In general, I wouldn't think universities have much to say about the operating system, but the professors in non-CS departments will likely being ignorant of the existence of anything other than Windows and Mac. Although that is rapidly changing. The hard part may be avoiding a Technical Writing class that is basically a "Using MS Word to write a 100 page document class." Also collaboration with other students can be difficult in such classes where you are stuck in a group with students that are only interested in getting the project done and not if you feel the class shouldn't be teaching Microsoft products.
The Linux users at my university mostly negotiated their way around issues, and occasionally fought battles against so-called web apps that were IE only. I am sure your daughter will manage.
This girl is typical of the mainstream, and what people often fail to grasp is that Windows is just as technically challenging to use as Linux, but there is a very large and established support infrastructure for Windows and years of conditioning the Windows experience.
As an aside, this girl is really dumb. You mean to tell me she can't find a guy to fix her computer?! Here are some easy to follow instructions:
Go to nearest Department of Computer Science Find male Use bedroom voice Say "fix it." Blow kiss
The hard part is not ending up with several guys at your apartment... Or maybe that isn't the hard part.
Consumers, can't choose, they don't have nor do they want to be an expert in everything. Technically consumers should choose to ignore products that are harmful to themselves, or way various non-monetary options, but that isn't what the market is. The market always chooses price, and price is only a good way of determining the best price within a given environment. It doesn't help pick the best environment.
I don't buy into the corporatist religion. I choose to be led by smart people that specialize, and that requires active government, business, and people.
For me I choose AT&T over technology. I have no love for the company but GSM/UMTS is a worldwide technology, and for better or worse I am backing the standard. Verizon, and Sprint both deal in proprietary technology, which in my opinion is the real problem in the US. The FCC has allowed companies to use cell technology, nasty contracts, and DRM technologies (SIMLOCK) to provide customer lock-in. IMHO the FCC should dictate the technology, and it should be the same path most countries are on, GSM/UMTS/LTE. They should also disallow the contractual lock-in, and SIM locking.
The government picking a technology standard that enables US customers to have real choice is a good thing.
I guess the reason every compiler uses SSA as an intermediate form is because it delivers such sucky performance. SSA is an intermediate representation of code that facilitates the application of a whole range of optimizations. Potentially, SSA form could be where parallelism is extracted, but the form itself isn't going to give it to you automatically. You are going to need to look for it.
I have heard this from the functional programming community, but from my perspective, functional programming is just another threading strategy. The memory disambiguation problem, while real, isn't the limiting factor in the performance of programs.
If you look at the Wall paper, which was a limit study of instruction-level parallelism, and then the Lam paper, you will see that even with perfect memory disambiguation the amount of parallelism is fairly small. The small size of basic blocks and therefore frequency of conditional branches, is the greatest limiting factor to program performance. Only if you can enlarge basic blocks and/or execute speculatively are you going to see serious improvements on a single processor.
We know instruction-level parallelism on a single processor isn't large, the problem of writing multi-threaded code for multi-core processors, is identifying sufficiently large chunks of code to parallelize. In other words, where ILP occurs for free by the processor, now the compiler or language must identify the threads to take advantage of multiple cores. Further the compiler or language must wrap this code in threads that the operating system understands.
The traditional multi-threading technique is where you set a programmer at his computer and tell him parallelize stuff. The functional programmer will certainly identify parts of the code that can be executed in parallel, but I am not sure that is better than any other thread markup. All programmer threading techniques suffer from the fact that a programmer must see the parallelism in their program or algorithms to take advantage of it.
I believe we are going to see faster software from multi-threading on existing architectures if we find automatic thread identification techniques. Automatic thread identification, like any other compiler optimization, could yield the speed desired, by finding more parallelism in the program than what a human can.
Now I won't have anywhere to hookup my HD-DVD drive!
was obviously Funny not Insightful.
Firewire was on its way out when it didn't make the cut for iPod, or iPhone and really we don't need two standards. Yes Firewire is faster, but most people have only USB and I think Apple's product choice for their budget laptop reflects that.
Apple doesn't simply follow the herd on cramming every imaginable item into a laptop or computer, they make solid technology choices, and that is why we respect them. Go look at the PC World article on the Macbook where they slam them for DisplayPort instead of HDMI (adapter apparently not good enough), another example of a choice that won't make everyone happy.
