1. OS CD 2a. One driver CD, if you've already gone out and downloaded all your system drivers and burnt them to a single disk. 2b. Multiple driver CDs, because you'll need to download them all separately to keep them up to date. (Multiple reboots needed to get all the drivers up and running, don't screw around with mulitple driver installs if you are installing ANYTHING from ATI. ATI drivers=follow the order to reboot) 3. Office, or OpenOffice 4. SP2 and Patches. Or do you download all ~200 megs of updates the first time you logon? 5. Printer drivers. You don't download that absurd 200 meg download from hp.com, do you? 6. (Possibly multiple disks) All the other necessary utility software you've got. Winrar. Firefox. Thunderbird. Google Desktop. Gimp. Your-favorite-flavor-of-IM software. Anti virus software. Anti-spyware software, usually two flavors. A proper firewall.
That's *AT LEAT* 6 disks. Probably more.
With linux? I install from the one DVD that comes with my distribution. All the software I could possibly use comes in that install.
There's ONE reboot. Not multiple reboots.
Installing Linux is a much easier process than installing Windows.
The proper counter-argument is not that Windows is easier to install. It's not: Linux is. The proper counter-argument is that unless you game (update drivers all the time), or have sketchy hardware, you won't end up reinstalling Windows very often. As such, it doesn't really matter that its a bigger hassle.
But it MOST DEFINITELY is much more difficult to install XP than, say, SuSE 9.3.
Microsoft is always *very* anxious for people not to look at the theoretical, but to evalute things like 'True Cost of Ownership', or 'Performance under real-world situations'.
Microsofties (MS-fanbois) always like to ask "If OS X (or Linux) are superior, then why aren't they dominant?"
Fact: There isn't a SINGLE OS X worm or virus out there that isn't an equivalent of rm -rf/.
While theoretical vulnerabilities may exist, the fact of the matter is that you could buy a mac mini, turn off the firewall, plug it directly into a cable modem, and it WON'T get owned. Not within 5 minutes, not within 20 minutes, not within 6 months.
Obviously, good security practices will protect you in the future. Obviously, its a good idea to monitor which services you are running, and to run a firewall.
You always here Microsofties say things like "Windows is better because of install base. Greater software avaliability trumps superior architecture"
Or the $ per 'unit of performance' metric--- At any given price, a Windows prebuilt box will end up being cheaper, even though a Linux or Mac prebuilt box could theoretically perform better.
Well, you CAN'T have it both ways: At any given deployment level, an OS X box will not get owned. Period.
Eat it.
I'm tired of all this FUD. To idiots like the article author, and the guy quoted: Feel free to discuss how the *nix sky is falling (in terms of security) when we get daily exploits, and large corporation are shutdown because their *nix servers/workstations are passing e-mail viruses or tcp/ip worms back and forth.
Until then, SHUT-UP. Much like Duke Nukem Forever, the Phantom console, and economically viable Fusion, I'll believe it when I see. Keep repeating to yourself: There are NO Mac OS X viruses. Not one. Not 1/2 of one. Not a shadow of one.
What is says is very, very simple. The KDE foundation is permitted to license the latest QT Free edition under any open source license, explicitly including the BSD license, as long as one of the following three conditions is meet:
1. QT Free edition is not updated for 12 months. 2. QT Free edition is not updated within 12 months of the release of a new QT proprietary edition (i.e. QT4 comes out, non-gpl, no QT4 Free edition) 3. Unanimous consent of the KDE foundation boardmembers.
That's all. No one, at all, should fear that Trolltech can take QT away, or that a large company (say Microsoft) could purchase Trolltech, and take QT away.
The absolute worst that could happen would be Trolltech stopping development. That's it.
With this agreement, Trolltech irrevocably ties themselves to the free software movement. QT is under no threat at all.
After all, these opensource nuts are the only ones that experience delays, and its only because of the poor caliber of opensource programmers.
Microsoft, of course, never experiences delays. If they had gone with a Microsoft Solution 3 years (projected started in 2001), they'd be running on Longhorm, ahem, I mean, Vista, today!
