Damn, I thought I was an old fart, you got me beat. Well you can rest in peace soon, so just hang with winxp and office 1997 and you'll be ok until the funeral .
While I am not, in general or in intent, an Apple hater, I have seen enough of the recycling centers in China to know that a lot of the Apple recycling (in Asia at least) ends up being recycled by kids tearing stuff apart by hand and being exposed to dangerous minerals and chemicals in the process. IF, and I emphasize IF, Apple is recycling by sending their products to Asia then I don't think that they are playing fair and should be called for it. I do not know what their policy is about where they recycle, but I do know that many western recyclers accept things for recycling and just package it up for return to China for recycling and reuse. and then claim that they are taking care of it properly.
Sorry dude, but I'm in Florida and happened to be a bystander to a small corner of the TB epidemic. Here at USF in Tampa we have had a number of students with TB. No the public was not told until they were in hospital and under care, but it clearly is an outbreak on a large scale for us here in Tampa.
I was in Moscow last summer at a second hand phone market. I asked around for one with a number of the dealers, they said that there was not a single N900 available in all of Moscow. Then they said that if I could find one it would be worth a fortune because some real.... interesting people would like to have one.
Ya, snark all you want, but this kind of process is still looking for its opening. It can happen, it just needs the right yeast to help it grow. Mobile phones might be just the over crowded place where it could happen, by going against popular belief it actually has a better chance. I have a meego- based tablet and it really is a great system, and there is a lot of good work sitting htere waiting to grow.
on the other hand, the need will be for a charismatic leader to marshal the developers. Meego has an awesome crew of full and part time devs, what it has never had was a leader who could connect to both the devs and the buyers. It needs someone, a personality that provides the spark.
Sheesh! Cut it out folks! Ok, I use Linux even when it is not convenient to do so (not because of Linux itself, but because of the other systems in the IT pipeline that interact with it. ) Ok, I have used Apple, and been in situations where I think Apple was the best thing for other users, and had to maintain Apple products for others as well as windows products and my own linux computers.
The results of years of doing this, for a regular guy in a regular, non-tech job, just getting shit to work for the family and friends on a day to day basis: 1) I love linux, as do all the members of my family from the 9 year old chrome-head to the 50 year old artist-wife with minus 1 computer skill level. I do not recommend it for everyone, i don't care about the YOTD or any other fabled time when linux will rule the world. Frankly, I am sick of the fuss about all this stuff.
2) Windows is improving. I still avoid using it, mostly because I have not needed it or used it for more than one or two required business programs at work. I had WinXP at home on a VM for the last 5 years and used it maybe once or twice a year at home, ususally because I had to convert a DRM file to a non-DRM format and it was safer to do in a VM than to find and download a program outside the repos. I am not saying that windows sucks, only that it is no longer of interest or value to me. The problems for file conversion have disappeared in the last 2 years and now i don't even bother to keep windows in a VM.
3) Apple. Oh dear, Apple A. I have recommended Apple to many people: for example, students who are computer illiterate and the overfed children of over-rich parents who need to appear stylish to their peers (other over-fed plush dolls). They can usually not manage to F** it up as quickly as they can F** up a windows PC. But they can, of course with the extra effort they are so good at applying. Apple B. I know lots of over-fed computer savy folks who were sucked in by the Apple marketing program and bought into the Apple kool-aid program. I do admit that it used to help that it didn't need the constant attention to Anti-virus and anti-malware upkeep that windows required, but that advantage has quickly eroded away, although it is still a slight advantage. Apple C. Real geeks who use Apple products migrated over from windows and found it superior to windows for a geek. Yes, very true, but why didn't they give time to linux (since it is obvious that they tried a distro or so for a few days, weeks or months and decided it was too [hard/confusing/time-consuming] to let them just get some work done so they paid the money (the Apple tax) to get a linux that had been stripped down and made stupid enough for over-fed rich kids who need to be protected from themselves) when spending that time would get them ability and credibility in the real world? Well, they probably had a day job that required them to be up and running right away-- no room for messing about with your computer to figure out how to do what they needed to do. The people who did have the time were either out of work or in school and learning on someone else's nickel.
