It really bothers me when people say things like this. What do you consider "older?" 5 years old? 10 years old? Is a 10 year old car with 50,000 miles on it more unsafe than a 2 year old car with 150,000? What about a 15 year old car that's been properly maintained and serviced? Is that more unsafe than a brand new car? What is so "unsafe" about older cars anyway? Mechanical parts wear out but that has more to do with mileage than age. Cars from the mid 1990's an up all have airbags as standard equipment.
Honestly -- if your vehicle is so big that you can't steer it at (say) 30mph without power assist, you probably shouldn't be driving it. American cars have just gotten too damn big.
Yeah, cause the average car on the road in the US today is so much bigger than a 1954 Packard Clipper (or any other random land barge made from the 1950's to the mid to late 1970's.) Interestingly enough, power steering and brakes were options on a lot of cars made during this era. They are actually pretty easy to steer.
Throttle by wire has been proven to be extremely responsive. More importantly, it is part of a closed-loop operation, whereby the ECU can properly evaluate requested levels versus actual in pretty much everything. If the fuel line is pinched, for example, flooring it would cause devastating detonation, EXCEPT in "by wire". Once the fuel present was mismatched to the air, the ECU would force the throttle to close somewhat, regardless of pedal position. The exception is in many cases of a wide open throttle request, when some output levels like fuel overrich are ignored, and the ECU uses an internal map of what "should be going in and out, given the max power request.
The TPS is quite different than "drive by wire." Most (I want to say all here but I'm not 100% sure) EFI cars have a TPS. The TPS is attached to the throttle butterfly valve that is moved with a cable or other mechanical linkage. The "drive by wire" systems that are being discussed here eliminate the cable/linkage and open the valve electronically. Any car with a TPS is going to avoid the detonation scenario you mention above. Any carbureted car is not going to have that issue as the fuel flow is controlled by airflow due to the ventri effect.
IE7 has been in the wild for at least 6 months, perhaps a year (I don't use it so I don't know exactly) so of course IE6 market share is going to be dropping. From what I can tell more and more people are migrating to IE7 and it's a reasonably decent browser now.
IE 7 has been out for 3 years now. IE 8 has been around for about 6 months. If what you say is really the case, you would think that IE6's market share would have dropped a long time ago.
Why is anyone comparing anything, be it Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, or anything else, to IE6 now?
Because it is still the dominant version of IE even though there are 2 newer versions.
You kept the entire automobile industry alive through huge tariffs and subsidies
Just about every country protects their domestic auto industry. I remember reading a few years ago that in Japan a Ford Taurus costs more than a Mercedes because of the high tariffs. Protecting domestic industry is the only way to keep manufacturing jobs in the US. Low wages and few/no environmental controls in India, China or even Mexico make it way too tempting to outsource manufacturing jobs. Tariffs are one of the government's tools to try to level the playing field.
That industry's dead now, and you've got at least 10-15% unemployed atm.
I'm going to call Bullshit. Ford is still alive and kicking without any sort of bailout. GM and Chrysler are still around, making cars and employing people. I wouldn't call that "dead." As of September unemployment in the US was 9.5%. That's nowhere near "at least 10-15%."
And that's why ticket revenue should not go back (directly) to police departments. It would remove the incentive to focus on minor infractions that are profitable and hopefully shift the focus to fighting real crime.
(and only in the US can you find people stupid enough to agree to pay to receive texts).
I know it's fun to bash Americans, but in my experience this is because some people are not given a choice. Where I live, I was lucky enough to find a smaller regional provider who does not charge for incoming texts (or calls.) My previous provider (Cellular One) didn't charge for incoming texts until they were bought out by AT&T. This is one of the reasons I switched carriers. Where my parents live the only two available providers are Alltel and AT&T. Both carriers charge for incoming texts unless you have the unlimited text plan. Since they don't text enough to warrant the unlimited plan on all of their phones, it's cheaper to pay for the incoming texts. You are absolutely correct when you say it's stupid, but when almost every carrier charges it's hard to get away from it.
I just checked my GV account. You don't have to change your GV number...you can redirect your mobile phone voicemail to GV. All you have to do is go in to settings, click on Phones, find your mobile phone in the list and click the "Activate Google voicemail on this phone" link. You keep your old GV number and any voicemail that used to go to your mobile carrier's voicemail goes to GV instead. It doesn't cost anything to do it this way either.
