That is a rather general statement, and most people who say things like this haven't thought about the details. They are only thinking of one specific case where they think it's great, but usually you find something where they don't want a free market after all. Many already don't want a free market when it comes to such still rather ordinary stuff like organs, but forbidding bribes might as well be considered hindering a completely free market...
There's nothing wrong with a trade in organs if you aren't stealing them from someone else.
There's nothing wrong with bribes in the private sector if you aren't altering laws, or influencing public officials.
Either way, however, the only "real" consequence of banning these sorts of "free market" activities is a black market. Bribes to public officials are _rampant_ in our society, and there's definitely a world-wide trade in organs, even though 99% of nations have banned economic exchanges for human tissue.
With bribes, the easiest way to deal with the problem is limit the scope of the government, reducing the incentive and cost/benefit ratio of bribery. With an organ trade, one carefully define the regulatory framework surrounding it. But banning these things outright just forces them underground, making them _far_ more "dirty".
Hopefully, stem cell research will eliminate the "organ trade", or at least transform it into something legitimate.
Never underestimate the free market; the only illusion that people like you are operating on is that you can control it through government action. Saying that you will eliminate a "free market" in bribes is really just saying that you're turning lobbyists into shadow figures with envelopes stuff with 100s rather than bank checks that can be monitored.
The guts of slot loading CD/DVD/DVDR/DVD+-RW drive in a Mac are the same as those produced for PC vendors. Apple even changes vendors from time to time, from Pioneer, to Matsushita (Panasonic), to LG, to Sony.
Do you honestly think that Apple makes it a requirement for these disks to be non-standards requirement? Do you honestly think that other laptop vendors would insist on higher levels of quality?
The article is fluff. In fact, the manufacturers website specifically says do not use the disk in ANY slot loading drive.
I dunno what you are talking about; they seem to be in the top 3 on both the retail/wholesale lists.
AFAIK, most internet traffic in the U.S. goes over AT&T's backbone, which is a damn shame. Hopefully Sprint, MCI, and maybe even Google will take over that load, and someday the behemoth that is AT&T can collapse.
That company is evil. You're bills will be wrong. If you think you are saving $15 a month, you'll actually be saving more like $5, because of random fees and charges. Customer service will be incredibly slow and rude. Not to mention that even AT&T's Fiber service is capped at 6mbps.
Don't use AT&T. I tried out AT&T DSL about two months ago, just to see if they had improved.
Short story? I now have ongoing billing dispute with them, even though I only had service for 3 days, and they claim I owe them $100+. Absurd.
I'd like to remind everyone about the suspicious connection in China between a very large number of death penalty cases and extremely rapid organ transplants.
For the average transplant recipient, the waiting time in China is approximately 2 weeks. 2 weeks. This compares to months or even years in the U.S.
With this in mind, I do not think Mr. Niven's idea is quaint or naive at all.
Because it can't grow anymore; at least, it can't keep up with world economic growth rates.
Until we can figure out a new energy source or cycle (be it bio-petroleum, electric/nuclear, electric/renewable, or something else), all of these conservation, efficiency, and subsidize mechanisms are stop-gap measures at best.
Transportation, and in general, the large economy of the world will remain constrained by our inability to satisfy the world's energy needs, and getting American consumers to switch to smaller cars is really only a small part of the solution.
Frankly, the "best" solution would be for the U.S. government to begin incentivizing realistic alternative energy sources, whether that be nuclear or anything else.
The size of the car you drive doesn't really matter; hell, the MPG or efficiency of your vehicle (in terms of energy use/kilometer) doesn't really matter. What *really* matters is the efficiency of transportation in dollars/kilometer, and in a greater sense, the efficiency of energy production in dollars/gigajoule.
There would be no problem with everyone driving a Hummer or a M1 Main Battle Tank if they were powered electrically or via algae-grown biofuel, and we had a vast excess of algae farms and fusion reactors. In bills like this, the government seems to think that 10-20 years is "long term", when realistically mankind needs to start to think about how to radically increase our ability to harness and generate energy at extremely low costs.
The universe is awash in energy. Our planet is literally baked by a fusion reactor 100,000x the size of it. With breeder reactors, the energy locked up in transuranic isotopes is immense.
Dickering around with oil, whether at 20, 30, or 100 MPG is really kind of short sighted.
Do I have all the anwers? No; however, when you look at the energy bill in TFA, you'll see that the amount of money going towards Big Oil is immense. I'd rather see that money plowed back into the federal budget, and then create a "tax shelter" whereby investments into nuclear, renewables, and other formers of sustainable energy would be entirely tax free; and those entities doing the research should get massive tax breaks as well.
I don't pretend to have all the technical answers, however, given a lot of the promising research that was done on conversion of algae directly into "home-grown" petroleum in the 1970s, a major breakthrough in that area could replace the petroleum economy over night, and at least put us back into a situation where energy use could grow linerally rather than logrithmatically, which is what is happening right now.
*shrug* None of this is me saying that I'm opposed to more efficient cars, however, praising this bill for increasing efficiency is preposterous when the vast majority of the bill (and its funding!) goes to subsidizing big oil.
