You do not specify in which country you live. In the Netherlands, you can buy a wide range of DVR's for amounts between EUR 150 (crappy no-name brands) and EUR 500 (with HD support, 2 tuners, big harddisk, etc.).
For example Samsung has quite a few, but I don't know whether they sell them only in Europe (PAL) or in other places as well. There's several other brands that sell 'em too, e.g. Sony.
Pay attention to such things as: does it support an electronic program guide (and will this work with your cable provider), is it actually easy to capture e.g. all airings of particular shows/series, is it easy to navigate the menus or is programming it such a nightmare that you probably won't ever use it after the first week.
Vista is a technology release, breaking lots of new ground and hence it's hard to get right the first time.
What new ground?
Ohhhh, you mean catching up with the state of the art 5 years ago mostly?
Or you must mean reaching new heights in customer-unfriendliness with even more restricted EULA's (e.g. see restrictions on virtualization), even more convoluted licensing schemes (I'd hardly have thought that was even possible) and technological "inventions" in the realm of Digital Restriction Management.
Ahh, *those* breakthroughs. Thanks, but I'll pass.
don't care if you think they're "opt-in" -- if you're sending 50,000 emails twice a week, you're a spammer. You might call it a newsletter etc, but it's still mass emailing -- ie. SPAM.
No, because the definition of spam is UBE - Unsolicited Bulk Email.
Sending stuff to confirmed opt-in mailinglists is *not* sending unsolicited email by any means.
I don't get the big deal about spam. Honestly, you get more junkmail than regular mail on a daily basis, but yet there's no big call to outlaw regular postage and allow only confirmed 3rd parties to send you mail. Why the hell should e-mail be any different?
Is this a troll? Or is there really a need to state the obvious once more? Here goes:
Because with e-mail, the recipient pays for the costs of receiving and storing the e-mail (because your ISP will need more servers and/or storage, and will factor this into the rate you're paying). The costs of sending millions of e-mails is however negligible.
With "physical" junkmail the situation is opposite: sending physical junkmail costs real amounts of money per package. However, there is no real cost (other than time wasted) on your side. Because, when was the last time you had to buy a bigger mailbox because the junkmail wouldn't fit?
It's to act as a development vehicle for iPhone, since all third party iPhone apps will be rich Web 2.0/AJAX applications.
Exactly. In addition, they might be hoping to make some money from search results, in the same way the Mozilla Foundation does:
"It's not widely publicized, but those integrated search bars in web browser toolbars are revenue generators. When you do a Google search from Safari's toolbar, Google pays Apple a portion of the ad revenue from the resulting page. (Ever notice the "client=safari" string in the URL query?)" - source
This suggestion seems to be confirmed by the behavior I noticed: when you try to create a bookmark to google.com, or even to set it as your homepage. It'll popup a window asking you whether you really want to set google as your homepage (or bookmark it), as "you can already use the search bar to search google anyway".
One thing you should keep in mind when testing the beta, is that it appears to be very broken on localized version of Windows XP; that is any language version except the US one.
I've tried browsing quite a few sites yesterday, including sites like youtube, slashdot, and quite a few news-sites (computer-related as well as mainstream newspaper websites), and so on. It didn't crash on me once.
However, I've heard from a few people who tried it on the Dutch localized version of Windows XP (SP2 of course), and they say it crashes frequently, renders pages with horrible flaws, e.g. bold text does not appear at all and similar very obvious rendering problems. However, I visited some of those same pages using the US version of Windows and they looked just fine.
Sure, shared pointers get rid of memory leaks, but what about objects that consistently grow. Such programming errors are equivalent to "memory leaks" in the traditional sense, and plague applications written in Java, C#, Python, (and C++) etc....
The bottom line here is that C++ gives you (the programmer) the flexibility to use any of the patterns found in these "advanced scripting languages". - It is just that you have to know what you are doing. -bms20
You can avoid those memory leaks in Java just as well though. However, you don't have to bother in the (majority of) cases where the GC works just fine already. Whereas C++ certainly gives more flexibility, it also *forces* you to actually use that flexibility all the time (at least where GC is concerned). I mean, you could argue the same way that programming in assembly language is even more flexible...(even less restrictions). Which it is, of course, but sometimes, you do *not* want some things to be flexible, you just want to have sensible defaults and perhaps the ability to override them when necessary. I'll admit that Java sometimes fails to provide the latter.
