It's interesting that you would say that, considering the fact that possibly THE biggest reason that people are still saying that "Linux is not ready for the desktop" is that the current crop of desktop environments are not up to the Windows par. Which implies that one of the significant reasons that users aren't switching from Windows to Linux is because they do not see either Gnome of KDE as being capable of meeting their needs for a desktop system.
So while I personally think the KDE vs Gnome battle to be more relevant, the winner has to take on Windows. So Gnome vs Windows (and KDE vs Windows) is something that has to be considered, at least eventually. (Bear in mind, of course, that in this context of Gnome vs Windows, it is Windows the desktop environment, whereas if it were Linux vs Windows it would be Windows the operating system... Microsoft was kind enough to give everything the same title.)
That's not the only reason foreign countries and foreign banks lend the US money; in fact, it's not even the biggest. That fact is, however, one of the biggest dangers to the US economy in the long term.
The number one reason foreign banks are willing to lend the US money is that they are guaranteed to be paid back. There is no question that the US will default on a loan, and there is no question that it will be on time. However, that is very dangerous, because as the US continues to pay off these foreign debts, money is leaving the country and it's not coming back. As more and more of these foreign banks get paid back, and less and less American banks lend money to the US government (they don't want to support big government, and the interest rates are ridiculously low), the money that leaves the US economy will result in drastic reductions of the standard of living in the US, while the standard of living will rise in the lending nations as that same money flows in.
The national debt is massive, and that is a problem (a small amount of debt is both expected and beneficial, but it's getting excessive), but the big problem for the US is that the government no longer owes that money to its citizens; the money belongs to other nations.
The new apple PCs will only run at 3ghz or so, but will continue to completely school anything from Intel/Microsoft.
3GHz? Jobs and IBM claimed that 3GHz will be reached by the end of this summer. I'm not saying that's a guarantee, but the PPC970, it is said, will be scalable in terms of clockspeed in a way that the G4 was not. I guess my point is that by the time Longhorn comes out, unless it is sometime early next year, the new Apples will probably be somewhere above 3GHz. But they'll still trash Intel.
If they hadn't released documentation on how to exploit this bug, it would have taken much more time before it was discovered and exploited naturally. This would in turn have given the world more time to patch their systems. Thus, the outbreak would not have been as bad.
If, on the other hand, they had just released the fix and told everyone to update because there's a bug in something, the bug writers would be in the same place they'd always been: searching over the whole system for a bug. Apple's doing it right. Not Microsoft.
It loses in performance? Do you have any numbers to show that, or are you just making it up to enforce your point that everything is reversed now? I would be interested in a link, or some other kind of proof.
Anecdotally, I have a 17" laptop with a P4 2.8GHz HT, and it came with Windows. It ran a little slowly, dragging on mundane tasks, and it got too hot to touch after just a few minutes of being on. I got fed up, and decided to install Gentoo. After getting everything set up and working (except sound), it's a speed demon. Mozilla starts instantaneously. Everything does. There is no waiting for anything. It only takes 10-15 seconds to boot. Compared to Windows, Linux runs away with the trophy. But it struggles in hardware support.
"We want to beat Google. Give us millions." Hmmm, wouldn't the response to that be something like: "Not even Microsoft can beat Google, and they have infinite funds and a monopoly. Go to hell." ?
I cannot imagine Apple supporting that at all. They don't want to give the idea that they are admitting inferiority in their hardware. Saying "You can use our hardware in order to have access to our software, and use beige box PCs to do your processing" does not help you out next time you try to convince people it's not a good idea just to port your software to other hardware.
And anyway, they want you to replace your G4-450 with a G5, not an Athlon64.
Wow! You're right, Mr. AC! All I have to do is spend the next 12-18 hours install Gentoo and trying to get it to work with my non-standard hardware, then download (or purchase) a couple of games, then test them out. Clearly, my subjective opinion won't be biased because of the hassle I went through to get it to work. Oh, what? You mean in order to do a reasonable test, I'd have to have two identical machines with installations of Windows and Linux and run them side by side to test them? Well, sure, I'll just go buy another machine, because somebody made an unsupported claim on Slashdot.