Actually, in terms of build quality, the latest American cars are quite good.
Consumer Reports has put Buick above Lexus in terms of reliability, and a few other GM brands are up there, too.
American cars developed a really bad reputation in the 90s, and its taken forever to turn it around. On the other hand, I don't understand the fascination people have with European cars. German cars, in particular, really suck these days.
A Mercedes, or a BMW, is really a piece of crap, poor build quality, design flaws, and serious maintenance issues. I know, I've seen dozens of them fall apart.
Buy Japanese, or American; but the European garbage isn't worth the exorbatant prices right now.
I'm not sure why, but screenshots don't do it justice. I just installed it, and there is something about the oxygen theme/interface that just works.
About 10 minutes after I started using it it grew on me. My issues with KDE4 are bugs, not the interface choices; as far as I can tell, Oxygen/Plasma/Phenon seems like excellent pieces of work, and everything they were cracked up to be.
If network browsing in Dolphin worked properly, (no more malformed URL errors), I'd be using it as my primary desktop.
The interface is very... rich. It looks a bit like a video game, but unlike a video game, is quite functional. The configuration nightmare that was KDE3.5 seems to have been seriously paired down, and there are new, subtle touches to the design (subtle fade in/out at various dialogues, Apple like use of transparency). In sum, I like it.
When MS decides to natively support ODF in MS Office.
Microsoft often talks about dual, equal standards, but it obviously bullshit unless MS Office, with the vast resources behind it, can support the same formats as the relatively resource poor OO.org, or KOffice, or Wordperfect.
I'm certain that the world would drop its objections to OOXML if MS decided to support ODF, without an addon plugin. Instead, by making it an us (ooxml) or them(odf) decision, they've invited hostility.
The shocking thing is the syncophants in the OSS community would eat Microsoft's propaganda/excrement while being slapped in the face.
Why should we support two new formats, when they only support one? Especially since OOXML is not yet used by most organizations; and if it is a real "open" standard, we can implement it "when customers demand it".
I wasn't necessarily thinking Macro, I was thinking Micro.
By this, I mean $$$ spent on development/management of development versus final lines of code produced.
Everything, and I mean everything, I read about Microsoft, including internal blogs, seems to suggest that there is nothing lean or flexible about MS's internal procedures.
No one uses it, yet. It's not a pragmatic standard, and it's definitely not an "official" standard (as in ISO).
More likely than not, if I sent out DOCX files from my business, I would be asked to send either PDF or DOC.
Until OOXML is ubiquitous, which will not happen for several years, there is no reason to not push ODF instead, particularly because ODF's got quite a bit of momentum internationally. Especially if the ODF plugin for MS Office continues to work properly; there won't be a reason to switch to DOCX at all.
It is more than remotely realistic to have an office without OOXML support. Microsoft's latest offering for the Mac doesn't have it. The vast majority of Office users in the world don't have it. Competing software doesn't have it yet.
OOXML will not become a reality for several years, and hopefully, will never become a reality.
(face it: it's going to become the new.doc format regardless of any protest or opposition from OSS, so why waste the opportunity to at least fix the most serious problems with it, and make implementation of it in OSS easier?)
There will not be a better opportunity to change the world's default document format to an OSS one that when MS is bogged down in its own transition to OOXML. Once.DOCX becomes the standard, it'll stay that way. In the interim, there is confusion, and there's a decent chance that ODF could catch on.
It doesn't hurt in the least bit that ODF is an ISO standard, and has extensive support from the various Office-as-a-service vendors (IBM, Google, etc. ..).
This is a major opportunity for the OSS community, to stand united behind ODF, and building in cooperation with OOXML will be a kiss of death (things will not work properly; just like IE doesn't render "standard" pages correctly, and the MS Office version of OOXML will be the correct version, while the "standard" version will be allowed to languish).
Heaven knows there are enough "outs" in the OOXML format (like all the legacy crap) that will give MS plenty of leeway to insure that only MS Office opens documents properly. Of course, these will all be "fixed" in the indefinite future; just like Internet Explorer.
Microsoft has a terrible, terrible record as a standard bearer. It makes no sense to allow MS to watch the keys to the kingdom. We've got an opportunity to push the world towards ODF, and there's quite a bit of uptake internationally, and quite a bit of interest domestically. Let's not try and upstage that by putting OOXML into all our applications (not to mention the wasted developer hours).
The primary complaint against Linux has always been, "don't just duplicate, build something better!". Well, ODF is better than OOXML. Let's stick with it until we've had DOCX forced down our throat. DOCX will not be ubiquitous for several years because of the legacy users out there, so we've got some time to push ODF over DOCX.
Life isn't _usually_ about taking your ball and going home.
Every once in a while, however, you meet a predator/bully who cannot be challenged via _any_ means except a war to the death. You do not beat diseases by negotiating with bacteria. You do not eliminate rats by trying to train them away from dumpsters. You cannot negotiate with an irrational tyrant expect positive results.
We've already been through the standards process for a document format. There's an ISO standard for documents: ODF. Anything that does not build on ODF is a subversion of that process. Worse, Microsoft's methods are extremely slimy.
