It is a mixed metaphor too, as it includes the elephant in "the room". This person sprays idiomatic English like a Hollywood scriptwriter describing the process of hacking.
What are you talking about? My favourite game from a few years ago (and still is today for that matter) is Path of Exile, and I don't see that turning into a fingerpainting gamelet any time soon. In fact, I seriously doubt any of the games I have enjoyed over the past few years are something that could be even in theory turned into fingerpainting.
I guess for people that just play casual games it does not really matter, but then we have not really changed the conversation have we? Just as some tasks are better performed at a workstation, like programming, some types of games will always be better suited for sitting down to something with hundreds of buttons, multiple monitors, maybe a joystick & throttle and several hundred hours to kill.
You're making up issues that don't exist, either that or have no idea what you are talking about and are just repeating arguments you have heard elsewhere and have remembered only poorly. In all of the decades I have been using the hell out of computers, and I have used the hell out of them, I have never "automated" my config files. What the hell man? I can certainly perceive contrived scenarios where that might be useful, but that is not as burning desire for even geeks, let alone normal "power users".
What you probably heard people talking about is basic system control and "automation" (what we generally refer to as scripting), and the Mac has just as much of that as Linux does, and what it does not have installed by default, you can easily get, just like most modern Linux distributions.
With a new Mac I can get Zsh up and running with my eight year old dot files, dump all of my scripts written in Zsh, Ruby and Python into my home/bin, set up the path and be just as automated as I am on any Linux machine, and even more so, because I have access to surface layer software which is just so above and beyond anything provided within the Linux realm that it turns my entire GUI into something as keyboard driven and abbreviated as running pipes. Hell, with no more than eight keys I can tarball 15 files, upload it to my FTP server and then e-mail a copy to a proof pool. I have system-wide text abbreviation which triggers hand-coded scripts, boiler plates and just plain old things I'd otherwise have to type in over and over. Can you call up the results of a Ruby script within the search bar of your web browser? I can, and it is damn useful, too.
People that don't know how to use a Mac think it is all dumbed down and rigid, but that is only because they don't know how to use a Mac. They are as ignorant as the people that think you have to switch distributions if you don't like e default desktop manager.
The laptop keyboards have these keys, you just need to learn where they are because they are not printed on the key. They are where they have been on Mac keyboards for over a decade. You use the Fn key plus the right/left and up/down keys for home/end and pgup/pgdn respectively. Fn and delete for forward delete.
Again, who said I was not having fun? You sure do love to leap and bound to conclusions. Perhaps you are just using a different definition for six hours of content than I would. Out of that list, I think only Uncharted and HL2 would qualify would they not? I don't know what those types of games are like though, except in theory. I've never owned a large console, nor found point-at-monster-and-click stuff to be very fun. But for instance, I'm sure we clocked in more than six hours of Tetris, Gameboys tethered together back when Gameboy only meant one thing, on a single road trip. How would one even rate Tetris on an "hours of content" scale, since it is an escalating puzzle game?
Hence, I think we are speaking a different language.
I don't follow your comparison. What does sexual congress have to do with playing a video game? I suppose in some strange eclipse of the two, one might find an intersection, but I was not thinking of any of those hypothetical examples.
I'm sure you have a point somewhere in there, but perhaps a more meaningful example would serve it better. Perhaps you are not even responding to me though, as I never used the phrase, "not worth your time" (and doing so would be odd as I can only speak for myself, not yourself).
To come back to what I actually did ask: what is a game like, that only has six hours of content in it?
Jesus, I don't even consider buying a game unless I know I can get at least 100 hours out of it. Some of my favorites probably have more like 500 to 1,000. What does a six hour game even look like? That sounds like watching commercials instead of films, to me.
Except that "kosher" has very little to do with the humane treatment of animals. It is more a strange, antiquated notion of basic hygiene that is as dogmatic (and often, absolutely incorrect) in its principles as any other offspring of religion.
I think you are misunderstanding, or perhaps conflating, the limitations in any system designed to monitor information, and being unable to detect all deliberate actors within that system to foil monitoringâ"with "stupidity". Given how vast the data set is (basically all of social, and even to an extent, natural reality) it is nearly trivial to slip undetected through it, and the burden of detecting not only overt threats but clandestine ones is a problem of incredible complexity, since the resources of any monitoring agency cannot exceed the natural throughput of reality. There will always be more information than can be processed, since processing information is also a system generator.
