I agree with you that I should have said "disc", although the two terms are actually far more interchangeable than you imply. Traditionally, it's the music industry that favoured spelling with a "c" (hence why it stuck to CDs) and computer science favoured "k" (and so for hard disks). http://www.answers.com/topic/compact-disc
I still get confused though, so just tend to scatter my usage evenly between the two and hope some of it ends up in the right place...
With my phone (Motorola RAZR V3i), I can set an alarm and then turn it off. The alarm still functions and will activate exactly when it is meant to.
Not that I'm implying that the radio is thusly still transmitting and receiving. Nor, for that matter, intending to imply anything. But that does suggest some part of it is still active, which is probably what gives rise to these sorts of urban legends.
I'm not sure if there is a similar environment or feel like that anywhere any more. (Or more likely - it's somewhere I'm just not in it, too old to see it, etc.)
I don't know, I think the internet has done a lot for the homebrew programmers. Anyone can now write a program and distribute it pretty much for free these days, and social sites let the word on decent programmes spread quickly, particularly throughout the programmer's own social echelons. Throw up a Paypal account (or similar) and ask for donations, and you might even make some pocket money out of it.
Seeing as gaming tastes are a bit more refined these days it might be trickier to turn a profit. But indy developing is rarely about profit, right?
While true; what's better, a black-and-white screen you can only use in certain lighting conditions, or one which you can't use at all because the batteries ran out before you could get through the first level of anything?
I had a Game Gear and loved it, but I recognise now that it completely lacked any niche to fit into. You couldn't play it when out and about, making it useless as a hand-held, and if you were going to only play it next to a power outlet it made more sense to just get a Mega Drive or SNES.
I would think so. In my younger days, I always claimed a dislike of whisky. One day a friend explained to me that a splash of water "opens up the flavour"- and I've adored it ever since. I find a little less than equal parts whisky/water (in the whisky's favour) does me nicely, but YMMV.
For the record (and the greater good), Talisker is my all time favourite off-the-shelf whiskey.
By "hardware" I meant more worrying about processing power and RAM quantities and such what. Bringing out a PC game often means deciding between cutting-edge, eye-bleeding graphics, particle physics and so forth, or scaling it back so that people with machines more then 2 months old might actually be able to play it (a desirable thing for anyone hoping to sells some actual copies of the game). Or trying to encapsulate every aspect of the game in variable options that the user can tweak to match their system specs, AND making sure it looks and plays tolerably under every possible setting.
Console games don't have to worry about any of that. If a game runs on one Xbox 360, it'll run on them all.
There's absolutely no reason an OEM couldn't pre-install the Linux bits just the same, then. If we're saying that the biggest flaw with a fresh Ubuntu build is that you need to grab the "restricted extras" pack before it'll play MP3s, there's no reason Dell (for e.g.) couldn't install that before selling it if they'd like.
Or alternatively, use a distro that already has it installed. I believe Mint is basically Ubuntu packaged with a few such things to make it more out-of-box friendly.
My point is that we're talking about exactly the same problems with Windows and Linux. And seeing as there are plenty of ways of coping with said problems under Windows, there's no reason not to find ways of coping under Linux.
Odd thing, I live in a Democracy (well a Republic, but still)...
Sorry to be a pedant, but this always bugs me. If you live in the US, you live in a democracy (small "d"). You also live in a republic (small "r"). The terms are not mutually exclusive.
A republic is any country which is not ruled by a monarchy, or similarly styled leadership. As the US is governed by a President, this makes it a republic. A democracy is any country governed by an elected representative. As the President, Senate, Congress, Governors and every other conceivable leader are all elected by various means, this makes the US, by definition, a democracy.
By strict application of both terms, the USA more than qualifies for both. There are plenty of countries that claim to be both of the above, and are far less so than the States...