You cannot beat Microsoft on the playing field, since MS has the money to insure there aren't any fair playing fields. That's why _we_, the angry morons, need to try and balance the field the other way.
I think many, if not most, openSuSE users use KDE. SuSE was a KDE distribution for a long time, and most of the SuSE GUI tools are still KDE-centric.
Also, the official position of the openSuSE Community is that there is no "default" desktop environment:
What is the default desktop of openSUSE - GNOME or KDE? openSUSE supports a number of popular desktop environments, including GNOME and KDE. During installation, the user is asked to choose between GNOME and KDE but no default is given. Both desktop environments are mature and feature-rich, which one a user chooses is a question of personal taste.
AFAIK, Novell/Commercial SuSE (influence of Ximian) trends towards GNOME, but openSuSE trends towards KDE. Both are pretty definitely "dual-desktop"
Ron Paul is a lunatic with damn little understanding of history, economics and politics.
Ron Paul may not be an unequaled sage; there are most likely students of history, economics, and politics who are superior to him.
These people are not, however, in our government. Obama is a toll. Hillary Clinton, though quite bright, fundamentally doesn't understand the long-term strategic mis-steps the U.S. has made in the past 50 years. That being said, both Obama and Clinton have a much better grip on reality that the rest (as in non-Paul) of the Republican slate. McCain, Huckabee, Giulani, and the rest have no clue on basic things like immigration, economics, foreign policy, and religion.
Does Paul say stupid things some times? Yes. However, if you do some research, you'll see that he is far more knowledgable about the issues he speaks about that his contemporaries, and many of the things that he advocates are sane, sound policy decisions.
For example, the DEA, and the drug war, is a ridiculous mess. If the only good thing that came out of a Paul Presidency was the end of the drug war, the U.S. would be a much better place.
The same is true of the IRS, which is also a complete mess. Keep in mind that Paul who advocate a replacement such as a sales tax, which is the sort of mechanism that European economics use (they call it a VAT).
Our government has gone through large scale reformations before, and survived. Recently, even; look at the Department of Homeland security, which has completely reoriented the operations of domestic law enforcement, and the USCIS, which is a newish entity replacing the INS.
I, for one, am willing to trade the possibility of the free market failing in providing economic equality in exchange for strengthening of our civil liberties, the end of the drug war, a return to a more conservative foreign policy, pursuit of a balanced budget and trade, and a complete overhaul of our insane tax system.
Who are you to call me a lunatic, and why are the risks involved in moving to what I believe to be a "better" government any worse than the shitstorm the democrats and republicans are currently driving us towards? The vast majority of the electorate has delved into the issues far less than I have, and the vast majority of the congress, and every _other_ lunatic running for President, is a good deal less informed than Dr. Paul.
Either you are a hopeless optimist, and like the direction this country is going in, or you've become so conservative and a afraid of change that any large-scale reorientation of the government is terrifying to you.
Hell, I'd excuse people like you if you had a candidate who would restore our liberties without pursuing radical economics changes, however, given the current slate of possibilities on both sides of the aisle, no one other than Kucinich and Paul defend civil liberties that way they need to be defended.
There's an economic answer to this crap. Don't keep _any_ media that could endager you. Download free music, listen to indy artists, or get MP3s that you are allowed to copy.
Stop using non-free software.
As an individual, or as a company, you can eliminate any possibility of going wrong on this law by dumping the closed-source ecosystem at a full clip.
Microsoft recently realized that the kill switch in Vista was hurting, not helping, their marketshare. Now, the MAFIAAs are trying to build a legal/physical kill switch into the concept of IP. As such, the best answer is "not to play". And if you get asked why you don't use those products (either in a market survey, or by a salesman (best at a big company)), reply that you don't want to risk confiscation of your equipment, and until they can supply media/software which is _impossible_ to infringe, you don't want to do business from them.
Will it suck a little? Yes. Will you loose access to a lot of software/video/audio? Yes. But you don't have to do it all at once; just stop buying new software/video/audio, and try and survive on what you've got + new free stuff.
Even if you: Think he is an idiot. Disagree with every aspect of his platform. Think libertarians are idiots. Don't have faith in his foreign policy. Don't believe in a protectionism, isolationist foreign policy.
You should vote for Ron Paul.
Why? Because on the scale of small government big government, the U.S. has gone so far towards big government that its terrifying. We live in a police state now. In many situations you are guilty until proven innocent. You can be punished BEFORE your trial. Worse, the government is trying its best to be able to gain the right to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens.
Where does Ron Paul come in? Because he's the only potentially electable candidate who doesn't support this kind of shit. The previous paragraph of "scary shit" is bipartisan . Consider that TFA is going through a democratic congress.
Ron Paul, at least, is the only candidate who will bring _some_ balance to this level of rights violation. A centrist is _not_ the answer, because our policies have gotten so out of control. We need someone with some backbone, someone who will tell the DEA to stand down, and neuter the Justice Department. Perhaps even someone who could reorient the resources of the executive branch towards real security rather than the mechanisms of a police state.