However, to address the example you mention, you can set no-longer-used fields that refer to large substructures (e.g. a parsed XML document) of long-lived objects (e.g. the main application object) to 'null' explicitly to make sure they will be garbage collected. This is still a *long* way from having to (explicitly) free *every* object in your entire application.
if you don't think the java VM is slow then you aren't running many java apps. Startup time on java applets on sites i have to deal with is probably 100x greater than a C++ app doing the same function, and 20x greater than using AJAX to do the same thing.
Yes, because as we all know startup time is the only relevant performance metric, and Java is primarily used to run applets.
OK, back to reality now? Sure, Java VM's are generally slower than compiled C++. However, my points are:
In most situations it doesn't matter anyway. Thanks to GC and a cleaner language design, I can develop my application in less than half the time it would cost me to do it in C++. CPU/memory is cheap compared to paying programmers, especially if your app runs only serverside.
Btw. I am using both Eclipse and (unfortunately) Visual Studio 2005. The first is written 100% in Java, whereas I think Visual Studio is mostly written in C++. Visual Studio is definitely not much faster than Eclipse. And this isn't because it has much more functionality (because it doesn't).
I have never heard of a photoshop printing digital using 'traditional methods.'
"traditional" as in: using chemically processed paper and using chemicals to fixate the image. As opposed to squirting ink on a piece of glossy paper (dye-sub or inkjet printers).
The difference being that machines that do the former will typically cost between $50,000 - $500,000, which is why nobody has them at home (well, that, and they're big...and use some rather nasty chemicals). But they produce superior and longer-lasting output.
Use valgrind : www.valgrind.org It is (in my opinion) the best tool available for this purpose. In fact, I develop C++ exclusively on linux first because of valgrind, then port to Win32 later.
It's been a few years since I last programmed in C++, but Valgrind indeed really saved the day on a regular basis. Also look into (KDE-)frontends if you think looking at text output is not very convenient. Couldn't agree more with this part, it's the best tool I've seen - and it's free software, too.
By the way, you're not missing out on anything special by not programming in Java or C#. Both of those languages are slow, and introduce their own language complexities. -bms20
Afraid I have to disagree here though. First of all, a language is not the thing that's "slow" or "fast". It may be the case that no very efficient compilers or virtual machines exist (for a particular language). I will admit that it is hard(er) to create efficient implementations of some languages (functional languages, logic-based languages), but C# and Java are definitely not among those. Second, Java VM's used to be slow in 1997. It's 2007 now, I'd suggest you try again (and be surprised). Third, I definitely do not agree that "you're not missing out on anything special" by using C++ instead of any garbage collected language (not necessarily Java or C#). For one, you're (do I need to state the obvious here?) missing out on garbage collection! I would say garbage collection is a clear advantage in the vast majority of programming scenario's. I would even argue that it's the biggest practical advancement in programming since the introduction of the procedural paradigm - perhaps even more important than object orientation.
Last of all, you're complaining about "language complexities" in Java/C# and (thereby) suggesting C++ is better in this regard? Hmm, I guess my sarcasm detector must be broken or something:D
Imagine a filesystem that is encrypted 3 times, in "headerless" fashion.
So you're proposing two things here:
1. Security by obscurity (you don't know how the thing is encrypted, and hope this helps improve the security) 2. Applying multiple encryptions over the same source.
I hope I don't have to explain why (1) tends not to work very well. As to the second, in most cases, applying the same (or even different) encryption algorithms does not make the encryption any stronger. In some cases it may even make the encryption easier to break.
I see how you want to use this idea to hide the fact that you are even storing encrypted content, but given that the contents of your harddisk are apparently of sufficient interest to e.g. the police that they want to find out in the first place, it will be rather trivial to find out that parts have been encrypted - for example, because of the evenly spread distribution of occurrence of each possible character (byte).
If you want to hide encrypted content, perhaps a better way is to use steganography.