Note the small d's and r's. No confusion should be made between the technical terms and the names of certain popular political parties (which could be named anything they flipping well like and it wouldn't mean a thing)./pedantry
Windows needs tweaking when you first install it too. The first thing I ever do when I install a fresh XP or help someone with a new PC purchase- head for Windows Update. I then download and install 2 or 3 service packs and countless other bits of software- usually takes at least 4 or 5 reboots, and many hours of DSL downloading.
I then head back to the internet and download some anti-virus software. I'll install, update and configure that; that usually requires an extra reboot.
Time to make sure all the hardware works- download separate drivers (from a whole host of websites, each with their own uniquely badly designed interface) for all of my awesome hardware. Most of these are happier if they're allowed to reboot.
Back on the internet I go, and download a decent firewall program and probably some anti-spyware software. Two more rounds of downloads, two more rounds of install and configures. They might politely demand a reboot too.
Saying that downloading a single "restricted extras" pack to make Ubuntu work writes it off as a mainstream OS is to grossly overestimate the competition. Grossly underestimate the poor sods battling against their Windows installs, too; it's not an easy life for the non-techies...
1: If you really can't fathom burning a CD, you can either buy a disk at not much above cost, or even request a free one be sent to you in the post (although the latter option takes a few weeks to be delivered).
2: Figuring out how to boot from a CD, what wireless internet is and how to install a printer all need to be done with a Windows OS too, unless someone sets it up for you. If you insist on doing it yourself, you'll have the same problems on both OSs. If you're happy to have someone else do it, you can have someone do it with Linux too (you can even buy preloaded OEM Linux PCs now, exactly like you can with Windows).
Oh, no argument there. Although Britain & France both declared war, it was after months (years?) of foot-dragging on the issue. Even once they had "declared war" on Nazi Germany, they continued to drag their feet and hope they wouldn't need to get properly involved, letting the opportunity to help Poland slip away.
But incompetent foot-dragging doesn't preclude the reasoning for declaring war in the first place. Britain & France both knew they needed to do something, but were completely unwilling to actually do anything...
Amarok is pretty cool (and can handle iPods decently enough). I'm told Banshee works well too, although I've not tried it.
Seeing as I don't use an iPod and my audio player has a UMS mode, I've never felt a burning desire for either iTunes or either of the above, and usually go for something slimmer (using Exaile atm, but not married to it). I imagine that'd be the same for most non-iPod-owner, shrinking minority we may be.
The official contingency plan for that situation is to just waterboard you until you remember you password. Or are willing to admit under oath that the partition contains blueprints of the Pentagon/X-Men Origins.
Nobody declared war on Britain or France either- they both declared war in support of the Polish.
And there's a reason for this: far and aside from humanitarian arguments, Britain & France both reached the conclusion that Nazi Germany probably wasn't going to stop at Eastern Europe. The realisation that you were probably in the firing line anyway will do a lot to make you stick together with your fellow targeted neighbours.
What do we think would have happened to the United States once all of Europe, Asia and Africa were under fascist regimes? And how well would they have fared, with no allies and the industrial might of a whole world poised against them?
We actually don't really need to ask this. Hitler demonstrated quite amply with his treatment of the Soviets. At the beginning of the war Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact. As soon as the Nazi regime decided that they were able to take them, they turned their attentions on the Soviets. And of course, the US was attacked by the Japanese as soon as they thought they could win, too, despite not having declared war.
All the US could have achieved by staying out of the war longer would have been to deepen the hole they would have needed to get out of. It is good for us and good for history that it didn't turn out this way, and that both the USA and USSR were dragged into the war before it was too late.
I think you're right. I'm not usually tempted by Apple products, but I would actually get excited by this.
The reason I'm not a fan of their PCs/laptops is that I don't like the concept of proprietary sealed-unit computers. The reason that I don't like their handheld devices is that I feel a lot of the features (casual gaming, novelty apps, gigantic data storage) would be wasted on me. The reason I don't like all Apple products is that they're usually overpriced.
