Strange... Fedora works perfectly fine on my Thinkpad. I get hardware video acceleration and everything out of the box... minus MP3 codecs, which are easily installed using APT for RPM and FreshRPMs.
The fact that your OEM doesn't support opensource has little to do with the failings or successes of Fedora.
By law a monopoly cannot engage in predatory pricing. That is one of the main differences with open source. The other main difference is that open source software is also... well, open source. Everyone has the source code in addition to the free binaries.
The obvious implication was that Microsoft's monopoly position, by USA law, prevents them from using techniques like predatory pricing to crush competition and create barries to market entry.
Microsoft is a monopoly, and therefore by law they have additional responsibilities that the KDE do not have. One of these repsonsibilities prevents them from using predatory pricing, of which bundling is a specific form.
If you are not a monopoly, you can use predatory pricing. If you are a monopoly, it is illegal to use predatory pricing. It is the law. These laws have been this way for almost 100 years.
Then the obvious solution is to use a distro such as Debian and only install software through apt-get from official repositories.
For the very few things that can't be had through the official repository (things covered by patents, closed source stuff, backports), you can use unofficial repositories.
The problem is that people equate distro with OS, and many people use the wrong distro for their needs.
I hate April First... the jokes are lame.
on
Usenet Audio
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Slashdot is basically worthless on April First. Then again I have browse with posts moderated as funny modified with a -3 weighting.
I own a modded Xbox. I actually don't use a mod-chip, but instead use one of the software exploits... that way I get a free mod as opposed to a $50 mod.
Anyway, I haven't pirated a single Xbox game. Instead I use my Xbox to play music and movies, which is made possible by the modding and Xbox Media Player. I also use my Xbox as an emulation based console for playing old NES and SNES games.
Well, there are still great original games, but they just don't get the same hype as the big game company's games. Check out Puzzle Pirates for an innovative game that combines Ultima Online, Tetris, and Pirates!
Sorry, but I have been using Gnome on Linux exclusively for the past year on my desktop. I need an interface that is tailored to me, not some future theoretical average joe. I need an interface that is not slow and buggy. I need an interface that is feature-ful. Gnome just ain't cutting it, and I lately I have been flirting with KDE.
There is no doubt that KDE and Gnome are rivals. Hell, Gnome's very existence was due to the creation of KDE and KDE's license issues... which by the way are no longer a problem.
It is survival of the fittest. Gnome is looking quite sickly, while KDE is robust and nubile.
Re:Is Nautilus still a buggy bloated POS?
on
GNOME 2.6 Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
While you may never have had problems with Nautilus, I have had plenty and so have all of my friend's who use Linux. You can ignore Gnome's problems, but it doesn't make them go away.
Re:Is Nautilus still a buggy bloated POS?
on
GNOME 2.6 Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
I must admit that I have seen a noticable improvement with the changes in the Gnome from the one that shipped with Redhat 9 to the one shipped with Fedora Core 1. In Redhat 9, Nautilus was basically unusable. It would "timeout" even on relatively small local directories. Don't even get me started on directories with many small files.
The Nautilus in Fedora Core 1 was orders of magnitude faster than the one shipped with Redhat 9... however, it was still slow compared to Microsoft's Windows Explorer. It was also still considerably buggy.
It still reguarly crashes when viewing the local file system, and when viewing SMB networked filesystems it crashes on a daily basis. It also still has the weird "timeout" bug that resembles what web browsers do with slow web sites... that is they don't display any content... but Nautilus does this with local filesystem directory listings.
Then there are the drag-n-drop bugs. All Nautilus users know what I am talking about. You drag and drop, but the little icon snaps back and doesn't do any file copying, moving, etc... Or you cut and past files, but the destination doesn't let you paste until you reload the directory.
Lets not even get into the bugs with selecting files in list view.
Then there are the bugs with icon layout on the desktop.
Oh, and don't even get me started on the problems with jumping in and out of directories. Let say I have a directory with enough entries to require vertical scrolling. I jump into one of the directories and then back out. Nautilus takes its sweet ass time recreating the list view, dynamically inserting new list entries causing everything to jumble around. A total usability nightmare.