OK? Can we stop fighting now? People do stuff for good reason's, just not our own reasons. I had the time to work through linux and the determination to do it because i did not have to use my computer ability to make a living. I had a Mac, a win PC and a linux PC running in the house for 3 or 4 years while I meandered through the learning process. I do not assume that everyone else has that leisure and I appreciate that your choice is not mine, and probably couldn't be. It is OK.
Vizio VIA TV with a cheapo freebie Dell opteron added on to pick up some things like ESPN and HBO (had it and dropped it because we only watched one show and when it was over....) but HULU plus covers a lot, overlays with netflix which often gives two choices. Then I also use the Dell for "Eclipse.tv" which has sometimes better connectivity than the Vizio VIA apps. I just like having the browser available and plan to enable xbmc to hook up my music and movies through nfs4, bingo.
Stay away from wifi, lan is just faster and less laggy.
I don't have one, but my experience with my WeTab (differnet specs, of course, but similar goals-- a complete tablet sized computer, not an oversized PSP like the iPad) show that it is really pretty easy to take a tablet computer and turn it into a complete netbook/ laptop. I use a bluetooth keyboard (a very nice MS branded one, BTW) and a wireless mouse while dual-booting the WeTab OS and Fedora17. The WeTab OS provides a VM that holds Android (unfortunately only 1.1) but let's me have access to some android apps, Ekiga for phone calling (or Skype should one wish), 4G as well as WiFi full time and other nice features while Fedora17 obviously gives me a full desktop with everything needed to do anything I want and more besides.
One of the other articles today was about early ideas about tech and I was remembering my first (1994) laptop, it had a 500MB HDD, which i maxxed out by upgrading to a pirated version of win95 when I was in Thailand one time. I didn't have enough space for a complete version of MS Office so I only took some parts (i forget which). The WeTab could hold 64 of those old lappies, almost 20 years ago now (drooling slightly with a far-off look in his age bleared eyes.....)
You don't RC, I had a portable phone in a bag the size of a lunchbox that I used on my job (on-site construction supervision) in the early 80's. Damn thing was big and weighed a ton but saved me more times than i can even remember. I bought the phone myself to convince my boss it was worthwhile. He happily pciked up the $.50 a minute call charge. Later I switched to a car phone in my truck which was exactly the same kit, but was just built in, under the front seat, with a mike on the cieling and a separate speaker from the audio. Now I bluetooth to the car, much better, really.
If you wanted solid and stable servers you should have been running Red Hat or CentOs in the first place. Fedora is bleeding edge, was designed to be bleeding edge. Don't run it if you have mission critical stuff or don't want to be part of the process. For myself, I like being part of the process. That is the power of linux (remember?)
I'm running fedora 17 on a 60GB SSD I bought last fall, using a 2 GB storage drive for most of my file management and then a 1 TB backup drive for incremental daily backups of critical data from the 2 TB drive. Even if the SSD fails, i have almost nothing in the home folder that isn't backedup up within 24 hours that its loss would not even be noticed. I would like to replicate that setup in my other home machines as well, and this price for SSDs makes that possibility very interesting. Failure for gamers is different than what I would expect, gamers are willing to spend stupid mad cash for their hobby/pleasure. Acceptable wastage for that is a personal decision. I just have a home system for entertainment and communications, less demanding and easier on the wallet overall. Just different.
Who is ranking this "insightful"? It is just Ballmer leading the softies off into the desert in search of the past. It is too late to follow Apple's lead, and they are not able to forge their own path under the monkey man. So, expect more, massive fails for the poor old sods
Well, I have worked with Gnome 3 and with xfce and with cinnamon and mate recently and KDE as well. I have tried KDE 3.x and KDE 4.x, my daughter loves KDE, and I have supported her machine for a few years (kubuntu, Sabayon, Pardus, and.... oh I forget) and, while I can use it, I don't. Just like the way gnome is more than other DE's. Yes, I like gnome 3, but I also started with a late alpha and then went through the beta testing process with them for part of the cycle, so i should probably be rated a fanboy if i was a fan for anything (and i'm a pretty lazy fan at best).