To put it simply: one can be extremely intelligent and capable, and even whole groups of like people can gather together and be effective as a unit, and still be utterly awash in the vastness that is the background noise of societal information. It is actually amazing, and a testament to their diligence, that they can get anything done at all.
But oh no, go on and spout your narrow minded and simplistic essays on how things must be This or That.
Neither. 3) Partial panopticians do not work much better than minimal surveillance, and no matter how hard or diligently people work to stop destructive assholes, a few are always going to slip through. Honestly, the effectiveness of even a hypothetical full panopticon is dubious.
You do not need these hyperbolic, extreme scenarios to explain reality.
As someone who spends a good percentage of my day supporting a Mac application, you have no idea how many people have problems with DMGs. A lot of people just don't get it. They try to run the program off of the DMG, or drag it straight to the Dock and then wonder why the alias breaks a month later when they accidentally trash the DMG---some even think the DMG itself is the application and wonder why it is so limited, and why it closes whenever they try to remove it from the desktop.
From a support standpoint, something like the App Store is going to be a godsend. I'm not sure about the rest of it yet, we'll have to wait and see.
No need to apologise. The former is a highly processed tomato paste that has been seasoned and watered down until it can be easily spread onto sandwiches and whatnot. "Boston baked beans" are a reference to a common canned food in the United States. Pop open a can and eat them cold, or hot, depending on how lazy one is. Point being, beyond these two examples, most people eat highly processed or preserved food that doesn't taste much like the original. Catsup, in particular, since the tomato is so processed, seasoned, and watered down, can be made from absolute crap produce. I don't know many Americans who eat fresh produce on a regular basis, either fruit or vegetables.
Those that do tend to not eat any of the above, and have much more expensive diets to compensate. It isn't a lifestyle that everyone can afford.
That would be one of these! I love how it features fifty stories of machinery to power a functioning park, while there seems to be a functioning "natural" park flourishing right below it.
Ever heard of catsup, or boston baked beans? People eat utter crap. Hardly anyone eats fresh produce in quantities enough to notice whether or not it had relatively clean air as a child.
You are clueless on what everyone else here is talking about. Why don't you go do a little research before blathering and frothing about the issue at hand.
Eh, not quite. Tabs allow you to add sessions to a single window, but the application remains free of MDI restraints. I can, for example, create a new Firefox window, place it beside the original, and open five tabs in it. I can then activate a text editor and leave one Firefox window raised with the other lowered, then click on something in the Firefox window without fear of losing my text editor.. Cannot do that with Opera in Windows (at least, not the older versions, I haven't looked at Opera on Windows lately), because it really is an MDI interface.
In the Windows world, though, the main reason people like tabs is that multiple browsing sessions do not spawn a dozen objects in the task bar. So it really isn't relevant to compare what a Windows user likes about Firefox to someone on another operating system of desktop environment that does not have this annoyance.
Your comments on virtual desktops being like MDIs is flawed as well. I suppose if you just place one single window in each space that would be true -- but silly. Most people use them to establish somewhat static working environments for different tasks comprised of several applications, negating the need to activate and hide four applications or so when switchings tasks. It is more comparable to having multiple monitors than anything else.
MDI has come to mean more than just Multiple Document Interface. It is really more about Encapsulated Application Space. Nothing else can enter or leave it. Fine for some things, I guess, hideous for other things. I'd rather take the flexability of specifically choosing to isolate an application with all or some of its windows. Throw just one terminal window for FTP into the Gimp desktop space, and you throw a wrench in the Virtual Desktop = MDI assertion.
The problem that her composition teacher noted (who did introduce her to notation), is that she isn't using the standard scale, and uses the harmonics of the piano to essentially create notes which do not exist in the scales, and cannot be marked. She uses the innate resonance of the piano to do this, and thus the process is different for each instrument. Her teacher stated that she would have to basically create a new system from scratch to fully capture what was going on, and was dubious as to whether or not there was any solid reason to invest such an amount of time into it, given that the process only works on one piano, and likely would stop working after a semi-annual tuning. Her method, accordingly, shifts from piano to piano -- she would have to re-notate for every piano she plays on.
I should say, so there is no confusion of contradiction, that this was the only class she ever took, and the teacher threw the textbooks across the room when she heard what was being done, saying that learning tradition composition would destroy her artform, and the best they could do with their time would be to learn basic notation, even though that is faulty in this scenario. It was the last class she took.
