Have you tried a distribution using NetworkManager?
This makes this stuff *much* easier.
Even with older SuSEs (10.0 and older), YaST2 has pretty good 802.11 WEP/WPA support. Not sure why you had problems.
Anyways, with the new distributions (in particular openSuSE 10.2), NetworkManager hits the 802.11 ball out of the park; wireless encryption is as easy as on an OS X box, and a great deal easier than on an XP box.
AT&T is evil, and is a willing participant with the government factions that want to throw us, head first, into an Orwellian nightmare.
Furthermore, if you continue to do business with them *you* are a willing participant, and should grow some balls.
Now, Comcast and their ilk are pretty evil, but they aren't nearly as bad as AT&T. Neither are the other major telecoms, and most certainly the RBOCs.
If you _really_ want to make a difference in whatever small way you can, get off Slashdot, research an alternative phone company, ISP, or wireless company, and *switch*.
Don't buy service from Cingular. Don't buy service from SBC/Ameritech/AT&T/whatever else the monster has eaten up.
Turn off your DSL and switch to cable. Turn off your long-distance service and get VOIP or an RBOC's POTS unlimited plan.
RBOCs are still out there; there just hurting for business. But many of these companies will guarantee that none of their records will go to the government (and in my area, TDS Metrocom is advertising this). There's still some leak over to AT&Ts systems, as they use AT&Ts local loops, but the more people that switch away from paying into AT&Ts pockets, the better.
This is particularly relevant for Cingular. If you have Cingular, you should wise up. Sprint's SERO plans are cheaper, T-mobile is somewhat cheaper, and has vastly better customer service, and Verizon's footprint is larger and more reliable. Not to mention the regional carriers, which beat up Cingular market-by-market.
There is no reason to do business with this devil of a company. While the government empowers them to do evil, the $$ they use for their transactions come from consumers, and you all need to wise up.
These SCO bastards never cease to amaze me. IBM hurt SCO's profits, and scared away their customers? What about all this FUD (that was knowingly false) that has been streaming out of SCO since this case began.
Someone should really slug Mr. McBride in the nose.
A) You're talking about an forum (electronic or otherwise) designed to promote freedom of expression, and holding that as one of your primary ideals, and B) You ask whether this is freedom of speech gone too far,
The answer is always, "no". Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
Please start worrying about Human Rights abuses in North Korea, before you start worrying about Rights abuses against machines which many never become sentient.
This is an exercise in mental masturbation not unlike righting an intersolar code of being's rights. The article does NOT suggestion something along the lines of gun control, but more along the lines of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I do not believe you will find a good answer to your question, not with our current level of technology, perhaps ever, and certainly not without years of study into the esoteric realms of relativity and particle physics.
This is stuff that doesn't even really make a whole lot of sense to many physicists.
The short answer is, "because it is".
The slightly longer answer, with somewhat less certainty is, "because if this constant was defined any other way the universe would not exist in the form that it is today." This is similar to concepts of evolution; we evolved the way we did not because of any particular reason, but because if we had evolved any other way, we would not have survived, and as such, exist the way we do. There isn't any other value for c which would generate a universe like the one we live in.
There are other answers, but most likely none of them will be satisfying to you. Some believe that the constants up which things like c are defined are still changing (albeit extremely slowly). Others believe that the very nature of any universe requires a cosmic coincidence in which the constants end up as they are. And then there are other theories that there are any number of configurations which may be "workable" for generating stable universe-spaces, but we just happened to end up in this particular one.
*shrug*
Before the big bang, concepts like speed have no meaning. No distance and/or time. What caused it? Who knows. My opinion is that "before" the big bang is not really something we can explore; it is unknowable. Even the notion of "before" doesn't apply, most likely. Think of the weirdest, most confusing dream you've ever had. One in which time and space don't make any sense. We do not have the linguist constructs to even begin discussing it.
The phenomenon you point to is real. Especially in the tech world, moreso in the computing world, and most of all in the world of video games.
*However*, while you may feel this pull, not everyone does in the world. How many people do you know who are happy with an outdated Windows? And how long have they been using it? Furthermore, how many people do you know who are happy with an older car? Or, for that matter, an older TV, or older sound system? Sometimes, our perspective may paint the world as dimmer than it actually is.
Did you know, for example, that most American's have minimal credit card debt? .
Just because there are excellent negative examples out there doesn't make them the norm. Not everyone lives at the tech forefront.
Rather, the issue is that the media/advertising/corporate drones out there needs to make it look like this is as the case. "Everyone" has credit card debt, and "everyone" has the latest X-station-360-ii console, and "everyone" has the latest Toyota/Lexus, because that's an effective marketing talent. Luckily, there are quite a few companies who actually, for the most part, try to respect their customers, and generally act quite reasonably. Like, Costco. Or T-Mobile. How about Newegg? Or Dreamhost (who plays nice with even very, very loud critics). Even in the utility industry, I've found WideOpenWest, a cable company, to be more than reasonable. Hell, Nintendo and Apple, both the subject of much (deserved) criticism are generally quite a bit more human friendly than Sony and Microsoft, neither of whom I've ever heard of being more generous than "fair", and whom are often considered quite dastardly.
And don't knock elections. Yes, your vote doesn't matter in the US Presidential election. Get over it. However, have you ever voted in a local election? Are you aware of just how much power the local authorities have over your life? And for that matter, consider the House; most electoral districtions are smaller than you think.