Those URLs do *NOT* count as support of the claim. At all.
take charge to deal with our own rouge company/monopolies.
Microsoft is spreading it's monopoly into the makeup industry?! Oh, the horror! Well, the one consolation we can take is that animal testing will fall by the wayside... MS don't need no testing!
I think comparing NT3 to XP as an analogue to the relationship between Gentoo and Linux is unwise. Gentoo IS Linux, but with things added that are specific to its distribution. NT, on the other hand, is not XP... XP is NT with things added. And you typically do expect that something written for NT will work in XP, though that isn't ALWAYS the case.
I'm going to have to call bullshit here. I have the Compaq tablet with the Crusoe in it, and it's not painfully slow at all. You just have to realize that it's not going to move as quickly as the beast sitting next to it, but the tradeoff is that it lasts twice as long on battery and weighs 3-4 times less. I used it as my primary machine for a couple of months while I was angry at my main laptop (17" Toshiba).
Basically, don't believe people who tell you Transmetas are too slow... they're no speed demons, but they do what they set out to do.
On the slower, colder end you're forgetting the VIA C3 chip that is available in a few laptops and tablets. It uses less watts than the Efficeon and gives off less heat. It is also cheaper. However, it is considerably slower per clock cycle and doesn't have the power management built into it like the Transmeta chips. I have a Crusoe tablet, and I'd like to compare it directly to a VIA-based machine.
On the fast and hot end you're forgetting about laptops with the full P4 in them (or even the new ones with P4EE or Prescott). I also have one of these (full P4). It is hotter than hell, and I can't keep it on my lap for more than half an hour without worrying that the sweat on my thighs will short it out. Also 12 lbs vs 3 lbs is not so comfortable.
Basically, there are a lot of options depending on what you want. I personally like the laptop form factor for a desktop machine (quiter than a normal rig with comparable speed), and the tablet/laptop hybrid is awesome for portability (especially the Compaq one, which has the computer behind the screen instead of the keyboard, so there is nothing to produce heat where the machine touches your body).
An addition to the question: does anyone have any good suggestions for a bag for a big 17 inch laptop? It's considerably larger than the 17" powerbook, and i'd also like to be able to fit books and/or my other smaller laptop (tablet) inside. Are there any bags that would fit this?
Both "Monsters Inc." and "Finding Nemo" contained very little about the actual story. In fact, after seeing the trailer for "Finding Nemo", I was not exactly enthused about the story.
I take issue with this. It is my philosophy of trailers that you can tell how good a movie is going to be as an inverse proportion of how much of the story can be gleaned from the trailers. If they tell the story in the trailer, they have nothing to lose and are hoping people will go despite having no reason to do so. Keeping the story a secret means they have something up their sleeve. Which may well mean that the movie will be pretty good. Check that on the trailers and the movies that come out. It turns out to be remarkably accurate.
I love people like you who say things like "we all have to tighten up to compete" and seem to stick to the idea that "all" doesn't for some reason, include the biggest slice of the pie: those managers and CEOs who take the most money and don't do anything but take money and jobs away from their workers. Sure, the workers' salaries ought to go down to compete with the cheap labor from overseas... but the millions that the bosses are making should go down a lot more.
Note to the free-traders: "all" also includes the rich and useless!
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting that you would say that, considering the fact that possibly THE biggest reason that people are still saying that "Linux is not ready for the desktop" is that the current crop of desktop environments are not up to the Windows par. Which implies that one of the significant reasons that users aren't switching from Windows to Linux is because they do not see either Gnome of KDE as being capable of meeting their needs for a desktop system.
... Microsoft was kind enough to give everything the same title.)