But that's all different for consoles. The proprietary sealed unit design is well accepted in consoles (and has always been), and is actually a big plus for game developers not having to worry about varying hardware. With the shift towards consoles being an all-purpose set-top device, things like the app-store and iTunes become a gold mine for any multimedia TV. And unless they pull a Sony and price the ting right out of the market, most people would be happy to pay anything for a good console.
And that's before we even get started on things like Mac/iPod/iPhone integration, or porting some of their OSX applications across...
Incremental only works if you price your products to match.
Mac OSX (which releases fairly incrementally, as these things go) will set me back 70 GBP for the newest version (Leopard). The equivalent for Vista Home Premium is 140 GBP, double the price. One would suspect Win7 would be about the same price, at the same point in it's life-cycle.
If you're paying double for one piece of software over another, you expect double the content. If Win7 is as incremental a release as OSX's releases, I would expect it to be priced similarly. If it isn't, then they aren't doing it right.
MS is big business; all those copies of Vista and Office 2007 that get sold in the EU bring in VAT revenue, all the revenue brought in by MS's EU office pay the usual corporate tax, and every MS employee/software retail employee pays income tax.
If the EU really were to force MS out, they'd be taking a chunk out of their pockets. Relaxing copyright laws to allow piracy (which I'm fairly sure would never happen, thanks to the copyright lobby) wouldn't help that.
Equally, MS would lose huge amounts of money from pulling out of the EU. Neither party wants to lose that money, so neither party would let that happen if they can help it.
Remember we're talking about netbooks here- tiny, dirt cheap things with a firm focus on mobility (thus battery life), while trying to squeeze as much life as possible out of the lightest, cheapest battery that could do the job.
While keeping your computer busy makes perfect sense for a desktop user, and mainstream laptops are more than capable of taking up the slack, netbooks are a different game. Wasting resources on (probably) unappreciated background tasks isn't necessarily a clever move.
The worst (best?) part of more open-style exams are that they favour students with a good grasp of language, regardless of the subject being tested.
In England & Wales, there is an emphasis (especially in post-compulsory education, such as A Levels) on essay-based exams. As someone who was comfortable with English, I always had quite an easy time getting a decent mark, even if I wasn't too great at the subject. Students far better than me at the subject would often score worse than me due to a not-so-great grasp at English; those for whom English wasn't a first language in particular.
Multiple-choice or project-based examination both have flaws, but at least they primarily test the subject in question. The more open you make a test, the more non-core skills you have to involve. A very gifted biologist should score better than me at biology, regardless of their linguistic skills.
If I had a x86 PC, I would try Slackware first, then Debian and if all goes wrong, FreeBSD. New fashion eye candy stuff is either too Windows like or OS X like for me. Especially Ubuntu which its fanatics really started to become irritating.
The beauty of FOSS is that there really can be something for everyone. Ubuntu is needed to appeal to the masses because it looks pretty, installs easily, and most things work out of the box thanks to binary blobs (it appeals to me too, for the same reasons). For people who like their Linux Linuxy, there are plenty of other options.
My SMS is free (up to a limit that I could never reach, and pretty cheap after that) as part of my phone contract, and my (pretty basic) phone ignores the 160 limit by sending multiple messages/piecing together split incoming messages behind the scenes. My SMS "account" is also tied to my phone number, meaning only having to give out one number to everyone for them to contact me (and vice versa).
On the other hand, a data plan for my phone is pretty expensive, and e-mail accounts are independent of phone numbers doubling the number of contacts for my address book.
SMS still sounds like the better option of the two for my phone handset. The day phone contracts come with a free email account integrated into my phone number is the day that that changes.
If I know that anybody using MS Office can read my ODF files, I'll never use anything but ODF (in OO.o) ever again.
If I think there might still be uncertainty as to whether the recipient can read the files I send them, I might still be inclined to stick with the MS formats. And nothing handles the MS formats quite as well as the MS product.
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Ah, I see the confusion.
I agree with you that I should have said "disc", although the two terms are actually far more interchangeable than you imply. Traditionally, it's the music industry that favoured spelling with a "c" (hence why it stuck to CDs) and computer science favoured "k" (and so for hard disks). http://www.answers.com/topic/compact-disc
I still get confused though, so just tend to scatter my usage evenly between the two and hope some of it ends up in the right place...