The media/corporate/advertising "vision" of our society is pretty dismissal, but surprisingly, they're often wrong. The vast majority of Americans don't really fit into that fold. Consider DRM/P2P. Literally _most_ Americans who use the internet pirate music. It's not just that most Americans, if they really understood it, wouldn't reject DRM. It's that it hasn't really touched them much yet, because they're still watching SD DVDs on their 27" CRTs, even if they've got a gigantic LCD in their living room, and they used to download music off of Napster, and now download it off LimeWire. They simply don't know about it; the entire view of the tech sector, that Patents/Copyright are king, and you should be buying the next-best thing. Most people don't even understand the advertising, and haven't really been pulled in by it, because they are too busy focusing on things they actually enjoy. Those of us in or near the tech industry see it in a slightly different way, and as a result, I believe, get too dismissal of a picure.
This isn't to say there aren't real problems in the world; but if you think you're the only person that cares about Peace, Global Warming, and a variety of other topics, you're quite wrong. A large number of wealthy, powerful, and famous people worldwide also share your concern; no matter which angle you pick (pro-Fossil Fuels, pro-Environmentalism, pro-Jihad, anti-terrorist, pro-drug, anti-drug, pro-space, anti-space).
Just because the debate doesn't manage to win out over Anna Nicole Smith doesn't mean that it isn't going on, and doesn't mean that it is inaccessible. It just means that the people who control your media would rather sell you something with bling than focus on the serious, and unmarketable.
Figure out a way to make a buck advocating carbon dioxide sequestering, and you, too could make an Oscar Nominated film.;-)
The "simple and brief" attitude doesn't work so well for any sort of legacy system. There are two sorts of standards: blue-sky (TCP, IP, HTTP, etc) and those that build on what's already on the market. So unless you have any bright ideas for dealing with docs that *already* exist, be prepared to deal with messy specs (and it's not like the ODF spec is that brief... a famous problem is the ambiguity in the formulas, which effectively makes reverse-engineering StarCalc's formula engine a must to parse ODF properly, effectively making it a hidden part of the spec.)
This is the exact kind of ambiguity littered throughout the OOXML spec. Stuff like, "This tag means emulate Word 2.0 for Mac System 8. This behavior should copy that of Word 2.0 for Mac System 8, which should be determined by running the same output through that system. The details of this implementation are too complex to define here."
That is *all over* the MS spec. That's a useless spec; no one other than MS will be able to implement OOXML, at least with output approaching Office 2007.
Except, certain things in Vista still work better than under (say) Ubuntu, or a lot of other Linux distributions.
Like, say, 802.11 configuration.
Have you used NetworkManager? 802.11b/g/a on my MacBook Pro running openSuSE 10.2 is automagic, and properly reconnects to all previously connected network without fail, unlike both OS X and Vista. NetworkManager > All Other OS network configuration daemons.
Or perhaps, volume controls. I've given up on getting a proper working fucking volume control on my SB Live-equipped Ubuntu desktop machine.
*shrug*. Perhaps Ubuntu sucks. I've never, ever had a problem with a volume control on a SuSE box, SB Live, Audigy, whatever. Or Bluetooth. Such pain and trauma to configure a Bluetooth mouse with Linux, but it was straight-forward with Vista.
Once again, never had an issue on SuSE. Plug in bluetooth dongle. Put in batteries on keyboard. Push "connect" on keyboard. Push "connect" on dongle. Repeat for Mouse. Done.
Not to mention that the Bluetooth control panel in YaST2 is pretty slick (much more configurable than OS X, which is much more configurable than Vista). And KDE's KBluetoothd with KIO support is awesome. Or video drivers. Neither Vista nor XP has ever trashed my video drivers with an automatic update. Meanwhile, every time Ubuntu switches to a new nvidia-legacy driver, my desktop machine needs to be tickled again before X will work. (I know - I should just stick with the free nv driver, since there's no fucking games for Linux to make 3D worth caring about, anyway. But I like xscreensaver's GL hacks.)
Use a real distro, something that packages binary drivers with Kernel & Xorg updates. Like, SuSE. Both NVIDIA's and ATI's are automatically updated when you update your kernel or Xorg, as long as you stick with official packages. It just works, everytime.
And in terms of games, I play Medieval Total War 2, World of Warcraft, Half Life 2, Doom 3, Unreal Tournament, Eve Online, and a panoply of other games. Wine & Cedega have both gotten quite good. Vista's not perfect, though. It killed support for DirectSound3D and EAX, making games less enjoyable to play (for me, anyway). However, EAX never worked at all in Linux, so I guess I don't feel "trapped" anymore than I do with Linux. This is valid, however, Creative has announced full EAX support in its next set of XiFi (or whatever the new card is called). OpenAL works properly in Linux (as it does in Windows Vista through 98), and being the new cross-platform solution, I suspect a lot more games will come out with OpenAL in the near future.
We're a small company. We've spent years developing this technology, and a substantial percentage of our (group) personal savings (which is a small amount; probably no more than one to two million). But this money was everything we had.
Why should we develop this technology for free? Why should we just give it away? Without a patent possibility, we wouldn't have started, the technology would not have existed, and the consumer would be worse off.
Do we believe our technology is novel and unique? Yes, very much so, because the other players in this industry have no interest in cleaning; they'd rather build landfills.
We're not just a new way to "clean" soil. We're the only way to clean soil, and we're the only company that is looking at cleaning soil. Other companies sort and separate, or they landfill, or incinerate, or stabilize (which means turn soil into concrete). We take dirty soil, and make clean soil. Period. It's not just an economic question, we're quantitatively different, and we can do it cheap, too.
The issue is our competitors are multibillion dollar corporations, and they have long term exclusive contracts with the various government authorities responsible for implementing consent decrees, or harbor management. I guess we could just decide to be charitable, and throw away our life savings to increase the profits of one of these giants by.01% .