The real scoop The basic idea is that if someone uses software patents against a Free Software program under the GPL, he might lose the right to distribute that particular software, to use it for their products. We have no interest in restricting the way people can use and develop software.
If you patent something related to the way that Apache serves web pages, you are no longer permitted to distribute Apache under the GPL.
If you patent something related to the way Linux's memory management works, you are no longer permitted to distribute Linux under the GPL.
Sounds good to me--- Basically, its an addition the GPL saying, "If you patent some aspect of your software in an attempt to restrict redistribution through non-copyright-based legal tools, your software may no longer be distributed under the GPL"
This is a NECESSARY addition. Otherwise, whats to stop some company from patenting X related to some feature they just contributed to the Linux kernel, waiting 2 years for that feature to become widely used, and then sue everyone using the kernel into oblivion?
You see one file, which is actually a zip with your xml doc file, and images/, or / directory inside.
The file is simply a container for various other files, either the plain-text document, or the native binary format images/charts/video/sounds/whatever.
This is vastly _superior_ to MS's format. If you send me a opendocument file with videos and the like in it, and my filesystem browser natively support the zip format, I can navigate into the document archive and pull out whatever binary files I want, since they are stored as-is (compressed, of course).
I do not believe that pulling stuff out of an MS file would be anywhere near that easy.
To the end-user, it looks like one file. To the person that wants easy access to the contents, its a directory. To anyone interested in reading the XML file, its a human-readable plain-text version of your document, without huge piles of binary spaghetti strewn about.
I dunno, I've read some evidence that students in my state (illinois) have performed *significantly* better in recent years in the sciences and mathematics.
Not in literacy, however, but the 'numbers and test-tubes' teachers seem to be doing well, at least in this state.
I'm not sure where it is, but I'm *sure* such a thing does exist. I found it before, when I used to regularly use firefox. It's a toolbar, most likely avaliable on the firefox extensions page, somthing about spoofing browser identification.
I don't know where it is, because I usually use Safari or Konqueror (depending on whether I'm in OS X on my powerbook or linux on my desktop), and this funcationality is native to both.
God help us if it fails. Not that I live in New Orleans, but if it really does stay flooded with 10-20' of water for 9 weeks, there won't be anything left, especially of the beautiful portions, like the French Quarter.
As it is, if the city dried out tomorrow, it would take a month to determine the safety of various buildings, and another month to repair them.
2 months for pumping, 2 months for repair. In all honest, that would be the end of the city.
Right now, the federal government needs to give the army corp of engineers an unlimited budget to fix the leeves & pumping system as fast as physically possible.
Quite frankly, loosing New Orleans, one of the most historic cities in the U.S., would be a great tradgey. We're spending any unlimited amount of money to rescue everyone who remains stranded in the city; I hope the government maintains this level of urgency for the repair operations.
Anyways, if you look at my posting history, you'll see a billion responses (all linux adovacy, usually SuSE). I am a big fan of Transgaming's Cedega, and I'd argue the following:
If you want a computer that just works (office/work type stuff), Linux is ready for you, and almost as good as Apple.
If you want a computer that plays certain games very well with great easy, Linux is ready for you. This mean you only play linux games. Linux games versus Apple games? Apple wins.
If you want the above two, plus the ability to play Windows games, Linux beats the heck out of Apple. (I say this as a person who loves Mac OS X, who owns a Mac Mini and a Powerbook). Even though Cedega is 'quirky', it means I can play Half-Life 2 on my Linux box.
This is a big deal. Linux is ready for the desktop in terms of native apps. All you need to do is pickup a copy of SuSE, and you'll be playing Linux games, and running Linux office apps Out-Of-Box. Windows applications are harder, but at least its possible. Virtual PC, IMHO, sucks, bad.
Even in terms of system virtualization, at least with the latest VMware you can run Direct3D games (hardware 3D access, finally, yeah!). With OS X, you firmly live in the OS X world. No Windows apps avaliable. This has made me come down on the linux side of the fence, I think.
