connections WAY more than Windows. So 2 years after buying my 701, one of the best dists is barely at parity with what Windows could have done out of the box.
You know how hard it is to get a 3G modem working on Windows? Plug it in, run the installer and you have 3G networking. That "stale crap" makes using hardware a fairly painless exercise and represents the level of simplicity that Linux needs too.
As for Ubuntu & Plasma, we'll see when we actually start seeing netbooks that actually ship with them. I have lot more faith in Ubuntu providing a netbook suitable experience than KDE. Ubuntu (and GNOME) has a proven track record of putting usability front and center even if it comes up short supporting drivers. KDE has never gotten usability, not even in 4.x which is a dogs dinner of simple & advanced menus, toolbars & settings all mixed together. I have no faith that slapping some netbook skin on top will materially change things.
Basically, they all said it was shit. They didn't like how they couldn't play their existing games or use their existing apps, for instance.
I doubt many netbooks let you play any games on them for one reason or another (crappy resolution / CPU / memory etc.) so I don't see that as a valid objection. What is a valid objection is that Linux distributions tend in general to be incredibly poor from a usability perspective compared to commercial offerings. Even the best of them (which is Ubuntu) still has flaws to catch out the unwary. Chrome OS had better polish the experience to a shine or it will suffer by comparison with Windows or OS X.
If I were developing a multimedia box, or an essentially closed system (e.g. a satnav), what possible reason have I got for using exFAT? The reality is I could just shove ext2 or any other random fs on my device and it doesn't matter.
And if its a device that plugs into a PC, why not use MTP? After all, MTP is fairly decent these days and it means that USB stick, or media player or whatever you plug into your computer (of any kind), can implement any fs its little heart desires. It doesn't matter because it is under the covers. If the device wanted it could even store files with FAT32, using MTP to break them up into chunks as they were read or written.
Perhaps MTP is too much for some simpler devices. It isn't beyond the bounds of reason to envisage a simple standard for multi-part files, (e.g. a manifest + file chunks) that would allow large files to be copied to and from even FAT32 devices. Linux could even take the lead here by implementing that support in its FAT32 device driver. i.e, that if you copy a > 4Gb file to a FAT32 partition, that it is physically split up into chunks but appears as a single file to the caller.
The problem there is that ext2 is as associated with Linux as FAT32 is with Windows. But it doesn't enjoy the ubiquity of FAT32 and probably never will. Even though ext2 drivers do exist for Windows, who is going to bother installing them to read large content from a flash drive?
The best chance ext2 / ext3 / ext4 or any other fs has for multimedia storage is when the user doesn't even know or care what file system is being used. I wouldn't give a damn what fs a NAS / streaming devices is using so long as it works and is reliable. I'm sure that exFAT would be largely redundant if someone defined a simple, clearcut way to break up large files into 4Gb chunks for easy transfer over FAT32.
It's probably going to suffer the same fate as DivX.... at least, I hope.
DivX is an implementation of the MPEG 4 Part 2 ASP video codec (with some proprietary extensions). DIVX was a hated DVD based rental format which died a quick and well deserved death.
Anyway I think that people who buy into a proprietary format for media they wish to keep need their heads examined. Purchasing content for a device that is tied to one store or one manufacturer is incredibly short sighted. It doesn't really matter for rental / streaming content, or content that only plays on one kind of device (e.g. computer software, games), but movies, music and books absolutely need an industry wide file format.
E-books are a case study in how to turn a potentially lucrative medium into a shitscape of warring factions fighting over scraps because most consumers are too scared, confused or smart to favour one proprietary format over another. The sad part is this has been obvious for years and years, yet the likes of Amazon and now these bozos are perpetuating it.
Thunderbird 2 had a fairly useful quick search bar. Type a word, hit enter, and your email list was filtered for just the search term. The list could be multi-selected, moved around and general managed in a normal fashion. The feature was handy for bulk operations since it was fast.
Thunderbird 3 still has the search bar but results appear in a new tab. This tab does not show results as a list but in a fancy HTML based summary view. That's great if you were searching for a particular message but utterly useless for bulk operations. What if I want to drag and drop a few files around, or delete them or flag them as junk? Even as a summary view it is stupid since it only shows 10 results at a time with a More button at the bottom. FFS, stop mimicking an AJAX web application - the results are RIGHT THERE on the disk and you can certainly show more than 10 results at a time.