*shrug* Our licensing costs are quite reasonable, and the cost savings between our process and a standard landfill process are substantial. The delta between these two is quite small compared to the revenue of these giant companies that normally do waste disposal.
The primary barrier to adoption of our technology is inertia, not our patent.
And no, there isn't more polluted soil than we can process, because we're a technology company, not a construction contractor. We sell soil washing machines, and soil washing expertise, not the actual in-out process. Do you suggest we just give everything away to the multi-billion dollar corporations we are trying to compete with?
And if we do give it away, exactly how should we pay the bills so that we can continue to develop newer and better technologies?
Obviously, you have no knowledge of the real world, outside the software world. You say, "You provide a service." What exactly does that mean? We do something no one else does, something no other company wants to do. They prefer to build giant landfills and pile up all the contaminated soils in them; because it gives them never-ending revenue. By stealing out technology, and driving us out of the few projects we do manage to overcome in terms of government inertia, they could get rid of us innovative upstarts, and go back to landfilling.
I'm glad you choose to live in a world of unlimited serfdom, where gigantic megacorporations control all the technologies out there, and new ideas are instantly "owned" by those capable of either mass marketing them fastest, or are driven into the ground by competitors capable of spending new companies into the ground. I'm also glad that in this specific instance, when you are talking about MY company, that you'd rather see the contaminated soils end up incinerated and landfilled, rather than decontaminated. Why? Because sure as hell, I can tell you that my company will not give away our expertise/technology for free; we will keep our remaining trade secrets secret, and take them to our grave (in a world without patents).
I'm a libertarian, but you sound like a libertarian crank; there ARE barriers to entry in various markets, there are sunken costs that are impossible to recover without patent protection.
As to stealing our equipment having nothing to do with patents? My point is that trade secret isn't enough; the "construction" business, which is ostensibly what we are in, is a dirty business. Our patents protect our technology; not secrets. Any sort of trade secret will be overwhelemed by corporate espionage, and not necessarily the high-tech kind.
I'm sorry that you think we should go out of business, but I think you don't know how business really works. Business isn't a cut and dry world of my operating costs are lower than other peoples operating costs, therefore I win. Business is a cutthroat world where you have to manipulate every advantage you can. Furthermore, if you are the little guy, you cannot be marginally superior; you have to be economically and technologically superior in every sense of the word; and without patent protection, there IS no such thing as technological superiority, and there is NO reason for us to develop better technologies, technologies which the "big guys" have no interest in pursuing.
The president of my company makes ~ $150,000 a year.
We live or die by our patents. We're primarily a soil remediation/washing company; we developed a technology completely different from anything else on the market. We do what other companies cannot do, and we do it cheaper than disposal/incineration.
If we didn't have a patent on our core equipment, we would not be in business. Why? Because several of our contractors have already tried to steal our design, and got bitch-slapped in court doing so.
Not that I totally disagree with you. I believe patents should cover a very narrow range of mechanical/technical innovation. Definitely not software concepts, and most likely not biotechnology, either. But can a small company like ours utilize the patent system to our advantage? Most definitely; if we didn't have a patented technology, we'd be out of business, because someone would literally steal our equipment (this HAS happened to us), reverse engineer it (this HAS happened to us), and we'd have no legal recourse, except possibly against the original theft, which would be difficult to prove.
Does the patent system need major reform? Yes. Do I think that the USPTO's standard of obviousness is ridiculous? Yes.
Do I think a patent system, in principle, is a good idea? Yes.
Well, as other posters have said, Linux is just an OS kernel, not a distribution; having said that, there is a great deal of innovation going on in the open source world.
Linux: 1. User-space file systems. FUSE. This stuff is neat. Linux supports a panoply of filesystems that Windows users can only dream of, and a lot of these are worlds and worlds ahead of Windows stuff. Take a look at FunionFS, and Wayback FS. 2. Abstract, granular CPU and I/O prioritization and scheduling. Linux can be realtime in ways that NT can only dream of; which is impressive considering the scale of Linux. 3. LinuxBIOS. Anyone stuck an NT kernel into Motherboard firmware? No? Why not? 4. KVM. Linux kernel virtualization. Microsoft is talking about duplicating this for the NEXT version of NT. 5. A fully relocatable kernel. New in 2.6.20 6. How about a native IPv6 stack? Linux did it first. 7. How about boot time switching between 64-bit and 32-bit, or ACPI and noACPI? How about probing/autoloading of modules on boot? How about all possible drivers being installed, all the time, even ATI and NVIDIA's closed-source drivers now, using the Novell KMP system? 8. POSIX compliance (uncertified), AND Win32 compliance (uncertified). First OS to do this. 9. Support/scaling for an unlimited number of processors? 10. How about a flat memory model (4GB/4GB split), even on 32-bit? 11. Don't forget about ALSA. Wanna change how your sound is mixed, in userspace? No problem. Wanna reroute your mid-rear-left speaker to your record slot? No problem. Want 3D sound in older applications? OpenAL is there for you (unlike DirectSound in Vista). Here's a list of ALSA plugins, all of which are utilized in userspace: http://alsa.opensrc.org/ALSA_plugins. 12. Vast improvements in Kernel security all the time. Things like selinux, and AppArmor (AppArmor is really cool stuff) are worlds beyond UAC and group policy.
And that's just the OSS Linux kernel. Wanna talk about other subsystems? CUPS versus Windows printing? 1. Autodiscovery of local subnet printers? Not possible in Windows, even Vista. 2. End to end Postscript printing, even on $15 crapprinters? 3. Out of box support for IPP, CUPS, LPR, SMB, and other kind of printing system you can dream of. No matter how you slice, CUPS is worlds away from Windows printing. Never, ever have to deal with printer drivers as you move from network to network; this is a dream avaliable for years in the CUPS world.