Regarding Cedega. Transgaming really has the some great code there, however, their default configuration *really* *really* sucks. Nearly *every* game requires configuration tweaks, even games that are A-list Cedega titles with active support.
This doesn't make any sense to me, and I'm working on a project that will load up the correct optimizations on a game-by-game basis, similar to the way that Codeweaver's Crossover Office works.
Cedega and Point2Play would be perfect if they loaded these optimizations correctly. Sadly, it really is too confusing for some people to have to go to the settings menu and click and unclick boxes. Its also stupid to require that, since there really is (depending on your video card (ATI/Nvidia)) a best configuration.
My dream product is a Point2Play work-a-like that detects the CD you just inserted, starts cedega for the install with the exactly corrected, heavily tweaked on a per-game-basis configuration file, and then puts entries in your Gnome/KDE system menu, as well as having access to a Cedega-only-Point2Play gui. This would allow Cedega to clear the last hurdle to users such as yourself.
1. You are using a buggy, most likely power-user oriented distribution.
Arrow keys on mouse scrolling not working? What, are you using Gentoo, and compiling everything with bizarre USE flags?
2. Yes, Windows can be cheaper if you pirate everything, because sometimes its difficult to pirate Linux software, so you'll have to buy it. Sorry if I don't cry a tear for you;-)
4. Why should they standardize on update systems? It's not like you'll be running multiple distributions on the same system. Pick one that's best for you (if you are new, than a noob-friendly distirubtion, like SuSE), and update/package management will be easy.
Plus, Windows needs a crap load of stuff to work 'Out of Box'. Of course, you've probably pirated all the stuff you already need, like MS Office, Photoshop, Winzip, etc . .., so you didn't notice or took for granted that all of that was installed by default on your linux system.
Oh, and if you are running Mandrake, SuSE, or Fedora, all of your drivers (including ATI/Nvidia OpenGL drivers) can be installed automatically via the distribution. No need to go driver hunting, which is a Pain In The Ass on windows.
2) There is some API translation overhead. Not much, but some. Right now, the overhead is only significant in terms of translating D3D pixel shaders to OpenGL--- everything else is negligible (under 1%).
With pixel shaders, there is about a 5-15% slowdown, depending upon the complexitiy. World of Warcraft pixel shaders are very basic. Half Life 2's are somewhat more complex.
This, however, is usually more than made up for by other positive things regarding linux-- better (and faster) memory allocation, finer delinated process priorities, close to real-time scheduling (which actually slows down net performance, but makes your games feel more responsive), significantly faster filesystem access (especially if you use the new Reiserfs 4).
In an apples to apples comparison, in a game that does not use pixel shaders, Cedega performance is usuallly about 20% faster than Windows. In the near future, I'm sure we'll see greater pixel shader optimizations, especially now that Nvidia's (soon ATIs) drivers have OpenGL 2.0 support.
The more we can speed up and automate maintenance and service tasks (i.e. speed up shoping, automate cashiers), the less time man kind spends doinging drudge work.
Two sort of philosopical points:
1. There isn't enough time in a human life, from beginning to end. The less time we have to spend on necessities the more time we can spend on luxuries. Like time with your friends, with nature, time inventing, pursuing the arts, etc . . . .
2. Yes, its unforutnate for the cashiers to loose their jobs. It'd be preferable if they phased them out--- i.e. not hire new ones when the previous ones left their jobs. Also, a carrer path to a different position should be provided. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where all the 'slaves' of capitalism were free by robotics, menial labor was endless and extremely-low-cost (robotic), and all mankind reaped these benefits?
While outsourcing has hit the tech sector in a moderate fashion, I'd argue that the 90's tech bubble did far more damage to tech jobs than outsourcing.
Even now, we see backlashes against outsourcing. It really doesn't compromise as much of the job market as you might believe. Furthermore, if you've ever taken an international trade class, you'd learn that it makes sense for countries to specialize in whatever goods they are best at producing. In the long run, everyone benefits as production is moved to the lost-cost-per-good nation (assuming fairly free trade, of course).