So while I personally think the KDE vs Gnome battle to be more relevant, the winner has to take on Windows. So Gnome vs Windows (and KDE vs Windows) is something that has to be considered, at least eventually. (Bear in mind, of course, that in this context of Gnome vs Windows, it is Windows the desktop environment, whereas if it were Linux vs Windows it would be Windows the operating system
You don't seem to understand what government means.
The government has spent billions fighting a war overseas; when is it your turn to go fight?
Saddam: "I destroyed them. Note, I don't have them any more. Come look."
Response: "Aha! He's hiding them! Now you will die."
That's not the only reason foreign countries and foreign banks lend the US money; in fact, it's not even the biggest. That fact is, however, one of the biggest dangers to the US economy in the long term.
The number one reason foreign banks are willing to lend the US money is that they are guaranteed to be paid back. There is no question that the US will default on a loan, and there is no question that it will be on time. However, that is very dangerous, because as the US continues to pay off these foreign debts, money is leaving the country and it's not coming back. As more and more of these foreign banks get paid back, and less and less American banks lend money to the US government (they don't want to support big government, and the interest rates are ridiculously low), the money that leaves the US economy will result in drastic reductions of the standard of living in the US, while the standard of living will rise in the lending nations as that same money flows in.
The national debt is massive, and that is a problem (a small amount of debt is both expected and beneficial, but it's getting excessive), but the big problem for the US is that the government no longer owes that money to its citizens; the money belongs to other nations.
The new apple PCs will only run at 3ghz or so, but will continue to completely school anything from Intel/Microsoft.
3GHz? Jobs and IBM claimed that 3GHz will be reached by the end of this summer. I'm not saying that's a guarantee, but the PPC970, it is said, will be scalable in terms of clockspeed in a way that the G4 was not. I guess my point is that by the time Longhorn comes out, unless it is sometime early next year, the new Apples will probably be somewhere above 3GHz. But they'll still trash Intel.
If they hadn't released documentation on how to exploit this bug, it would have taken much more time before it was discovered and exploited naturally. This would in turn have given the world more time to patch their systems. Thus, the outbreak would not have been as bad.
If, on the other hand, they had just released the fix and told everyone to update because there's a bug in something, the bug writers would be in the same place they'd always been: searching over the whole system for a bug. Apple's doing it right. Not Microsoft.
Only geeks talk about Macs and technology AT ALL.
It loses in performance? Do you have any numbers to show that, or are you just making it up to enforce your point that everything is reversed now? I would be interested in a link, or some other kind of proof.
Anecdotally, I have a 17" laptop with a P4 2.8GHz HT, and it came with Windows. It ran a little slowly, dragging on mundane tasks, and it got too hot to touch after just a few minutes of being on. I got fed up, and decided to install Gentoo. After getting everything set up and working (except sound), it's a speed demon. Mozilla starts instantaneously. Everything does. There is no waiting for anything. It only takes 10-15 seconds to boot. Compared to Windows, Linux runs away with the trophy. But it struggles in hardware support.
"We want to beat Google. Give us millions." Hmmm, wouldn't the response to that be something like: "Not even Microsoft can beat Google, and they have infinite funds and a monopoly. Go to hell." ?
I cannot imagine Apple supporting that at all. They don't want to give the idea that they are admitting inferiority in their hardware. Saying "You can use our hardware in order to have access to our software, and use beige box PCs to do your processing" does not help you out next time you try to convince people it's not a good idea just to port your software to other hardware.
And anyway, they want you to replace your G4-450 with a G5, not an Athlon64.
Wow! You're right, Mr. AC! All I have to do is spend the next 12-18 hours install Gentoo and trying to get it to work with my non-standard hardware, then download (or purchase) a couple of games, then test them out. Clearly, my subjective opinion won't be biased because of the hassle I went through to get it to work. Oh, what? You mean in order to do a reasonable test, I'd have to have two identical machines with installations of Windows and Linux and run them side by side to test them? Well, sure, I'll just go buy another machine, because somebody made an unsupported claim on Slashdot.