With my phone (Motorola RAZR V3i), I can set an alarm and then turn it off. The alarm still functions and will activate exactly when it is meant to.
Not that I'm implying that the radio is thusly still transmitting and receiving. Nor, for that matter, intending to imply anything. But that does suggest some part of it is still active, which is probably what gives rise to these sorts of urban legends.
I'm not sure if there is a similar environment or feel like that anywhere any more. (Or more likely - it's somewhere I'm just not in it, too old to see it, etc.)
I don't know, I think the internet has done a lot for the homebrew programmers. Anyone can now write a program and distribute it pretty much for free these days, and social sites let the word on decent programmes spread quickly, particularly throughout the programmer's own social echelons. Throw up a Paypal account (or similar) and ask for donations, and you might even make some pocket money out of it.
Seeing as gaming tastes are a bit more refined these days it might be trickier to turn a profit. But indy developing is rarely about profit, right?
While true; what's better, a black-and-white screen you can only use in certain lighting conditions, or one which you can't use at all because the batteries ran out before you could get through the first level of anything?
I had a Game Gear and loved it, but I recognise now that it completely lacked any niche to fit into. You couldn't play it when out and about, making it useless as a hand-held, and if you were going to only play it next to a power outlet it made more sense to just get a Mega Drive or SNES.
I would think so. In my younger days, I always claimed a dislike of whisky. One day a friend explained to me that a splash of water "opens up the flavour"- and I've adored it ever since. I find a little less than equal parts whisky/water (in the whisky's favour) does me nicely, but YMMV.
For the record (and the greater good), Talisker is my all time favourite off-the-shelf whiskey.
By "hardware" I meant more worrying about processing power and RAM quantities and such what. Bringing out a PC game often means deciding between cutting-edge, eye-bleeding graphics, particle physics and so forth, or scaling it back so that people with machines more then 2 months old might actually be able to play it (a desirable thing for anyone hoping to sells some actual copies of the game). Or trying to encapsulate every aspect of the game in variable options that the user can tweak to match their system specs, AND making sure it looks and plays tolerably under every possible setting.
Console games don't have to worry about any of that. If a game runs on one Xbox 360, it'll run on them all.
Who said buy and install a hard drive? I didn't mention hard drives once, did I?
There's absolutely no reason an OEM couldn't pre-install the Linux bits just the same, then. If we're saying that the biggest flaw with a fresh Ubuntu build is that you need to grab the "restricted extras" pack before it'll play MP3s, there's no reason Dell (for e.g.) couldn't install that before selling it if they'd like.
Or alternatively, use a distro that already has it installed. I believe Mint is basically Ubuntu packaged with a few such things to make it more out-of-box friendly.
My point is that we're talking about exactly the same problems with Windows and Linux. And seeing as there are plenty of ways of coping with said problems under Windows, there's no reason not to find ways of coping under Linux.
Odd thing, I live in a Democracy (well a Republic, but still)...
Sorry to be a pedant, but this always bugs me. If you live in the US, you live in a democracy (small "d"). You also live in a republic (small "r"). The terms are not mutually exclusive.
A republic is any country which is not ruled by a monarchy, or similarly styled leadership. As the US is governed by a President, this makes it a republic. A democracy is any country governed by an elected representative. As the President, Senate, Congress, Governors and every other conceivable leader are all elected by various means, this makes the US, by definition, a democracy.
By strict application of both terms, the USA more than qualifies for both. There are plenty of countries that claim to be both of the above, and are far less so than the States...
Note the small d's and r's. No confusion should be made between the technical terms and the names of certain popular political parties (which could be named anything they flipping well like and it wouldn't mean a thing). /pedantry
Windows needs tweaking when you first install it too. The first thing I ever do when I install a fresh XP or help someone with a new PC purchase- head for Windows Update. I then download and install 2 or 3 service packs and countless other bits of software- usually takes at least 4 or 5 reboots, and many hours of DSL downloading.
