For a few days. You can load all types of little crazy applets, but after awhile I hardly ever used it. Its one of those OSX features that has a huge WOW factor, but doesn't change the way people work. Its great to see that someone is finally following through on Linux compatibility, but considering Gnome is the default desktop for nearly ever major distro, it will not effect most desktop Linux users.
On the topic of OSX, why would anyone want to write commercial software for the OSX market? If your product is successful, Apple will simply duplicate the functionality, include it in OSX, and act like they invented it.
I really wish some hardware sites would start doing a section on every hardware review about the status of linux support. It might encourage hardware manufactures to consider making at least a semi-decent attempt to support Linux.
Right now, most of the major sites seem to focus solely on windows drivers and windows specific features. I realize that its 95% windows world, but Linux people do purchase a decent amount of hardware. Because of Nvidia's decent Linux support over the years, when I look at graphics cards I don't even bother looking to see what ATI has to offer.
"Looks like finding a compatible girl geek in the computer profession is becoming even harder,"
The last thing most geeky people need is a partner with the same type of personality issues. People who have the typical geek personality traits (ie socially awkward), would be much better off pairing up with a normal extroverted girl.
Seriously, how could Barrett be so stupid? Yeah, lets launch FUD against a low cost laptop designed to give computing capabilties to people could otherwise have nothing. Does program diversity matter when the only other option is no computer? Brilliant PR move! Maybe Barrett is just pissed that Intel's stock price has been flat since his tenure as CEO.
I've been waiting for standalone hdtv tivo since I purchased my series2 three years ago. How can a technology company not release a major product revision in nearly three years? Instead of releasing new products, Tivo seems to be worrying a lot more about partnering, catering to content companies(DRM), fiddling with the pricing model, and minor software updates rather than producing any real innovations.
From all accounts, it appears that Microsoft is trying to create an artificial shortage by only allowing a small number of units to be sold today. I called a few retailers this morning, all of them are sold out. Most of them had less that 40 systems for sale, and this in the Philadelphia area, not some rural market.
While the intended effect is to create a buzz that encourages a christmas buying frenzy, it could backfire just as well. The original Xbox launch had an enormous supply. I wasn't really looking to buy an xbox at the time, but I happened to be in Best Buy 2 days after the launch, so I decided to give it a shot.
Today, Xbox 360's are selling for nearly $2,000 on ebay. Not even a package, just the system. The "shortage buzz" will certainly keep casual purchasers away and I'm sure quite a few people might decide to wait a few months for the ps3.
I can see this working if you are looking to provide basic end user support, but good luck finding highly skilled technical people to move to the country for less money. In the past, I've been involved in trying to hire skilled workers to rural areas and its very difficult to find good people who are willing to move to remote areas.
I purchased a series2 Tivo three years ago and it has served me well, but when is Tivo going to finally release an HD capable standalone box? Three years is a lifetime for a struggling company not to release a major product update.
As a music lover, I am still forced to purchase CD's in order to get a high quality sound in an uncrippled format. My usual routine is to rip the CD in to FLAC as soon as it arrives and keep the CD has a hard backup copy. When the industry initially pushed copy protected CD's, it seemed that the target market was pop and rap consumers, so it never really affected the music I cared to purchase. Now, I'm starting to see indie, jamband, and jazz CD's with copy protection.
Sure, most of the schemes do not affect ripping on my platform(Linux), but I am unwilling to support a distribution method that unfairly restricts basic fair use. So whenever I see a CD that I would like to purchase but its copy protected, I make sure to give it a 1-start review on amazon stating the reasons why I wont purchase it. Its quite simple, if enough people refuse to buy copy protected content and make it publicly known, the industry will be forced to release real CD's.
This tablet looks really cool, especially from a software perspective and Nokia's efforts to seed the development community. What would be even better, is a smartphone using the same platform. With Palm moving to windows, there is a clear lack of alternative smartphone platforms for the future. If there was Maemo powered smartphone, I would move to it in a heartbeat. While the tablet is an interesting piece of technology, I can't justify spending $300+ for device when I'm already sporting a laptop, ipod, and a smartphone.
I picked up my pre-order of Civ 4 yesterday and had just enough time to whip through the tutorial game to see what is new. Overall, there seems to be a lot of improvements both in graphics, gameplay, and strategy. Its hard to give a real detailed review, only playing it for 2 hours, but its just as additive as civ III if not more.