The workaround is to create a saved search but that's even more hassle for something that could be achieved in seconds in v2.0. So much for progress. I suggest if Thunderbird 3.1 turns up, they put an option or two in to control this behaviour and remember what the user has chosen. There is even a "save search as virtual folder" option in the quick search menu suggesting someone was thinking of doing something like this, it just appears to be inexplicably greyed out.
Thunderbird 3 has potential but it really feels like a regression in several important respects. It also inexplicably lacks things I would have expected to be improved. For example, you still can't select an email, and right mouse and create a filter from it. This is something that Outlook has had for donkey's years.
Phil Jones is in the UK, he is subject to UK Freedom of Information Act which states that failure to comply with a request can be treated the same as contempt of court. Criminal contempt (and there are other lesser kinds) usually sees a maximum sentence of 1 month in jail or £2500 fine in a lower court. That's after someone files a FOI request, and after a public body fails to comply with a notice, and a complaint has been made and the public body has been proven to have made a false or reckless statement. In this case Jones appears to have not received a FOI request when he suggested people delete emails, so it's not like he is in contempt of anything. And even if he were charged, and found in contempt it's likely he'd get a fine or a slap on the wrist. More likely again that it would be the UEA that would get the fine / slap on the wrist and Jones would be looking for a new job. That's assuming anything at all will happen. The guy will probably get stuck on administrative leave while an internal review is conducted and then things will return to relative normality with or without him back as director.
You hope it happens why? I see no evidence of it being a cover-up, or a conspiracy. Just some scientist fed up with being pestered for foi requests, especially when they were made by someone using that data to undermine and publicly discrediting the person & establishment they were requested from.
While it may be unacceptable in some regards, it is quite understandable from a human standpoint. It certainly does not extrapolate into some vast conspiracy that many AGW bloggers would believe. Even if he were prosecuted for contempt (which is the charge that failure to comply with a request entails), harm would have to be proven, intent would have to be proven and the outcome of that that is likely to be a fine. At most.
How hard is it to just release a totally OSS version of your OS with all applications and stuff there and let people modify it and put it on your phone? I really don't see the point of trying to complicate things by closing the OSS. Release everything for free and you can take a lot more free code and not having to worry about paying lots of money when you are caught.
I'm sure some OS makers would be delighted to do that but some such as Apple and of course the mobile networks who are not. A network doesn't make any money if you unlock / jailbreak your phone.
For example - deleting emails: Deleting emails is not unethical or criminal, but if you delete them pursuant to FOIA requests, or anticipation of such, then it is.
I think this email states fairly clearly what the situation was as far as the uni was concerned. The requests were a pain in the ass and the scientists had escalated the issue uni higher ups to seek advice. They also opine on how much effort it is to deal requests and how one request is going to open the floodgates for more and more. It's fairly understandable why they don't like them, and certainly not any where close to the "scientists deleted files in FOI cover-up" guff going around the AGW blogs.
I suggest you visit a few AGW blog sites which have covered the story and it snowballed from there. They cherry picked a few quotes without supplying any context whatsoever, all to imply it to be a con. It's quote mining pure and simple. It's no different that creationists quotemining isolated sentences from Darwin without providing any context at all to the remarks.
When you have gigabytes of private correspondence to sift through of course you can cherry pick / quote mine something to make it look like a conspiracy. That is all some anti-global warmer bloggers have done. They have engaged in the same sort of quotemining that creationists like to go in for which says a lot about the strength of their arguments.
Most emulators can upscale, even if that just means rescaling the buffer to fill the current window / screen resolution. The more sophisticated ones can also translate vector / 3D draw instructions. For example if the emulated device thinks its drawing a triangle into a 640x480 buffer, the emulator could draw the corresponding rescaled triangle into a 1280x960 buffer. And the same for other primitives such as lines, triangle fans etc., and any texturing. It means smoother edges on polys although there might be issues with seams.
I believe that any Wii HD could pull off a similar trick if it wished, and probably should. Depends on what the "Wii HD" is of course. If its a Wii with an HDMI port, I expect it will just upscale the entire buffer which would be a pretty shitty trick to pull on consumers. If its a genuine hardware bump with proper BC, then it could do what emulators do.