So you buy a new computer, get it home, unpack it, call Acer, REPACK it, send your BRAND NEW laptop off to never-never land to be "repaired," then wait while it comes back to you... all for 58 bucks? And how much did you spend on shipping?
Yeah, it was annoying...but I didn't need the laptop right away. Shipping was something like $8 and I had the laptop back in a little over a week.
You truly must be one of those folks living in mom's basement with nothing else to do - cuz I marginally have anything to do (besides try to pay for this house) and there's just no way I would consider that much work worth 58 stinking dollars. And that's why it's rigged this way - you can "opt out" but it's so much effort as to be not worth it. And while it's essentially chump change to most folks, 58 bucks times a 100,000 machines adds up to... well, almost enough to pay Ballboy's salary.
Heh, I wish I was still living in Mom's basement...everything was cheaper there. To be honest, I spent about an hour working on getting the refund. I wish I made $50 an hour at my day job. You hit the nail on the head though, if enough people call in and ask for refunds eventually more companies may start to offer a non-Windows option. I consider it a moral victory rather than a monetary victory. It's also worth noting that I was returning Vista Home Basic so the refund probably would have been bigger if it hadn't been the most worthless version of Windows.
I think you would be looking for Xubuntu (XFCE) if you are looking for something with a low memory footprint. KDE (the default desktop environment in Kubuntu) has roughly the same memory footprint as normal Ubuntu (which uses Gnome by default.)
Really? I bought an Acer netbook with Vista on it. A simple phone call was all it took to get the process rolling. It was annoying that I had to send the laptop back to them to have Windows removed, but I did get my $58 or whatever it was.
The Dell Mini 10's are available with Ubuntu preloaded if you would rather go that route. I believe they start at $299 so they aren't unreasonably priced either.
I would be inclined to disagree. I know this is all anecdotal but I own an HTC Vogue (aka HTC Touch.) The hardware is terrific but the software (WM) leaves a lot to be desired. A few months back I was standing on the balcony of my second story apartment when my phone rang. I pulled the phone from my pocket, but it bumped in to the rail on the way out. The phone fell at least 20 feet and landed on the concrete sidewalk below. I went downstairs expecting the phone to be shattered in pieces. I was not disappointed. The battery and the phone were laying a few feet apart, the back cover was about 5 feet away and the stylus was hanging out of the main body of the phone. I put the battery back in, replaced the back cover, pressed the power button and to my amazement the phone turned on. Everything, including the touchscreen, continue to work to this day as if nothing had ever happened. The only other phone I have seen that can take that kind of abuse are the old Nokia's that we all fondly remember.
Comparing Novel Influenza today to Typhoid Fever in the early 1900's is ridiculous. The mortality rate of Typhoid Fever then is much higher than Novel Influenza's mortality rate will ever be.
Let's say I don't get vaccinated and become the next Typhoid Mary. If that were to happen, something would have changed and the people most susceptible to the virus would have been vaccinated. Most people I would come in to contact with would either be vaccinated or less likely to catch the virus in the first place. Anybody who did would probably live and have immunity when all was said and done.
I work at a health care facility in Wisconsin and it's either get the vaccine or leave. While I don't have any objections to getting the vaccine myself, with all the whining about shortages of the vaccine I hear every day I wonder why I get the vaccine instead of people at a higher risk of getting the flu. I think society in general would benefit more from the vaccine going to people more at risk to getting the flu--children, the elderly and the immune compromised. As a healthy adult I would prefer to take my chances and be inconvenienced for a few days at worst than have someone who is immune-compromised die of the flu because there was not enough vaccine to go around.
The president is a figurehead, he doesnt physically DO anything.
From The United States Constitution:
Section 2 - Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
and Section 3 - State of the Union, Convening Congress
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
It looks to me like the the President DOES an awful lot.
He is the leader of the executive branch of government in the United States. That means he is in charge of directing other people what to do.
Directing people IS physically doing something. The president of the United States also has influence that he can use to make things go his way.
Things like this;
S.T.A.R.T Treaty negotiations [hindustantimes.com]
The S.T.A.R.T Treaty negotiations took place within the last month. Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize were closed 11 days in to Barak Obama's presidency. At the time he was nominated he didn't have time to do anything.
No amount of points or arguments you give, have any meaning whatsoever to the outcome of the votes of the Nobel Committee.
Why cant you accept the results of a vote?
I never said I could not accept the results of the vote. I was stating that I do not agree with them.
Do you hate democracy?
No. What I really hate are people who accuse other people of hating democracy because they do not agree with the results of a vote.
