Not that anyone followed that advice, or that the ending would have been much more satisfactory if we had. Though you could tell that it was going downhill when he inserted himself as a character into his own book.
I've likened it to American politics. Most people in either of the two parties have, in the past, been fairly moderate. You get your extremists periodically, and they don't last really long, but they're generally the most vocal and so they appear to represent the party as a whole. Regardless, the moderate ones do make names for themselves when they do great things.
In Rowling's books, you can see similarities. In wizarding history, there have been wizards quite vocal about the blood lines, about muggles, etc. but you also get great leaders from all houses (and other countries) who aren't so extreme.
Nowadays, in America, it seems like everyone really is polarized. Ever politician seems to vote along party lines, and the only way policy changes is during a regime change. Old president leaves office, new one comes in with new ideals (if he's of the opposing party) or with very, very similar ones (same party.) Congress either opposes the president or supports him, but it's usually unanimous and consistent (until now, where the current President's approval rating is through the floor and his party is scrambling to disassociate themselves so that they can get re-elected.)
In modern Potterworld, you seem to have the same situation. Now, all Slytherins stick together, whereas before, there might have been differences.
It probably doesn't help (America) that you've got the football team mentality going on. I've met Republicans who actually believed in a lot of Democrat ideals once you started talking to them, however their parents were Republican, and their grandparents, and great-grandparents...and so they are Republican. And vice-versa, of course (most notably, Democrats who believe in small government.)
There were too many inconsistencies around that wand. It may be attributed to the fact that a lot of what is known about it was hidden in legend, but I'm going to assume that it has more to do with Rowling's weaknesses as a writer and lack of an overall plan for the series.
There are implications that the wand doesn't transfer ownership until its owner has been killed. In the final scene in the headmaster's office, Harry and Dumbledore even say as much ('and if I die a natural death, the wand will have no master?') Harry alludes to the fact that mere disarming is enough to become the wand's master (and indeed, this appears to be why Voldemort kills himself instead of Harry.) This would be fine, but it would appear to mean that if anyone ever disarms Harry in the future, they would gain the wand's fealty. After all, Harry won the Elder Wand, not by taking it from Draco, but by taking Draco's normal wand, long after Dumbledore was buried.
The whole thing felt like a cop out. Rowling probably didn't want Harry to actually kill Voldemort. She didn't want to redeem Voldemort. And yet she had set up the series such that had someone else killed him, huge portions of the series would have to be retconned. I think that she either wrote herself into the corner and failed to adequately get out of it, or she simply hadn't thought everything through like she's done so many times--there are loads of similar inconsistencies throuhout the series.
Don't get me wrong--I love these books. They're great stories. But I would have enjoyed them even more if there had been a little more cohesion from the first book to the last, rather than simply adding some duct tape to tie things together.
Wow, that was a pretty abrasive reply (and I'm not even the person to whom you replied.)
The barrier to entry for spam is higher. That doesn't mean you won't get spam, but it does mean that it's more work for the spammer. Right now, it's trivial to automate spam. It's slightly less trivial to automate creating Facebook accounts, logging in, passing the captchas, etc.
He's also right about the authentication issue. E-mail can be spoofed. Though efforts have been made to mitigate this, there hasn't been a magic bullet solution yet. Social-networking (and most instant messaging network) messages are generally spoofable only through a vulnerability (like XSS) or through a compromised login/password. So generally speaking, you should always know which account sent you the message.
They provide a place for people who can't figure out how to make an RSS feed.
Facebook, Myspace, Livejournal, etc. work because they handle the gritty details. The user doesn't have to set up any software or do any configuration in order to participate in the online community. It's also aggregate--rather than bookmarking all of your friends' websites, you just add them as a friend on whatever social networking site you're on. Want to send them a quick message or 'poke' or something? The links are right there. With individual websites, some users might not implement all the features. Face it, people want a consistent experience (which is part of the reason that Linux has failed on the desktop until very recently.)
These sites make it easy, and the general population will gravitate towards things that are easy.