If Ron Paul were to be elected, in 4-8 year he would be gone. A centrist would take power; maybe Hillary Clinton, maybe someone else. The country could be run on an even keel, and if you are a fan of liberal economic policies we could get back on track to building a welfare state. But in the interm, Dr. Paul would be able to cause a substantial amount of turmoil for the forces building a police state.
We, the average citizenry, have nothing to benefit from in a police state. Regardless of whether you are a libertarian or a socialist, it is necessary for us to elect a candidate who will stop this from happening. We can worry about economics and social welfare at a later date; we've got to stop this onrushing Orwellian nightmare first.
At one point, "Made in Japan" used to mean, "Cheap Japanese Crap".
Now, Japanese industrial goods (like cars/ships) and Japanese electronics are considered top-of-the-market, and dominate all levels of the market.
Before you can think about can think about dominating the market, you need a toe-hold. MS-DOS and MS Windows used to be for toy computers. That changed.
Not many companies can pull an Apple and win the high-end on image. For everyone else, its much easier to compete at the bottom, and work your way up. If you look at Hyundai, this is exactly what they are trying to do in the U.S. right now (bringing their line of luxury cars into the U.S., moving from the bottom market segment upwards).
If "Runs Linux" starts to mean, "Cheap, basic computers" to the average consumer, rather than "Nerdy, unknown crap", I'd feel confident that 2008 would be the year of Linux on the desktop.
If walmart manages to push enough of the gOS Everex boxes, this is exactly what will happen. Then we'll see software houses developing games for those gOS boxes (think The Sims; Myst; Sim City, card games, etc . ..; you know, most of the computer game market); and Linux Desktop marketshare will be in the 30-40% range by 2009-2010. The day a "Sims" type game is natively released for Linux is the day that Valve and the other recalcitrant game makers start developing Linux software.
I don't have the numbers to prove it, however, I'm guessing that Microsoft's efficiency is starting to approach that of the U.S. military's.
Still on top of its game, however, in terms of $$$ spent per line of code, Microsoft seems to be incredibly wasteful. That's okay for the military, since a military focuses on redundancy, also know as "waste", or "inefficiency".
For a corporation, however, particularly a public company, this suggests a degree of illness/sickness. The question is, given Microsoft's huge coffers, monopoly grip in the OS market, and dominance in a variety of other markets; will they be able to turn it around?
If Microsoft continues to stagnate for 20-30 years, they will no long be on top. 6 years ago, this would have just been wishful thinking, however, keep in mind just how little Microsoft's technology has advanced since then, and extrapolate that over 30 years.
Still, a lot can change in 30 years, and it would be foolish to predict what is going to happen. Either way, however, Linux/Apple encroaching upon Microsoft will improve the consumer's experience. Either we'll get better software from MS, or we'll switch to something better from another company.
This is *exactly* why Walmart gets it with Everex's $199 gOS boxes.
Simple. Not too many buttons. Web/Office/Email. Cheap.
Doesn't break, doesn't get viruses. Works out of box, not much to configure.
That's the what the article is talking about. There's no way for MS to compete with a $199 box that costs less than the MS software only, while still handling 95% of the "basic" home users's tasks. And of all the retailers out there smart enough to capitalize on something like this, Walmart is the toughest/smartest.
There's a Fry's near Chicago. It's a bit west. Intersection of I-355, I-88, at Butterfield road. Sounds like you're on the north side, so if you are anywhere near 94/94, take the 294 south to 355, and the 355 west 1 mile to 88. Can't miss it.
The thing is, though, that crappy, cheap, import stuff is often pretty good.
The issue is sorting the wheat from the chaff. When Fry's puts something on super sale, you've gotta do your research first. Often, you'll find incredible deals, such as their processor+halfwaydecent motherboard for less than the cost of the processor.
For example, right now they are selling a Core 2 Duo E6750 with an ECS motherboard. Are ECS motherboards crap? Sure; but you're getting this one free, even considering that the CPU is being sold at bargain basement prices (same price as the lowest price on pricewatch).
Also, they'll have reasonable prices on items not avaliable at BestBuy. Abit/ASUS/Kingston/eVGA; they have a great selection.
Some of their "standard" off-brands aren't bad either. They're the only place you can get Buffalo brand wireless gear in Chicago (not even Microcenter carries it anymore); hell, the only place you can get 802.11g/n equipment under $80.00. Airlink works ok, too.
*shrug*. I love Fry's. I don't think they're "normal" pricing is unreasonable considering the per-unit costs in run a B&M operation that isn't Walmart, and occasionally you'll find deals that are significantly cheaper than any sale you might see online (and not always on garbage-gear).
So, apparently, because Western Digital can't determine whether or not I have the correct license to share my files, from a device I own, I'm not allowed to do it?
Crazy.
Whatever happened to "substantially non-infringing use"?
One could imagine an archive of freely redistributable video. I would have a use for such a device.
Slashdot Mirror
That is a rather general statement, and most people who say things like this haven't thought about the details.
They are only thinking of one specific case where they think it's great, but usually you find something where they don't want a free market after all.
Many already don't want a free market when it comes to such still rather ordinary stuff like organs, but forbidding bribes might as well be considered hindering a completely free market...
There's nothing wrong with a trade in organs if you aren't stealing them from someone else.