X? Xorg is a thing of beauty. 1. Full network transparency (2D/3D). Not avaliable in Windows. Best of breed network performance using NX. 2. A fully modular windowing system. Remove or add components at will. No Internet Explorer required. 3. Extremely high performance, with decades of support for both 2D and 3D operations. 4. The sky's the limit in terms of scalability. 1 monitor? 4 monitors? 64 monitors spread across 12 systems? No problemo. 5. Xgl is the beginnings of a pure 3D windowing system with legacy support. Xegl is the future of this pure 3D windowing system, at performance levels that put Aero's hybrid 2D/3D setup to shame. 6. Yes, spinning cubes. And a whole lot more eye candy. On a whole lot less hardware than Aero requires. Geforce 5200 mobile with 32 MB of RAM? No problem.
GUIs? I don't know much about Gnome, as I'm a KDE guy, but: 1. KIO-slaves. ftp:// ? of course. bzip2:// ? torrent:// ? fish:// (this one is amazing, directory browsing over plain SSH). beagled:// ? how about man:// or programs:// ? how about klik:// ? KIO-slaves are one of the coolest features in GUIs out there, hands down. 2. Kparts. Click on a PDF url, and you get KPDF in your Konqueror window. Click on a DOC url, and you get Kword in your Window. Click on an RPM, and you get either YaST2 (for SuSE), or KPackage. And all of these are user configurable, of course, on a user-by-user basis. This is something that neither OS X or Windows have worked out correctly.
I'd consider hosting it, at least on a dreamhost shared hosting account. Cost is minimal, and I've got a separate account for my personal stuff, and ~2 TB of monthly bandwidth, which should be plenty for text;-)
Excellent support, even through all the various hardware related issues they had 6 months or so. They definitely have a small company feel (meaning things do go wrong at times), but they fix issues _very_ quickly, they will refund your money if you are unhappy, and their support is just excellent cross the board.
Give them a try. I know lots of people have been upset with them because of their hosting issues, but as far as I'm concerned, although they are not perfect, they put a lot of effort into their customers; and this is something I value more than other aspects of their service.
Yeah, watch Microsoft try that against AMD, Intel, Nvidia (The three primary video card manufacturers, of which Intel already opensources its drivers, and AMD which open sources old specs + is considering open sourcing new specs), HP, TI, or any of the larger peripheral vendors.
This kind of crap might fly against a small company with no extra cash and no legal resources, but a large company would be able to get an injunction against Vista. Abuse of monopoly power = bad news for MS, and this is _exactly_ why.
On the other hand, what could happen is that Microsoft will push companies to develop drivers for SuSE's kernel, and only SuSE's kernel, because SuSE is the "blessed" Microsoft Linux.
GP is wrong, because there are plenty of non-standard printers out there with minimal Linux support. Either way, however, it matters little in the grand scheme of things, because you can buy a 100% compatible linux printer for $100 or less.
Also, there IS a standard interface for printing. It's not dot matrix parallel, it's Postscript! Duh.
Buy a Postscript printer, print once, print everywhere, the same output, not drivers required. Postscript is the way and the answer to your printing woes. If you're not dealing with a postscript printer or an HP, Epson, Cannon, or Samsung printer, you're dealing with a $2 dollar printer thats equivalent to a off-brand winmodem.
In general, you'll have a better Linux experience if you plan your equipment before you install, rather than install on the garbage you already have.
Simple. It's an EDGE "smartphone". And you have to deal with AT&T come Cingular. And you have to pay $$$, in addition to signing a 2 year contract.
I must admit, I'm very attracted to the idea of an Apple phone; but EDGE really sucks, and AT&T sucks worse. Once you've gone EVDO, HSDPA, or even UMTS, you'll never go back to EDGE/GPRS. It's a gigantic step backwards, and considering that Verizon/Sprint now have an additional 6 months to pursue a high-end smart phone, I would be shocked to see the iPhone succeed in any big way.
Certainly a phone utilizing yesterday's data technology will not muscle it's way to the top of the market. No video downloads over EDGE, and audio downloads will pause while you are speaking on the phone. Furthermore, it doesn't even seem that it will have a J2ME stack.
I don't have high hopes for this phone, and I'll be damned if I have to deal with AT&T to get one.
Yes, there is one scenario under which you can watch premium content at full quality: If you have end-to-end HDCP encryption, meaning a monitor that support HDCP (extremely rare), a video card that supports HDCP (rare), an OS that supports HDCP (Vista), and playback software that supports HDCP.
If you are missing any elements of the above, Vista will not playback HD video at full res. Furthermore, XP will never have the ability to play HD-DVD and Blu-ray at full res.
So, in short, all you need to do is wait till the consumer Vista release, and purchase a Vista Ultimate system with a brand new monitor to replace the 23" LCD flat panel you bought last year. Don't forget the DVI-HDCP compliant cables, and the 5.1 digital speakers with HDCP support.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you tried a distribution using NetworkManager?
This makes this stuff *much* easier.
Even with older SuSEs (10.0 and older), YaST2 has pretty good 802.11 WEP/WPA support. Not sure why you had problems.
Anyways, with the new distributions (in particular openSuSE 10.2), NetworkManager hits the 802.11 ball out of the park; wireless encryption is as easy as on an OS X box, and a great deal easier than on an XP box.
I've seen this issue on my printers (all HP). It always has to do with page size.
SuSE & openSuSE default to A4. I'm in the USA, so all the paper I buy is letter size. Change the default page size, and this issue vanishes for me.
I've had this on a color Laserjet (forgot the model number), and a selection of HP PSCs and All-in-Ones.