Also, delaying your trial won't work for the simple reason that they'll just force you (by court order) to give up the passwords. You can then be prosecuted for ignoring the courts order if you don't comply.
I don't want to shell out a grand or whatever and then have to spend time I don't have to turn the machine into what I actually needed in the first place. There is a time I would have, and would have relished the chance - but that time is long passed.
I'm a reasonably sophisticated Linux user, and even a Linux advocate - but in this case - I'm primarily a consumer with a need and the willingness to pay for it. The guy who offers to fulfill that need, gets the cash.
Exactly. This is why people buy Macs. I know I did (and for this very reason).
It's not about the $50 difference in price, it's about the amount of time needed to make it work.
Even so, if you *have* to install manually for whatever reason, these days the tables seem to be turning: I recently (re)installed both Linux and Windows on two machines. Installing Ubuntu was easy: boot the live CD, partition manually (since that's just what I like to do), click next a few times, everything works, you have a complete desktop, and the "update" thingy shows up automatically and lets you install security updates for a few packages. Even all the (extra) multimedia buttons on my laptop work by default, as well as pressing the power button, closing the lid, CPU frequency scaling, etc. That's a long way from what it used to be like even just a year ago!
Now, as to installing Windows XP (without the OEM disks for the laptops). Windows Vista, I won't even go there. Windows XP SP2 (released around the time these laptops where bought) is bad enough: it doesn't detect *any* of the hardware except the screen, mouse and USB. So: no wireless, no network, no bluetooth, no soundcard, etc. etc. So, I have to fiddle with a USB stick on a different computer to download all the drivers (from manufacturers websites which let you download stuff at their usual glacial speeds. I was still lucky too, because both manufacturers - Dell and Fujitsu Siemens in this case - had all the drivers grouped per laptop model). Install drivers, reboot, install more drivers, reboot. Run windows update, reboot some more.
Then you have to fix all the braindead default settings (e.g. fisher price look, disable useless time-consuming effects, regedit to disable the retarded search assistent, disable disk-space wasting SFP, etc.). Not before this moment can you even start installing all the software you actually want to use (browsers, mail client, office suite, adobe reader, etc.). Never mind that you cannot update those from a central repository; these days you basically have an 'update' agent or process running _all the time_ for about half the programs that you install. (either that, or they check on every application startup..I'm not sure what's more annoying).
Oh, and then you'll probably want to install decent firewall and virusscanner software, which will then drag your newly configured system to a complete crawl (not to mention the cost of this software).
Anyway, installing Ubuntu for the first time took me about an hour. Installing Windows XP SP2 basically took the rest of the evening.
Similar to how the brain works (AFAIK, I'm not a biologist, etc.), the issue is whether you can find data, not whether it's stored.
Things that you have forgotten may still be stored somewhere, but the connections needed to retrieve the actual "data" are lost, so you cannot get to the actual information.
Something similar happens with computers, I may have an e-mail/IM archive over the past 10 years or so, but if I don't know what (combination of) keywords to look for, I won't be able to find anything. It's simply too much information.
There's no need for a car that goes more than 70mph.
In the States, perhaps. In the rest of the world, which uses such wonderful inventions as the metric system, 70 mph equals ca. 112 km/h, which where I live would be considered ridiculously slow. In Germany for example there is (still) no speed limit on the highways, but the advised speed is 130 km/h. If your car does a maximum of about a 110, you'll be stuck on the right lane between the big trucks which will drive at about the same speed.
If you're going to produce a car like that, you might as well not bother at all.
There is no reason why this would be necessary either: my 1997 Hyundai Excel does 190 km/h (ca. 120 mph for the metric impaired). It has a 1300 cc 4-cylinder engine. If you drive it at 'sane' speeds (say, around 75 mph), it'll do about 7 liters per 100km, which equals about 33 miles to the gallon. And this is a 10 year old car, mind you..
In general, any content that you submit as part of a course becomes the intellectual property of the school, unless they explicitly say otherwise.
Says who? I'm genuinely curious, because people at your school or university telling you this, doesn't necessarily make it so.
This may depend on country, I don't know...can you point out any laws or precedents where this issue came up?
Because I don't know of any. (admittedly this doesn't say much at all as IANAL).