There's nothing wrong with bribes in the private sector if you aren't altering laws, or influencing public officials.
Either way, however, the only "real" consequence of banning these sorts of "free market" activities is a black market. Bribes to public officials are _rampant_ in our society, and there's definitely a world-wide trade in organs, even though 99% of nations have banned economic exchanges for human tissue.
With bribes, the easiest way to deal with the problem is limit the scope of the government, reducing the incentive and cost/benefit ratio of bribery. With an organ trade, one carefully define the regulatory framework surrounding it. But banning these things outright just forces them underground, making them _far_ more "dirty".
Hopefully, stem cell research will eliminate the "organ trade", or at least transform it into something legitimate.
Never underestimate the free market; the only illusion that people like you are operating on is that you can control it through government action. Saying that you will eliminate a "free market" in bribes is really just saying that you're turning lobbyists into shadow figures with envelopes stuff with 100s rather than bank checks that can be monitored.
I'm extremely skeptical about this.
The guts of slot loading CD/DVD/DVDR/DVD+-RW drive in a Mac are the same as those produced for PC vendors. Apple even changes vendors from time to time, from Pioneer, to Matsushita (Panasonic), to LG, to Sony.
Do you honestly think that Apple makes it a requirement for these disks to be non-standards requirement? Do you honestly think that other laptop vendors would insist on higher levels of quality?
The article is fluff. In fact, the manufacturers website specifically says do not use the disk in ANY slot loading drive.
I dunno what you are talking about; they seem to be in the top 3 on both the retail/wholesale lists.
AFAIK, most internet traffic in the U.S. goes over AT&T's backbone, which is a damn shame. Hopefully Sprint, MCI, and maybe even Google will take over that load, and someday the behemoth that is AT&T can collapse.
Don't switch to AT&T DSL.
That company is evil. You're bills will be wrong. If you think you are saving $15 a month, you'll actually be saving more like $5, because of random fees and charges. Customer service will be incredibly slow and rude. Not to mention that even AT&T's Fiber service is capped at 6mbps.
Don't use AT&T. I tried out AT&T DSL about two months ago, just to see if they had improved.
Short story? I now have ongoing billing dispute with them, even though I only had service for 3 days, and they claim I owe them $100+. Absurd.
I'd like to remind everyone about the suspicious connection in China between a very large number of death penalty cases and extremely rapid organ transplants.
For the average transplant recipient, the waiting time in China is approximately 2 weeks. 2 weeks. This compares to months or even years in the U.S.
With this in mind, I do not think Mr. Niven's idea is quaint or naive at all.
Holy Crap!
Word for Mac 2004 is the latest version of Office for the Mac.
This is going to be hellish in terms of my companies' recent switch to an all-mac infrastructure.
Boy do I hate MS.
Nobody gets it.
The petroleum economy is dead. Why?
Because it can't grow anymore; at least, it can't keep up with world economic growth rates.
Until we can figure out a new energy source or cycle (be it bio-petroleum, electric/nuclear, electric/renewable, or something else), all of these conservation, efficiency, and subsidize mechanisms are stop-gap measures at best.
Transportation, and in general, the large economy of the world will remain constrained by our inability to satisfy the world's energy needs, and getting American consumers to switch to smaller cars is really only a small part of the solution.
Frankly, the "best" solution would be for the U.S. government to begin incentivizing realistic alternative energy sources, whether that be nuclear or anything else.
The size of the car you drive doesn't really matter; hell, the MPG or efficiency of your vehicle (in terms of energy use/kilometer) doesn't really matter. What *really* matters is the efficiency of transportation in dollars/kilometer, and in a greater sense, the efficiency of energy production in dollars/gigajoule.
There would be no problem with everyone driving a Hummer or a M1 Main Battle Tank if they were powered electrically or via algae-grown biofuel, and we had a vast excess of algae farms and fusion reactors. In bills like this, the government seems to think that 10-20 years is "long term", when realistically mankind needs to start to think about how to radically increase our ability to harness and generate energy at extremely low costs.
The universe is awash in energy. Our planet is literally baked by a fusion reactor 100,000x the size of it. With breeder reactors, the energy locked up in transuranic isotopes is immense.
Dickering around with oil, whether at 20, 30, or 100 MPG is really kind of short sighted.
Do I have all the anwers? No; however, when you look at the energy bill in TFA, you'll see that the amount of money going towards Big Oil is immense. I'd rather see that money plowed back into the federal budget, and then create a "tax shelter" whereby investments into nuclear, renewables, and other formers of sustainable energy would be entirely tax free; and those entities doing the research should get massive tax breaks as well.
I don't pretend to have all the technical answers, however, given a lot of the promising research that was done on conversion of algae directly into "home-grown" petroleum in the 1970s, a major breakthrough in that area could replace the petroleum economy over night, and at least put us back into a situation where energy use could grow linerally rather than logrithmatically, which is what is happening right now.
*shrug* None of this is me saying that I'm opposed to more efficient cars, however, praising this bill for increasing efficiency is preposterous when the vast majority of the bill (and its funding!) goes to subsidizing big oil.