Despite his intentions, the fact is if someone installs an unauthorised application on 2000 PCs, one which consumes 100% CPU when it feels like it, that person IS causing harm to the school district. At the very least they are jacking up power bills because PCs are running full blast more ofte but also support calls as people complain their machine is locked, slow or otherwise less responsive than it should be.
I think he should have gotten permission. He could have argued that BOINC (not just S@H) can do real science and promote visibility of the district. And if the answer was no he should have left it at that.
Exactly. Creating documentation for mainstream users is completely pointless. I personally think Ubuntuforums has great docs. I can just copy paste what they tell me, and voila, i have fakeraid setup, or whatever else is hard to install.
The easiest way to reduce the need for documentation is to make the UI as accessible, user friendly, forgiving, helpful and task centric as possible. People only seek out help when the OS doesn't appear to do what they want.
Usability has always been the Achilles heel of Linux. Dists have traditionally ignored it completely and only in the last few years has it gained any serious traction. Ubuntu has been the recent pathfinder for usability but even that dist has plenty of rough edges to catch out the unwary.
Wow that is some rant. In case you hadn't noticed, I was responding to someone who thought 2010 would be the year of Linux on the desktop and my thoughts on the only way that is likely to happen. Stating my opinion has clearly offended you, for which I am sorry. For you.
Yes Linux could be an alternative to Windows with "less hassle". After all OS X is built over BSD and is arguably a simpler OS than Windows despite its underlying architecture. All it takes is the motivation and the recognition that making the OS accessible, and usable by more people is a good thing for the platform, and for people who make a living from Linux. BTW I make my living from Linux so I believe I have a stake in wanting it to be better. The likes of Ubuntu have made great strides in this department but even the latest version doesn't hold a candle to Windows 7. It doesn't stop people such as yourself self-flagellating on some older dist if you want.
The traditional problem for Linux, which you are clearly a part of, is that any criticism is perceived as an attack. How dare I criticize your beloved Linux! So please, go back to FC4 and enjoy yourself. Or simmer that anyone dare have a different opinion of Linux from yourself.
When people get fed up with crippled "home" versions and paying more for "ultimate" versions, Linux will surely take off. If Microsoft is unwilling to provide all the features in one simple install, 2010 will be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
Sorry to burst your bubble but Windows 7 works and it works so well that virtually NO ONE is going to switch to Linux. Perhaps a computer literate person might if they're more interested in tinkering with their PC than using their PC to get stuff done but that is a minority. Your average consumer wants something that works out of the box and Windows 7 works out of the box. They are very unlikely to install another OS, especially one which really doesn't offer much that their current one can't do.
In fact the only way I see 2010 being the "year of Linux" is if Google persuades the likes of Lenovo, Dell, Toshiba etc. to install Chrome OS on their budget netbooks/laptops instead of Windows. Even then, I don't know how successful this proposition would be unless Google splits its ad revenues with manufacturers. The manufacturers would have to make more from Google than they lose in sales from installing Windows 7 and from not installing paid crapware like Norton 30 day trials.
Personally I think Linux has blown it on the desktop. Ubuntu got closest to a workable desktop, and the Vista PR nightmare was the perfect time to steal Window's thunder but it never happened. Linux looked like it was making progress on netbooks but its lost virtually all of its traction there too. Now Windows 7 is here, the reasons for switching to Linux look pretty weak.
"Copying of any Nintendo game is illegal and is strictly prohibited by domestic and international intellectual property laws. "Back-up" or "archival" copies are not authorized and are not necessary to protect your software. Violators will be prosecuted."
Unless Nintendo offer replacement carts in absolutely all circumstances (even today), it is hard to see how they could justify "not necessary".
Actually I play games through the PC and PS3. While the Wii is blighted by shovelware, the reality is that every platform has a large percentage of mediocre / bad games, a smaller band of decent games and a smaller again band of stand-out titles.
Every time someone preorders a title, they are basically gambling with their money when a few days would tell one way or another what the consensus is. That could be critical consensus as well as what fans of the genre thought of it.
