There's a sucker born every minute, and thus surely a lot of money to be made by being the creationist PhD that lends credibility to a creationism conference.
It's not religion. One could imagine a religion that could accomodate facts alongside religious tenets. A religion does not have to be based on miracles or abherrent postulates, could be based solely on values + God for example, without the ridiculous children stories to go with that.
The issue is that religions won't die (and the most recent ones do not seem much better than the oldest ones, cf scientology). So we're shackled with a bunch a religions that made stupid pseudo-scientific claims when Science as such did not exist, and can't back down now under penalty of looking ridiculous, so they are hell-bent (pun intended) on refusing facts.
What we need is a modern religion, that accepts its place as mainly a moral + philosophical system, with just a bit of reality TV thrown in for its pedagogical and entertainment value. And please, no political, financial... agenda.
The Microsfot answer to ODF, though approved by an ex-standard body (turned MS plaything) is NOT an actual open standard: - no usable specs - no reference open implementation - just one implementation (ms office), and maybe not even that
Which is why it is important to word open document laws in such a way as to filter it out. Requesting an open implementation and at least 2 full implementations from different vendors does the trick nicely, and probably will for a long time.
are the two most important features, to me, for any smartphone. I haven't yet found them. My last phone, a WinMobile 6.0 monster, is 1- dead after 2 weeks 2- required 2 hands to use... and really felt like it would have loved to have a keyboard... For making phone calls and adresse book lookups...
Stop it with the featuritis. Do less. Do it better.
is too vague a term: does that mean ensuring a few don't hog all the bandwidth ? Or instituting a free-for-all where, on the contrary, a handful of heavy users degrade the experience of "lighter" users ? Have you actually looked at how much of your bandwidth the top 5 or 10% of your subscribers use ?
At home, I hate it when uTorrent screws up my warcraft lag; the 'rents are unhappy when their daily dose of skyping with their 3yo grand child is choppy; and I do notice when webpages take a handful of seconds to come up.
So, to me, offering the best experience means actually capping the bandwidth, QOS, and shaping the traffic. I'd guess it's mainly a question of balance, though.
That's right in theory, and would be the best, but there are issues: - government-lead IT has a long track record of failures: look only at what in happening in the UK for their healthcare IT right now. - the hardest part is the design and speccing. once that it done, actual coding should be trivial, but then deployment/training will be hard. FOSS only adresses the easy middle of the equation; the designing probably takes too much effort for a FOSS-type service company to do all the investment up front, and then hope to recoup it with consultancy type work if they win the contract.
I'd really like to explore, though the learning curve is steep. It's very frustrating going from DOS/Windows expert to Linux noob: finding an editor, then finding the config files, finding the info... Things I can do in 2 minutes in Windows take me hours, when they work at all.
I was thinking of going Ubuntu because of its success. PLus Wine for a bit of light gaming.
Thanks. I had guessed as much about intel, which is a pity because AMD looks better in the low midrange I'm aiming at. I'll need a discrete vidcard though, and especially sound through HDMI. Is ati 48xx ok ?
Also I couldn't get Wifi to work last time around. Is it OK now or do we still need a specific chipset ? All soundchips work even the Asus-specific Realtek ALC1200 ?
I'm sorry it was a while back I deleted the bookmarks to the forums requests. I actually got 2 answers indeed: one directing me to a US-only ready-made PC seller, and another to try out from a boot CD. Both don't really help when speccing a PC that I don't have yet, and I'm not in the US.
I'm in the "should use Linux" case you describe. Every year, I try to install Linux. Every year, I run into a hardware compatibility/driver roadblock, and fail to solve it after a handful of hours. I'm motivated to keep trying, even went as far as requesting advice on which components to use (cpu, gpu, sound...) for an easy Ubuntu install on a couple of Ubuntu forums: no useful answer.
I'll try again soon, and I'd dearly like it to work this time. I'm a fairly competent Windows user, building and installing PCs for myself and others, but I don't feel confident at all about recommendng let alone installing Linux yet.
Mee too, but I'm perpetually trying to switch to Linux, and failing: - none of my 10+ installation attempts on various PCs have worked, due to hardware installation issues. These are very simple PCs (last one: intel i815, no addin card), on which XP runs flawlessly. Fixing problems, especially boot problems, is too hard for a total linux noob. - I'm down to buying a new PC, and looking for a list of well-supported "current" hardware, but can't find any (AMD vs Intel ? ATI vs nVidia ? Soundchip ? Wifi card ?). Advice requests in the forums have resulted in.. nothing of value, but a couple of "learn to read" trolls.