How can they give someone the Nobel Peace Prize for something he has not done yet? The US is still in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are no closer to pulling out than we were 8 months ago. From Wikipedia: "According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded 'to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.'" What has Barak Obama done (not talked about doing) in the last 8 months that makes him worthy of the prize this year?
Media play works fine with open-source drivers. With the current state of gaming in Linux, users who really want to go through the hassle to get games running in wine will go through the hassle of clicking the one button it takes to install the proprietary video driver.
A fairly recent Linux distribution will support 90% of hardware out of the box. The hardest it will get is clicking the box to install a proprietary driver. The problem with hardware support in Windows isn't always the support of new hardware but support of older hardware. I have a scanner sitting on my desk that works with every version of Windows up until Vista. I have to muck around on the manufacturer's website to download the driver and then mess around in the "add new hardware wizard" to get it up and running (which is difficult for average users...probably just as difficult as typing "apt-get install" in a CLI.) This scanner doesn't work in anything newer than XP because Microsoft changed the driver model. This same scanner works with no configuration, no downloads, anything on my Linux box. It's 100% plug and play. With my Linux box I have good confidence that since support for this is built in now, it will not be dropped in the foreseeable future since the driver is maintained by the SANE project (who makes the software and can verify that the driver works after software changes are made) rather than the maker of the hardware who will have to spend a lot more time testing the driver and updating for new software.
You are correct in that there are people out there who think this way. It's funny though, I don't see these people complaining about Windows at all.
If you are thinking of Macs here, it's important to note that anyone using an OS installed from the factory will only have to install drivers for hardware he or she added. Reinstalling OSX on a Mac is about like reinstalling Windows or Linux using a manufacturer's recovery disc. The end result is that the drivers are not installed by the user. On Linux and Mac systems many user-installed peripherals work out of the box, but sometimes you still need drivers. It is not practical to expect an OS to support every piece of hardware ever made out of the box--especially if the hardware was released after the OS.
Well Linux has "support" as well. In both cases additional drivers may or may not be needed. Since the parent was not in any way specific as to the type of touchscreen I was being as general as possible. Most Linux distributions provide support for a variety of touchscreens and drawing tablets out of the box. I know for a fact that Vista on one of the tablets I use needs a driver installed manually for the Wacom tablet. Ubuntu does not. It really depends on the hardware.
My comment was aimed at the people who rip on Linux because they have to install drivers (it really doesn't matter what type.) I was pointing out that you need to do that in other OS's as well.
In Linux, you do some google searching, type something cryptic like
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx & modprobe blah blah blah
And then when it doesn't work, you go back and look up another cryptic command until you finally get it right.
The use of the word "cryptic" here puts you into category #3.
No, it's because in windows, you go to the manufacturer's website, download the driver, double-click it, hit next a couple times, and restart. And then it works.
In Linux, you do some google searching, type something cryptic like
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx & modprobe blah blah blah
And then when it doesn't work, you go back and look up another cryptic command until you finally get it right.
Every desktop-oriented Linux distribution has video drivers built in that provide basic support for anything a "normal user" will need to do. If the user wants to play games or whatever most desktop-oriented distributions provide a nice GUI to download and install the proprietary drivers automatically. Sure, things go wrong once in a while but you occasionally see broken or unstable drivers in Windows as well.
If you really want to, you can get both AMD and nVidia graphics drivers from their respective websites (exactly like the windows drivers,) double click and install just like in Windows if you would like. It's generally not the preferred (and far from the best) way of doing things but it does work.
I tried walking my uncle, who is very intelligent, but not a computer expert, through getting his video drivers on linux working over the phone. It was torture. He eventually switched back to windows, and had no trouble getting it working.
I'm not an MS or Apple schill, and I've installed and used Linux a lot. But I still don't believe a normal person can get devices set up on Linux as easily as on Mac or Windows.
"Normal people" do not generally install device drivers for anything not connected to a USB port. They use the OS (with all drivers preloaded) that comes with their computer. You can get the same experience by buying a system from System76 or Dell with Ubuntu preloaded. As far as things that do plug in to a USB port, Linux has support for more hardware out of the box than any other OS. Most USB devices that regular users plug in will "just work" without having to mess with the CD that came with it. There are a few exceptions (some crappy printers and a few webcams) but this is generally the case.
Slashdot Mirror
# ifconfig eth0 hw ether de:ad:13:37:ba:be
Enjoy driving unsafe older cars.