But KDE just doesn't float my boat.
This is why we love Linux, KDE makes my daughter happy. Cinnanmon makes my wife happy. I like gnome3. We all are comfortable with this, so where is the problem?
I blamed the reader for blaming linux, yes. I refuse to blame the OS when it is obviously a hardware problem. When I had a Dell computer that required reinstallation of Win98 every 6 months because of stability issues, even though it was preloaded with win98 I didn't asssume it was win98 that was the problem. It was the hardware, win98 ran fine on other computers at the time. When I updated to winxp it had same problem, was it windows? No. If you have stable hardware then the OS will work fine, no matter the OS.
Yes, but since buying decisions are being made by... well, let me avoid the rude adjectives here, let's just say people who don't really understand how to make technology decisions, then of course we have foolish decisions being made based on advertising.
How many times a day do you (if you listen to commercial radio) hear something about a company's new iPhone or iPad application. Frankly folks, has anyone considered that this constant promotional material for Apple, disguised as an advertisement for some other company or service, has warped not just the tech landscape but the entire idea of marketing. Apple doesn't have to spend very much for marketing since they have "product placement" in damn near every advertisement for every other product in the world. I am eagerly awaiting the new Apple app that will provide information about where to buy the cheapest Android phone, so that you will have an Adroid company advertising for Apple as well.
So, how could the people making decisions, based on their experience of the advertising that permeates their world, make any other decision? Their world is completely warped by America's marketing juggernaut and they do, actually, believe that an iPad can take the place of a computer.
(Disclaimer, I don't work for none of these peeple. I have owned Apple products in the past but don't now. I use a 6 year old mobile phone and a one year old WeTab tablet, which is, in my opinion, able to function as a complete computer with just a keyboard)
yes, some people do, i guess i am just lucky to have had many different computers, from unsupported tablets to iMacs to laptops to desktops, from ppc to intel to amd, from ati to nvidia to intel-onboard, they all work with no issues. Should i include the many different monitors, mice , keyboards, graphics pads, webcams, audio cards, what else do you want? You, my friend, have an anecdotal incident. Unless you would like to take your machine apart and replace piece by piece to show where the problem is ( in a controlled experiment where you have new replacements of each piece of kit and a different brand piece of kit) then you really don't know what the problem is. So you blame linux. OK, so don't be surprised if I blame windows (but of course I don't because i am not sure about where the problem came from).
I know how to figure out how many people are using iPhones! Just check if their email says "sent from my iPhone"
(that won't work because you can buy an Android and a general pushmail app that adds "sent from my iPhone" to all your mail, even your PC and office mail. People in China don't like Apple products, they are just whores for the name...)
I used Netscape before Opera, then both together, then mostly Opera, then I went to China where it is blocked. so Firefox, now my son was using opera but now chrome. Browsers, who cares besides people who need to define themselves by browser?
my WeTab with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and touchscreen running Fedora 16 last Christmas wins in that category. There are a few other people who did it as well, I followed their lead
Dear Friends, Why are we (and I mean you) getting sucked into an argument that has absolutely no reasonable conclusion? The reason why it can't end well for either side is that it is a failure in logic to be arguing something that has no useful application.
Now, I don't know, or appreciate, why the gggp had to vent in public about WinXP and start this folderol, but they did. The correct, and polite response would have been to ignore it. Hairyfeet, SJames all the rest of us should have just turned away and moved on. Instead it was used as a platform for everyone to get into a ridiculous and overblown war about our favorite topic: "Whose OS is the best."
Now we all know, already and ad nauseum, that this will get us nowhere. So let's try to remember this. Someone could call the gggp a troll, and whether it was an intentional troll or not they would be right: simply because their venting stated a flamewar. But, we all know that it is our responsibility to not respond to trolls, to perceive where replies would lead and to remain quiet. Especially those of us with reason.
Now, please read, hang head a second, and let's STFU
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, I thought I was an old fart, you got me beat. Well you can rest in peace soon, so just hang with winxp and office 1997 and you'll be ok until the funeral .