I think the "linux on the desktop" part is failing because a desktop = a user, and users like me can't make heads nor tails of even installing linux.
On the Smartphone front, the issues are a bit of the same. Hopefully Linux will come preinstalled, but I think what makes the iPhone's succes is marketing, design, ergonomics, and the App/Tunes store. I'm not sure a plethora of "hacker" apps quite counter that.
The way France is doing it is by having enormous taxes on fuel.Unleaded (which is the standard) is 1.16 euros/liter, ie 1.16 x 1.27 ( $ per euro) x 3.785 (liters per gallon) = 5.6 $/gallon.
That encourages all kinds of responsible behaviour (fuel efficient cars, public transportation, energy efficient homes). It does hurt rural communities (no public transport, more travelling neede)compared to cities.
Sadly, all those taxes are not specifically used to invest in better energy sources or infrastructure, but are mainly integrated into the general budget.
1- that's a lot of IFs, which didn't materialize when the first waves of DRMers stopped/changed services a while back. Plus distributors almost certainly don't have the right to remove DRM on stuff they resell on behalf of others... They don't own it anymore than we do.
2- That's arguably illegal. I dont't want a system that makes me do illegal things to enjoy content I bought.
- when the DRM server goes down, you lose your stuff. The question is not whether it will, but when. We need some king of DRM escrow.
- because of the drm, we're beholden to not only 1 drm system, but 1 file format, 1 software, and sometimes even 1 hardware vendor, or 1 product line form a specific vendor. We need a DRM standard, shared amongst all vendors.
- we lose the right to resell or even loan our stuff.
I find that carrying all those gold pieces around all the time is a bit of a pain, after a while. And it's hard to find an employer who'll actually pay you with these.
Slashdot Mirror
loser ? are you sure ?
There's a sucker born every minute, and thus surely a lot of money to be made by being the creationist PhD that lends credibility to a creationism conference.
It's not religion. One could imagine a religion that could accomodate facts alongside religious tenets. A religion does not have to be based on miracles or abherrent postulates, could be based solely on values + God for example, without the ridiculous children stories to go with that.
The issue is that religions won't die (and the most recent ones do not seem much better than the oldest ones, cf scientology). So we're shackled with a bunch a religions that made stupid pseudo-scientific claims when Science as such did not exist, and can't back down now under penalty of looking ridiculous, so they are hell-bent (pun intended) on refusing facts.
What we need is a modern religion, that accepts its place as mainly a moral + philosophical system, with just a bit of reality TV thrown in for its pedagogical and entertainment value. And please, no political, financial... agenda.
The Microsfot answer to ODF, though approved by an ex-standard body (turned MS plaything) is NOT an actual open standard:
- no usable specs
- no reference open implementation
- just one implementation (ms office), and maybe not even that
Which is why it is important to word open document laws in such a way as to filter it out. Requesting an open implementation and at least 2 full implementations from different vendors does the trick nicely, and probably will for a long time.
are the two most important features, to me, for any smartphone. I haven't yet found them. My last phone, a WinMobile 6.0 monster, is 1- dead after 2 weeks 2- required 2 hands to use... and really felt like it would have loved to have a keyboard... For making phone calls and adresse book lookups...
Stop it with the featuritis. Do less. Do it better.
is too vague a term: does that mean ensuring a few don't hog all the bandwidth ? Or instituting a free-for-all where, on the contrary, a handful of heavy users degrade the experience of "lighter" users ? Have you actually looked at how much of your bandwidth the top 5 or 10% of your subscribers use ?
At home, I hate it when uTorrent screws up my warcraft lag; the 'rents are unhappy when their daily dose of skyping with their 3yo grand child is choppy; and I do notice when webpages take a handful of seconds to come up.
So, to me, offering the best experience means actually capping the bandwidth, QOS, and shaping the traffic. I'd guess it's mainly a question of balance, though.
35k+5k is trivial compared to the other costs of developping and maintaining such a complex system.
That's right in theory, and would be the best, but there are issues:
- government-lead IT has a long track record of failures: look only at what in happening in the UK for their healthcare IT right now.
- the hardest part is the design and speccing. once that it done, actual coding should be trivial, but then deployment/training will be hard. FOSS only adresses the easy middle of the equation; the designing probably takes too much effort for a FOSS-type service company to do all the investment up front, and then hope to recoup it with consultancy type work if they win the contract.
thanks
oh, wait... kdawson...