I have to disagree with point #1, there. While it is rare, there are artists who have, what you might call, a secret ingredient. Just as with any other intellectual field, they do not come along every day. I am fortunate enough to know one. She is a pianist who taught herself from scratch, as a child,by taking it apart and putting it back together. Her innate knowledge of that instrument is sometimes frightening to watch, as she can sit down blind-folded, play something she's never played before, and it will be just as fractally complex, emotional, and brilliant as a piece that an untalented person might have spent years composing over thousands of revisions; perhaps even more so because the process of revision tends to strip the raw power out of things.
She'll then promptly forget this piece because she could never afford schooling and doesn't even know how to write down music using standard notation.
The greatest artists are the ones who can skip right past all of the preliminaries and slap something down that is 95 - 99% genius. Whether or not they perfect the remaining percentage over time is something that is different for each one. The person I just mentioned, for instance, does not like to revise at all. She feels that the only true rendering of something is when it is played the first time. Even playing the same song twice destroys its vitality! Other people, like Leonardo DaVinci, spent many years on their masterpieces.
So anyway. I think it is great that people try to get others to draw, or engage in other artistic endeavors such as jazz. That's wonderful because I believe it is a great emotional outlet that is fun (or should be.) But this should not be confused with innate talent. Some people were just born with the ability to see things that others will never see, ever. It goes against the whole "Everyone can be Anything if they Try" rhetoric, but that is all it is -- rhetoric. Even if I spent the rest of my life playing the piano, I would not once be able to sit down and do what she can do without even thinking about it.
Practice will always make someone better, even an innate genius, but you cannot get to the level of innate genius with practice.:)
Um, and then you could not use any of those programs for what we are talking about here anyway. All of those applications sold under a student license are useless in a business setting because they cannot be used to create commercial products. There is a reason why it is called Personal Learning Edition. You use it for your classes, get addicted to using it, and then when you step out into the real working world, you have to fork over the dough to get a commercial license. You might as well just be a pirate if you are going to use Educational version in your business and save the money. Both are equally illegal.
1. Find software's homepage.
2. Try to figure out where their download link is amidst all of the marketing fluff.
3. Click the "Agree" on the download link, signing away everything you own.
4. Double-click the installation icon.
5. Click "Agree" to EULA; finish installation.
6. Reboot.
7. Get attacked by little balloons helpfully informing you that you have installed new software. Find software in the Start Menu.
8. Click "Use Trial"
9. Dialog box informs you that you have 30 days to try it, and that the save features have been disabled.
10. Cuss.
11. Load up browser software and search for a cracked version.
12. Get attacked by several hundred pop-ups.
13. Cuss profusely.
14. Download crack.
15. Double-click installation icon.
16. Reboot.
17. Two days later your broadband gets cut off by the ISP because you've been trojaned and are sending out 800,000 penis spam mails per minute.
18. Cuss. Reboot. Cuss.
19. Search for Windows XP installation CD.
20. [Insert five hundred step process for installation and reboots.] ...
520. Friendly balloon asks you to activate your software for your protection.
521. Your Internet is still offline, so you call Microsoft.
522. Wait 50 minutes. Cuss.
523. Relay the 255 digit long activiation sequence number to the Microsoft representive. He hears it wrong.
524. Repeat number slowly.
525. Representive informs you that you have already activated XP too many times, and you'll have to purchase another copy. Would you like to be transferred to the sales department?
526. Cuss.
527. Find Debian installation CDs.
What? I take the bus twice a day and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I also use light-rail occasionally as well, but over the past two years I've spent as much as two hours a day on buses, or as little as half an hour. Personally I love riding the bus. I wouldn't trade having a car for it at all. I can read; listen to music; write; sit and stare out the window.
The problem with light-rail, not from a user standpoint, is the cost. They are super expensive to install, especially since it usually requires demolition/re-zoning/compensation/construction/etc . to lay down the rails and feed power lines along the length of them. Buses are far cheaper, they utilize the existing infrastructure. You are right from a user standpoint though. I like riding the rail much more than the bus. It is smoother, and more quiet. It just isn't feasible for most cities to install light-rail on a large scale.
Well, it just might be. I was unable to verify anything on their end because all of the links were slashdotted (and in checking again, they still are FUBAR, damn). In any case, this thing has been out at least four or five months, that is when I first noticed it. Could be even longer. It wouldn't surprise me if they are the same. Sager has been a Linux friendly laptop company for quite a while now. Most of their distributors even have Linux pre-install options and the ability to not get Windows at all. Pretty good company for not being one of the "biggies." I have one of their high-end clunkers. The thing has given me no problems at all.