It really bothers me when people say things like this. What do you consider "older?" 5 years old? 10 years old? Is a 10 year old car with 50,000 miles on it more unsafe than a 2 year old car with 150,000? What about a 15 year old car that's been properly maintained and serviced? Is that more unsafe than a brand new car? What is so "unsafe" about older cars anyway? Mechanical parts wear out but that has more to do with mileage than age. Cars from the mid 1990's an up all have airbags as standard equipment.
Honestly -- if your vehicle is so big that you can't steer it at (say) 30mph without power assist, you probably shouldn't be driving it. American cars have just gotten too damn big.
Yeah, cause the average car on the road in the US today is so much bigger than a 1954 Packard Clipper (or any other random land barge made from the 1950's to the mid to late 1970's.) Interestingly enough, power steering and brakes were options on a lot of cars made during this era. They are actually pretty easy to steer.
Throttle by wire has been proven to be extremely responsive. More importantly, it is part of a closed-loop operation, whereby the ECU can properly evaluate requested levels versus actual in pretty much everything. If the fuel line is pinched, for example, flooring it would cause devastating detonation, EXCEPT in "by wire". Once the fuel present was mismatched to the air, the ECU would force the throttle to close somewhat, regardless of pedal position. The exception is in many cases of a wide open throttle request, when some output levels like fuel overrich are ignored, and the ECU uses an internal map of what "should be going in and out, given the max power request.
The TPS is quite different than "drive by wire." Most (I want to say all here but I'm not 100% sure) EFI cars have a TPS. The TPS is attached to the throttle butterfly valve that is moved with a cable or other mechanical linkage. The "drive by wire" systems that are being discussed here eliminate the cable/linkage and open the valve electronically. Any car with a TPS is going to avoid the detonation scenario you mention above. Any carbureted car is not going to have that issue as the fuel flow is controlled by airflow due to the ventri effect.
IE7 has been in the wild for at least 6 months, perhaps a year (I don't use it so I don't know exactly) so of course IE6 market share is going to be dropping. From what I can tell more and more people are migrating to IE7 and it's a reasonably decent browser now.
IE 7 has been out for 3 years now. IE 8 has been around for about 6 months. If what you say is really the case, you would think that IE6's market share would have dropped a long time ago.
Why is anyone comparing anything, be it Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, or anything else, to IE6 now?
Because it is still the dominant version of IE even though there are 2 newer versions.
The tariffs were different...probably because there is more competition in the mid-size sedan market than in the luxury sedan market in Japan.
You kept the entire automobile industry alive through huge tariffs and subsidies
Just about every country protects their domestic auto industry. I remember reading a few years ago that in Japan a Ford Taurus costs more than a Mercedes because of the high tariffs. Protecting domestic industry is the only way to keep manufacturing jobs in the US. Low wages and few/no environmental controls in India, China or even Mexico make it way too tempting to outsource manufacturing jobs. Tariffs are one of the government's tools to try to level the playing field.
That industry's dead now, and you've got at least 10-15% unemployed atm.
I'm going to call Bullshit. Ford is still alive and kicking without any sort of bailout. GM and Chrysler are still around, making cars and employing people. I wouldn't call that "dead." As of September unemployment in the US was 9.5%. That's nowhere near "at least 10-15%."
And that's why ticket revenue should not go back (directly) to police departments. It would remove the incentive to focus on minor infractions that are profitable and hopefully shift the focus to fighting real crime.
(and only in the US can you find people stupid enough to agree to pay to receive texts).
I know it's fun to bash Americans, but in my experience this is because some people are not given a choice. Where I live, I was lucky enough to find a smaller regional provider who does not charge for incoming texts (or calls.) My previous provider (Cellular One) didn't charge for incoming texts until they were bought out by AT&T. This is one of the reasons I switched carriers. Where my parents live the only two available providers are Alltel and AT&T. Both carriers charge for incoming texts unless you have the unlimited text plan. Since they don't text enough to warrant the unlimited plan on all of their phones, it's cheaper to pay for the incoming texts. You are absolutely correct when you say it's stupid, but when almost every carrier charges it's hard to get away from it.
I just checked my GV account. You don't have to change your GV number...you can redirect your mobile phone voicemail to GV. All you have to do is go in to settings, click on Phones, find your mobile phone in the list and click the "Activate Google voicemail on this phone" link. You keep your old GV number and any voicemail that used to go to your mobile carrier's voicemail goes to GV instead. It doesn't cost anything to do it this way either.