If you need Firewire you need a Macbook Pro. Bask in the glory of being a Professional.
If you consdier the German speaking world you will want a Master's. I am sure people will argue about this here, but in that part of Europe the Bachelor's concept is relatively new, and most people you will be competing against have a Diplom. A Diplom is a Master's in the United States and if you want to maximize your job opportunites you will want one. They take academic titles much more seriously in Europe than the US, and it isn't unusual for people to be called by their title and not their name. Also don't be surprised if they ask for things like Leaving Reports from previous jobs, your transcripts from school, and of course your C.V.
For the C.V. it is standard practice to require information that is illegal to ask about in the United States. It will have your date of birth, photograph, gender and what not. For an example try the Europass CV.
I suggest you pick a country, and start taking formal or informal language and cultural courses. I chose German because I felt it offered the best tech opportunites in Europe, and access to all or part of three countries. Try and plan a semester abroad or a summer in the country you think will suit you. Honestly, nothing will motivate you to slog it through the hard part of moving somewhere new, and get you past the depressing fact that you can't communicate. A friend of mine in Vienna said, "I spent almost two years not being funny." Which for her was a big deal because her humor is a big part of who she is.
People have a completely different lifestyle and expectations in Europe, when compared to the US. I really suggest you prepare yourself mentally for a severe lifestyle change. For example the first word we learned in German for a place to live was apartment, not house. They don't buy as much, they eat at home a lot more, you probably won't own a car, food is going to be different, and in general if you haven't been to europe for longer than two weeks you are going to encounter culture shock.
Last but not least you are going to want to set up a home base in the country you are going to live in. Try and hoarde cash, you want to save about 4-5 thousand Euros. You are going to want to live in Europe while looking for a job there. Find a flat mate that will let you live there cheap and start applying around. Newspapers are still a big source of job offers so just scour their websites. Once you get there and are looking for a job you should really get out and try to meet people in your field.
I live in Vienna austria so everyday. Mostly I take bike or walk and when the weather is rainy public transit. I don't own a car here but I can borrow one if I need it.
Suburbia is the worst of both worlds. The suburban lifestyle is designed around an automobile. Need milk? Drive. Want to catch a movie? Drive. Want to go to the park? Drive. An absolute train wreck that 30 mpg cars and better light bulbs isn't going to solve. The problem is land use not fuel efficiency.
When you start thinking about a world without cars you must start thinking about walking, biking, and public transport. These things really only become viable alternatives with a decent degree of density. I say this because living within walking distance of your job isn't good enough. We must expect that people will have more than one job in their life, and so they need to live close to a wide range of jobs. They need shops for food, clothing, entertainment and what not within walking distance too. In the end, those who enjoy a modern lifestyle are in a city.
This isn't a matter of want. Want is what got us into the current situation, and honestly crammed is a matter of what you are used to. If you want to order furniture by the ton, sure it will be cramped. However, people who can't live in less than 2500 square feet are the same people who don't understand how four people can fit in a Fiat 500. We all need to learn to differentiate between want and need.
Miles per gallon is an answer for the cars that are left, but reevaluating land use is how we are going to address climate change, and that means the suburbs are going to have to die. If you want to live in a village and take less, that can work, but if you want to maintain some modicum of your current suburban lifestyle you are going to end up in a higher density city.
As a former child I would much rather go to the park and have some quality green space than your so-called yard.
Many saw this outcome, not the specific details, but we still couldn't get out in front of the problem. SUV is the symbol of inefficient energy use in America, because it represented a relationship with the planet's resources that says, "if I can afford the upfront cost who are you to tell me I can't have it." We need to actively limit private automobile ownership that is anything less than absolutely necessary for business, or public transport.
I think a nice first step would be for cities with urban density like New York, Chicago, Vienna, London and have more than adequate public transport is just to go ahead and ban private passenger cars within the city. Limit vehicles to Taxis, Buses, and Delivery vehicles. Make all remaining vehicles subject to tough regulation.
Outside the cities raise fuel standards for private cars to at least 30 mpg, and start changing land use to concentrate people into cities so public transportation and foot traffic is viable.
With some radical changes over the next five to ten years we can really start to rein in energy prices, curb greenhouse gas emissions, and breathe a little easier. From there we should look to invest in state-of-the-art public transport that moves us quickly, cleanly, and quietly.