Those URLs do *NOT* count as support of the claim. At all.
I know I dual-boot my webserver ... you all should too!
Yeah, damn that Wpresident and his Wadministration ... WGeorge WW Wbush and his Wcronies are so Wwhack!
take charge to deal with our own rouge company/monopolies.
... MS don't need no testing!
Microsoft is spreading it's monopoly into the makeup industry?! Oh, the horror! Well, the one consolation we can take is that animal testing will fall by the wayside
Maybe it's Maybelline, and all that jazz...
Yeah, because Cyrillic characters cost more.
I think comparing NT3 to XP as an analogue to the relationship between Gentoo and Linux is unwise. Gentoo IS Linux, but with things added that are specific to its distribution. NT, on the other hand, is not XP ... XP is NT with things added. And you typically do expect that something written for NT will work in XP, though that isn't ALWAYS the case.
I'm going to have to call bullshit here. I have the Compaq tablet with the Crusoe in it, and it's not painfully slow at all. You just have to realize that it's not going to move as quickly as the beast sitting next to it, but the tradeoff is that it lasts twice as long on battery and weighs 3-4 times less. I used it as my primary machine for a couple of months while I was angry at my main laptop (17" Toshiba).
... they're no speed demons, but they do what they set out to do.
Basically, don't believe people who tell you Transmetas are too slow
On the slower, colder end you're forgetting the VIA C3 chip that is available in a few laptops and tablets. It uses less watts than the Efficeon and gives off less heat. It is also cheaper. However, it is considerably slower per clock cycle and doesn't have the power management built into it like the Transmeta chips. I have a Crusoe tablet, and I'd like to compare it directly to a VIA-based machine.
On the fast and hot end you're forgetting about laptops with the full P4 in them (or even the new ones with P4EE or Prescott). I also have one of these (full P4). It is hotter than hell, and I can't keep it on my lap for more than half an hour without worrying that the sweat on my thighs will short it out. Also 12 lbs vs 3 lbs is not so comfortable.
Basically, there are a lot of options depending on what you want. I personally like the laptop form factor for a desktop machine (quiter than a normal rig with comparable speed), and the tablet/laptop hybrid is awesome for portability (especially the Compaq one, which has the computer behind the screen instead of the keyboard, so there is nothing to produce heat where the machine touches your body).
If you knew what you were talking about, you'd probably be playing it on your PC by now.
And after that, if we do it fast enough, we could go for the slashdottacular!
I play too much Halo.
Actually they outsourced them to India to save money. While they now pay less in salaries, however, their editors don't speak English very well.
An addition to the question: does anyone have any good suggestions for a bag for a big 17 inch laptop? It's considerably larger than the 17" powerbook, and i'd also like to be able to fit books and/or my other smaller laptop (tablet) inside. Are there any bags that would fit this?
Both "Monsters Inc." and "Finding Nemo" contained very little about the actual story. In fact, after seeing the trailer for "Finding Nemo", I was not exactly enthused about the story.
I take issue with this. It is my philosophy of trailers that you can tell how good a movie is going to be as an inverse proportion of how much of the story can be gleaned from the trailers. If they tell the story in the trailer, they have nothing to lose and are hoping people will go despite having no reason to do so. Keeping the story a secret means they have something up their sleeve. Which may well mean that the movie will be pretty good. Check that on the trailers and the movies that come out. It turns out to be remarkably accurate.
I love people like you who say things like "we all have to tighten up to compete" and seem to stick to the idea that "all" doesn't for some reason, include the biggest slice of the pie: those managers and CEOs who take the most money and don't do anything but take money and jobs away from their workers. Sure, the workers' salaries ought to go down to compete with the cheap labor from overseas... but the millions that the bosses are making should go down a lot more.
Note to the free-traders: "all" also includes the rich and useless!
When was the last time that was cheap?