This sub-$1,000 computer has been out for a while. Granted it is just barely under $1,000. I'm not sure if it is classified as a true tablet though, since it is actually a convertible with a keyboard (personally I would prefer having a keyboard even if it does mean a litle more bulk). The screen rotates around, a bit like Sony's PDAs, and lays down over the keyboard like a tablet. Looks like a pretty good computer too. Built in web-cam, 4-in-1 card reader, 1 ghz VIA processor, and can support up to a gigabyte of RAM.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a mixed metaphor too, as it includes the elephant in "the room". This person sprays idiomatic English like a Hollywood scriptwriter describing the process of hacking.
What are you talking about? My favourite game from a few years ago (and still is today for that matter) is Path of Exile, and I don't see that turning into a fingerpainting gamelet any time soon. In fact, I seriously doubt any of the games I have enjoyed over the past few years are something that could be even in theory turned into fingerpainting.
I guess for people that just play casual games it does not really matter, but then we have not really changed the conversation have we? Just as some tasks are better performed at a workstation, like programming, some types of games will always be better suited for sitting down to something with hundreds of buttons, multiple monitors, maybe a joystick & throttle and several hundred hours to kill.
You're making up issues that don't exist, either that or have no idea what you are talking about and are just repeating arguments you have heard elsewhere and have remembered only poorly. In all of the decades I have been using the hell out of computers, and I have used the hell out of them, I have never "automated" my config files. What the hell man? I can certainly perceive contrived scenarios where that might be useful, but that is not as burning desire for even geeks, let alone normal "power users".
What you probably heard people talking about is basic system control and "automation" (what we generally refer to as scripting), and the Mac has just as much of that as Linux does, and what it does not have installed by default, you can easily get, just like most modern Linux distributions.
With a new Mac I can get Zsh up and running with my eight year old dot files, dump all of my scripts written in Zsh, Ruby and Python into my home/bin, set up the path and be just as automated as I am on any Linux machine, and even more so, because I have access to surface layer software which is just so above and beyond anything provided within the Linux realm that it turns my entire GUI into something as keyboard driven and abbreviated as running pipes. Hell, with no more than eight keys I can tarball 15 files, upload it to my FTP server and then e-mail a copy to a proof pool. I have system-wide text abbreviation which triggers hand-coded scripts, boiler plates and just plain old things I'd otherwise have to type in over and over. Can you call up the results of a Ruby script within the search bar of your web browser? I can, and it is damn useful, too.
People that don't know how to use a Mac think it is all dumbed down and rigid, but that is only because they don't know how to use a Mac. They are as ignorant as the people that think you have to switch distributions if you don't like e default desktop manager.
The laptop keyboards have these keys, you just need to learn where they are because they are not printed on the key. They are where they have been on Mac keyboards for over a decade. You use the Fn key plus the right/left and up/down keys for home/end and pgup/pgdn respectively. Fn and delete for forward delete.
Again, who said I was not having fun? You sure do love to leap and bound to conclusions. Perhaps you are just using a different definition for six hours of content than I would. Out of that list, I think only Uncharted and HL2 would qualify would they not? I don't know what those types of games are like though, except in theory. I've never owned a large console, nor found point-at-monster-and-click stuff to be very fun. But for instance, I'm sure we clocked in more than six hours of Tetris, Gameboys tethered together back when Gameboy only meant one thing, on a single road trip. How would one even rate Tetris on an "hours of content" scale, since it is an escalating puzzle game?
Hence, I think we are speaking a different language.
I don't follow your comparison. What does sexual congress have to do with playing a video game? I suppose in some strange eclipse of the two, one might find an intersection, but I was not thinking of any of those hypothetical examples.
I'm sure you have a point somewhere in there, but perhaps a more meaningful example would serve it better. Perhaps you are not even responding to me though, as I never used the phrase, "not worth your time" (and doing so would be odd as I can only speak for myself, not yourself).
To come back to what I actually did ask: what is a game like, that only has six hours of content in it?
Jesus, I don't even consider buying a game unless I know I can get at least 100 hours out of it. Some of my favorites probably have more like 500 to 1,000. What does a six hour game even look like? That sounds like watching commercials instead of films, to me.
Except that "kosher" has very little to do with the humane treatment of animals. It is more a strange, antiquated notion of basic hygiene that is as dogmatic (and often, absolutely incorrect) in its principles as any other offspring of religion.