AT&T is evil, and is a willing participant with the government factions that want to throw us, head first, into an Orwellian nightmare.
Furthermore, if you continue to do business with them *you* are a willing participant, and should grow some balls.
Now, Comcast and their ilk are pretty evil, but they aren't nearly as bad as AT&T. Neither are the other major telecoms, and most certainly the RBOCs.
If you _really_ want to make a difference in whatever small way you can, get off Slashdot, research an alternative phone company, ISP, or wireless company, and *switch*.
Don't buy service from Cingular.
Don't buy service from SBC/Ameritech/AT&T/whatever else the monster has eaten up.
Turn off your DSL and switch to cable. Turn off your long-distance service and get VOIP or an RBOC's POTS unlimited plan.
RBOCs are still out there; there just hurting for business. But many of these companies will guarantee that none of their records will go to the government (and in my area, TDS Metrocom is advertising this). There's still some leak over to AT&Ts systems, as they use AT&Ts local loops, but the more people that switch away from paying into AT&Ts pockets, the better.
This is particularly relevant for Cingular. If you have Cingular, you should wise up. Sprint's SERO plans are cheaper, T-mobile is somewhat cheaper, and has vastly better customer service, and Verizon's footprint is larger and more reliable. Not to mention the regional carriers, which beat up Cingular market-by-market.
There is no reason to do business with this devil of a company. While the government empowers them to do evil, the $$ they use for their transactions come from consumers, and you all need to wise up.
These SCO bastards never cease to amaze me. IBM hurt SCO's profits, and scared away their customers? What about all this FUD (that was knowingly false) that has been streaming out of SCO since this case began.
Someone should really slug Mr. McBride in the nose.
If,
A) You're talking about an forum (electronic or otherwise) designed to promote freedom of expression, and holding that as one of your primary ideals,
and
B) You ask whether this is freedom of speech gone too far,
The answer is always, "no". Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
Article = dumb. I RTFAs, but not in this case.
To South Korea:
Please start worrying about Human Rights abuses in North Korea, before you start worrying about Rights abuses against machines which many never become sentient.
This is an exercise in mental masturbation not unlike righting an intersolar code of being's rights. The article does NOT suggestion something along the lines of gun control, but more along the lines of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I do not believe you will find a good answer to your question, not with our current level of technology, perhaps ever, and certainly not without years of study into the esoteric realms of relativity and particle physics.
This is stuff that doesn't even really make a whole lot of sense to many physicists.
The short answer is, "because it is".
The slightly longer answer, with somewhat less certainty is, "because if this constant was defined any other way the universe would not exist in the form that it is today." This is similar to concepts of evolution; we evolved the way we did not because of any particular reason, but because if we had evolved any other way, we would not have survived, and as such, exist the way we do. There isn't any other value for c which would generate a universe like the one we live in.
There are other answers, but most likely none of them will be satisfying to you. Some believe that the constants up which things like c are defined are still changing (albeit extremely slowly). Others believe that the very nature of any universe requires a cosmic coincidence in which the constants end up as they are. And then there are other theories that there are any number of configurations which may be "workable" for generating stable universe-spaces, but we just happened to end up in this particular one.
*shrug*
Before the big bang, concepts like speed have no meaning. No distance and/or time. What caused it? Who knows. My opinion is that "before" the big bang is not really something we can explore; it is unknowable. Even the notion of "before" doesn't apply, most likely. Think of the weirdest, most confusing dream you've ever had. One in which time and space don't make any sense. We do not have the linguist constructs to even begin discussing it.
You've drank the evil coolaid!
;-)
:)
It's really not as bad as you say.
The phenomenon you point to is real. Especially in the tech world, moreso in the computing world, and most of all in the world of video games.
*However*, while you may feel this pull, not everyone does in the world. How many people do you know who are happy with an outdated Windows? And how long have they been using it? Furthermore, how many people do you know who are happy with an older car? Or, for that matter, an older TV, or older sound system? Sometimes, our perspective may paint the world as dimmer than it actually is.
Did you know, for example, that most American's have minimal credit card debt? .
Just because there are excellent negative examples out there doesn't make them the norm. Not everyone lives at the tech forefront.
Rather, the issue is that the media/advertising/corporate drones out there needs to make it look like this is as the case. "Everyone" has credit card debt, and "everyone" has the latest X-station-360-ii console, and "everyone" has the latest Toyota/Lexus, because that's an effective marketing talent. Luckily, there are quite a few companies who actually, for the most part, try to respect their customers, and generally act quite reasonably. Like, Costco. Or T-Mobile. How about Newegg? Or Dreamhost (who plays nice with even very, very loud critics). Even in the utility industry, I've found WideOpenWest, a cable company, to be more than reasonable. Hell, Nintendo and Apple, both the subject of much (deserved) criticism are generally quite a bit more human friendly than Sony and Microsoft, neither of whom I've ever heard of being more generous than "fair", and whom are often considered quite dastardly.
And don't knock elections. Yes, your vote doesn't matter in the US Presidential election. Get over it. However, have you ever voted in a local election? Are you aware of just how much power the local authorities have over your life? And for that matter, consider the House; most electoral districtions are smaller than you think.
The media/corporate/advertising "vision" of our society is pretty dismissal, but surprisingly, they're often wrong. The vast majority of Americans don't really fit into that fold. Consider DRM/P2P. Literally _most_ Americans who use the internet pirate music. It's not just that most Americans, if they really understood it, wouldn't reject DRM. It's that it hasn't really touched them much yet, because they're still watching SD DVDs on their 27" CRTs, even if they've got a gigantic LCD in their living room, and they used to download music off of Napster, and now download it off LimeWire. They simply don't know about it; the entire view of the tech sector, that Patents/Copyright are king, and you should be buying the next-best thing. Most people don't even understand the advertising, and haven't really been pulled in by it, because they are too busy focusing on things they actually enjoy. Those of us in or near the tech industry see it in a slightly different way, and as a result, I believe, get too dismissal of a picure.