The answer to outsourcing is *not* protectionism. The answer to outsourcing is better eduction for American workers, tax breaks to enterprises that choose to locate factories in the U.S. and American free-trade partners (Canada, Mexico), investment in research & development (not necessarily by the government but by large lending institutions, and the general organs of the economy). Think proactive, not reactive: the U.S. and Europe have dominated world trade for a long, long time. Now, other countries are going to start competing for these markets. This means we need to be *more* productive, and more economically efficient.
Everyone benefits when the whole world has jobs. Everyone benefits when humanities economic conditions improve. It's extremely shorted sighted to ignore that.
Furthermore, I do not think the adjustment process has to be *that* ugly. What are things that we will see in the adjustment process?
Well, for one, rising energy prices (check). Two, we'll see the yuan (RMB) rise in value; you can only keep control of a currency for so long before the black market takes over (the Chinese know this; they keep good tabs on this kind of thing). Greater purchasing power parity will cause imports in these 3rd world countries to rise. Also, some markets will dry up (American textiles, or American steel), but cheap intermediate goods will give opportunities for integrators to manufacturer end user products. The coalition of companies I work for manufacture heavy equipment, perform construction contracting, manufacturing environmental cleanup chemicals, and food products. We roll with the punches as much as we can; we purchase our supplies from Europe, China, S. Korea, Mexico, and the U.S. We sell these same products back, in manufactured form, with ourselves and our employees being the benefactors of mark up.
This transition doesn't have to be ugly. The governments of the world need to embrace free trade, and sane economic policy-- rather than being a new 'Great Depression', this jerky, painful, stop-start process *is* without a doubt the engine that can substantially reduce world poverty.
When a company looses out to foreign competitors, it needs to redouble its efforts. American companies are still extremely competitive: it's just that we aren't the only players on the field anymore, and thats a very good thing (the American steel conglomerates deserve to die, the same way that the S. Korean/Japanese steel conglomerates *did* die. Inefficent, expensive, monopoly-esque profits, while trashing the environment left and right (we've done some of those cleanup projects).
These pains are the agonies of the world growing up. Wealth should not be concentrated in the North. But individuals like yourself shouldn't propogate doom scenarions Gee, doesn't the Great Depression look like it might have been a fun thing to live through because you aren't helping matters, you're just stocking the fires of protectionists.
My suspicion.... the RIAA will require the older, less popular music be *more* expensive, and newer, higher volume (or expected to be higher volume) pop songs will be cheaper.
If you have admin priviledges, you can easily delete the partition table, or you can start securely deleting files.
Hell, you can schedule the system to securely delete *every* file on the next reboot, and then either causes the system to freeze, or call a shutdown.
Admin priviledges means you can kill someone's installation. I could do it, and I am a very, very mediocre programmer. I can only imagine what a skilled programmer could do.
Slashdot Mirror
1. OS CD
2a. One driver CD, if you've already gone out and downloaded all your system drivers and burnt them to a single disk.
2b. Multiple driver CDs, because you'll need to download them all separately to keep them up to date.
(Multiple reboots needed to get all the drivers up and running, don't screw around with mulitple driver installs if you are installing ANYTHING from ATI. ATI drivers=follow the order to reboot)
3. Office, or OpenOffice
4. SP2 and Patches. Or do you download all ~200 megs of updates the first time you logon?
5. Printer drivers. You don't download that absurd 200 meg download from hp.com, do you?
6. (Possibly multiple disks) All the other necessary utility software you've got. Winrar. Firefox. Thunderbird. Google Desktop. Gimp. Your-favorite-flavor-of-IM software. Anti virus software. Anti-spyware software, usually two flavors. A proper firewall.
That's *AT LEAT* 6 disks. Probably more.
With linux? I install from the one DVD that comes with my distribution. All the software I could possibly use comes in that install.
There's ONE reboot. Not multiple reboots.
Installing Linux is a much easier process than installing Windows.