My favorite... and yes I lost data making the mistake, is when you copy a directory with a name over another directory with the same name. In Windows, which I used up until a year ago, the file manager asks if you want to overwrite, and when you say yes it merges the contents of the two directories. Nautilus just deletes one copy and writes the other. Yeah! You just deleted hundreds of my precious files during a directory move!
Another Gnome goof is that launchers cannot be modified after being created. If you mess up something you have to start again from the begining. Or if you move the location of something referenced by the launcher, you can either clutter your drive with symlinks or you can start from the begining and make a whole new launcher.
Don't even get me started on the fact that you can't edit the application (i.e. "start") menu. I mean, come on, this is a GUI and I can't even drag and drop or in some other graphical way organize my start menu?
The spatial mode thing doesn't bother me as long as I have an option to not use it. Under windows I would always disable that, and I will do the same under Linux. I don't need a million windows cluttering my desktop just because I changed to another directory.
In closing, I have used exclusively Gnome on Linux for about a year now. I will give Gnome on Fedora Core 2 a chance... if significant improvements aren't made, then I am switching to KDE. Another drop in the bucket, but it does add up.
The evolution of free software involves a certain element of survival of the fittest, and such is the case here.
Re:Is Nautilus still a buggy bloated POS?
on
GNOME 2.6 Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
Switching one's desktop isn't something that can be done at the drop of a hat. I the same desktop at both home and work. There are many things that I must do in order to properly switch over.
Just as you can get locked in to the Windows interface, you can get locked in to FOSS desktops. I plan on switching with Fedora Core 2, and once I am used to KDE there... I will probably switch to KDE on Debian Sarge once it goes stable. This is a case where Redhat's Bluecurve project pays off, as it will lessen the shock incured by switching desktops.
Also note that I was not threatening developers. I was mearly stating fact. The versions of Gnome shipped with Redhat 9 and Fedora Core 1 are extremely buggy... mainly due to Nautilus.
With all of the bugs and performance problems that the current version of Nautilus has, you would think that would work on fixing Nautilus before changing it.
Is Nautilus still a buggy bloated POS?
on
GNOME 2.6 Reviewed
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I am writing this from my Fedora Gnome desktop, which I use on a regular basis. Therefore I am very knowledgable on the bugginess of Nautilus. It is slow, buggy, and lacking in features. If something big doesn't happen by the next Fedora release, I will be switching to KDE 3.2... as I recently demo'ed it on a Mandrake install. Konqueror is fast, featureful, and seemed to have far fewer bugs than Nautilus.
The only problem is that I am really used to Gnome's look-n-feel, but I guess since I am using Fedora, that won't be as much of an issue due to the whole Bluecurve thing.
Puzzle Pirates is a great innovative game. It combines Ultima Online, Tetris, Bejeweled, Super Puzzle Fighter, and Pirates into one great game. Check it out, as the demo is free, and the game runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. My wife and I just started playing last night. Its the type of game that the whole family can enjoy.
Not only that, but the developers are very FOSS friendly and independent. So give them a little support if you can.
I think that most people that love GTA3 and GTA3:VC have never extensively played the original GTA. Therefore they didn't miss the motorbikes or multiplayer in GTA3. They also don't realize that Liberty City, Vice City, and San Adreas were packed into the original GTA. They don't realize that the original GTA was a 3D game with open-ended "sandbox" gameplay.
These same people slam GTA3:VC for being too derivative.
Then you have the people that have been with the series since the original GTA. These types miss the multiplayer, but generally agree that GTA3:VC is the best GTA game so far. Each game has mostly improved upon the previous games, with a few notable exceptions such as multiplayer.
I would buy another GTA, as long as enough new quality content was added, and additional gameplay improvements were made. In other words, as long as the improvement made between GTA3 and GTA3:VC is made for the next GTA game... I will buy it.
Don't get me wrong though. I am always on the outlook for new revolutionary games. My current favorite game is Puzzle Pirates, which runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It combines Ultima Online, Tetris, Puzzle Fighter, Bejeweled, and Pirates of the Caribean into one fun game.