This isn't to say there aren't real problems in the world; but if you think you're the only person that cares about Peace, Global Warming, and a variety of other topics, you're quite wrong. A large number of wealthy, powerful, and famous people worldwide also share your concern; no matter which angle you pick (pro-Fossil Fuels, pro-Environmentalism, pro-Jihad, anti-terrorist, pro-drug, anti-drug, pro-space, anti-space).
Just because the debate doesn't manage to win out over Anna Nicole Smith doesn't mean that it isn't going on, and doesn't mean that it is inaccessible. It just means that the people who control your media would rather sell you something with bling than focus on the serious, and unmarketable.
Figure out a way to make a buck advocating carbon dioxide sequestering, and you, too could make an Oscar Nominated film.
*shrug*. It ain't all rosy, but try and perk up
A twitter post without a troll bitching about twitter attached to it?
Insane! Quickly, Slashdot Trolls, start posting against Twitter!
Sup twitter.
*props*
You're a *shill*
... a famous problem is the ambiguity in the formulas, which effectively makes reverse-engineering StarCalc's formula engine a must to parse ODF properly, effectively making it a hidden part of the spec.)
The "simple and brief" attitude doesn't work so well for any sort of legacy system. There are two sorts of standards: blue-sky (TCP, IP, HTTP, etc) and those that build on what's already on the market. So unless you have any bright ideas for dealing with docs that *already* exist, be prepared to deal with messy specs (and it's not like the ODF spec is that brief
This is the exact kind of ambiguity littered throughout the OOXML spec. Stuff like, "This tag means emulate Word 2.0 for Mac System 8. This behavior should copy that of Word 2.0 for Mac System 8, which should be determined by running the same output through that system. The details of this implementation are too complex to define here."
That is *all over* the MS spec. That's a useless spec; no one other than MS will be able to implement OOXML, at least with output approaching Office 2007.
Except, certain things in Vista still work better than under (say) Ubuntu, or a lot of other Linux distributions.
Like, say, 802.11 configuration.
Have you used NetworkManager? 802.11b/g/a on my MacBook Pro running openSuSE 10.2 is automagic, and properly reconnects to all previously connected network without fail, unlike both OS X and Vista. NetworkManager > All Other OS network configuration daemons.
Or perhaps, volume controls. I've given up on getting a proper working fucking volume control on my SB Live-equipped Ubuntu desktop machine.
*shrug*. Perhaps Ubuntu sucks. I've never, ever had a problem with a volume control on a SuSE box, SB Live, Audigy, whatever.
Or Bluetooth. Such pain and trauma to configure a Bluetooth mouse with Linux, but it was straight-forward with Vista.
Once again, never had an issue on SuSE. Plug in bluetooth dongle. Put in batteries on keyboard. Push "connect" on keyboard. Push "connect" on dongle. Repeat for Mouse. Done.
Not to mention that the Bluetooth control panel in YaST2 is pretty slick (much more configurable than OS X, which is much more configurable than Vista). And KDE's KBluetoothd with KIO support is awesome.
Or video drivers. Neither Vista nor XP has ever trashed my video drivers with an automatic update. Meanwhile, every time Ubuntu switches to a new nvidia-legacy driver, my desktop machine needs to be tickled again before X will work. (I know - I should just stick with the free nv driver, since there's no fucking games for Linux to make 3D worth caring about, anyway. But I like xscreensaver's GL hacks.)
Use a real distro, something that packages binary drivers with Kernel & Xorg updates. Like, SuSE. Both NVIDIA's and ATI's are automatically updated when you update your kernel or Xorg, as long as you stick with official packages. It just works, everytime.
And in terms of games, I play Medieval Total War 2, World of Warcraft, Half Life 2, Doom 3, Unreal Tournament, Eve Online, and a panoply of other games. Wine & Cedega have both gotten quite good.
Vista's not perfect, though. It killed support for DirectSound3D and EAX, making games less enjoyable to play (for me, anyway). However, EAX never worked at all in Linux, so I guess I don't feel "trapped" anymore than I do with Linux.
This is valid, however, Creative has announced full EAX support in its next set of XiFi (or whatever the new card is called). OpenAL works properly in Linux (as it does in Windows Vista through 98), and being the new cross-platform solution, I suspect a lot more games will come out with OpenAL in the near future.
There's a problem with your reasoning.
.01% .
We're a small company. We've spent years developing this technology, and a substantial percentage of our (group) personal savings (which is a small amount; probably no more than one to two million). But this money was everything we had.
Why should we develop this technology for free? Why should we just give it away? Without a patent possibility, we wouldn't have started, the technology would not have existed, and the consumer would be worse off.
Do we believe our technology is novel and unique? Yes, very much so, because the other players in this industry have no interest in cleaning; they'd rather build landfills.
We're not just a new way to "clean" soil. We're the only way to clean soil, and we're the only company that is looking at cleaning soil. Other companies sort and separate, or they landfill, or incinerate, or stabilize (which means turn soil into concrete). We take dirty soil, and make clean soil. Period. It's not just an economic question, we're quantitatively different, and we can do it cheap, too.
The issue is our competitors are multibillion dollar corporations, and they have long term exclusive contracts with the various government authorities responsible for implementing consent decrees, or harbor management. I guess we could just decide to be charitable, and throw away our life savings to increase the profits of one of these giants by
*shrug* Our licensing costs are quite reasonable, and the cost savings between our process and a standard landfill process are substantial. The delta between these two is quite small compared to the revenue of these giant companies that normally do waste disposal.