The proper counter-argument is not that Windows is easier to install. It's not: Linux is. The proper counter-argument is that unless you game (update drivers all the time), or have sketchy hardware, you won't end up reinstalling Windows very often. As such, it doesn't really matter that its a bigger hassle.
But it MOST DEFINITELY is much more difficult to install XP than, say, SuSE 9.3.
One DVD >> ~6 CDs
Microsoft is always *very* anxious for people not to look at the theoretical, but to evalute things like 'True Cost of Ownership', or 'Performance under real-world situations'.
/.
Microsofties (MS-fanbois) always like to ask "If OS X (or Linux) are superior, then why aren't they dominant?"
Fact: There isn't a SINGLE OS X worm or virus out there that isn't an equivalent of rm -rf
While theoretical vulnerabilities may exist, the fact of the matter is that you could buy a mac mini, turn off the firewall, plug it directly into a cable modem, and it WON'T get owned. Not within 5 minutes, not within 20 minutes, not within 6 months.
Obviously, good security practices will protect you in the future. Obviously, its a good idea to monitor which services you are running, and to run a firewall.
You always here Microsofties say things like "Windows is better because of install base. Greater software avaliability trumps superior architecture"
Or the $ per 'unit of performance' metric--- At any given price, a Windows prebuilt box will end up being cheaper, even though a Linux or Mac prebuilt box could theoretically perform better.
Well, you CAN'T have it both ways: At any given deployment level, an OS X box will not get owned. Period.
Eat it.
I'm tired of all this FUD. To idiots like the article author, and the guy quoted: Feel free to discuss how the *nix sky is falling (in terms of security) when we get daily exploits, and large corporation are shutdown because their *nix servers/workstations are passing e-mail viruses or tcp/ip worms back and forth.
Until then, SHUT-UP. Much like Duke Nukem Forever, the Phantom console, and economically viable Fusion, I'll believe it when I see. Keep repeating to yourself: There are NO Mac OS X viruses. Not one. Not 1/2 of one. Not a shadow of one.
End of story.
Doesn't work on Firefox for Mac OS X, 1.0.6
Anyone got an experiences on other platforms?
Anyone know if this can do anything other than crash the browser?
I just read the KDE foundation Trolltech agreement.
p hp#updated_agreement
Link is here: http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.
What is says is very, very simple. The KDE foundation is permitted to license the latest QT Free edition under any open source license, explicitly including the BSD license, as long as one of the following three conditions is meet:
1. QT Free edition is not updated for 12 months.
2. QT Free edition is not updated within 12 months of the release of a new QT proprietary edition (i.e. QT4 comes out, non-gpl, no QT4 Free edition)
3. Unanimous consent of the KDE foundation boardmembers.
That's all. No one, at all, should fear that Trolltech can take QT away, or that a large company (say Microsoft) could purchase Trolltech, and take QT away.
The absolute worst that could happen would be Trolltech stopping development. That's it.
With this agreement, Trolltech irrevocably ties themselves to the free software movement. QT is under no threat at all.
This obviously means the death of Linux.
After all, these opensource nuts are the only ones that experience delays, and its only because of the poor caliber of opensource programmers.
Microsoft, of course, never experiences delays. If they had gone with a Microsoft Solution 3 years (projected started in 2001), they'd be running on Longhorm, ahem, I mean, Vista, today!
The real scoop
The basic idea is that if someone uses software patents against a Free Software program under the GPL, he might lose the right to distribute that particular software, to use it for their products. We have no interest in restricting the way people can use and develop software.
If you patent something related to the way that Apache serves web pages, you are no longer permitted to distribute Apache under the GPL.
If you patent something related to the way Linux's memory management works, you are no longer permitted to distribute Linux under the GPL.
Sounds good to me--- Basically, its an addition the GPL saying, "If you patent some aspect of your software in an attempt to restrict redistribution through non-copyright-based legal tools, your software may no longer be distributed under the GPL"
This is a NECESSARY addition. Otherwise, whats to stop some company from patenting X related to some feature they just contributed to the Linux kernel, waiting 2 years for that feature to become widely used, and then sue everyone using the kernel into oblivion?