I think you are misunderstanding, or perhaps conflating, the limitations in any system designed to monitor information, and being unable to detect all deliberate actors within that system to foil monitoringâ"with "stupidity". Given how vast the data set is (basically all of social, and even to an extent, natural reality) it is nearly trivial to slip undetected through it, and the burden of detecting not only overt threats but clandestine ones is a problem of incredible complexity, since the resources of any monitoring agency cannot exceed the natural throughput of reality. There will always be more information than can be processed, since processing information is also a system generator.
To put it simply: one can be extremely intelligent and capable, and even whole groups of like people can gather together and be effective as a unit, and still be utterly awash in the vastness that is the background noise of societal information. It is actually amazing, and a testament to their diligence, that they can get anything done at all.
But oh no, go on and spout your narrow minded and simplistic essays on how things must be This or That.
Neither. 3) Partial panopticians do not work much better than minimal surveillance, and no matter how hard or diligently people work to stop destructive assholes, a few are always going to slip through. Honestly, the effectiveness of even a hypothetical full panopticon is dubious.
You do not need these hyperbolic, extreme scenarios to explain reality.
As someone who spends a good percentage of my day supporting a Mac application, you have no idea how many people have problems with DMGs. A lot of people just don't get it. They try to run the program off of the DMG, or drag it straight to the Dock and then wonder why the alias breaks a month later when they accidentally trash the DMG---some even think the DMG itself is the application and wonder why it is so limited, and why it closes whenever they try to remove it from the desktop.
From a support standpoint, something like the App Store is going to be a godsend. I'm not sure about the rest of it yet, we'll have to wait and see.
No need to apologise. The former is a highly processed tomato paste that has been seasoned and watered down until it can be easily spread onto sandwiches and whatnot. "Boston baked beans" are a reference to a common canned food in the United States. Pop open a can and eat them cold, or hot, depending on how lazy one is. Point being, beyond these two examples, most people eat highly processed or preserved food that doesn't taste much like the original. Catsup, in particular, since the tomato is so processed, seasoned, and watered down, can be made from absolute crap produce. I don't know many Americans who eat fresh produce on a regular basis, either fruit or vegetables.
Those that do tend to not eat any of the above, and have much more expensive diets to compensate. It isn't a lifestyle that everyone can afford.
That would be one of these! I love how it features fifty stories of machinery to power a functioning park, while there seems to be a functioning "natural" park flourishing right below it.
Ever heard of catsup, or boston baked beans? People eat utter crap. Hardly anyone eats fresh produce in quantities enough to notice whether or not it had relatively clean air as a child.
As above, and alternatively you can press the period key to search all text — not just links.
Google is not "giving away" anything.
In the Windows world, though, the main reason people like tabs is that multiple browsing sessions do not spawn a dozen objects in the task bar. So it really isn't relevant to compare what a Windows user likes about Firefox to someone on another operating system of desktop environment that does not have this annoyance.
Your comments on virtual desktops being like MDIs is flawed as well. I suppose if you just place one single window in each space that would be true -- but silly. Most people use them to establish somewhat static working environments for different tasks comprised of several applications, negating the need to activate and hide four applications or so when switchings tasks. It is more comparable to having multiple monitors than anything else.
MDI has come to mean more than just Multiple Document Interface. It is really more about Encapsulated Application Space. Nothing else can enter or leave it. Fine for some things, I guess, hideous for other things. I'd rather take the flexability of specifically choosing to isolate an application with all or some of its windows. Throw just one terminal window for FTP into the Gimp desktop space, and you throw a wrench in the Virtual Desktop = MDI assertion.
Yeah! Awesome. You could call it something like... Pong! This is huge.
I should say, so there is no confusion of contradiction, that this was the only class she ever took, and the teacher threw the textbooks across the room when she heard what was being done, saying that learning tradition composition would destroy her artform, and the best they could do with their time would be to learn basic notation, even though that is faulty in this scenario. It was the last class she took.
I have to disagree with point #1, there. While it is rare, there are artists who have, what you might call, a secret ingredient. Just as with any other intellectual field, they do not come along every day. I am fortunate enough to know one. She is a pianist who taught herself from scratch, as a child ,by taking it apart and putting it back together. Her innate knowledge of that instrument is sometimes frightening to watch, as she can sit down blind-folded, play something she's never played before, and it will be just as fractally complex, emotional, and brilliant as a piece that an untalented person might have spent years composing over thousands of revisions; perhaps even more so because the process of revision tends to strip the raw power out of things.