The real refreshing thing about this game, is that it actually includes real documentation. Its amazing how many games, especially console games, have absolutely hideous docs. The late 80's/early 90's PC games usually came with heavy duty docs.
I'm not discrediting the people who had actual CRACKED screens-- that's B.S. It should be fixed. Scratches... get a life.
I'm sorry, but I think its a reasonable request to be able to put an ipod nano in your pocket, unprotected, and expect not to look like crap after a few days of use. My 3g ipod is a year old. While the battery life is down to about 2-3 hours of use, the case and screen look fine after keeping it in my pocket daily, for over a year. While you may not have an issue, there are obviously thousands of people who dissatisfied.
I see a lot of Apple apologists saying "use a case" buy a "screen protector" but any of those solutions are simply compensating for a design flaw.
Red Hat doesn't have "official" forums because you call them or email them your problem directly and their engineers or tech people get back to you.
Calling and e-mailing for answers to support issues is a great "traditional" option, but it doesn't take a way the usefulness of having an official support forum.
E-mail and phone support is not searchable. A lot of the good support solutions come from actual users, not the people paid to talk with them. It also fixes the problem of answering the same question over and over again. Sure, Redhat has a knowledge base, but it requires an employee to manually post to the knowledge base. An on line forum provides a nimble interactive knowledge base with a sense of community.
Any company providing software support in 2005, that cannot see the clearly obvious benefits of on line support forums, needs to really take a step back and reassess their support strategy.
I moved my laptop from gentoo unstable to Ubuntu development for a few reasons. First off, Ubuntu seems to adopt new releases quicker that any other distribution, yet somehow manages to have excellent Q&A even on their unstable releases. The second major reason was that Ubuntu has made an effort to adopt many of the latest mono based applications. If you look around for the most exciting new desktop applications being developed for Linux, most of them are mono based. F-spot, Banshee, and Beagle are in Ubuntu's packaging system.
Thirdly, Community based distros make it so much easier to find support answers. I deal with RHEL systems at work, good luck finding support answers on the web. How sad is it that its the year 2005 and Redhat still doesn't have an online support forum? Ever search for a Redhat support issue on google? Most of results that come are rh9 issues.. Its so much easier to use online resources with community based distributions, when I'm scouring for Redhat answers I find myself asking a simple question, "What the hell are we paying for?"
What happens when there is a mechanical or electrical malfunction that requires the pilot to go in to cabin? There have been thousands of situations where a pilot had to go in to the cabin to observe damage, check wiring, check the gear, etc etc.
There is not a chance in hell pilots would ever accept any type of electronic device. Not to mention that having a device in every commercial airplane that gave people on the ground full control would be financial infeasible. It would cost billions and billions to create a device that would be safe enough to embed in airliners to the point where the remote user could override the control of a functioning jumbo jet and actually land the damn thing safely.
I love how since 9-11, everyone is looking for the government to spend billions on preventative measures for movie inspired unlikely scenarios. Yeah lets spend a hundred million outfitting stewardesses with wifi buzzers, instead of just using the plainly obvious non-gagetry solution of not opening up the cockpit door when the stewardess yells hijack. Either way, with the buzzers or just yelling hijack a reprisal from the terrorist will occur when that cockpit door does not open.
Has anyone noticed that there has not been an attempted hijack on a US airline since post 9-11 security measures were put in place?
The idea of rebranding such a collection of tools as a system is such a joke. Sure, java apps now look pretty good in gnome with the gtk look and feel, but there is hardly anything that differentiates the java desktop sytem from a standard gnome install with a jre and openoffice.
While people keep discussing the bottom of the barrel, I think the majority of customers who would be attracted by WIFI spend more than the average cafe customer.
In my case, when I was working on a proposal for a few weeks(without an office), we spent quite a bit of time working in local cafe that offered free wifi. During a multiple hour session, we easily spent $20 per person on lunch, soda, coffee, and snacks. If the wifi did not exist, we would be somewhere else.
Besides people working on grant proposals or people starting a biz without office space, free wifi attracts business clientèle. Locations with wifi are preferred for longer lunch meetings. Most of these meetings would previously be spent in a conference room, but now people can get out of the office and remain connected.