Maybe not as revolutionary as some games, but it is revolutionary enough in my book.
You are overstating the importance of Boole's work with regards to Turing or Neumann's work. Study a little metamathematics and you will see that with regards to the stream of ideas that lead to Turing machines... Boole's are almost non-existent.
Actually the tape doesn't need to be infinite. It only needs to be unbounded. So at any given time the tape can be finite, but also at any given time you might have to add another piece of tape in a hot-swappable plug-in-play way.
The internet functions in this way. At any given time, people are adding more servers and therefore more tape to the net.
von Neumann's computer architecture is still used today! Random access memory accessed by a CPU through a bus. That seems like a big deal to me!
Also, just like you said, Turing machines don't require binary implementation, and therefore Boole's ideas played only a small part if any in Turing machines.
The truth is far more sophisticated. Everything worth anything is the result of a continuum of research and researchers. However, my arguement is that von Neumann's contributions are the first to resemble modern computers. Boole on the other hand contributes as much as Peano or Hilbert or Aristotle, etc...
You obviously have no idea whatsoever what a Turing machine is. Turing machines don't use "gates". I can't believe that your post was moderated as informative.
I don't have time to give you a computer science lesson on Turing machines, but just Google it and read up on what they are.
Go read a text on foundations of mathematics, which presents such things as Intuitionism and other constructive forms of mathematics. Intuitionism, for example, doesn't rely on formal axioms... and therefore isn't bothered by incompleteness phenonmenon such as is the case with Hilbert-style math.
Your degree seems to have only taught you classical formalism of the Hilbert type, i.e. axiomatic.
Interesting that schools teach such a narrow and biased view of "mathematics". Only presenting classical formal axiomatic mathematics is not a good thing if you want train sophisticated mathematicians.
I think Turing and von Neumann had far more to do with the underpinnings of modern computers than Boole.
Boole's great acheivement was his attempt to formalize logic algebraically at a time when logic was informal and far too meta for even mathematicians to consider formally. While this is great and all, it doesn't result in a general purpose computer.
However, Turing machines and von Neumann machines are in everyway a general purpose computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Strange... Fedora works perfectly fine on my Thinkpad. I get hardware video acceleration and everything out of the box... minus MP3 codecs, which are easily installed using APT for RPM and FreshRPMs.
The fact that your OEM doesn't support opensource has little to do with the failings or successes of Fedora.
By law a monopoly cannot engage in predatory pricing. That is one of the main differences with open source. The other main difference is that open source software is also... well, open source. Everyone has the source code in addition to the free binaries.
The obvious implication was that Microsoft's monopoly position, by USA law, prevents them from using techniques like predatory pricing to crush competition and create barries to market entry.
Microsoft is a monopoly, and therefore by law they have additional responsibilities that the KDE do not have. One of these repsonsibilities prevents them from using predatory pricing, of which bundling is a specific form.
If you are not a monopoly, you can use predatory pricing. If you are a monopoly, it is illegal to use predatory pricing. It is the law. These laws have been this way for almost 100 years.
Then the obvious solution is to use a distro such as Debian and only install software through apt-get from official repositories.
For the very few things that can't be had through the official repository (things covered by patents, closed source stuff, backports), you can use unofficial repositories.
The problem is that people equate distro with OS, and many people use the wrong distro for their needs.
Slashdot is basically worthless on April First. Then again I have browse with posts moderated as funny modified with a -3 weighting.
I own a modded Xbox. I actually don't use a mod-chip, but instead use one of the software exploits... that way I get a free mod as opposed to a $50 mod.
Anyway, I haven't pirated a single Xbox game. Instead I use my Xbox to play music and movies, which is made possible by the modding and Xbox Media Player. I also use my Xbox as an emulation based console for playing old NES and SNES games.
Well, there are still great original games, but they just don't get the same hype as the big game company's games. Check out Puzzle Pirates for an innovative game that combines Ultima Online, Tetris, and Pirates!
You have obviously never used Nautilus. I am using it right now on Fedora Core 1 on a modern 2Ghz Dell. It is the very definition of slow.