While I am not, in general or in intent, an Apple hater, I have seen enough of the recycling centers in China to know that a lot of the Apple recycling (in Asia at least) ends up being recycled by kids tearing stuff apart by hand and being exposed to dangerous minerals and chemicals in the process. IF, and I emphasize IF, Apple is recycling by sending their products to Asia then I don't think that they are playing fair and should be called for it. I do not know what their policy is about where they recycle, but I do know that many western recyclers accept things for recycling and just package it up for return to China for recycling and reuse. and then claim that they are taking care of it properly.
Sorry dude, but I'm in Florida and happened to be a bystander to a small corner of the TB epidemic. Here at USF in Tampa we have had a number of students with TB. No the public was not told until they were in hospital and under care, but it clearly is an outbreak on a large scale for us here in Tampa.
I was in Moscow last summer at a second hand phone market. I asked around for one with a number of the dealers, they said that there was not a single N900 available in all of Moscow. Then they said that if I could find one it would be worth a fortune because some real .... interesting people would like to have one.
Ya, snark all you want, but this kind of process is still looking for its opening. It can happen, it just needs the right yeast to help it grow. Mobile phones might be just the over crowded place where it could happen, by going against popular belief it actually has a better chance. I have a meego- based tablet and it really is a great system, and there is a lot of good work sitting htere waiting to grow.
on the other hand, the need will be for a charismatic leader to marshal the developers. Meego has an awesome crew of full and part time devs, what it has never had was a leader who could connect to both the devs and the buyers. It needs someone, a personality that provides the spark.
I'm an end user, i use it, next?
Sheesh! Cut it out folks!
Ok, I use Linux even when it is not convenient to do so (not because of Linux itself, but because of the other systems in the IT pipeline that interact with it. )
Ok, I have used Apple, and been in situations where I think Apple was the best thing for other users, and had to maintain Apple products for others as well as windows products and my own linux computers.
The results of years of doing this, for a regular guy in a regular, non-tech job, just getting shit to work for the family and friends on a day to day basis:
1) I love linux, as do all the members of my family from the 9 year old chrome-head to the 50 year old artist-wife with minus 1 computer skill level. I do not recommend it for everyone, i don't care about the YOTD or any other fabled time when linux will rule the world. Frankly, I am sick of the fuss about all this stuff.
2) Windows is improving. I still avoid using it, mostly because I have not needed it or used it for more than one or two required business programs at work. I had WinXP at home on a VM for the last 5 years and used it maybe once or twice a year at home, ususally because I had to convert a DRM file to a non-DRM format and it was safer to do in a VM than to find and download a program outside the repos. I am not saying that windows sucks, only that it is no longer of interest or value to me. The problems for file conversion have disappeared in the last 2 years and now i don't even bother to keep windows in a VM.
3) Apple. Oh dear, Apple A. I have recommended Apple to many people: for example, students who are computer illiterate and the overfed children of over-rich parents who need to appear stylish to their peers (other over-fed plush dolls). They can usually not manage to F** it up as quickly as they can F** up a windows PC. But they can, of course with the extra effort they are so good at applying. Apple B. I know lots of over-fed computer savy folks who were sucked in by the Apple marketing program and bought into the Apple kool-aid program. I do admit that it used to help that it didn't need the constant attention to Anti-virus and anti-malware upkeep that windows required, but that advantage has quickly eroded away, although it is still a slight advantage. Apple C. Real geeks who use Apple products migrated over from windows and found it superior to windows for a geek. Yes, very true, but why didn't they give time to linux (since it is obvious that they tried a distro or so for a few days, weeks or months and decided it was too [hard/confusing/time-consuming] to let them just get some work done so they paid the money (the Apple tax) to get a linux that had been stripped down and made stupid enough for over-fed rich kids who need to be protected from themselves) when spending that time would get them ability and credibility in the real world? Well, they probably had a day job that required them to be up and running right away-- no room for messing about with your computer to figure out how to do what they needed to do. The people who did have the time were either out of work or in school and learning on someone else's nickel.