Actually, in terms of build quality, the latest American cars are quite good.
Consumer Reports has put Buick above Lexus in terms of reliability, and a few other GM brands are up there, too.
American cars developed a really bad reputation in the 90s, and its taken forever to turn it around. On the other hand, I don't understand the fascination people have with European cars. German cars, in particular, really suck these days.
A Mercedes, or a BMW, is really a piece of crap, poor build quality, design flaws, and serious maintenance issues. I know, I've seen dozens of them fall apart.
Buy Japanese, or American; but the European garbage isn't worth the exorbatant prices right now.
I'm not sure why, but screenshots don't do it justice. I just installed it, and there is something about the oxygen theme/interface that just works.
... rich. It looks a bit like a video game, but unlike a video game, is quite functional. The configuration nightmare that was KDE3.5 seems to have been seriously paired down, and there are new, subtle touches to the design (subtle fade in/out at various dialogues, Apple like use of transparency). In sum, I like it.
About 10 minutes after I started using it it grew on me. My issues with KDE4 are bugs, not the interface choices; as far as I can tell, Oxygen/Plasma/Phenon seems like excellent pieces of work, and everything they were cracked up to be.
If network browsing in Dolphin worked properly, (no more malformed URL errors), I'd be using it as my primary desktop.
The interface is very
When MS decides to natively support ODF in MS Office.
Microsoft often talks about dual, equal standards, but it obviously bullshit unless MS Office, with the vast resources behind it, can support the same formats as the relatively resource poor OO.org, or KOffice, or Wordperfect.
I'm certain that the world would drop its objections to OOXML if MS decided to support ODF, without an addon plugin. Instead, by making it an us (ooxml) or them(odf) decision, they've invited hostility.
The shocking thing is the syncophants in the OSS community would eat Microsoft's propaganda/excrement while being slapped in the face.
Why should we support two new formats, when they only support one? Especially since OOXML is not yet used by most organizations; and if it is a real "open" standard, we can implement it "when customers demand it".
I wasn't necessarily thinking Macro, I was thinking Micro.
By this, I mean $$$ spent on development/management of development versus final lines of code produced.
Everything, and I mean everything, I read about Microsoft, including internal blogs, seems to suggest that there is nothing lean or flexible about MS's internal procedures.
I don't see why anyone is defending OOXML.
No one uses it, yet. It's not a pragmatic standard, and it's definitely not an "official" standard (as in ISO).
More likely than not, if I sent out DOCX files from my business, I would be asked to send either PDF or DOC.
Until OOXML is ubiquitous, which will not happen for several years, there is no reason to not push ODF instead, particularly because ODF's got quite a bit of momentum internationally. Especially if the ODF plugin for MS Office continues to work properly; there won't be a reason to switch to DOCX at all.
It is more than remotely realistic to have an office without OOXML support. Microsoft's latest offering for the Mac doesn't have it. The vast majority of Office users in the world don't have it. Competing software doesn't have it yet.
OOXML will not become a reality for several years, and hopefully, will never become a reality.
(face it: it's going to become the new .doc format regardless of any protest or opposition from OSS, so why waste the opportunity to at least fix the most serious problems with it, and make implementation of it in OSS easier?)
.DOCX becomes the standard, it'll stay that way. In the interim, there is confusion, and there's a decent chance that ODF could catch on.
.).
Not in the Netherlands, at least.
Also, apparently, not in several other nations.
There will not be a better opportunity to change the world's default document format to an OSS one that when MS is bogged down in its own transition to OOXML. Once
It doesn't hurt in the least bit that ODF is an ISO standard, and has extensive support from the various Office-as-a-service vendors (IBM, Google, etc. .
This is a major opportunity for the OSS community, to stand united behind ODF, and building in cooperation with OOXML will be a kiss of death (things will not work properly; just like IE doesn't render "standard" pages correctly, and the MS Office version of OOXML will be the correct version, while the "standard" version will be allowed to languish).
Heaven knows there are enough "outs" in the OOXML format (like all the legacy crap) that will give MS plenty of leeway to insure that only MS Office opens documents properly. Of course, these will all be "fixed" in the indefinite future; just like Internet Explorer.
Microsoft has a terrible, terrible record as a standard bearer. It makes no sense to allow MS to watch the keys to the kingdom. We've got an opportunity to push the world towards ODF, and there's quite a bit of uptake internationally, and quite a bit of interest domestically. Let's not try and upstage that by putting OOXML into all our applications (not to mention the wasted developer hours).
The primary complaint against Linux has always been, "don't just duplicate, build something better!". Well, ODF is better than OOXML. Let's stick with it until we've had DOCX forced down our throat. DOCX will not be ubiquitous for several years because of the legacy users out there, so we've got some time to push ODF over DOCX.
???
Life isn't _usually_ about taking your ball and going home.
Every once in a while, however, you meet a predator/bully who cannot be challenged via _any_ means except a war to the death. You do not beat diseases by negotiating with bacteria. You do not eliminate rats by trying to train them away from dumpsters. You cannot negotiate with an irrational tyrant expect positive results.