In principle you have copyright on everything you write, unless you do it as part of a (paid) job because in such cases you usually signed a contract that states any work you do [in company-paid time] becomes property of your employer. Also, you can explicitly transfer the copyright to someone else - this is what you usually (have to) do to get your work published in a journal, book or (scientific) proceedings. Because if you don't, they are not allowed to print/distribute it. I don't remember ever signing such a "contract" with schools or universities I attended in the past though...
Then run away now. Both the X11 and the "Aquafied" version totally stink. Terrible usability, horribly slow..
How so? NeoOffice works quite well for me, a lot better in fact than the included Microsoft Office 2004 demo, which seems to run in emulation mode on my Intel Mac Mini (don't tell me it runs in native mode, if that's the case MS should really be ashamed about the speed..)
Actually, it's a common insult and FUD. Understanding your boot process is nice and all, but your distribution already does this and has come to reasonable compromises.
Denying the problem doesn't make it go away, really. All the hibernation and sleep modes in the world don't change the fact that Linux boot times are much longer than, say, Windows XP's.
I'm sorry, but I run both Windows and Linux on my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, and booting Linux takes much, much longer. We're talking 2-3x longer, in fact.
If you want to tweak with it, more power to you but you won't really save much. With proper power management you don't have to boot at all. For instance, the laptop I'm using says:
Yeah, that's nice and all, assuming the power management actually works correctly.
Which, for many laptops, it doesn't. For instance, some time ago I finally managed to get hibernation mode to work (after a lot of fiddling), but it was still experimental at the time (ca. half a year ago) and would crash on resume sometimes. Not good when you have some important applications still running.
Now I'm running a different distribution (FC5) and it hangs after resuming from "normal" sleep mode (which is activated when I close the lid).
So yes, boot time is quite relevant for me, thank you very much, and saying this is FUD is... well... uninformed, at best.
People who complain about long gnu/linux boot times have either not learned how to use their much better systems yet or are FUDing astroturfers.
Or perhaps they are people who get tired of having to spend 2 weekends to get some stupid features, such as sleep mode and hibernation, to work correctly. Which then promptly breaks, of course, on the next kernel upgrade (which, in my case, was needed to get wireless to work).
This is also why I won't bother with trying to speed up the boot-time of my laptop, I'm waiting for some decent distro which does it for me!
Also, why would you even want to pay for such things when it should be part of the OS (whether the OS itself is for free or not).
Another reason why I prefer Linux...at least in Linux you don't have to download adware/spyware-infested crap in order to do some simple theme or style changes in my desktop environment.
"Um... the Xbox has been a loss for five years now. That doesn't sound like it's much of a success for MS yet."
Xbox is not losing money anymore. They make money on it!
Define "making money". As far as I know, they have lost at least 4 billion dollars ($4,000,000,000) developing and selling the XBox and XBox 360 to date. While they may finally have started to actually produce positive quarterly results (btw. do you have any source proving this statement?), they haven't "made" any money until they recoup at least the money they have spent so far.
Also see here, in case you don't want to take my word for the $4B number.
The completely spin-doctored reaction by Microsoft didn't help much. Be sure to read the comments on that one..they're basically getting slaughtered on their own weblog.
Just a highlight I'll quote here:
Question: Will the Windows Vista content protection board robustness recommendations increase the cost of graphics cards?
Answer by MS: evades the question, but suggests the answer is no. Answers from an ATI presentation:
"These costs are passed on to the consumer"
"This cost is passed on to all consumers"
"This cost is passed on to purchasers of multimedia PC's"
"Costs are passed on to consumers"
"Costs are passed on to consumers, especially early adopters"
Slashdot Mirror
You do not specify in which country you live. In the Netherlands, you can buy a wide range of DVR's for amounts between EUR 150 (crappy no-name brands) and EUR 500 (with HD support, 2 tuners, big harddisk, etc.).
For example Samsung has quite a few, but I don't know whether they sell them only in Europe (PAL) or in other places as well. There's several other brands that sell 'em too, e.g. Sony.