The primary barrier to adoption of our technology is inertia, not our patent.
And no, there isn't more polluted soil than we can process, because we're a technology company, not a construction contractor. We sell soil washing machines, and soil washing expertise, not the actual in-out process. Do you suggest we just give everything away to the multi-billion dollar corporations we are trying to compete with?
And if we do give it away, exactly how should we pay the bills so that we can continue to develop newer and better technologies?
Smells like a troll.
Obviously, you have no knowledge of the real world, outside the software world. You say, "You provide a service." What exactly does that mean? We do something no one else does, something no other company wants to do. They prefer to build giant landfills and pile up all the contaminated soils in them; because it gives them never-ending revenue. By stealing out technology, and driving us out of the few projects we do manage to overcome in terms of government inertia, they could get rid of us innovative upstarts, and go back to landfilling.
I'm glad you choose to live in a world of unlimited serfdom, where gigantic megacorporations control all the technologies out there, and new ideas are instantly "owned" by those capable of either mass marketing them fastest, or are driven into the ground by competitors capable of spending new companies into the ground. I'm also glad that in this specific instance, when you are talking about MY company, that you'd rather see the contaminated soils end up incinerated and landfilled, rather than decontaminated. Why? Because sure as hell, I can tell you that my company will not give away our expertise/technology for free; we will keep our remaining trade secrets secret, and take them to our grave (in a world without patents).
I'm a libertarian, but you sound like a libertarian crank; there ARE barriers to entry in various markets, there are sunken costs that are impossible to recover without patent protection.
As to stealing our equipment having nothing to do with patents? My point is that trade secret isn't enough; the "construction" business, which is ostensibly what we are in, is a dirty business. Our patents protect our technology; not secrets. Any sort of trade secret will be overwhelemed by corporate espionage, and not necessarily the high-tech kind.
I'm sorry that you think we should go out of business, but I think you don't know how business really works. Business isn't a cut and dry world of my operating costs are lower than other peoples operating costs, therefore I win. Business is a cutthroat world where you have to manipulate every advantage you can. Furthermore, if you are the little guy, you cannot be marginally superior; you have to be economically and technologically superior in every sense of the word; and without patent protection, there IS no such thing as technological superiority, and there is NO reason for us to develop better technologies, technologies which the "big guys" have no interest in pursuing.
Disclaimer: I make ~ $50,000 a year.
The president of my company makes ~ $150,000 a year.
We live or die by our patents. We're primarily a soil remediation/washing company; we developed a technology completely different from anything else on the market. We do what other companies cannot do, and we do it cheaper than disposal/incineration.
If we didn't have a patent on our core equipment, we would not be in business. Why? Because several of our contractors have already tried to steal our design, and got bitch-slapped in court doing so.
Not that I totally disagree with you. I believe patents should cover a very narrow range of mechanical/technical innovation. Definitely not software concepts, and most likely not biotechnology, either. But can a small company like ours utilize the patent system to our advantage? Most definitely; if we didn't have a patented technology, we'd be out of business, because someone would literally steal our equipment (this HAS happened to us), reverse engineer it (this HAS happened to us), and we'd have no legal recourse, except possibly against the original theft, which would be difficult to prove.
Does the patent system need major reform? Yes. Do I think that the USPTO's standard of obviousness is ridiculous? Yes.
Do I think a patent system, in principle, is a good idea? Yes.
Well, as other posters have said, Linux is just an OS kernel, not a distribution; having said that, there is a great deal of innovation going on in the open source world.
.
Linux:
1. User-space file systems. FUSE. This stuff is neat. Linux supports a panoply of filesystems that Windows users can only dream of, and a lot of these are worlds and worlds ahead of Windows stuff. Take a look at FunionFS, and Wayback FS.
2. Abstract, granular CPU and I/O prioritization and scheduling. Linux can be realtime in ways that NT can only dream of; which is impressive considering the scale of Linux.
3. LinuxBIOS. Anyone stuck an NT kernel into Motherboard firmware? No? Why not?
4. KVM. Linux kernel virtualization. Microsoft is talking about duplicating this for the NEXT version of NT.
5. A fully relocatable kernel. New in 2.6.20
6. How about a native IPv6 stack? Linux did it first.
7. How about boot time switching between 64-bit and 32-bit, or ACPI and noACPI? How about probing/autoloading of modules on boot? How about all possible drivers being installed, all the time, even ATI and NVIDIA's closed-source drivers now, using the Novell KMP system?
8. POSIX compliance (uncertified), AND Win32 compliance (uncertified). First OS to do this.
9. Support/scaling for an unlimited number of processors?
10. How about a flat memory model (4GB/4GB split), even on 32-bit?
11. Don't forget about ALSA. Wanna change how your sound is mixed, in userspace? No problem. Wanna reroute your mid-rear-left speaker to your record slot? No problem. Want 3D sound in older applications? OpenAL is there for you (unlike DirectSound in Vista). Here's a list of ALSA plugins, all of which are utilized in userspace: http://alsa.opensrc.org/ALSA_plugins
12. Vast improvements in Kernel security all the time. Things like selinux, and AppArmor (AppArmor is really cool stuff) are worlds beyond UAC and group policy.
And that's just the OSS Linux kernel. Wanna talk about other subsystems?
CUPS versus Windows printing?
1. Autodiscovery of local subnet printers? Not possible in Windows, even Vista.
2. End to end Postscript printing, even on $15 crapprinters?
3. Out of box support for IPP, CUPS, LPR, SMB, and other kind of printing system you can dream of.
No matter how you slice, CUPS is worlds away from Windows printing. Never, ever have to deal with printer drivers as you move from network to network; this is a dream avaliable for years in the CUPS world.