What Steve Jobs and company know is that consumers don't know what they want, and so he believes that Apple, a vertically integrated company, makes a better decision for the consumer than they can.
They tightly control the hardware design, and the software design, and thereby the entire user experience. This is true of every Apple product, since Steve Jobs return. It is this attention to detail that makes people buy their product. So it is no surprise that a company that requires a camera in every MacBook and iMac, insists on locking their phone to a predetermined network, has a line of retail stores that are wildly successful, would also want to control the phone experience by limiting what you can and cannot put on it. Apple doesn't fully trust application developers, nor does it trust users, and users reward Apple by buying their products.
Yes, they will need the Mozilla (Apple) Software Update mechanism to roll-out first.
I initially thought it strange that Apple ported their software update tool to Windows, but now it makes a little more sense. Maybe Apple's plan is to convert Windows users one update at a time to OS X.
Will Slashdot flame the pre-checked install of BSD Subsystem, and Mach Kernel?
It may make sense that Mozilla leverage the Firefox browser at some point to push other technologies they feel aren't getting the attention they deserve. A foundation that is "...dedicated to improving the Internet experience for people everywhere" may think it should install Sunbird and Thunderbird by default. Really what is stupid to you may be quite smart to others.
I think it is an absolutely ridiculous proposition that users will install something because it is 'good' for them. This very concept of 'good' is difficult to define. IE meets all the requirements of the web for users as long as everyone agrees that we live in an exclusively-Microsoft ecosystem. Trying to explain why open-standards, in this environment, are 'good' for people is like trying to explain the virtues of taking public transportation. Public transportation, like using open-standards, is a great idea for other people.
In the case of Apple, they need open-standards to compete against Microsoft. Without web standards there is no competing with IE. The only way to build market share for another browser is leveraging their extremely popular iTunes software to encourage people to try it out. Although the primary way I assume Apple will get Safari to matter is via iPhone. Still they need open standards for Safari to be competitive, and they need Safari to make OS X attractive, and ultimately sell hardware.
The idea that it is 'evil' to push a free browser that is standards-compliant out via their Software Update tool seems dumb. More people pushing for open-standards in the Microsoft ecosystem is a good thing.
I finally found out who could deal with Vista. A sensei. To use the 10th definition from google define, Sensei is a five piece, melodic, rock band from Jacksonville, Florida. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensei (band).
Well Phil Schiller decides to generate a little FUD of his own after the near PR disaster that was the over priced launch. If Apple manages to accidentally or intentionally 'brick' iPhones that have been locked, and then refuse service, they will end up with an open revolt on their hands. They can kiss their halo effect goodbye if that happens. I think Apple has set itself up for a serious stumble with their vendor lock-in move, and any subsequent FUD they are trying to spin about users voiding their warranty via software. Are they going to test in-store for modified firmware? Nope, I am pretty sure this is posturing, trying to scare users back to the loving arms of Apple and AT&T, and when the firmware relocks the phone without incident, people will say 'Thank you Apple.' I for one am not relocking my phone. I have the $700 phone bill for 32MB to data they can shove up their ass first.
As a general rule the quality of advertising on the web is terrible. There are no standards of advertising and a fairly low bar to entry as a content provider. I don't use adblock, but I use Flash blocker which largely accomplishes the same thing. I refuse to look at Flash anything. If content providers don't vet the advertising, insist upon animations and other overt distractions, it is no more immoral that I block their advertising than it is for them to subject me to it. It is poor advertising practice to drive off your customers, or make them resort to technological filters to make the web useful. If an advertiser wants me to see something, try looking to magazines in the target audience field and determine what is reasonable. Content providers need to look at the ads that they are posting on behalf of advertisers and be discriminating. And please, no Flash.
I have no cable, and no aerial. I watch the shows I like, when I like by downloading them from iTunes or watching DVDs on the big screen TV. The two shows I have bought from NBC Universal in the past were Heroes and Battlestar Galactica. So for me this is super-annoying because at the very least I want to know how the final season of BSG ends. I guess NBC Universal has so much money they don't need mine.
Slashdot Mirror
In general, I wouldn't think universities have much to say about the operating system, but the professors in non-CS departments will likely being ignorant of the existence of anything other than Windows and Mac. Although that is rapidly changing. The hard part may be avoiding a Technical Writing class that is basically a "Using MS Word to write a 100 page document class." Also collaboration with other students can be difficult in such classes where you are stuck in a group with students that are only interested in getting the project done and not if you feel the class shouldn't be teaching Microsoft products.