There is a reason for that. It's a lot of hard work and cost bringing a product to market and generally, the real dogs are killed long before they hit the shelves.
That or the games are shovelware. The publisher knows they are crap and sees no reason to send review copies out when they'd earn an abysmal score for their troubles. Better to just push it out there and hope that grannies and five year olds will be fooled into buying it.
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It's too bad that no VM tool seems to support OS X as a guest. I'm sure it must be possible.
Therefore it isn't safe to assume that just because one browser is in privacy mode and the other isn't that Google has no way of associating those two windows. Furthermore, these browsers could inadvertently expose themselves as running from the same account. For example Flash player stores shared objects (glorified cookies) in just one place no matter what browser you ran it through. If you loaded the same domain in two browsers it may be possible for the flash app running on that domain to link both browsers together. Google doesn't use a huge amount of flash controls but it has some (e.g. in the financials) that would certainly allow them to do this if they were feeling particularly evil. It doesn't have to be a Google domain either of course since lots of sites run Google originated advertising.
You'd probably have to use two computers (or a VM) with one browser running Tor and preferably all plugins disabled to remove all chance of browsing behaviour from being associated.
Not if the the books are DRM'd or locked to one device. Or as long as there are freeloaders prepared to avoid paying for the material.
In a few years we'll be hearing about people who've hooked up their Kindle DXs / Sony Readers up to a flatbed scanner so that they can automatically scan content straight off the device and OCR it. It should be pretty trivial to do too - just pop the page turn buttons and wire them up to some kind of computer controlled switch instead. Scan turn page, scan, turn page, scan etc. Could probably do most books in under 40 minutes with no user interaction.
Currently its XP which is doing just fine clawing back market share from Linux, and soon it will be Windows 7 starter. There is nothing ridiculous about it, it's a reality. What is notable about both offerings is that they run fine on netbooks, provide a familiar experience and also work great with 3G modems and other attachments that people are likely to attach to them. Microsoft badly screwed up with Vista's system requirements but even using XP as a stopgap proved to be sufficient to stop Linux making further inroads.
I know from bitter experience the sort of obstacles Linux throws up that don't even occur on Windows. I started with an EeePC 701 running Asus' homebrew Linux. The support was terrible, no doubt caused by using unionfs on the ssd - every patch actually gobbled up user storage space. So I reinstalled with Ubuntu. The first couple of iterations didn't even support the netbook's hardware but eventually I got a basic working netbook. The pain didn't stop since I bought a 3G modem which worked fine on Windows. Did it work fine on Linux? Of course not since the kernel didn't even support usb modems, or usb devices that switch modes. So I spent hours rebuilding the kernel to include usbserial, and crafting scripts to flip the modem into modem mode, invoke wvdial etc. I had basic working network connectivity even if it meant dropping to a shell to get stuff running. Finally Ubuntu caught up with 3G so now I can use the network tool. This is a major advance but it's still very flakey, lacking signal strength info and dropping connections WAY more than Windows. So 2 years after buying my 701, one of the best dists is barely at parity with what Windows could have done out of the box.
You know how hard it is to get a 3G modem working on Windows? Plug it in, run the installer and you have 3G networking. That "stale crap" makes using hardware a fairly painless exercise and represents the level of simplicity that Linux needs too.
As for Ubuntu & Plasma, we'll see when we actually start seeing netbooks that actually ship with them. I have lot more faith in Ubuntu providing a netbook suitable experience than KDE. Ubuntu (and GNOME) has a proven track record of putting usability front and center even if it comes up short supporting drivers. KDE has never gotten usability, not even in 4.x which is a dogs dinner of simple & advanced menus, toolbars & settings all mixed together. I have no faith that slapping some netbook skin on top will materially change things.
I doubt many netbooks let you play any games on them for one reason or another (crappy resolution / CPU / memory etc.) so I don't see that as a valid objection. What is a valid objection is that Linux distributions tend in general to be incredibly poor from a usability perspective compared to commercial offerings. Even the best of them (which is Ubuntu) still has flaws to catch out the unwary. Chrome OS had better polish the experience to a shine or it will suffer by comparison with Windows or OS X.