So you buy a new computer, get it home, unpack it, call Acer, REPACK it, send your BRAND NEW laptop off to never-never land to be "repaired," then wait while it comes back to you... all for 58 bucks? And how much did you spend on shipping?
Yeah, it was annoying...but I didn't need the laptop right away. Shipping was something like $8 and I had the laptop back in a little over a week.
You truly must be one of those folks living in mom's basement with nothing else to do - cuz I marginally have anything to do (besides try to pay for this house) and there's just no way I would consider that much work worth 58 stinking dollars. And that's why it's rigged this way - you can "opt out" but it's so much effort as to be not worth it. And while it's essentially chump change to most folks, 58 bucks times a 100,000 machines adds up to... well, almost enough to pay Ballboy's salary.
Heh, I wish I was still living in Mom's basement...everything was cheaper there. To be honest, I spent about an hour working on getting the refund. I wish I made $50 an hour at my day job. You hit the nail on the head though, if enough people call in and ask for refunds eventually more companies may start to offer a non-Windows option. I consider it a moral victory rather than a monetary victory. It's also worth noting that I was returning Vista Home Basic so the refund probably would have been bigger if it hadn't been the most worthless version of Windows.
I think you would be looking for Xubuntu (XFCE) if you are looking for something with a low memory footprint. KDE (the default desktop environment in Kubuntu) has roughly the same memory footprint as normal Ubuntu (which uses Gnome by default.)
Really? I bought an Acer netbook with Vista on it. A simple phone call was all it took to get the process rolling. It was annoying that I had to send the laptop back to them to have Windows removed, but I did get my $58 or whatever it was.
The Dell Mini 10's are available with Ubuntu preloaded if you would rather go that route. I believe they start at $299 so they aren't unreasonably priced either.
I would be inclined to disagree. I know this is all anecdotal but I own an HTC Vogue (aka HTC Touch.) The hardware is terrific but the software (WM) leaves a lot to be desired. A few months back I was standing on the balcony of my second story apartment when my phone rang. I pulled the phone from my pocket, but it bumped in to the rail on the way out. The phone fell at least 20 feet and landed on the concrete sidewalk below. I went downstairs expecting the phone to be shattered in pieces. I was not disappointed. The battery and the phone were laying a few feet apart, the back cover was about 5 feet away and the stylus was hanging out of the main body of the phone. I put the battery back in, replaced the back cover, pressed the power button and to my amazement the phone turned on. Everything, including the touchscreen, continue to work to this day as if nothing had ever happened. The only other phone I have seen that can take that kind of abuse are the old Nokia's that we all fondly remember.
Comparing Novel Influenza today to Typhoid Fever in the early 1900's is ridiculous. The mortality rate of Typhoid Fever then is much higher than Novel Influenza's mortality rate will ever be.
Let's say I don't get vaccinated and become the next Typhoid Mary. If that were to happen, something would have changed and the people most susceptible to the virus would have been vaccinated. Most people I would come in to contact with would either be vaccinated or less likely to catch the virus in the first place. Anybody who did would probably live and have immunity when all was said and done.
I work at a health care facility in Wisconsin and it's either get the vaccine or leave. While I don't have any objections to getting the vaccine myself, with all the whining about shortages of the vaccine I hear every day I wonder why I get the vaccine instead of people at a higher risk of getting the flu. I think society in general would benefit more from the vaccine going to people more at risk to getting the flu--children, the elderly and the immune compromised. As a healthy adult I would prefer to take my chances and be inconvenienced for a few days at worst than have someone who is immune-compromised die of the flu because there was not enough vaccine to go around.
The president is a figurehead, he doesnt physically DO anything.
From The United States Constitution:
Section 2 - Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
and
Section 3 - State of the Union, Convening Congress
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
It looks to me like the the President DOES an awful lot.
He is the leader of the executive branch of government in the United States. That means he is in charge of directing other people what to do.
Directing people IS physically doing something. The president of the United States also has influence that he can use to make things go his way.
Things like this; S.T.A.R.T Treaty negotiations [hindustantimes.com]
The S.T.A.R.T Treaty negotiations took place within the last month. Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize were closed 11 days in to Barak Obama's presidency. At the time he was nominated he didn't have time to do anything.
No amount of points or arguments you give, have any meaning whatsoever to the outcome of the votes of the Nobel Committee. Why cant you accept the results of a vote?
I never said I could not accept the results of the vote. I was stating that I do not agree with them.
Do you hate democracy?