Pay attention to such things as: does it support an electronic program guide (and will this work with your cable provider), is it actually easy to capture e.g. all airings of particular shows/series, is it easy to navigate the menus or is programming it such a nightmare that you probably won't ever use it after the first week.
What new ground?
Ohhhh, you mean catching up with the state of the art 5 years ago mostly?
Or you must mean reaching new heights in customer-unfriendliness with even more restricted EULA's (e.g. see restrictions on virtualization), even more convoluted licensing schemes (I'd hardly have thought that was even possible) and technological "inventions" in the realm of Digital Restriction Management.
Ahh, *those* breakthroughs. Thanks, but I'll pass.
No, because the definition of spam is UBE - Unsolicited Bulk Email.
Sending stuff to confirmed opt-in mailinglists is *not* sending unsolicited email by any means.
Is this a troll? Or is there really a need to state the obvious once more? Here goes:
Because with e-mail, the recipient pays for the costs of receiving and storing the e-mail (because your ISP will need more servers and/or storage, and will factor this into the rate you're paying). The costs of sending millions of e-mails is however negligible.
With "physical" junkmail the situation is opposite: sending physical junkmail costs real amounts of money per package. However, there is no real cost (other than time wasted) on your side. Because, when was the last time you had to buy a bigger mailbox because the junkmail wouldn't fit?
Exactly. In addition, they might be hoping to make some money from search results, in the same way the Mozilla Foundation does:
"It's not widely publicized, but those integrated search bars in web browser toolbars are revenue generators. When you do a Google search from Safari's toolbar, Google pays Apple a portion of the ad revenue from the resulting page. (Ever notice the "client=safari" string in the URL query?)" - source
This suggestion seems to be confirmed by the behavior I noticed: when you try to create a bookmark to google.com, or even to set it as your homepage. It'll popup a window asking you whether you really want to set google as your homepage (or bookmark it), as "you can already use the search bar to search google anyway".
One thing you should keep in mind when testing the beta, is that it appears to be very broken on localized version of Windows XP; that is any language version except the US one.
I've tried browsing quite a few sites yesterday, including sites like youtube, slashdot, and quite a few news-sites (computer-related as well as mainstream newspaper websites), and so on. It didn't crash on me once.
However, I've heard from a few people who tried it on the Dutch localized version of Windows XP (SP2 of course), and they say it crashes frequently, renders pages with horrible flaws, e.g. bold text does not appear at all and similar very obvious rendering problems. However, I visited some of those same pages using the US version of Windows and they looked just fine.
You can avoid those memory leaks in Java just as well though. However, you don't have to bother in the (majority of) cases where the GC works just fine already. Whereas C++ certainly gives more flexibility, it also *forces* you to actually use that flexibility all the time (at least where GC is concerned). I mean, you could argue the same way that programming in assembly language is even more flexible...(even less restrictions). Which it is, of course, but sometimes, you do *not* want some things to be flexible, you just want to have sensible defaults and perhaps the ability to override them when necessary. I'll admit that Java sometimes fails to provide the latter.
However, to address the example you mention, you can set no-longer-used fields that refer to large substructures (e.g. a parsed XML document) of long-lived objects (e.g. the main application object) to 'null' explicitly to make sure they will be garbage collected. This is still a *long* way from having to (explicitly) free *every* object in your entire application.
Yes, because as we all know startup time is the only relevant performance metric, and Java is primarily used to run applets.
OK, back to reality now? Sure, Java VM's are generally slower than compiled C++. However, my points are:
Btw. I am using both Eclipse and (unfortunately) Visual Studio 2005. The first is written 100% in Java, whereas I think Visual Studio is mostly written in C++. Visual Studio is definitely not much faster than Eclipse. And this isn't because it has much more functionality (because it doesn't).
"traditional" as in: using chemically processed paper and using chemicals to fixate the image. As opposed to squirting ink on a piece of glossy paper (dye-sub or inkjet printers).
The difference being that machines that do the former will typically cost between $50,000 - $500,000, which is why nobody has them at home (well, that, and they're big...and use some rather nasty chemicals). But they produce superior and longer-lasting output.
It's been a few years since I last programmed in C++, but Valgrind indeed really saved the day on a regular basis. Also look into (KDE-)frontends if you think looking at text output is not very convenient. Couldn't agree more with this part, it's the best tool I've seen - and it's free software, too.