We've already been through the standards process for a document format. There's an ISO standard for documents: ODF. Anything that does not build on ODF is a subversion of that process. Worse, Microsoft's methods are extremely slimy.
You cannot beat Microsoft on the playing field, since MS has the money to insure there aren't any fair playing fields. That's why _we_, the angry morons, need to try and balance the field the other way.
*shrug*
I think many, if not most, openSuSE users use KDE. SuSE was a KDE distribution for a long time, and most of the SuSE GUI tools are still KDE-centric.
Also, the official position of the openSuSE Community is that there is no "default" desktop environment:
What is the default desktop of openSUSE - GNOME or KDE?
openSUSE supports a number of popular desktop environments, including GNOME and KDE. During installation, the user is asked to choose between GNOME and KDE but no default is given. Both desktop environments are mature and feature-rich, which one a user chooses is a question of personal taste.
AFAIK, Novell/Commercial SuSE (influence of Ximian) trends towards GNOME, but openSuSE trends towards KDE. Both are pretty definitely "dual-desktop"
Ahhh,
The Ad Hominem.
Ron Paul is a lunatic with damn little understanding of history, economics and politics.
Ron Paul may not be an unequaled sage; there are most likely students of history, economics, and politics who are superior to him.
These people are not, however, in our government. Obama is a toll. Hillary Clinton, though quite bright, fundamentally doesn't understand the long-term strategic mis-steps the U.S. has made in the past 50 years. That being said, both Obama and Clinton have a much better grip on reality that the rest (as in non-Paul) of the Republican slate. McCain, Huckabee, Giulani, and the rest have no clue on basic things like immigration, economics, foreign policy, and religion.
Does Paul say stupid things some times? Yes. However, if you do some research, you'll see that he is far more knowledgable about the issues he speaks about that his contemporaries, and many of the things that he advocates are sane, sound policy decisions.
For example, the DEA, and the drug war, is a ridiculous mess. If the only good thing that came out of a Paul Presidency was the end of the drug war, the U.S. would be a much better place.
The same is true of the IRS, which is also a complete mess. Keep in mind that Paul who advocate a replacement such as a sales tax, which is the sort of mechanism that European economics use (they call it a VAT).
Our government has gone through large scale reformations before, and survived. Recently, even; look at the Department of Homeland security, which has completely reoriented the operations of domestic law enforcement, and the USCIS, which is a newish entity replacing the INS.
I, for one, am willing to trade the possibility of the free market failing in providing economic equality in exchange for strengthening of our civil liberties, the end of the drug war, a return to a more conservative foreign policy, pursuit of a balanced budget and trade, and a complete overhaul of our insane tax system.
Who are you to call me a lunatic, and why are the risks involved in moving to what I believe to be a "better" government any worse than the shitstorm the democrats and republicans are currently driving us towards? The vast majority of the electorate has delved into the issues far less than I have, and the vast majority of the congress, and every _other_ lunatic running for President, is a good deal less informed than Dr. Paul.
Either you are a hopeless optimist, and like the direction this country is going in, or you've become so conservative and a afraid of change that any large-scale reorientation of the government is terrifying to you.
Hell, I'd excuse people like you if you had a candidate who would restore our liberties without pursuing radical economics changes, however, given the current slate of possibilities on both sides of the aisle, no one other than Kucinich and Paul defend civil liberties that way they need to be defended.
"We can not negotiate in the usual ways."
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
There's an economic answer to this crap. Don't keep _any_ media that could endager you. Download free music, listen to indy artists, or get MP3s that you are allowed to copy.
Stop using non-free software.
As an individual, or as a company, you can eliminate any possibility of going wrong on this law by dumping the closed-source ecosystem at a full clip.
Microsoft recently realized that the kill switch in Vista was hurting, not helping, their marketshare. Now, the MAFIAAs are trying to build a legal/physical kill switch into the concept of IP. As such, the best answer is "not to play". And if you get asked why you don't use those products (either in a market survey, or by a salesman (best at a big company)), reply that you don't want to risk confiscation of your equipment, and until they can supply media/software which is _impossible_ to infringe, you don't want to do business from them.
Will it suck a little? Yes. Will you loose access to a lot of software/video/audio? Yes. But you don't have to do it all at once; just stop buying new software/video/audio, and try and survive on what you've got + new free stuff.
Even if you:
Think he is an idiot.
Disagree with every aspect of his platform.
Think libertarians are idiots.
Don't have faith in his foreign policy.
Don't believe in a protectionism, isolationist foreign policy.
You should vote for Ron Paul.
Why? Because on the scale of small government big government, the U.S. has gone so far towards big government that its terrifying. We live in a police state now. In many situations you are guilty until proven innocent. You can be punished BEFORE your trial. Worse, the government is trying its best to be able to gain the right to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens.
Where does Ron Paul come in? Because he's the only potentially electable candidate who doesn't support this kind of shit. The previous paragraph of "scary shit" is bipartisan . Consider that TFA is going through a democratic congress.
Ron Paul, at least, is the only candidate who will bring _some_ balance to this level of rights violation. A centrist is _not_ the answer, because our policies have gotten so out of control. We need someone with some backbone, someone who will tell the DEA to stand down, and neuter the Justice Department. Perhaps even someone who could reorient the resources of the executive branch towards real security rather than the mechanisms of a police state.