The Linux users at my university mostly negotiated their way around issues, and occasionally fought battles against so-called web apps that were IE only. I am sure your daughter will manage.
Where do you live? I thought the world being screwed was a foregone conclusion.
--
I really doubt your Suburban burns less gasoline unless it broken, sitting on your lawn, with a tarp over it.
Well yeah. Although she shouldn't lather it on too thick, or she might come off as insincere. :)
This girl is typical of the mainstream, and what people often fail to grasp is that Windows is just as technically challenging to use as Linux, but there is a very large and established support infrastructure for Windows and years of conditioning the Windows experience.
As an aside, this girl is really dumb. You mean to tell me she can't find a guy to fix her computer?! Here are some easy to follow instructions:
Go to nearest Department of Computer Science
Find male
Use bedroom voice
Say "fix it."
Blow kiss
The hard part is not ending up with several guys at your apartment... Or maybe that isn't the hard part.
Consumers, can't choose, they don't have nor do they want to be an expert in everything. Technically consumers should choose to ignore products that are harmful to themselves, or way various non-monetary options, but that isn't what the market is. The market always chooses price, and price is only a good way of determining the best price within a given environment. It doesn't help pick the best environment.
I don't buy into the corporatist religion. I choose to be led by smart people that specialize, and that requires active government, business, and people.
For me I choose AT&T over technology. I have no love for the company but GSM/UMTS is a worldwide technology, and for better or worse I am backing the standard. Verizon, and Sprint both deal in proprietary technology, which in my opinion is the real problem in the US. The FCC has allowed companies to use cell technology, nasty contracts, and DRM technologies (SIMLOCK) to provide customer lock-in. IMHO the FCC should dictate the technology, and it should be the same path most countries are on, GSM/UMTS/LTE. They should also disallow the contractual lock-in, and SIM locking.
The government picking a technology standard that enables US customers to have real choice is a good thing.
I guess the reason every compiler uses SSA as an intermediate form is because it delivers such sucky performance. SSA is an intermediate representation of code that facilitates the application of a whole range of optimizations. Potentially, SSA form could be where parallelism is extracted, but the form itself isn't going to give it to you automatically. You are going to need to look for it.
Since SSA is Functional Programming there is no need to learn a language like Haskell or Erlang.
I have heard this from the functional programming community, but from my perspective, functional programming is just another threading strategy. The memory disambiguation problem, while real, isn't the limiting factor in the performance of programs.
If you look at the Wall paper, which was a limit study of instruction-level parallelism, and then the Lam paper, you will see that even with perfect memory disambiguation the amount of parallelism is fairly small. The small size of basic blocks and therefore frequency of conditional branches, is the greatest limiting factor to program performance. Only if you can enlarge basic blocks and/or execute speculatively are you going to see serious improvements on a single processor.
We know instruction-level parallelism on a single processor isn't large, the problem of writing multi-threaded code for multi-core processors, is identifying sufficiently large chunks of code to parallelize. In other words, where ILP occurs for free by the processor, now the compiler or language must identify the threads to take advantage of multiple cores. Further the compiler or language must wrap this code in threads that the operating system understands.
The traditional multi-threading technique is where you set a programmer at his computer and tell him parallelize stuff. The functional programmer will certainly identify parts of the code that can be executed in parallel, but I am not sure that is better than any other thread markup. All programmer threading techniques suffer from the fact that a programmer must see the parallelism in their program or algorithms to take advantage of it.
I believe we are going to see faster software from multi-threading on existing architectures if we find automatic thread identification techniques. Automatic thread identification, like any other compiler optimization, could yield the speed desired, by finding more parallelism in the program than what a human can.
The post:
Now I won't have anywhere to hookup my HD-DVD drive!
was obviously Funny not Insightful.
Firewire was on its way out when it didn't make the cut for iPod, or iPhone and really we don't need two standards. Yes Firewire is faster, but most people have only USB and I think Apple's product choice for their budget laptop reflects that.
Apple doesn't simply follow the herd on cramming every imaginable item into a laptop or computer, they make solid technology choices, and that is why we respect them. Go look at the PC World article on the Macbook where they slam them for DisplayPort instead of HDMI (adapter apparently not good enough), another example of a choice that won't make everyone happy.