Afraid I have to disagree here though. First of all, a language is not the thing that's "slow" or "fast". It may be the case that no very efficient compilers or virtual machines exist (for a particular language). I will admit that it is hard(er) to create efficient implementations of some languages (functional languages, logic-based languages), but C# and Java are definitely not among those. Second, Java VM's used to be slow in 1997. It's 2007 now, I'd suggest you try again (and be surprised). Third, I definitely do not agree that "you're not missing out on anything special" by using C++ instead of any garbage collected language (not necessarily Java or C#). For one, you're (do I need to state the obvious here?) missing out on garbage collection! I would say garbage collection is a clear advantage in the vast majority of programming scenario's. I would even argue that it's the biggest practical advancement in programming since the introduction of the procedural paradigm - perhaps even more important than object orientation.
Last of all, you're complaining about "language complexities" in Java/C# and (thereby) suggesting C++ is better in this regard? Hmm, I guess my sarcasm detector must be broken or something
So you're proposing two things here:
1. Security by obscurity (you don't know how the thing is encrypted, and hope this helps improve the security)
2. Applying multiple encryptions over the same source.
I hope I don't have to explain why (1) tends not to work very well. As to the second, in most cases, applying the same (or even different) encryption algorithms does not make the encryption any stronger. In some cases it may even make the encryption easier to break.
I see how you want to use this idea to hide the fact that you are even storing encrypted content, but given that the contents of your harddisk are apparently of sufficient interest to e.g. the police that they want to find out in the first place, it will be rather trivial to find out that parts have been encrypted - for example, because of the evenly spread distribution of occurrence of each possible character (byte).
If you want to hide encrypted content, perhaps a better way is to use steganography.
Also, delaying your trial won't work for the simple reason that they'll just force you (by court order) to give up the passwords. You can then be prosecuted for ignoring the courts order if you don't comply.
Exactly. This is why people buy Macs. I know I did (and for this very reason).
It's not about the $50 difference in price, it's about the amount of time needed to make it work.
Even so, if you *have* to install manually for whatever reason, these days the tables seem to be turning: I recently (re)installed both Linux and Windows on two machines. Installing Ubuntu was easy: boot the live CD, partition manually (since that's just what I like to do), click next a few times, everything works, you have a complete desktop, and the "update" thingy shows up automatically and lets you install security updates for a few packages. Even all the (extra) multimedia buttons on my laptop work by default, as well as pressing the power button, closing the lid, CPU frequency scaling, etc. That's a long way from what it used to be like even just a year ago!
Now, as to installing Windows XP (without the OEM disks for the laptops). Windows Vista, I won't even go there. Windows XP SP2 (released around the time these laptops where bought) is bad enough: it doesn't detect *any* of the hardware except the screen, mouse and USB. So: no wireless, no network, no bluetooth, no soundcard, etc. etc. So, I have to fiddle with a USB stick on a different computer to download all the drivers (from manufacturers websites which let you download stuff at their usual glacial speeds. I was still lucky too, because both manufacturers - Dell and Fujitsu Siemens in this case - had all the drivers grouped per laptop model). Install drivers, reboot, install more drivers, reboot. Run windows update, reboot some more.
Then you have to fix all the braindead default settings (e.g. fisher price look, disable useless time-consuming effects, regedit to disable the retarded search assistent, disable disk-space wasting SFP, etc.). Not before this moment can you even start installing all the software you actually want to use (browsers, mail client, office suite, adobe reader, etc.). Never mind that you cannot update those from a central repository; these days you basically have an 'update' agent or process running _all the time_ for about half the programs that you install. (either that, or they check on every application startup..I'm not sure what's more annoying).
Oh, and then you'll probably want to install decent firewall and virusscanner software, which will then drag your newly configured system to a complete crawl (not to mention the cost of this software).
Anyway, installing Ubuntu for the first time took me about an hour. Installing Windows XP SP2 basically took the rest of the evening.
Similar to how the brain works (AFAIK, I'm not a biologist, etc.), the issue is whether you can find data, not whether it's stored.