I'd really like to explore, though the learning curve is steep. It's very frustrating going from DOS/Windows expert to Linux noob: finding an editor, then finding the config files, finding the info... Things I can do in 2 minutes in Windows take me hours, when they work at all.
I was thinking of going Ubuntu because of its success. PLus Wine for a bit of light gaming.
Thanks. I had guessed as much about intel, which is a pity because AMD looks better in the low midrange I'm aiming at. I'll need a discrete vidcard though, and especially sound through HDMI. Is ati 48xx ok ?
Also I couldn't get Wifi to work last time around. Is it OK now or do we still need a specific chipset ? All soundchips work even the Asus-specific Realtek ALC1200 ?
I'm sorry it was a while back I deleted the bookmarks to the forums requests. I actually got 2 answers indeed: one directing me to a US-only ready-made PC seller, and another to try out from a boot CD. Both don't really help when speccing a PC that I don't have yet, and I'm not in the US.
a philosopher vs an engineer ?
I'm in the "should use Linux" case you describe. Every year, I try to install Linux. Every year, I run into a hardware compatibility/driver roadblock, and fail to solve it after a handful of hours. I'm motivated to keep trying, even went as far as requesting advice on which components to use (cpu, gpu, sound...) for an easy Ubuntu install on a couple of Ubuntu forums: no useful answer.
I'll try again soon, and I'd dearly like it to work this time. I'm a fairly competent Windows user, building and installing PCs for myself and others, but I don't feel confident at all about recommendng let alone installing Linux yet.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/08/asus-eee-pc-t91-and-t101h-touchscreen-tablet-hands-on/
No, it isn't, I buy parts, assemble and install all my PCs + lots for friends by hand.
I keep having problems, even on the most barebones and standard PCs, and cannot work my way out of any of them (while I'm quite adept with XP).
Mee too, but I'm perpetually trying to switch to Linux, and failing:
- none of my 10+ installation attempts on various PCs have worked, due to hardware installation issues. These are very simple PCs (last one: intel i815, no addin card), on which XP runs flawlessly. Fixing problems, especially boot problems, is too hard for a total linux noob.
- I'm down to buying a new PC, and looking for a list of well-supported "current" hardware, but can't find any (AMD vs Intel ? ATI vs nVidia ? Soundchip ? Wifi card ?). Advice requests in the forums have resulted in.. nothing of value, but a couple of "learn to read" trolls.
I think the "linux on the desktop" part is failing because a desktop = a user, and users like me can't make heads nor tails of even installing linux.
On the Smartphone front, the issues are a bit of the same. Hopefully Linux will come preinstalled, but I think what makes the iPhone's succes is marketing, design, ergonomics, and the App/Tunes store. I'm not sure a plethora of "hacker" apps quite counter that.
The way France is doing it is by having enormous taxes on fuel.Unleaded (which is the standard) is 1.16 euros/liter, ie 1.16 x 1.27 ( $ per euro) x 3.785 (liters per gallon) = 5.6 $ /gallon.
That encourages all kinds of responsible behaviour (fuel efficient cars, public transportation, energy efficient homes). It does hurt rural communities (no public transport, more travelling neede)compared to cities.
Sadly, all those taxes are not specifically used to invest in better energy sources or infrastructure, but are mainly integrated into the general budget.
1- that's a lot of IFs, which didn't materialize when the first waves of DRMers stopped/changed services a while back. Plus distributors almost certainly don't have the right to remove DRM on stuff they resell on behalf of others... They don't own it anymore than we do.
2- That's arguably illegal. I dont't want a system that makes me do illegal things to enjoy content I bought.
issues with downloads:
- when the DRM server goes down, you lose your stuff. The question is not whether it will, but when. We need some king of DRM escrow.
- because of the drm, we're beholden to not only 1 drm system, but 1 file format, 1 software, and sometimes even 1 hardware vendor, or 1 product line form a specific vendor. We need a DRM standard, shared amongst all vendors.
- we lose the right to resell or even loan our stuff.
I find that carrying all those gold pieces around all the time is a bit of a pain, after a while. And it's hard to find an employer who'll actually pay you with these.
Summary unclear: do we need a Kindle to use that software, or is it independent ?
Ever heard of cross compiling/interpreting/VMs ?
you're confusing "GUI" and "eye-candy".
A good GUI, as opposed to eye-candy, is all about ergonomics, helping the user see the choices and make the right one...
get off your horse (and switch on your brain), just trying to refute the term "not natural"... not saying anything about it being fine or not.