If Ron Paul were to be elected, in 4-8 year he would be gone. A centrist would take power; maybe Hillary Clinton, maybe someone else. The country could be run on an even keel, and if you are a fan of liberal economic policies we could get back on track to building a welfare state. But in the interm, Dr. Paul would be able to cause a substantial amount of turmoil for the forces building a police state.
We, the average citizenry, have nothing to benefit from in a police state. Regardless of whether you are a libertarian or a socialist, it is necessary for us to elect a candidate who will stop this from happening. We can worry about economics and social welfare at a later date; we've got to stop this onrushing Orwellian nightmare first.
At one point, "Made in Japan" used to mean, "Cheap Japanese Crap".
.; you know, most of the computer game market); and Linux Desktop marketshare will be in the 30-40% range by 2009-2010. The day a "Sims" type game is natively released for Linux is the day that Valve and the other recalcitrant game makers start developing Linux software.
Now, Japanese industrial goods (like cars/ships) and Japanese electronics are considered top-of-the-market, and dominate all levels of the market.
Before you can think about can think about dominating the market, you need a toe-hold. MS-DOS and MS Windows used to be for toy computers. That changed.
Not many companies can pull an Apple and win the high-end on image. For everyone else, its much easier to compete at the bottom, and work your way up. If you look at Hyundai, this is exactly what they are trying to do in the U.S. right now (bringing their line of luxury cars into the U.S., moving from the bottom market segment upwards).
If "Runs Linux" starts to mean, "Cheap, basic computers" to the average consumer, rather than "Nerdy, unknown crap", I'd feel confident that 2008 would be the year of Linux on the desktop.
If walmart manages to push enough of the gOS Everex boxes, this is exactly what will happen. Then we'll see software houses developing games for those gOS boxes (think The Sims; Myst; Sim City, card games, etc . .
I don't have the numbers to prove it, however, I'm guessing that Microsoft's efficiency is starting to approach that of the U.S. military's.
Still on top of its game, however, in terms of $$$ spent per line of code, Microsoft seems to be incredibly wasteful. That's okay for the military, since a military focuses on redundancy, also know as "waste", or "inefficiency".
For a corporation, however, particularly a public company, this suggests a degree of illness/sickness. The question is, given Microsoft's huge coffers, monopoly grip in the OS market, and dominance in a variety of other markets; will they be able to turn it around?
If Microsoft continues to stagnate for 20-30 years, they will no long be on top. 6 years ago, this would have just been wishful thinking, however, keep in mind just how little Microsoft's technology has advanced since then, and extrapolate that over 30 years.
Still, a lot can change in 30 years, and it would be foolish to predict what is going to happen. Either way, however, Linux/Apple encroaching upon Microsoft will improve the consumer's experience. Either we'll get better software from MS, or we'll switch to something better from another company.
Bzzzt!
This is *exactly* why Walmart gets it with Everex's $199 gOS boxes.
Simple. Not too many buttons. Web/Office/Email. Cheap.
Doesn't break, doesn't get viruses. Works out of box, not much to configure.
That's the what the article is talking about. There's no way for MS to compete with a $199 box that costs less than the MS software only, while still handling 95% of the "basic" home users's tasks. And of all the retailers out there smart enough to capitalize on something like this, Walmart is the toughest/smartest.
There's a Fry's near Chicago. It's a bit west. Intersection of I-355, I-88, at Butterfield road. Sounds like you're on the north side, so if you are anywhere near 94/94, take the 294 south to 355, and the 355 west 1 mile to 88. Can't miss it.
The thing is, though, that crappy, cheap, import stuff is often pretty good.
The issue is sorting the wheat from the chaff. When Fry's puts something on super sale, you've gotta do your research first. Often, you'll find incredible deals, such as their processor+halfwaydecent motherboard for less than the cost of the processor.
For example, right now they are selling a Core 2 Duo E6750 with an ECS motherboard. Are ECS motherboards crap? Sure; but you're getting this one free, even considering that the CPU is being sold at bargain basement prices (same price as the lowest price on pricewatch).
Also, they'll have reasonable prices on items not avaliable at BestBuy. Abit/ASUS/Kingston/eVGA; they have a great selection.
Some of their "standard" off-brands aren't bad either. They're the only place you can get Buffalo brand wireless gear in Chicago (not even Microcenter carries it anymore); hell, the only place you can get 802.11g/n equipment under $80.00. Airlink works ok, too.
*shrug*. I love Fry's. I don't think they're "normal" pricing is unreasonable considering the per-unit costs in run a B&M operation that isn't Walmart, and occasionally you'll find deals that are significantly cheaper than any sale you might see online (and not always on garbage-gear).
nothing to pick on that carcass as they went down.
;-)
I got a 62" Projection LCD for about $600.
That was worth picking
So, apparently, because Western Digital can't determine whether or not I have the correct license to share my files, from a device I own, I'm not allowed to do it?
Crazy.
Whatever happened to "substantially non-infringing use"?
One could imagine an archive of freely redistributable video. I would have a use for such a device.