Sorry, but I have been using Gnome on Linux exclusively for the past year on my desktop. I need an interface that is tailored to me, not some future theoretical average joe. I need an interface that is not slow and buggy. I need an interface that is feature-ful. Gnome just ain't cutting it, and I lately I have been flirting with KDE.
There is no doubt that KDE and Gnome are rivals. Hell, Gnome's very existence was due to the creation of KDE and KDE's license issues... which by the way are no longer a problem.
It is survival of the fittest. Gnome is looking quite sickly, while KDE is robust and nubile.
While you may never have had problems with Nautilus, I have had plenty and so have all of my friend's who use Linux. You can ignore Gnome's problems, but it doesn't make them go away.
I must admit that I have seen a noticable improvement with the changes in the Gnome from the one that shipped with Redhat 9 to the one shipped with Fedora Core 1. In Redhat 9, Nautilus was basically unusable. It would "timeout" even on relatively small local directories. Don't even get me started on directories with many small files.
The Nautilus in Fedora Core 1 was orders of magnitude faster than the one shipped with Redhat 9... however, it was still slow compared to Microsoft's Windows Explorer. It was also still considerably buggy.
It still reguarly crashes when viewing the local file system, and when viewing SMB networked filesystems it crashes on a daily basis. It also still has the weird "timeout" bug that resembles what web browsers do with slow web sites... that is they don't display any content... but Nautilus does this with local filesystem directory listings.
Then there are the drag-n-drop bugs. All Nautilus users know what I am talking about. You drag and drop, but the little icon snaps back and doesn't do any file copying, moving, etc... Or you cut and past files, but the destination doesn't let you paste until you reload the directory.
Lets not even get into the bugs with selecting files in list view.
Then there are the bugs with icon layout on the desktop.
Oh, and don't even get me started on the problems with jumping in and out of directories. Let say I have a directory with enough entries to require vertical scrolling. I jump into one of the directories and then back out. Nautilus takes its sweet ass time recreating the list view, dynamically inserting new list entries causing everything to jumble around. A total usability nightmare.
My favorite... and yes I lost data making the mistake, is when you copy a directory with a name over another directory with the same name. In Windows, which I used up until a year ago, the file manager asks if you want to overwrite, and when you say yes it merges the contents of the two directories. Nautilus just deletes one copy and writes the other. Yeah! You just deleted hundreds of my precious files during a directory move!
Another Gnome goof is that launchers cannot be modified after being created. If you mess up something you have to start again from the begining. Or if you move the location of something referenced by the launcher, you can either clutter your drive with symlinks or you can start from the begining and make a whole new launcher.
Don't even get me started on the fact that you can't edit the application (i.e. "start") menu. I mean, come on, this is a GUI and I can't even drag and drop or in some other graphical way organize my start menu?
The spatial mode thing doesn't bother me as long as I have an option to not use it. Under windows I would always disable that, and I will do the same under Linux. I don't need a million windows cluttering my desktop just because I changed to another directory.
In closing, I have used exclusively Gnome on Linux for about a year now. I will give Gnome on Fedora Core 2 a chance... if significant improvements aren't made, then I am switching to KDE. Another drop in the bucket, but it does add up.
The evolution of free software involves a certain element of survival of the fittest, and such is the case here.
Switching one's desktop isn't something that can be done at the drop of a hat. I the same desktop at both home and work. There are many things that I must do in order to properly switch over.
Just as you can get locked in to the Windows interface, you can get locked in to FOSS desktops. I plan on switching with Fedora Core 2, and once I am used to KDE there... I will probably switch to KDE on Debian Sarge once it goes stable. This is a case where Redhat's Bluecurve project pays off, as it will lessen the shock incured by switching desktops.
Also note that I was not threatening developers. I was mearly stating fact. The versions of Gnome shipped with Redhat 9 and Fedora Core 1 are extremely buggy... mainly due to Nautilus.
With all of the bugs and performance problems that the current version of Nautilus has, you would think that would work on fixing Nautilus before changing it.