Wireless ethernet cable is a joke. The rest of my post was meant to be serious:)
Some of us who joke about how much big retailers rip people off on cables (the markup is absurdly high) have suggested that Big Box retailer start selling wireless ethernet cables to go with their wireless routers.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of Bluetooth keyboards/mice. Either you have to charge them on a dock (which has a power cable), rechargeable batteries (which have to plug in somewhere, but you can opt to plug it in elsewhere, technically), or you're constantly buying batteries to power the thing.
You also forgot the power to the desktop itself.
Then, on top of that, I'm always running wireless ethernet cable all over the damned house....
Generally speaking, heat is bad for batteries. If you' leave the battery plugged in, it probably is warmer than if you unplugged it. But I don't imagine it saves it that much.
I'm still a fan of docking stations, as long as they work. I haven't had any bad luck with them so far, except that they sometimes screw up my mouse in Linux. I'll plug the machine into the docking station, and the trackpad loses its extended abilities (still functions as a mouse, but no scrolling, etc.) I'm sure it's something that can be fixed, but I haven't taken the time to track down how.
Incidentally, BookEndz makes a "docking station" for the Macbook Pro, which is basically just a set of mounted connectors which can slide into place to minimize the physical number of things that you have to plug in. I'm not describing it well, so here you go: http://www.bookendzdocks.com/Docking_Stations-Dock ing_Station_for_15_MacBook_Pro.html
They're pricey, but they're damned convenient (in my opinion.)
The prediction overlooks far too many inconveniences that technology hasn't yet resolved.
The need to regularly plug in the laptop. Yeah. I can't tell you how tethered I feel with my laptop, now that the battery is half dead. I can barely use it for an hour without recharging it. It's much better with my desktop, which never has to be recharged.
You're talking different eras. Maybe people today are more in touch with civil rights issues. Or maybe the media realizes that it's a great way to stir up the hornet's nest and get viewers/readers.
I've read a few stories about this issue, though I've not read how it was initially discovered.
You're right that someone might feel that FOSS is more secure, and thus be less likely to vet it themselves. If everyone does this, this means that the 'thousand eyes' theory is flawed. However, it seems likely that this flaw was discovered when someone took a closer look at their/bin, either because an update caused printing to fail, or because their daily scripts noticed the changes. Either way, with a closed source binary, this is basically the first opportunity you have to notice the strange behavior. No one is going to install the software and then check their system for weird behavior. At best, they might use tripwire, which would alert them quickly to the changes. Manual inspection of changes made to the system after software is installed simply doesn't happen unless you're suspicious in the first place. Hell, FOSS could make changes to the system that you didn't expect.
If the code was open, however, at least the possibility would exist. All of the checks you and I mentioned above would still be true--tripwire would fire if FOSS made these modifications. The SUID checking scripts would note the new files. An update to Open Office would still cause printing to break. In addition, though, people could read through the source. It's one more way that people might notice that something's up. Because of the additional methods of detection, it might have been discovered sooner. Maybe it wouldn't have--we'll never know. But that chance exists, and I think that's all that the poster you've been replying to was saying.
First of all, you make a quite large and erroneous assumption. I actually have a CRT HDTV, so there isn't the fixed-pixel problem you mention.
Second, one of the benefits of an upscaling DVD player is that it produces a signal which is, natively, one of the common HD resolutions. No TV that I've seen takes the digital data on the disc and rescales it to the appropriate resolution--rather, they take the signal and scale it. This can lead to distortion and/or unnecessary bits of the picture being cut off. Scaling on the DVD player tends to eliminate this, from what I've seen. Your TV gets a 720p, 1080i, or 1080p signal and displays it as expected. You might have black bars, depending upon the disc, but you don't lose picture, and you don't get distorted picture.
Your arguments are wholly unsupported. I at least provided a link which gave some data.
Also, you don't have to be confrontational to get your point across. "I suppose you could substitute your own reality?" That was unnecessary to a good argument. I'll be ignoring further posts by you.
Lots of problems here.
What I've noticed recently was that when marketshare numbers where put out on HD players, they would note later on that the PS3 shipments were excluded and that, IMO, shows that HD-DVD is losing. If you buy a Bluray player, there's a damned good chance that you bought it to play Bluray discs. If you buy an HD-DVD player, there's a damned good chance that you bought it to play HD-DVDs. But according to one report, 70% of console owners don't realize that their game systems play DVD discs[1]. It seems like including every PS3 purchase (many of which were returned due to problems/lack of games) as a Bluray player sale artificially inflates the success of Bluray. Excluding them entirely may not be fair, but including them probably skews the conclusion even more.