I then head back to the internet and download some anti-virus software. I'll install, update and configure that; that usually requires an extra reboot.
Time to make sure all the hardware works- download separate drivers (from a whole host of websites, each with their own uniquely badly designed interface) for all of my awesome hardware. Most of these are happier if they're allowed to reboot.
Back on the internet I go, and download a decent firewall program and probably some anti-spyware software. Two more rounds of downloads, two more rounds of install and configures. They might politely demand a reboot too.
Saying that downloading a single "restricted extras" pack to make Ubuntu work writes it off as a mainstream OS is to grossly overestimate the competition. Grossly underestimate the poor sods battling against their Windows installs, too; it's not an easy life for the non-techies...
1: If you really can't fathom burning a CD, you can either buy a disk at not much above cost, or even request a free one be sent to you in the post (although the latter option takes a few weeks to be delivered).
2: Figuring out how to boot from a CD, what wireless internet is and how to install a printer all need to be done with a Windows OS too, unless someone sets it up for you. If you insist on doing it yourself, you'll have the same problems on both OSs. If you're happy to have someone else do it, you can have someone do it with Linux too (you can even buy preloaded OEM Linux PCs now, exactly like you can with Windows).
Or in short- what's your point?
Oh, no argument there. Although Britain & France both declared war, it was after months (years?) of foot-dragging on the issue. Even once they had "declared war" on Nazi Germany, they continued to drag their feet and hope they wouldn't need to get properly involved, letting the opportunity to help Poland slip away.
But incompetent foot-dragging doesn't preclude the reasoning for declaring war in the first place. Britain & France both knew they needed to do something, but were completely unwilling to actually do anything...
Amarok is pretty cool (and can handle iPods decently enough). I'm told Banshee works well too, although I've not tried it.
Seeing as I don't use an iPod and my audio player has a UMS mode, I've never felt a burning desire for either iTunes or either of the above, and usually go for something slimmer (using Exaile atm, but not married to it). I imagine that'd be the same for most non-iPod-owner, shrinking minority we may be.
The official contingency plan for that situation is to just waterboard you until you remember you password. Or are willing to admit under oath that the partition contains blueprints of the Pentagon/X-Men Origins.
I agree. Any law such that just about everyone who has run for president since the passing of the law has violated it is a bad law.
So we're making corruption and white-collar fraud legal?
Nobody declared war on Britain or France either- they both declared war in support of the Polish.
And there's a reason for this: far and aside from humanitarian arguments, Britain & France both reached the conclusion that Nazi Germany probably wasn't going to stop at Eastern Europe. The realisation that you were probably in the firing line anyway will do a lot to make you stick together with your fellow targeted neighbours.
What do we think would have happened to the United States once all of Europe, Asia and Africa were under fascist regimes? And how well would they have fared, with no allies and the industrial might of a whole world poised against them?
We actually don't really need to ask this. Hitler demonstrated quite amply with his treatment of the Soviets. At the beginning of the war Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact. As soon as the Nazi regime decided that they were able to take them, they turned their attentions on the Soviets. And of course, the US was attacked by the Japanese as soon as they thought they could win, too, despite not having declared war.
All the US could have achieved by staying out of the war longer would have been to deepen the hole they would have needed to get out of. It is good for us and good for history that it didn't turn out this way, and that both the USA and USSR were dragged into the war before it was too late.
I think you're right. I'm not usually tempted by Apple products, but I would actually get excited by this.
The reason I'm not a fan of their PCs/laptops is that I don't like the concept of proprietary sealed-unit computers. The reason that I don't like their handheld devices is that I feel a lot of the features (casual gaming, novelty apps, gigantic data storage) would be wasted on me. The reason I don't like all Apple products is that they're usually overpriced.