And if its a device that plugs into a PC, why not use MTP? After all, MTP is fairly decent these days and it means that USB stick, or media player or whatever you plug into your computer (of any kind), can implement any fs its little heart desires. It doesn't matter because it is under the covers. If the device wanted it could even store files with FAT32, using MTP to break them up into chunks as they were read or written.
Perhaps MTP is too much for some simpler devices. It isn't beyond the bounds of reason to envisage a simple standard for multi-part files, (e.g. a manifest + file chunks) that would allow large files to be copied to and from even FAT32 devices. Linux could even take the lead here by implementing that support in its FAT32 device driver. i.e, that if you copy a > 4Gb file to a FAT32 partition, that it is physically split up into chunks but appears as a single file to the caller.
The best chance ext2 / ext3 / ext4 or any other fs has for multimedia storage is when the user doesn't even know or care what file system is being used. I wouldn't give a damn what fs a NAS / streaming devices is using so long as it works and is reliable. I'm sure that exFAT would be largely redundant if someone defined a simple, clearcut way to break up large files into 4Gb chunks for easy transfer over FAT32.
DivX is an implementation of the MPEG 4 Part 2 ASP video codec (with some proprietary extensions). DIVX was a hated DVD based rental format which died a quick and well deserved death.
Anyway I think that people who buy into a proprietary format for media they wish to keep need their heads examined. Purchasing content for a device that is tied to one store or one manufacturer is incredibly short sighted. It doesn't really matter for rental / streaming content, or content that only plays on one kind of device (e.g. computer software, games), but movies, music and books absolutely need an industry wide file format.
E-books are a case study in how to turn a potentially lucrative medium into a shitscape of warring factions fighting over scraps because most consumers are too scared, confused or smart to favour one proprietary format over another. The sad part is this has been obvious for years and years, yet the likes of Amazon and now these bozos are perpetuating it.
Thanks for the tip. The button wasn't very obvious but at least its an improvement on what I was doing.
Thunderbird 3 still has the search bar but results appear in a new tab. This tab does not show results as a list but in a fancy HTML based summary view. That's great if you were searching for a particular message but utterly useless for bulk operations. What if I want to drag and drop a few files around, or delete them or flag them as junk? Even as a summary view it is stupid since it only shows 10 results at a time with a More button at the bottom. FFS, stop mimicking an AJAX web application - the results are RIGHT THERE on the disk and you can certainly show more than 10 results at a time.
The workaround is to create a saved search but that's even more hassle for something that could be achieved in seconds in v2.0. So much for progress. I suggest if Thunderbird 3.1 turns up, they put an option or two in to control this behaviour and remember what the user has chosen. There is even a "save search as virtual folder" option in the quick search menu suggesting someone was thinking of doing something like this, it just appears to be inexplicably greyed out.
Thunderbird 3 has potential but it really feels like a regression in several important respects. It also inexplicably lacks things I would have expected to be improved. For example, you still can't select an email, and right mouse and create a filter from it. This is something that Outlook has had for donkey's years.
Phil Jones is in the UK, he is subject to UK Freedom of Information Act which states that failure to comply with a request can be treated the same as contempt of court. Criminal contempt (and there are other lesser kinds) usually sees a maximum sentence of 1 month in jail or £2500 fine in a lower court. That's after someone files a FOI request, and after a public body fails to comply with a notice, and a complaint has been made and the public body has been proven to have made a false or reckless statement. In this case Jones appears to have not received a FOI request when he suggested people delete emails, so it's not like he is in contempt of anything. And even if he were charged, and found in contempt it's likely he'd get a fine or a slap on the wrist. More likely again that it would be the UEA that would get the fine / slap on the wrist and Jones would be looking for a new job. That's assuming anything at all will happen. The guy will probably get stuck on administrative leave while an internal review is conducted and then things will return to relative normality with or without him back as director.
While it may be unacceptable in some regards, it is quite understandable from a human standpoint. It certainly does not extrapolate into some vast conspiracy that many AGW bloggers would believe. Even if he were prosecuted for contempt (which is the charge that failure to comply with a request entails), harm would have to be proven, intent would have to be proven and the outcome of that that is likely to be a fine. At most.
I'm sure some OS makers would be delighted to do that but some such as Apple and of course the mobile networks who are not. A network doesn't make any money if you unlock / jailbreak your phone.