If you need Firewire you need a Macbook Pro. Bask in the glory of being a Professional.
If you consdier the German speaking world you will want a Master's. I am sure people will argue about this here, but in that part of Europe the Bachelor's concept is relatively new, and most people you will be competing against have a Diplom. A Diplom is a Master's in the United States and if you want to maximize your job opportunites you will want one. They take academic titles much more seriously in Europe than the US, and it isn't unusual for people to be called by their title and not their name. Also don't be surprised if they ask for things like Leaving Reports from previous jobs, your transcripts from school, and of course your C.V.
For the C.V. it is standard practice to require information that is illegal to ask about in the United States. It will have your date of birth, photograph, gender and what not. For an example try the Europass CV.
I suggest you pick a country, and start taking formal or informal language and cultural courses. I chose German because I felt it offered the best tech opportunites in Europe, and access to all or part of three countries. Try and plan a semester abroad or a summer in the country you think will suit you. Honestly, nothing will motivate you to slog it through the hard part of moving somewhere new, and get you past the depressing fact that you can't communicate. A friend of mine in Vienna said, "I spent almost two years not being funny." Which for her was a big deal because her humor is a big part of who she is.
People have a completely different lifestyle and expectations in Europe, when compared to the US. I really suggest you prepare yourself mentally for a severe lifestyle change. For example the first word we learned in German for a place to live was apartment, not house. They don't buy as much, they eat at home a lot more, you probably won't own a car, food is going to be different, and in general if you haven't been to europe for longer than two weeks you are going to encounter culture shock.
Last but not least you are going to want to set up a home base in the country you are going to live in. Try and hoarde cash, you want to save about 4-5 thousand Euros. You are going to want to live in Europe while looking for a job there. Find a flat mate that will let you live there cheap and start applying around. Newspapers are still a big source of job offers so just scour their websites. Once you get there and are looking for a job you should really get out and try to meet people in your field.
I live in Vienna austria so everyday. Mostly I take bike or walk and when the weather is rainy public transit. I don't own a car here but I can borrow one if I need it.
Suburbia is the worst of both worlds. The suburban lifestyle is designed around an automobile. Need milk? Drive. Want to catch a movie? Drive. Want to go to the park? Drive. An absolute train wreck that 30 mpg cars and better light bulbs isn't going to solve. The problem is land use not fuel efficiency.
When you start thinking about a world without cars you must start thinking about walking, biking, and public transport. These things really only become viable alternatives with a decent degree of density. I say this because living within walking distance of your job isn't good enough. We must expect that people will have more than one job in their life, and so they need to live close to a wide range of jobs. They need shops for food, clothing, entertainment and what not within walking distance too. In the end, those who enjoy a modern lifestyle are in a city.
This isn't a matter of want. Want is what got us into the current situation, and honestly crammed is a matter of what you are used to. If you want to order furniture by the ton, sure it will be cramped. However, people who can't live in less than 2500 square feet are the same people who don't understand how four people can fit in a Fiat 500. We all need to learn to differentiate between want and need.
Miles per gallon is an answer for the cars that are left, but reevaluating land use is how we are going to address climate change, and that means the suburbs are going to have to die. If you want to live in a village and take less, that can work, but if you want to maintain some modicum of your current suburban lifestyle you are going to end up in a higher density city.
As a former child I would much rather go to the park and have some quality green space than your so-called yard.
Many saw this outcome, not the specific details, but we still couldn't get out in front of the problem. SUV is the symbol of inefficient energy use in America, because it represented a relationship with the planet's resources that says, "if I can afford the upfront cost who are you to tell me I can't have it." We need to actively limit private automobile ownership that is anything less than absolutely necessary for business, or public transport.
I think a nice first step would be for cities with urban density like New York, Chicago, Vienna, London and have more than adequate public transport is just to go ahead and ban private passenger cars within the city. Limit vehicles to Taxis, Buses, and Delivery vehicles. Make all remaining vehicles subject to tough regulation.
Outside the cities raise fuel standards for private cars to at least 30 mpg, and start changing land use to concentrate people into cities so public transportation and foot traffic is viable.
With some radical changes over the next five to ten years we can really start to rein in energy prices, curb greenhouse gas emissions, and breathe a little easier. From there we should look to invest in state-of-the-art public transport that moves us quickly, cleanly, and quietly.