You can tell a lot about a company by the company it keeps.
If someone does initiates new business with SCO, I'll end my business with them. Period.
You see one file, which is actually a zip with your xml doc file, and images/, or / directory inside.
The file is simply a container for various other files, either the plain-text document, or the native binary format images/charts/video/sounds/whatever.
This is vastly _superior_ to MS's format. If you send me a opendocument file with videos and the like in it, and my filesystem browser natively support the zip format, I can navigate into the document archive and pull out whatever binary files I want, since they are stored as-is (compressed, of course).
I do not believe that pulling stuff out of an MS file would be anywhere near that easy.
To the end-user, it looks like one file.
To the person that wants easy access to the contents, its a directory.
To anyone interested in reading the XML file, its a human-readable plain-text version of your document, without huge piles of binary spaghetti strewn about.
Win, Win, Win.
I dunno, I've read some evidence that students in my state (illinois) have performed *significantly* better in recent years in the sciences and mathematics.
Not in literacy, however, but the 'numbers and test-tubes' teachers seem to be doing well, at least in this state.
I'm not sure where it is, but I'm *sure* such a thing does exist. I found it before, when I used to regularly use firefox. It's a toolbar, most likely avaliable on the firefox extensions page, somthing about spoofing browser identification.
I don't know where it is, because I usually use Safari or Konqueror (depending on whether I'm in OS X on my powerbook or linux on my desktop), and this funcationality is native to both.
The english health system IS a disaster, and I see that first hand.
One to two month delays between appointments for an URGENT, life-threatening condition for a relative of mine.
It makes me REALLY upset.
At least thats what this article says.
5 .htm
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N3030679
God help us if it fails. Not that I live in New Orleans, but if it really does stay flooded with 10-20' of water for 9 weeks, there won't be anything left, especially of the beautiful portions, like the French Quarter.
As it is, if the city dried out tomorrow, it would take a month to determine the safety of various buildings, and another month to repair them.
2 months for pumping, 2 months for repair.
In all honest, that would be the end of the city.
Right now, the federal government needs to give the army corp of engineers an unlimited budget to fix the leeves & pumping system as fast as physically possible.
Quite frankly, loosing New Orleans, one of the most historic cities in the U.S., would be a great tradgey. We're spending any unlimited amount of money to rescue everyone who remains stranded in the city; I hope the government maintains this level of urgency for the repair operations.
It's not substantially uglier than slashdot, unless you are using some ghetto browser.
www.transgaming.com is their business/support site.
www.transgaming.org is their forum/developer blog site.
The main use to transgaming.org is the forums, which are pretty helpful. Not terribly high traffic, but fairly helpful.
I agree with the Parent, GP, and great-GP.
LOL
Anyways, if you look at my posting history, you'll see a billion responses (all linux adovacy, usually SuSE). I am a big fan of Transgaming's Cedega, and I'd argue the following:
If you want a computer that just works (office/work type stuff), Linux is ready for you, and almost as good as Apple.
If you want a computer that plays certain games very well with great easy, Linux is ready for you. This mean you only play linux games. Linux games versus Apple games? Apple wins.
If you want the above two, plus the ability to play Windows games, Linux beats the heck out of Apple. (I say this as a person who loves Mac OS X, who owns a Mac Mini and a Powerbook). Even though Cedega is 'quirky', it means I can play Half-Life 2 on my Linux box.
This is a big deal. Linux is ready for the desktop in terms of native apps. All you need to do is pickup a copy of SuSE, and you'll be playing Linux games, and running Linux office apps Out-Of-Box. Windows applications are harder, but at least its possible. Virtual PC, IMHO, sucks, bad.
Even in terms of system virtualization, at least with the latest VMware you can run Direct3D games (hardware 3D access, finally, yeah!). With OS X, you firmly live in the OS X world. No Windows apps avaliable. This has made me come down on the linux side of the fence, I think.