I think this email states fairly clearly what the situation was as far as the uni was concerned. The requests were a pain in the ass and the scientists had escalated the issue uni higher ups to seek advice. They also opine on how much effort it is to deal requests and how one request is going to open the floodgates for more and more. It's fairly understandable why they don't like them, and certainly not any where close to the "scientists deleted files in FOI cover-up" guff going around the AGW blogs.
I suggest you visit a few AGW blog sites which have covered the story and it snowballed from there. They cherry picked a few quotes without supplying any context whatsoever, all to imply it to be a con. It's quote mining pure and simple. It's no different that creationists quotemining isolated sentences from Darwin without providing any context at all to the remarks.
When you have gigabytes of private correspondence to sift through of course you can cherry pick / quote mine something to make it look like a conspiracy. That is all some anti-global warmer bloggers have done. They have engaged in the same sort of quotemining that creationists like to go in for which says a lot about the strength of their arguments.
I believe that any Wii HD could pull off a similar trick if it wished, and probably should. Depends on what the "Wii HD" is of course. If its a Wii with an HDMI port, I expect it will just upscale the entire buffer which would be a pretty shitty trick to pull on consumers. If its a genuine hardware bump with proper BC, then it could do what emulators do.
I think he should have gotten permission. He could have argued that BOINC (not just S@H) can do real science and promote visibility of the district. And if the answer was no he should have left it at that.
The easiest way to reduce the need for documentation is to make the UI as accessible, user friendly, forgiving, helpful and task centric as possible. People only seek out help when the OS doesn't appear to do what they want.
Usability has always been the Achilles heel of Linux. Dists have traditionally ignored it completely and only in the last few years has it gained any serious traction. Ubuntu has been the recent pathfinder for usability but even that dist has plenty of rough edges to catch out the unwary.
Yes Linux could be an alternative to Windows with "less hassle". After all OS X is built over BSD and is arguably a simpler OS than Windows despite its underlying architecture. All it takes is the motivation and the recognition that making the OS accessible, and usable by more people is a good thing for the platform, and for people who make a living from Linux. BTW I make my living from Linux so I believe I have a stake in wanting it to be better. The likes of Ubuntu have made great strides in this department but even the latest version doesn't hold a candle to Windows 7. It doesn't stop people such as yourself self-flagellating on some older dist if you want.
The traditional problem for Linux, which you are clearly a part of, is that any criticism is perceived as an attack. How dare I criticize your beloved Linux! So please, go back to FC4 and enjoy yourself. Or simmer that anyone dare have a different opinion of Linux from yourself.
Sorry to burst your bubble but Windows 7 works and it works so well that virtually NO ONE is going to switch to Linux. Perhaps a computer literate person might if they're more interested in tinkering with their PC than using their PC to get stuff done but that is a minority. Your average consumer wants something that works out of the box and Windows 7 works out of the box. They are very unlikely to install another OS, especially one which really doesn't offer much that their current one can't do.
In fact the only way I see 2010 being the "year of Linux" is if Google persuades the likes of Lenovo, Dell, Toshiba etc. to install Chrome OS on their budget netbooks/laptops instead of Windows. Even then, I don't know how successful this proposition would be unless Google splits its ad revenues with manufacturers. The manufacturers would have to make more from Google than they lose in sales from installing Windows 7 and from not installing paid crapware like Norton 30 day trials.
Personally I think Linux has blown it on the desktop. Ubuntu got closest to a workable desktop, and the Vista PR nightmare was the perfect time to steal Window's thunder but it never happened. Linux looked like it was making progress on netbooks but its lost virtually all of its traction there too. Now Windows 7 is here, the reasons for switching to Linux look pretty weak.
Oh well, they'll have to make do with Great Giana Sisters.
Unless Nintendo offer replacement carts in absolutely all circumstances (even today), it is hard to see how they could justify "not necessary".
Every time someone preorders a title, they are basically gambling with their money when a few days would tell one way or another what the consensus is. That could be critical consensus as well as what fans of the genre thought of it.
That or the games are shovelware. The publisher knows they are crap and sees no reason to send review copies out when they'd earn an abysmal score for their troubles. Better to just push it out there and hope that grannies and five year olds will be fooled into buying it.