OK? Can we stop fighting now? People do stuff for good reason's, just not our own reasons. I had the time to work through linux and the determination to do it because i did not have to use my computer ability to make a living. I had a Mac, a win PC and a linux PC running in the house for 3 or 4 years while I meandered through the learning process. I do not assume that everyone else has that leisure and I appreciate that your choice is not mine, and probably couldn't be. It is OK.
Vizio VIA TV with a cheapo freebie Dell opteron added on to pick up some things like ESPN and HBO (had it and dropped it because we only watched one show and when it was over....) but HULU plus covers a lot, overlays with netflix which often gives two choices. Then I also use the Dell for "Eclipse.tv" which has sometimes better connectivity than the Vizio VIA apps. I just like having the browser available and plan to enable xbmc to hook up my music and movies through nfs4, bingo.
Stay away from wifi, lan is just faster and less laggy.
I don't have one, but my experience with my WeTab (differnet specs, of course, but similar goals-- a complete tablet sized computer, not an oversized PSP like the iPad) show that it is really pretty easy to take a tablet computer and turn it into a complete netbook/ laptop. I use a bluetooth keyboard (a very nice MS branded one, BTW) and a wireless mouse while dual-booting the WeTab OS and Fedora17. The WeTab OS provides a VM that holds Android (unfortunately only 1.1) but let's me have access to some android apps, Ekiga for phone calling (or Skype should one wish), 4G as well as WiFi full time and other nice features while Fedora17 obviously gives me a full desktop with everything needed to do anything I want and more besides.
One of the other articles today was about early ideas about tech and I was remembering my first (1994) laptop, it had a 500MB HDD, which i maxxed out by upgrading to a pirated version of win95 when I was in Thailand one time. I didn't have enough space for a complete version of MS Office so I only took some parts (i forget which). The WeTab could hold 64 of those old lappies, almost 20 years ago now (drooling slightly with a far-off look in his age bleared eyes.....)
You don't RC, I had a portable phone in a bag the size of a lunchbox that I used on my job (on-site construction supervision) in the early 80's. Damn thing was big and weighed a ton but saved me more times than i can even remember. I bought the phone myself to convince my boss it was worthwhile. He happily pciked up the $.50 a minute call charge. Later I switched to a car phone in my truck which was exactly the same kit, but was just built in, under the front seat, with a mike on the cieling and a separate speaker from the audio.
Now I bluetooth to the car, much better, really.
actually, i wouldn't buy, even at that price;))>
If you wanted solid and stable servers you should have been running Red Hat or CentOs in the first place. Fedora is bleeding edge, was designed to be bleeding edge. Don't run it if you have mission critical stuff or don't want to be part of the process. For myself, I like being part of the process. That is the power of linux (remember?)
I'm running fedora 17 on a 60GB SSD I bought last fall, using a 2 GB storage drive for most of my file management and then a 1 TB backup drive for incremental daily backups of critical data from the 2 TB drive. Even if the SSD fails, i have almost nothing in the home folder that isn't backedup up within 24 hours that its loss would not even be noticed. I would like to replicate that setup in my other home machines as well, and this price for SSDs makes that possibility very interesting.
Failure for gamers is different than what I would expect, gamers are willing to spend stupid mad cash for their hobby/pleasure. Acceptable wastage for that is a personal decision. I just have a home system for entertainment and communications, less demanding and easier on the wallet overall. Just different.
Who is ranking this "insightful"?
It is just Ballmer leading the softies off into the desert in search of the past. It is too late to follow Apple's lead, and they are not able to forge their own path under the monkey man. So, expect more, massive fails for the poor old sods
Well, I have worked with Gnome 3 and with xfce and with cinnamon and mate recently and KDE as well. I have tried KDE 3.x and KDE 4.x, my daughter loves KDE, and I have supported her machine for a few years (kubuntu, Sabayon, Pardus, and.... oh I forget) and, while I can use it, I don't. Just like the way gnome is more than other DE's. Yes, I like gnome 3, but I also started with a late alpha and then went through the beta testing process with them for part of the cycle, so i should probably be rated a fanboy if i was a fan for anything (and i'm a pretty lazy fan at best).