Sure, your always going to have some punky looking kid who likes to sit there for a few more hours than he should, but its worth it in the long run.
Apple is probably the best company in the world when it comes to public relations. I've never seen another company get so much press repeatedly on inconsequential news items. Whether its the constant articles about the Virgina Tech cluster or the seemingly endless supply of pointless music store statistics, Apple takes the prize for making non-events, published by the media.
Do any other music stores measure performance by the sale of songs? Well, most music stores don't actually sell songs, but do they even care about how many albums they sell? Hell No, music stores, just like any other business, care about PROFIT. It doesn't matter if you sell 10 billion songs, how much money are you making?
Apple has been using the ITMS store as a loss leader to sell ipods, but there will come a day when the IPOD market becomes saturated. Instead of republishing meaningless Apple PR on Slashdot, perhaps a more interesting discussion would be, how will Apple make money of its music business when the MP3 player market has reached saturation?
If you haven't used Evolution in a long time, its worth checking out. There have been significant improvements, especially since the 2.0 release. I've been using evolution for about four years now exclusively with great results. Calendaring is ical based, connects to exchange and others. The e-mail client and todo list is top notch too.
Slashdot Mirror
On the topic of OSX, why would anyone want to write commercial software for the OSX market? If your product is successful, Apple will simply duplicate the functionality, include it in OSX, and act like they invented it.
Right now, most of the major sites seem to focus solely on windows drivers and windows specific features. I realize that its 95% windows world, but Linux people do purchase a decent amount of hardware. Because of Nvidia's decent Linux support over the years, when I look at graphics cards I don't even bother looking to see what ATI has to offer.
The last thing most geeky people need is a partner with the same type of personality issues. People who have the typical geek personality traits (ie socially awkward), would be much better off pairing up with a normal extroverted girl.
Seriously, how could Barrett be so stupid? Yeah, lets launch FUD against a low cost laptop designed to give computing capabilties to people could otherwise have nothing. Does program diversity matter when the only other option is no computer? Brilliant PR move! Maybe Barrett is just pissed that Intel's stock price has been flat since his tenure as CEO.
I've been waiting for standalone hdtv tivo since I purchased my series2 three years ago. How can a technology company not release a major product revision in nearly three years? Instead of releasing new products, Tivo seems to be worrying a lot more about partnering, catering to content companies(DRM), fiddling with the pricing model, and minor software updates rather than producing any real innovations.
While the intended effect is to create a buzz that encourages a christmas buying frenzy, it could backfire just as well. The original Xbox launch had an enormous supply. I wasn't really looking to buy an xbox at the time, but I happened to be in Best Buy 2 days after the launch, so I decided to give it a shot.
Today, Xbox 360's are selling for nearly $2,000 on ebay. Not even a package, just the system. The "shortage buzz" will certainly keep casual purchasers away and I'm sure quite a few people might decide to wait a few months for the ps3.
I can see this working if you are looking to provide basic end user support, but good luck finding highly skilled technical people to move to the country for less money. In the past, I've been involved in trying to hire skilled workers to rural areas and its very difficult to find good people who are willing to move to remote areas.
I purchased a series2 Tivo three years ago and it has served me well, but when is Tivo going to finally release an HD capable standalone box? Three years is a lifetime for a struggling company not to release a major product update.
Sure, most of the schemes do not affect ripping on my platform(Linux), but I am unwilling to support a distribution method that unfairly restricts basic fair use. So whenever I see a CD that I would like to purchase but its copy protected, I make sure to give it a 1-start review on amazon stating the reasons why I wont purchase it. Its quite simple, if enough people refuse to buy copy protected content and make it publicly known, the industry will be forced to release real CD's.
While HP Drivers for Windows and OSX might suck, if your running Linux, I've had nothing but success with a wide variety of HP printing products.
This tablet looks really cool, especially from a software perspective and Nokia's efforts to seed the development community. What would be even better, is a smartphone using the same platform. With Palm moving to windows, there is a clear lack of alternative smartphone platforms for the future. If there was Maemo powered smartphone, I would move to it in a heartbeat. While the tablet is an interesting piece of technology, I can't justify spending $300+ for device when I'm already sporting a laptop, ipod, and a smartphone.
AmaroK music player
Banshee, developed by a Novell employee, is leaps and bounds ahead of any existing music app for linux.
DigiKam
F-spot, also by a Novell employee.