Regarding Cedega. Transgaming really has the some great code there, however, their default configuration *really* *really* sucks. Nearly *every* game requires configuration tweaks, even games that are A-list Cedega titles with active support.
This doesn't make any sense to me, and I'm working on a project that will load up the correct optimizations on a game-by-game basis, similar to the way that Codeweaver's Crossover Office works.
Cedega and Point2Play would be perfect if they loaded these optimizations correctly. Sadly, it really is too confusing for some people to have to go to the settings menu and click and unclick boxes. Its also stupid to require that, since there really is (depending on your video card (ATI/Nvidia)) a best configuration.
My dream product is a Point2Play work-a-like that detects the CD you just inserted, starts cedega for the install with the exactly corrected, heavily tweaked on a per-game-basis configuration file, and then puts entries in your Gnome/KDE system menu, as well as having access to a Cedega-only-Point2Play gui. This would allow Cedega to clear the last hurdle to users such as yourself.
1. You are using a buggy, most likely power-user oriented distribution.
;-)
g e
., so you didn't notice or took for granted that all of that was installed by default on your linux system.
Arrow keys on mouse scrolling not working? What, are you using Gentoo, and compiling everything with bizarre USE flags?
2. Yes, Windows can be cheaper if you pirate everything, because sometimes its difficult to pirate Linux software, so you'll have to buy it. Sorry if I don't cry a tear for you
Oh, and you can get a free & legal copy of cedega using this script
http://winecvs.linux-gamers.net/index.php/Main_Pa
3. You can install Win2k via bootp, too
4. Why should they standardize on update systems? It's not like you'll be running multiple distributions on the same system. Pick one that's best for you (if you are new, than a noob-friendly distirubtion, like SuSE), and update/package management will be easy.
Plus, Windows needs a crap load of stuff to work 'Out of Box'. Of course, you've probably pirated all the stuff you already need, like MS Office, Photoshop, Winzip, etc . .
Oh, and if you are running Mandrake, SuSE, or Fedora, all of your drivers (including ATI/Nvidia OpenGL drivers) can be installed automatically via the distribution. No need to go driver hunting, which is a Pain In The Ass on windows.
1) Yes, what he said
2) There is some API translation overhead. Not much, but some. Right now, the overhead is only significant in terms of translating D3D pixel shaders to OpenGL--- everything else is negligible (under 1%).
With pixel shaders, there is about a 5-15% slowdown, depending upon the complexitiy. World of Warcraft pixel shaders are very basic. Half Life 2's are somewhat more complex.
This, however, is usually more than made up for by other positive things regarding linux-- better (and faster) memory allocation, finer delinated process priorities, close to real-time scheduling (which actually slows down net performance, but makes your games feel more responsive), significantly faster filesystem access (especially if you use the new Reiserfs 4).
In an apples to apples comparison, in a game that does not use pixel shaders, Cedega performance is usuallly about 20% faster than Windows. In the near future, I'm sure we'll see greater pixel shader optimizations, especially now that Nvidia's (soon ATIs) drivers have OpenGL 2.0 support.
I play those on Linux.
www.transgaming.org
What planet do you come from?
Hi :)
Yes, I can
2.6.11, 2.6.13rc2
Not sure of the cdrecord version, I'm at work right now, on my powerbook.
Works for sure, though, at 4x.
Is there an Aldi's in your area?
For whatever reason, I think Aldis spend an inordinate amount of time training their cashiers.
They are *SO* fast. They process at least 10 times faster than most people do at a checkout lane, and I'm not even exaggerating.
At least 1-3 items per second, compared to 3-10 seconds per item for individuals at a checkout lane.
Hear Hear!
The more we can speed up and automate maintenance and service tasks (i.e. speed up shoping, automate cashiers), the less time man kind spends doinging drudge work.
Two sort of philosopical points:
1. There isn't enough time in a human life, from beginning to end. The less time we have to spend on necessities the more time we can spend on luxuries. Like time with your friends, with nature, time inventing, pursuing the arts, etc . . . .