But that's all different for consoles. The proprietary sealed unit design is well accepted in consoles (and has always been), and is actually a big plus for game developers not having to worry about varying hardware. With the shift towards consoles being an all-purpose set-top device, things like the app-store and iTunes become a gold mine for any multimedia TV. And unless they pull a Sony and price the ting right out of the market, most people would be happy to pay anything for a good console.
And that's before we even get started on things like Mac/iPod/iPhone integration, or porting some of their OSX applications across...
Incremental only works if you price your products to match.
Mac OSX (which releases fairly incrementally, as these things go) will set me back 70 GBP for the newest version (Leopard). The equivalent for Vista Home Premium is 140 GBP, double the price. One would suspect Win7 would be about the same price, at the same point in it's life-cycle.
If you're paying double for one piece of software over another, you expect double the content. If Win7 is as incremental a release as OSX's releases, I would expect it to be priced similarly. If it isn't, then they aren't doing it right.
Tax.
MS is big business; all those copies of Vista and Office 2007 that get sold in the EU bring in VAT revenue, all the revenue brought in by MS's EU office pay the usual corporate tax, and every MS employee/software retail employee pays income tax.
If the EU really were to force MS out, they'd be taking a chunk out of their pockets. Relaxing copyright laws to allow piracy (which I'm fairly sure would never happen, thanks to the copyright lobby) wouldn't help that.
Equally, MS would lose huge amounts of money from pulling out of the EU. Neither party wants to lose that money, so neither party would let that happen if they can help it.
How much power does all that caching use?
Remember we're talking about netbooks here- tiny, dirt cheap things with a firm focus on mobility (thus battery life), while trying to squeeze as much life as possible out of the lightest, cheapest battery that could do the job.
While keeping your computer busy makes perfect sense for a desktop user, and mainstream laptops are more than capable of taking up the slack, netbooks are a different game. Wasting resources on (probably) unappreciated background tasks isn't necessarily a clever move.
The worst (best?) part of more open-style exams are that they favour students with a good grasp of language, regardless of the subject being tested.
In England & Wales, there is an emphasis (especially in post-compulsory education, such as A Levels) on essay-based exams. As someone who was comfortable with English, I always had quite an easy time getting a decent mark, even if I wasn't too great at the subject. Students far better than me at the subject would often score worse than me due to a not-so-great grasp at English; those for whom English wasn't a first language in particular.
Multiple-choice or project-based examination both have flaws, but at least they primarily test the subject in question. The more open you make a test, the more non-core skills you have to involve. A very gifted biologist should score better than me at biology, regardless of their linguistic skills.
Bad car analogy- outside of the US and some Asian countries, manual transmission still dominates. 80% of cars sold in Europe are manual.
If only 80% of OSs in Europe were FreeBSD...
If I had a x86 PC, I would try Slackware first, then Debian and if all goes wrong, FreeBSD. New fashion eye candy stuff is either too Windows like or OS X like for me. Especially Ubuntu which its fanatics really started to become irritating.
The beauty of FOSS is that there really can be something for everyone. Ubuntu is needed to appeal to the masses because it looks pretty, installs easily, and most things work out of the box thanks to binary blobs (it appeals to me too, for the same reasons). For people who like their Linux Linuxy, there are plenty of other options.
My SMS is free (up to a limit that I could never reach, and pretty cheap after that) as part of my phone contract, and my (pretty basic) phone ignores the 160 limit by sending multiple messages/piecing together split incoming messages behind the scenes. My SMS "account" is also tied to my phone number, meaning only having to give out one number to everyone for them to contact me (and vice versa).
On the other hand, a data plan for my phone is pretty expensive, and e-mail accounts are independent of phone numbers doubling the number of contacts for my address book.
SMS still sounds like the better option of the two for my phone handset. The day phone contracts come with a free email account integrated into my phone number is the day that that changes.
If I know that anybody using MS Office can read my ODF files, I'll never use anything but ODF (in OO.o) ever again.
If I think there might still be uncertainty as to whether the recipient can read the files I send them, I might still be inclined to stick with the MS formats. And nothing handles the MS formats quite as well as the MS product.