As far as all of the other applications you mentioned, each has a gnome equivalent that in many cases does a better job.
yep, its in French. Another issue, is that disc 2 is labeled play disc, where actually disc 1 is the play disk.
Here is a quick snap of the documentation included in the special edition.
The real refreshing thing about this game, is that it actually includes real documentation. Its amazing how many games, especially console games, have absolutely hideous docs. The late 80's/early 90's PC games usually came with heavy duty docs.
I'm sorry, but I think its a reasonable request to be able to put an ipod nano in your pocket, unprotected, and expect not to look like crap after a few days of use. My 3g ipod is a year old. While the battery life is down to about 2-3 hours of use, the case and screen look fine after keeping it in my pocket daily, for over a year. While you may not have an issue, there are obviously thousands of people who dissatisfied.
I see a lot of Apple apologists saying "use a case" buy a "screen protector" but any of those solutions are simply compensating for a design flaw.
Calling and e-mailing for answers to support issues is a great "traditional" option, but it doesn't take a way the usefulness of having an official support forum.
E-mail and phone support is not searchable. A lot of the good support solutions come from actual users, not the people paid to talk with them. It also fixes the problem of answering the same question over and over again. Sure, Redhat has a knowledge base, but it requires an employee to manually post to the knowledge base. An on line forum provides a nimble interactive knowledge base with a sense of community.
Any company providing software support in 2005, that cannot see the clearly obvious benefits of on line support forums, needs to really take a step back and reassess their support strategy.
Thirdly, Community based distros make it so much easier to find support answers. I deal with RHEL systems at work, good luck finding support answers on the web. How sad is it that its the year 2005 and Redhat still doesn't have an online support forum? Ever search for a Redhat support issue on google? Most of results that come are rh9 issues.. Its so much easier to use online resources with community based distributions, when I'm scouring for Redhat answers I find myself asking a simple question, "What the hell are we paying for?"
What happens when there is a mechanical or electrical malfunction that requires the pilot to go in to cabin? There have been thousands of situations where a pilot had to go in to the cabin to observe damage, check wiring, check the gear, etc etc.
I love how since 9-11, everyone is looking for the government to spend billions on preventative measures for movie inspired unlikely scenarios. Yeah lets spend a hundred million outfitting stewardesses with wifi buzzers, instead of just using the plainly obvious non-gagetry solution of not opening up the cockpit door when the stewardess yells hijack. Either way, with the buzzers or just yelling hijack a reprisal from the terrorist will occur when that cockpit door does not open.
Has anyone noticed that there has not been an attempted hijack on a US airline since post 9-11 security measures were put in place?
The idea of rebranding such a collection of tools as a system is such a joke. Sure, java apps now look pretty good in gnome with the gtk look and feel, but there is hardly anything that differentiates the java desktop sytem from a standard gnome install with a jre and openoffice.
Well I did the smart thing and sold the game on ebay immediatly after being dissapointed. I only lost $5.
In my case, when I was working on a proposal for a few weeks(without an office), we spent quite a bit of time working in local cafe that offered free wifi. During a multiple hour session, we easily spent $20 per person on lunch, soda, coffee, and snacks. If the wifi did not exist, we would be somewhere else.
Besides people working on grant proposals or people starting a biz without office space, free wifi attracts business clientèle. Locations with wifi are preferred for longer lunch meetings. Most of these meetings would previously be spent in a conference room, but now people can get out of the office and remain connected.
Sure, your always going to have some punky looking kid who likes to sit there for a few more hours than he should, but its worth it in the long run.
Do any other music stores measure performance by the sale of songs? Well, most music stores don't actually sell songs, but do they even care about how many albums they sell? Hell No, music stores, just like any other business, care about PROFIT. It doesn't matter if you sell 10 billion songs, how much money are you making?
Apple has been using the ITMS store as a loss leader to sell ipods, but there will come a day when the IPOD market becomes saturated. Instead of republishing meaningless Apple PR on Slashdot, perhaps a more interesting discussion would be, how will Apple make money of its music business when the MP3 player market has reached saturation?
If you haven't used Evolution in a long time, its worth checking out. There have been significant improvements, especially since the 2.0 release. I've been using evolution for about four years now exclusively with great results. Calendaring is ical based, connects to exchange and others. The e-mail client and todo list is top notch too.