But KDE just doesn't float my boat.
This is why we love Linux, KDE makes my daughter happy. Cinnanmon makes my wife happy. I like gnome3. We all are comfortable with this, so where is the problem?
I blamed the reader for blaming linux, yes. I refuse to blame the OS when it is obviously a hardware problem. When I had a Dell computer that required reinstallation of Win98 every 6 months because of stability issues, even though it was preloaded with win98 I didn't asssume it was win98 that was the problem. It was the hardware, win98 ran fine on other computers at the time. When I updated to winxp it had same problem, was it windows? No. If you have stable hardware then the OS will work fine, no matter the OS.
Don't care, still hate vampires and zombies. Hate Hate Hate.
bleeding edge??? what it was from testing??
hahahahaha
Yes, but since buying decisions are being made by ... well, let me avoid the rude adjectives here, let's just say people who don't really understand how to make technology decisions, then of course we have foolish decisions being made based on advertising.
How many times a day do you (if you listen to commercial radio) hear something about a company's new iPhone or iPad application. Frankly folks, has anyone considered that this constant promotional material for Apple, disguised as an advertisement for some other company or service, has warped not just the tech landscape but the entire idea of marketing. Apple doesn't have to spend very much for marketing since they have "product placement" in damn near every advertisement for every other product in the world. I am eagerly awaiting the new Apple app that will provide information about where to buy the cheapest Android phone, so that you will have an Adroid company advertising for Apple as well.
So, how could the people making decisions, based on their experience of the advertising that permeates their world, make any other decision? Their world is completely warped by America's marketing juggernaut and they do, actually, believe that an iPad can take the place of a computer.
(Disclaimer, I don't work for none of these peeple. I have owned Apple products in the past but don't now. I use a 6 year old mobile phone and a one year old WeTab tablet, which is, in my opinion, able to function as a complete computer with just a keyboard)
ditto, it works
yes, some people do, i guess i am just lucky to have had many different computers, from unsupported tablets to iMacs to laptops to desktops, from ppc to intel to amd, from ati to nvidia to intel-onboard, they all work with no issues. Should i include the many different monitors, mice , keyboards, graphics pads, webcams, audio cards, what else do you want?
You, my friend, have an anecdotal incident. Unless you would like to take your machine apart and replace piece by piece to show where the problem is ( in a controlled experiment where you have new replacements of each piece of kit and a different brand piece of kit) then you really don't know what the problem is. So you blame linux. OK, so don't be surprised if I blame windows (but of course I don't because i am not sure about where the problem came from).
I know how to figure out how many people are using iPhones! Just check if their email says "sent from my iPhone"
(that won't work because you can buy an Android and a general pushmail app that adds "sent from my iPhone" to all your mail, even your PC and office mail. People in China don't like Apple products, they are just whores for the name...)
I used Netscape before Opera, then both together, then mostly Opera, then I went to China where it is blocked. so Firefox, now my son was using opera but now chrome. Browsers, who cares besides people who need to define themselves by browser?
my WeTab with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and touchscreen running Fedora 16 last Christmas wins in that category. There are a few other people who did it as well, I followed their lead
Dear Friends,
Why are we (and I mean you) getting sucked into an argument that has absolutely no reasonable conclusion? The reason why it can't end well for either side is that it is a failure in logic to be arguing something that has no useful application.
Now, I don't know, or appreciate, why the gggp had to vent in public about WinXP and start this folderol, but they did. The correct, and polite response would have been to ignore it. Hairyfeet, SJames all the rest of us should have just turned away and moved on. Instead it was used as a platform for everyone to get into a ridiculous and overblown war about our favorite topic: "Whose OS is the best."
Now we all know, already and ad nauseum, that this will get us nowhere. So let's try to remember this. Someone could call the gggp a troll, and whether it was an intentional troll or not they would be right: simply because their venting stated a flamewar. But, we all know that it is our responsibility to not respond to trolls, to perceive where replies would lead and to remain quiet. Especially those of us with reason.
Now, please read, hang head a second, and let's STFU