2. Yes, its unforutnate for the cashiers to loose their jobs. It'd be preferable if they phased them out--- i.e. not hire new ones when the previous ones left their jobs. Also, a carrer path to a different position should be provided. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where all the 'slaves' of capitalism were free by robotics, menial labor was endless and extremely-low-cost (robotic), and all mankind reaped these benefits?
Well, I can dream, anyways.
You overestimate the outcome of outsourcing.
While outsourcing has hit the tech sector in a moderate fashion, I'd argue that the 90's tech bubble did far more damage to tech jobs than outsourcing.
Even now, we see backlashes against outsourcing. It really doesn't compromise as much of the job market as you might believe. Furthermore, if you've ever taken an international trade class, you'd learn that it makes sense for countries to specialize in whatever goods they are best at producing. In the long run, everyone benefits as production is moved to the lost-cost-per-good nation (assuming fairly free trade, of course).
The answer to outsourcing is *not* protectionism. The answer to outsourcing is better eduction for American workers, tax breaks to enterprises that choose to locate factories in the U.S. and American free-trade partners (Canada, Mexico), investment in research & development (not necessarily by the government but by large lending institutions, and the general organs of the economy). Think proactive, not reactive: the U.S. and Europe have dominated world trade for a long, long time. Now, other countries are going to start competing for these markets. This means we need to be *more* productive, and more economically efficient.
Everyone benefits when the whole world has jobs. Everyone benefits when humanities economic conditions improve. It's extremely shorted sighted to ignore that.
Furthermore, I do not think the adjustment process has to be *that* ugly. What are things that we will see in the adjustment process?
Well, for one, rising energy prices (check). Two, we'll see the yuan (RMB) rise in value; you can only keep control of a currency for so long before the black market takes over (the Chinese know this; they keep good tabs on this kind of thing).
Greater purchasing power parity will cause imports in these 3rd world countries to rise.
Also, some markets will dry up (American textiles, or American steel), but cheap intermediate goods will give opportunities for integrators to manufacturer end user products. The coalition of companies I work for manufacture heavy equipment, perform construction contracting, manufacturing environmental cleanup chemicals, and food products. We roll with the punches as much as we can; we purchase our supplies from Europe, China, S. Korea, Mexico, and the U.S.
We sell these same products back, in manufactured form, with ourselves and our employees being the benefactors of mark up.
This transition doesn't have to be ugly. The governments of the world need to embrace free trade, and sane economic policy-- rather than being a new 'Great Depression', this jerky, painful, stop-start process *is* without a doubt the engine that can substantially reduce world poverty.
When a company looses out to foreign competitors, it needs to redouble its efforts. American companies are still extremely competitive: it's just that we aren't the only players on the field anymore, and thats a very good thing (the American steel conglomerates deserve to die, the same way that the S. Korean/Japanese steel conglomerates *did* die. Inefficent, expensive, monopoly-esque profits, while trashing the environment left and right (we've done some of those cleanup projects).
These pains are the agonies of the world growing up. Wealth should not be concentrated in the North. But individuals like yourself shouldn't propogate doom scenarions Gee, doesn't the Great Depression look like it might have been a fun thing to live through because you aren't helping matters, you're just stocking the fires of protectionists.
My suspicion.... the RIAA will require the older, less popular music be *more* expensive, and newer, higher volume (or expected to be higher volume) pop songs will be cheaper.
No, Creative Suite doesn't run under Crossover Office.
That's what keeps me working on my mac.
Ehh?
If you have admin priviledges, you can easily delete the partition table, or you can start securely deleting files.
Hell, you can schedule the system to securely delete *every* file on the next reboot, and then either causes the system to freeze, or call a shutdown.
Admin priviledges means you can kill someone's installation. I could do it, and I am a very, very mediocre programmer. I can only imagine what a skilled programmer could do.
eek... slashdot deleted the rest of this.
basically----
programs wait till it succesfully infects 100 systems.
after that, it deletes the partition table.