:)
She'll then promptly forget this piece because she could never afford schooling and doesn't even know how to write down music using standard notation.
The greatest artists are the ones who can skip right past all of the preliminaries and slap something down that is 95 - 99% genius. Whether or not they perfect the remaining percentage over time is something that is different for each one. The person I just mentioned, for instance, does not like to revise at all. She feels that the only true rendering of something is when it is played the first time. Even playing the same song twice destroys its vitality! Other people, like Leonardo DaVinci, spent many years on their masterpieces.
So anyway. I think it is great that people try to get others to draw, or engage in other artistic endeavors such as jazz. That's wonderful because I believe it is a great emotional outlet that is fun (or should be.) But this should not be confused with innate talent. Some people were just born with the ability to see things that others will never see, ever. It goes against the whole "Everyone can be Anything if they Try" rhetoric, but that is all it is -- rhetoric. Even if I spent the rest of my life playing the piano, I would not once be able to sit down and do what she can do without even thinking about it.
Practice will always make someone better, even an innate genius, but you cannot get to the level of innate genius with practice.
Um, and then you could not use any of those programs for what we are talking about here anyway. All of those applications sold under a student license are useless in a business setting because they cannot be used to create commercial products. There is a reason why it is called Personal Learning Edition. You use it for your classes, get addicted to using it, and then when you step out into the real working world, you have to fork over the dough to get a commercial license. You might as well just be a pirate if you are going to use Educational version in your business and save the money. Both are equally illegal.
How to install software on Windows
1. Find software's homepage.
...
2. Try to figure out where their download link is amidst all of the marketing fluff.
3. Click the "Agree" on the download link, signing away everything you own.
4. Double-click the installation icon.
5. Click "Agree" to EULA; finish installation.
6. Reboot.
7. Get attacked by little balloons helpfully informing you that you have installed new software. Find software in the Start Menu.
8. Click "Use Trial"
9. Dialog box informs you that you have 30 days to try it, and that the save features have been disabled.
10. Cuss.
11. Load up browser software and search for a cracked version.
12. Get attacked by several hundred pop-ups.
13. Cuss profusely.
14. Download crack.
15. Double-click installation icon.
16. Reboot.
17. Two days later your broadband gets cut off by the ISP because you've been trojaned and are sending out 800,000 penis spam mails per minute.
18. Cuss. Reboot. Cuss.
19. Search for Windows XP installation CD.
20. [Insert five hundred step process for installation and reboots.]
520. Friendly balloon asks you to activate your software for your protection.
521. Your Internet is still offline, so you call Microsoft.
522. Wait 50 minutes. Cuss.
523. Relay the 255 digit long activiation sequence number to the Microsoft representive. He hears it wrong.
524. Repeat number slowly.
525. Representive informs you that you have already activated XP too many times, and you'll have to purchase another copy. Would you like to be transferred to the sales department?
526. Cuss.
527. Find Debian installation CDs.
How to install software on Linux
1. type: apt-get install [application name]
The problem with light-rail, not from a user standpoint, is the cost. They are super expensive to install, especially since it usually requires demolition/re-zoning/compensation/construction/etc . to lay down the rails and feed power lines along the length of them. Buses are far cheaper, they utilize the existing infrastructure. You are right from a user standpoint though. I like riding the rail much more than the bus. It is smoother, and more quiet. It just isn't feasible for most cities to install light-rail on a large scale.
Well, it just might be. I was unable to verify anything on their end because all of the links were slashdotted (and in checking again, they still are FUBAR, damn). In any case, this thing has been out at least four or five months, that is when I first noticed it. Could be even longer. It wouldn't surprise me if they are the same. Sager has been a Linux friendly laptop company for quite a while now. Most of their distributors even have Linux pre-install options and the ability to not get Windows at all. Pretty good company for not being one of the "biggies." I have one of their high-end clunkers. The thing has given me no problems at all.
This sub-$1,000 computer has been out for a while. Granted it is just barely under $1,000. I'm not sure if it is classified as a true tablet though, since it is actually a convertible with a keyboard (personally I would prefer having a keyboard even if it does mean a litle more bulk). The screen rotates around, a bit like Sony's PDAs, and lays down over the keyboard like a tablet. Looks like a pretty good computer too. Built in web-cam, 4-in-1 card reader, 1 ghz VIA processor, and can support up to a gigabyte of RAM.