X? Xorg is a thing of beauty.
1. Full network transparency (2D/3D). Not avaliable in Windows. Best of breed network performance using NX.
2. A fully modular windowing system. Remove or add components at will. No Internet Explorer required.
3. Extremely high performance, with decades of support for both 2D and 3D operations.
4. The sky's the limit in terms of scalability. 1 monitor? 4 monitors? 64 monitors spread across 12 systems? No problemo.
5. Xgl is the beginnings of a pure 3D windowing system with legacy support. Xegl is the future of this pure 3D windowing system, at performance levels that put Aero's hybrid 2D/3D setup to shame.
6. Yes, spinning cubes. And a whole lot more eye candy. On a whole lot less hardware than Aero requires. Geforce 5200 mobile with 32 MB of RAM? No problem.
GUIs?
I don't know much about Gnome, as I'm a KDE guy, but:
1. KIO-slaves. ftp:// ? of course. bzip2:// ? torrent:// ? fish:// (this one is amazing, directory browsing over plain SSH). beagled:// ? how about man:// or programs:// ? how about klik:// ? KIO-slaves are one of the coolest features in GUIs out there, hands down.
2. Kparts. Click on a PDF url, and you get KPDF in your Konqueror window. Click on a DOC url, and you get Kword in your Window. Click on an RPM, and you get either YaST2 (for SuSE), or KPackage. And all of these are user configurable, of course, on a user-by-user basis. This is something that neither OS X or Windows have worked out correctly.
I'd consider hosting it, at least on a dreamhost shared hosting account. Cost is minimal, and I've got a separate account for my personal stuff, and ~2 TB of monthly bandwidth, which should be plenty for text ;-)
Send me an e-mail at moornblade at gmail dot com
Your understanding of the LDDM (WGL, or whatever the heck you want to call it) is grossly oversimplified and vastly fanboyish.
"Intelligently sharing textures between video card ram and system ram".
You keep saying that, yet I do not think you know what it means.....
Try dreamhost.com
Excellent support, even through all the various hardware related issues they had 6 months or so. They definitely have a small company feel (meaning things do go wrong at times), but they fix issues _very_ quickly, they will refund your money if you are unhappy, and their support is just excellent cross the board.
Give them a try. I know lots of people have been upset with them because of their hosting issues, but as far as I'm concerned, although they are not perfect, they put a lot of effort into their customers; and this is something I value more than other aspects of their service.
Yeah, watch Microsoft try that against AMD, Intel, Nvidia (The three primary video card manufacturers, of which Intel already opensources its drivers, and AMD which open sources old specs + is considering open sourcing new specs), HP, TI, or any of the larger peripheral vendors.
This kind of crap might fly against a small company with no extra cash and no legal resources, but a large company would be able to get an injunction against Vista. Abuse of monopoly power = bad news for MS, and this is _exactly_ why.
On the other hand, what could happen is that Microsoft will push companies to develop drivers for SuSE's kernel, and only SuSE's kernel, because SuSE is the "blessed" Microsoft Linux.
No, No, NO!
You're BOTH wrong.
GP is wrong, because there are plenty of non-standard printers out there with minimal Linux support. Either way, however, it matters little in the grand scheme of things, because you can buy a 100% compatible linux printer for $100 or less.
Also, there IS a standard interface for printing. It's not dot matrix parallel, it's Postscript! Duh.
Buy a Postscript printer, print once, print everywhere, the same output, not drivers required. Postscript is the way and the answer to your printing woes. If you're not dealing with a postscript printer or an HP, Epson, Cannon, or Samsung printer, you're dealing with a $2 dollar printer thats equivalent to a off-brand winmodem.
In general, you'll have a better Linux experience if you plan your equipment before you install, rather than install on the garbage you already have.
I'm not aware of an FLOSS PDF replacements. ODF doesn't count.
Why will the iPhone (rev 1) suck?
Simple. It's an EDGE "smartphone". And you have to deal with AT&T come Cingular. And you have to pay $$$, in addition to signing a 2 year contract.
I must admit, I'm very attracted to the idea of an Apple phone; but EDGE really sucks, and AT&T sucks worse. Once you've gone EVDO, HSDPA, or even UMTS, you'll never go back to EDGE/GPRS. It's a gigantic step backwards, and considering that Verizon/Sprint now have an additional 6 months to pursue a high-end smart phone, I would be shocked to see the iPhone succeed in any big way.
Certainly a phone utilizing yesterday's data technology will not muscle it's way to the top of the market. No video downloads over EDGE, and audio downloads will pause while you are speaking on the phone. Furthermore, it doesn't even seem that it will have a J2ME stack.
I don't have high hopes for this phone, and I'll be damned if I have to deal with AT&T to get one.
Yes, there is one scenario under which you can watch premium content at full quality: If you have end-to-end HDCP encryption, meaning a monitor that support HDCP (extremely rare), a video card that supports HDCP (rare), an OS that supports HDCP (Vista), and playback software that supports HDCP.
If you are missing any elements of the above, Vista will not playback HD video at full res. Furthermore, XP will never have the ability to play HD-DVD and Blu-ray at full res.
So, in short, all you need to do is wait till the consumer Vista release, and purchase a Vista Ultimate system with a brand new monitor to replace the 23" LCD flat panel you bought last year. Don't forget the DVI-HDCP compliant cables, and the 5.1 digital speakers with HDCP support.
Love, Microsoft
Haven't you heard the latest MS marketing?
DX 10 is 10x faster than DX 9 on the same hardware!
Seriously. They're actually saying that.