What Steve Jobs and company know is that consumers don't know what they want, and so he believes that Apple, a vertically integrated company, makes a better decision for the consumer than they can.
They tightly control the hardware design, and the software design, and thereby the entire user experience. This is true of every Apple product, since Steve Jobs return. It is this attention to detail that makes people buy their product. So it is no surprise that a company that requires a camera in every MacBook and iMac, insists on locking their phone to a predetermined network, has a line of retail stores that are wildly successful, would also want to control the phone experience by limiting what you can and cannot put on it. Apple doesn't fully trust application developers, nor does it trust users, and users reward Apple by buying their products.
Yes, they will need the Mozilla (Apple) Software Update mechanism to roll-out first.
I initially thought it strange that Apple ported their software update tool to Windows, but now it makes a little more sense. Maybe Apple's plan is to convert Windows users one update at a time to OS X.
Will Slashdot flame the pre-checked install of BSD Subsystem, and Mach Kernel?
It may make sense that Mozilla leverage the Firefox browser at some point to push other technologies they feel aren't getting the attention they deserve. A foundation that is "...dedicated to improving the Internet experience for people everywhere" may think it should install Sunbird and Thunderbird by default. Really what is stupid to you may be quite smart to others.
I think it is an absolutely ridiculous proposition that users will install something because it is 'good' for them. This very concept of 'good' is difficult to define. IE meets all the requirements of the web for users as long as everyone agrees that we live in an exclusively-Microsoft ecosystem. Trying to explain why open-standards, in this environment, are 'good' for people is like trying to explain the virtues of taking public transportation. Public transportation, like using open-standards, is a great idea for other people.
In the case of Apple, they need open-standards to compete against Microsoft. Without web standards there is no competing with IE. The only way to build market share for another browser is leveraging their extremely popular iTunes software to encourage people to try it out. Although the primary way I assume Apple will get Safari to matter is via iPhone. Still they need open standards for Safari to be competitive, and they need Safari to make OS X attractive, and ultimately sell hardware.
The idea that it is 'evil' to push a free browser that is standards-compliant out via their Software Update tool seems dumb. More people pushing for open-standards in the Microsoft ecosystem is a good thing.
BTW I love Firefox 3 beta 4.
I finally found out who could deal with Vista. A sensei. To use the 10th definition from google define, Sensei is a five piece, melodic, rock band from Jacksonville, Florida. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensei (band).
Well Phil Schiller decides to generate a little FUD of his own after the near PR disaster that was the over priced launch. If Apple manages to accidentally or intentionally 'brick' iPhones that have been locked, and then refuse service, they will end up with an open revolt on their hands. They can kiss their halo effect goodbye if that happens. I think Apple has set itself up for a serious stumble with their vendor lock-in move, and any subsequent FUD they are trying to spin about users voiding their warranty via software. Are they going to test in-store for modified firmware? Nope, I am pretty sure this is posturing, trying to scare users back to the loving arms of Apple and AT&T, and when the firmware relocks the phone without incident, people will say 'Thank you Apple.' I for one am not relocking my phone. I have the $700 phone bill for 32MB to data they can shove up their ass first.
As a general rule the quality of advertising on the web is terrible. There are no standards of advertising and a fairly low bar to entry as a content provider. I don't use adblock, but I use Flash blocker which largely accomplishes the same thing. I refuse to look at Flash anything. If content providers don't vet the advertising, insist upon animations and other overt distractions, it is no more immoral that I block their advertising than it is for them to subject me to it. It is poor advertising practice to drive off your customers, or make them resort to technological filters to make the web useful. If an advertiser wants me to see something, try looking to magazines in the target audience field and determine what is reasonable. Content providers need to look at the ads that they are posting on behalf of advertisers and be discriminating. And please, no Flash.
Flash - the new animated GIF.
I have no cable, and no aerial. I watch the shows I like, when I like by downloading them from iTunes or watching DVDs on the big screen TV. The two shows I have bought from NBC Universal in the past were Heroes and Battlestar Galactica. So for me this is super-annoying because at the very least I want to know how the final season of BSG ends. I guess NBC Universal has so much money they don't need mine.
Any printer that requires more than a PPD and CUPS to operate is suspect.
If you have component, you can convert to composite or s-video. Third-party manufacturers will love it.