Who in their right mind wouldn't pick up a PS3 for their HD video( BluRay ) player when for maybe $100 you get a 3rd Gen game console thrown in? Someone who doesn't want a 3rg Gen console? Someone who would rather have HD-DVD for some reason (personally, there aren't a lot of Bluray movies I'd be interested in.) Someone who wants a combo player?
Universal... recently also [shut] off Apple from it's music portfolio by not renewing their iTunes license. Untrue untrue untrue! Universal declined to renew a long-term contract, opting for a short-term one which gives them more bargaining power. Universal music will continue to remain on iTunes.
While tempting, I still don't want to get caught with a device only supported by such a limited market. For $100, I'd do it. I've been wanting an upscaling DVD player, anyway, and those tend to cost around $60. Who in their right mind wouldn't pay an extra $40 for a 2nd gen DVD player if they're buying an upscaling DVD player anyway?
This is the first time that I'd heard about the volume management stuff. That's really fantastic! It's honestly something I would expect out of Apple, rather than Microsoft.
Integrated search - Works as well as Spotlight for me, and I thought Spotlight was the best thing since sliced bread. I've never used Spotlight except for when I'm trying to find something that someone else created on the computer. It does work well, but I don't need it.
They have been, since OS X 10.0, Linux 2 and Windows 2000, incremental. For the money you're paying (to upgrade, much less buy the full version), it should be more than an incremental update.
If you find yourself in this situation, well, I hate to my bones to say it, but if you didn't do anything wrong, what do you have to be worried about??? Yeah. Right now, if you're at the point where they get to demand your password, you're pretty well in their power entirely. Although you maintain some rights (unless you're classified as an emeny combatant) the right to privacy is largely gone at this point.
People don't understand economics. They don't get that bulk is cheaper. They don't understand that training on support for 5% of the sales costs the same as training for support on 95% of the sales, and that it doesn't make any business sense to bother with that 5% unless you're going to recoup your costs. They don't understand that Dell gets to price things however they want, even if it ends up killing one of their lines, or their business entirely.
Yes, the same program on a different OS should take up the same amount of memory, however you don't typically run the same programs on different OS. You run ports in some cases (Office for Mac, which is developed by an entirely different team from Office for Windows) and completely different software in others. You're comparing Apples to Volkswagons if you try to compare things this way.
A subjective comparison of the user experience with the varying types of RAM is really the only way to go. You could try things like startup times of the office software, web browser, etc. but there are many differences in little things like caching, preloading, etc. that will screw up objective tests that only examine processor, disk, and/or RAM.
And a 300MB div-x file takes 300MB, no matter what OS, etc. More or less true, but the pedant in me needs to point out that you can have variance based upon the (in)efficiencies of the file system. A 300MB file might REALLY take up 400MB on an inefficient file system, whereas on a more efficient one, it might only take up 320MB. Also, the base install of the OS matters. If Windows is 5GB, and Ubuntu is 1GB, then it makes sense to give Windows purchasers a little more space, since they're losing it to the OS.
I guess the point is, Linux and Windows are different beasts, and it's really hard to objectively compare them. Regardless, I imagine that the extra deals for Windows users are simply there because Dell is only halfway serious about promoting Linux. Or because the deals/promotions are semi-random. Or a combination of the two. It's definitely a different model number, so I could even see them accidentally neglecting the Linux line because the marketer didn't think about it.
I'm not the original poster.
Then remove the applet from the panel. If you right click on it, you will see an option to "remove from panel." Actually, you won't see an option to remove it from the panel, because that icon appears in the notification area, rather than the panel. To remove the networking icon by your method, you would have to remove the entire notification panel, which can have other (useful) icons.
I haven't yet found a way to remove that icon, but I also haven't tried that much. My screen real-estate isn't super precious (1900x1200 on my notebook, where I want the icon anyway, and 1600x1200 on my desktop.)
As a Ubuntu user since 6.05, I have to say that for me it does 'just work'.