I am writing this from my Fedora Gnome desktop, which I use on a regular basis. Therefore I am very knowledgable on the bugginess of Nautilus. It is slow, buggy, and lacking in features. If something big doesn't happen by the next Fedora release, I will be switching to KDE 3.2... as I recently demo'ed it on a Mandrake install. Konqueror is fast, featureful, and seemed to have far fewer bugs than Nautilus.
The only problem is that I am really used to Gnome's look-n-feel, but I guess since I am using Fedora, that won't be as much of an issue due to the whole Bluecurve thing.
GTA1 and 2 were 3D games.
Puzzle Pirates is a great innovative game. It combines Ultima Online, Tetris, Bejeweled, Super Puzzle Fighter, and Pirates into one great game. Check it out, as the demo is free, and the game runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. My wife and I just started playing last night. Its the type of game that the whole family can enjoy.
Not only that, but the developers are very FOSS friendly and independent. So give them a little support if you can.
I think that most people that love GTA3 and GTA3:VC have never extensively played the original GTA. Therefore they didn't miss the motorbikes or multiplayer in GTA3. They also don't realize that Liberty City, Vice City, and San Adreas were packed into the original GTA. They don't realize that the original GTA was a 3D game with open-ended "sandbox" gameplay.
These same people slam GTA3:VC for being too derivative.
Then you have the people that have been with the series since the original GTA. These types miss the multiplayer, but generally agree that GTA3:VC is the best GTA game so far. Each game has mostly improved upon the previous games, with a few notable exceptions such as multiplayer.
I would buy another GTA, as long as enough new quality content was added, and additional gameplay improvements were made. In other words, as long as the improvement made between GTA3 and GTA3:VC is made for the next GTA game... I will buy it.
Don't get me wrong though. I am always on the outlook for new revolutionary games. My current favorite game is Puzzle Pirates, which runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It combines Ultima Online, Tetris, Puzzle Fighter, Bejeweled, and Pirates of the Caribean into one fun game.
Maybe not as revolutionary as some games, but it is revolutionary enough in my book.
You are overstating the importance of Boole's work with regards to Turing or Neumann's work. Study a little metamathematics and you will see that with regards to the stream of ideas that lead to Turing machines... Boole's are almost non-existent.
Actually the tape doesn't need to be infinite. It only needs to be unbounded. So at any given time the tape can be finite, but also at any given time you might have to add another piece of tape in a hot-swappable plug-in-play way.
The internet functions in this way. At any given time, people are adding more servers and therefore more tape to the net.
von Neumann's computer architecture is still used today! Random access memory accessed by a CPU through a bus. That seems like a big deal to me!
Also, just like you said, Turing machines don't require binary implementation, and therefore Boole's ideas played only a small part if any in Turing machines.
The truth is far more sophisticated. Everything worth anything is the result of a continuum of research and researchers. However, my arguement is that von Neumann's contributions are the first to resemble modern computers. Boole on the other hand contributes as much as Peano or Hilbert or Aristotle, etc...
You obviously have no idea whatsoever what a Turing machine is. Turing machines don't use "gates". I can't believe that your post was moderated as informative.
I don't have time to give you a computer science lesson on Turing machines, but just Google it and read up on what they are.
Go read a text on foundations of mathematics, which presents such things as Intuitionism and other constructive forms of mathematics. Intuitionism, for example, doesn't rely on formal axioms... and therefore isn't bothered by incompleteness phenonmenon such as is the case with Hilbert-style math.
Your degree seems to have only taught you classical formalism of the Hilbert type, i.e. axiomatic.
Interesting that schools teach such a narrow and biased view of "mathematics". Only presenting classical formal axiomatic mathematics is not a good thing if you want train sophisticated mathematicians.
I think Turing and von Neumann had far more to do with the underpinnings of modern computers than Boole.
Boole's great acheivement was his attempt to formalize logic algebraically at a time when logic was informal and far too meta for even mathematicians to consider formally. While this is great and all, it doesn't result in a general purpose computer.
However, Turing machines and von Neumann machines are in everyway a general purpose computer.
802.11g has the same problems associated with 11b. Both use the same type of encrypted communication protocols, which are easily cracked.