No. What I really hate are people who accuse other people of hating democracy because they do not agree with the results of a vote.
How can they give someone the Nobel Peace Prize for something he has not done yet? The US is still in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are no closer to pulling out than we were 8 months ago. From Wikipedia: "According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded 'to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.'" What has Barak Obama done (not talked about doing) in the last 8 months that makes him worthy of the prize this year?
Media play works fine with open-source drivers. With the current state of gaming in Linux, users who really want to go through the hassle to get games running in wine will go through the hassle of clicking the one button it takes to install the proprietary video driver.
Wacom tablets use an active digitizer and a stylus. Some work with touches and some do not. It depends on the particular model.
A fairly recent Linux distribution will support 90% of hardware out of the box. The hardest it will get is clicking the box to install a proprietary driver. The problem with hardware support in Windows isn't always the support of new hardware but support of older hardware. I have a scanner sitting on my desk that works with every version of Windows up until Vista. I have to muck around on the manufacturer's website to download the driver and then mess around in the "add new hardware wizard" to get it up and running (which is difficult for average users...probably just as difficult as typing "apt-get install" in a CLI.) This scanner doesn't work in anything newer than XP because Microsoft changed the driver model. This same scanner works with no configuration, no downloads, anything on my Linux box. It's 100% plug and play. With my Linux box I have good confidence that since support for this is built in now, it will not be dropped in the foreseeable future since the driver is maintained by the SANE project (who makes the software and can verify that the driver works after software changes are made) rather than the maker of the hardware who will have to spend a lot more time testing the driver and updating for new software.
You are correct in that there are people out there who think this way. It's funny though, I don't see these people complaining about Windows at all.
If you are thinking of Macs here, it's important to note that anyone using an OS installed from the factory will only have to install drivers for hardware he or she added. Reinstalling OSX on a Mac is about like reinstalling Windows or Linux using a manufacturer's recovery disc. The end result is that the drivers are not installed by the user. On Linux and Mac systems many user-installed peripherals work out of the box, but sometimes you still need drivers. It is not practical to expect an OS to support every piece of hardware ever made out of the box--especially if the hardware was released after the OS.
Well Linux has "support" as well. In both cases additional drivers may or may not be needed. Since the parent was not in any way specific as to the type of touchscreen I was being as general as possible. Most Linux distributions provide support for a variety of touchscreens and drawing tablets out of the box. I know for a fact that Vista on one of the tablets I use needs a driver installed manually for the Wacom tablet. Ubuntu does not. It really depends on the hardware.
My comment was aimed at the people who rip on Linux because they have to install drivers (it really doesn't matter what type.) I was pointing out that you need to do that in other OS's as well.
In Linux, you do some google searching, type something cryptic like sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx & modprobe blah blah blah And then when it doesn't work, you go back and look up another cryptic command until you finally get it right.
The use of the word "cryptic" here puts you into category #3.
No, it's because in windows, you go to the manufacturer's website, download the driver, double-click it, hit next a couple times, and restart. And then it works. In Linux, you do some google searching, type something cryptic like sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx & modprobe blah blah blah And then when it doesn't work, you go back and look up another cryptic command until you finally get it right.
Every desktop-oriented Linux distribution has video drivers built in that provide basic support for anything a "normal user" will need to do. If the user wants to play games or whatever most desktop-oriented distributions provide a nice GUI to download and install the proprietary drivers automatically. Sure, things go wrong once in a while but you occasionally see broken or unstable drivers in Windows as well.
If you really want to, you can get both AMD and nVidia graphics drivers from their respective websites (exactly like the windows drivers,) double click and install just like in Windows if you would like. It's generally not the preferred (and far from the best) way of doing things but it does work.
I tried walking my uncle, who is very intelligent, but not a computer expert, through getting his video drivers on linux working over the phone. It was torture. He eventually switched back to windows, and had no trouble getting it working. I'm not an MS or Apple schill, and I've installed and used Linux a lot. But I still don't believe a normal person can get devices set up on Linux as easily as on Mac or Windows.
"Normal people" do not generally install device drivers for anything not connected to a USB port. They use the OS (with all drivers preloaded) that comes with their computer. You can get the same experience by buying a system from System76 or Dell with Ubuntu preloaded. As far as things that do plug in to a USB port, Linux has support for more hardware out of the box than any other OS. Most USB devices that regular users plug in will "just work" without having to mess with the CD that came with it. There are a few exceptions (some crappy printers and a few webcams) but this is generally the case.