Things that you have forgotten may still be stored somewhere, but the connections needed to retrieve the actual "data" are lost, so you cannot get to the actual information.
Something similar happens with computers, I may have an e-mail/IM archive over the past 10 years or so, but if I don't know what (combination of) keywords to look for, I won't be able to find anything. It's simply too much information.
How is this "News for nerds. Stuff that matters". OK, I can see the second part, but not the first.
In the States, perhaps. In the rest of the world, which uses such wonderful inventions as the metric system, 70 mph equals ca. 112 km/h, which where I live would be considered ridiculously slow. In Germany for example there is (still) no speed limit on the highways, but the advised speed is 130 km/h. If your car does a maximum of about a 110, you'll be stuck on the right lane between the big trucks which will drive at about the same speed.
If you're going to produce a car like that, you might as well not bother at all.
There is no reason why this would be necessary either: my 1997 Hyundai Excel does 190 km/h (ca. 120 mph for the metric impaired). It has a 1300 cc 4-cylinder engine. If you drive it at 'sane' speeds (say, around 75 mph), it'll do about 7 liters per 100km, which equals about 33 miles to the gallon. And this is a 10 year old car, mind you..
Says who? I'm genuinely curious, because people at your school or university telling you this, doesn't necessarily make it so.
This may depend on country, I don't know...can you point out any laws or precedents where this issue came up?
Because I don't know of any. (admittedly this doesn't say much at all as IANAL).
In principle you have copyright on everything you write, unless you do it as part of a (paid) job because in such cases you usually signed a contract that states any work you do [in company-paid time] becomes property of your employer. Also, you can explicitly transfer the copyright to someone else - this is what you usually (have to) do to get your work published in a journal, book or (scientific) proceedings. Because if you don't, they are not allowed to print/distribute it. I don't remember ever signing such a "contract" with schools or universities I attended in the past though...
No, I was in fact thinking the exact reverse.
Although it's still strange, this thinking in terms of TLA's.
How so? NeoOffice works quite well for me, a lot better in fact than the included Microsoft Office 2004 demo, which seems to run in emulation mode on my Intel Mac Mini (don't tell me it runs in native mode, if that's the case MS should really be ashamed about the speed..)
Denying the problem doesn't make it go away, really. All the hibernation and sleep modes in the world don't change the fact that Linux boot times are much longer than, say, Windows XP's.
I'm sorry, but I run both Windows and Linux on my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, and booting Linux takes much, much longer. We're talking 2-3x longer, in fact.
Yeah, that's nice and all, assuming the power management actually works correctly.
Which, for many laptops, it doesn't. For instance, some time ago I finally managed to get hibernation mode to work (after a lot of fiddling), but it was still experimental at the time (ca. half a year ago) and would crash on resume sometimes. Not good when you have some important applications still running.
Now I'm running a different distribution (FC5) and it hangs after resuming from "normal" sleep mode (which is activated when I close the lid).
So yes, boot time is quite relevant for me, thank you very much, and saying this is FUD is
Or perhaps they are people who get tired of having to spend 2 weekends to get some stupid features, such as sleep mode and hibernation, to work correctly. Which then promptly breaks, of course, on the next kernel upgrade (which, in my case, was needed to get wireless to work).
This is also why I won't bother with trying to speed up the boot-time of my laptop, I'm waiting for some decent distro which does it for me!
NOOOOO, not that spyware-infested piece of crap!
Also, why would you even want to pay for such things when it should be part of the OS (whether the OS itself is for free or not).
Another reason why I prefer Linux...at least in Linux you don't have to download adware/spyware-infested crap in order to do some simple theme or style changes in my desktop environment.
It's probably the usual stuff going on here....
They'll now get a large discount from Microsoft, which is probably what they're really after anyway.
Nothing to see here, move along...
Also see here, in case you don't want to take my word for the $4B number.
The completely spin-doctored reaction by Microsoft didn't help much. Be sure to read the comments on that one..they're basically getting slaughtered on their own weblog.
Just a highlight I'll quote here: Says it all for me, really.
From wikipedia: source
So what he was actually trying to say is not supposed to be French (although French, being a roman language, is indeed similar to Latin).