Me, too, 95% of the time. I've played around with Ubuntu since the second 5.xx release, and used it more or less full-time since 6.05. Not only was it great then, it's constantly improving.
Why is the bottom panel on my desktop missing about 20% of the time? I have to log out and log back in. Usually it comes back, sometimes it takes 2 logins.
I have never had this problem, but it seems your gnome setup has some problems (I'm assuming it's not just your screen resolution not displaying the bottom of the screen).
I've never had this problem with Ubuntu, but I have had it with Gnome under other distributions (Gentoo, several years ago.)
Why is the application built into Ubuntu to play music named "Movie Player"?
It's not, I've never seen Rythmbox (Ubuntu's music player) called "Movie Player". The "Movie Player" (Totem, I think) can play MP3s, but that isn't what it setup as default for music files.
I think you're wrong, there. I've never modified my player settings or file associations, and double-clicking an mp3 in Nautilus brings up Totem. This is a stock 7.04 install.
Why do I just get a black square when playing a movie with Movie Player? If I move the window I see the movie playing, but the black box comes back as soon as I drop the window.
It sounds like your video card driver hasn't properly implemented video playback in X11.
Indeed. I bet he's using an ATI card. I've seen lots of problems with that driver--whereas the nv or Nvidia binary driver both work great for everyone I talk to.
Why, when I explicity specify I want 2 workspace, does the second workspace disappear and I'm left with one for half of my logins? Even when I do get 2 the second one has no panels at all 75% of the time.
Again, I've never had this problem. It seems you have something seriously broken in Gnome. Try creating a new user account and logging in with that and don't change anything with Gnome when you do. If the new account has the same problems, the Gnome install is hosed, re-install it. If the new account is fine, then it's something you did in your account that is causing the problems.
Interestingly, I experienced this problem just the other day. I had a video file that just wouldn't play on my machine (through either Totem or mplayer), so I started troubleshooting. Tried another video driver in mplayer, and it started working. Tried switching off Desktop Effects (which was only on for the Expose-like feature, anyway), and suddenly I lost my desktops. Turned them back on, and I still only had one. It's definitely a bug, but one that I haven't been able to recreate so far. That said, it's one bug so far. How many bugs have you seen in Windows? OS X?
Why can't I Add/Remove certain software from Add/Remove? Why does it even show up on the list with a checkbox if all it is going to is tell me to run Synaptic?
I've heard this complaint before, and honestly it sounds like some stupid configuration. I can't say that I've ever actually used Add/Remove, I prefer synaptic for everything, but this seems a legitimate bug.
Agreed. Add/Remove should really call Synaptic, and anything in there which is not currently in a repository should probably be moved there.
Why is the Software Update notification so annoying? I know Linux generally makes poor use of screen space, but why is the popup so huge? Why isn't it transparent like every other popup on a modern desktop?
Uh, huge? It's tiny for me. What is your screen resolution? Are you running 640x480? Because that might be causing some of your other Gnome display problems
Right. Getting into bed with Microsoft means that your business expansion opportunities aren't limited by the computers and software that you use. Decide you want to get into CAD? No problem. AutoCAD runs on your current infrastructure.
A company which runs Linux on the desktop isn't going to have the option of moving to AutoCAD without introducing Windows into the mix. That's not to say that bringing in one Windows machine for this specific purpose is unreasonable, necessarily, but it does grant Microsoft a license to audit your infrastructure (it's right there in the EULA--check it out.) It also means you have to deal with interoperability issues in the other direction. Can Windows talk to all of your other machines? Can it share files? You have to do similar testing and evaluation as one would have to do migrating from Windows to Linux.
Microsoft managed to gain market dominance, and software developers followed suit. It only makes sense in the general case--you code to the marketshare where you have the most potential customers, and for general purpose desktops, that's Windows. But now that their dominance is so large and the gap so wide, they've very nearly got carte blanche to dictate how things are going to work. Interoperability with competitors is taboo, and unnecessary for the same reasons that people code for Windows--why interoperate with less than 5% of the market?
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, he warned us not to read the epilogue.
Not that anyone followed that advice, or that the ending would have been much more satisfactory if we had. Though you could tell that it was going downhill when he inserted himself as a character into his own book.
I've likened it to American politics. Most people in either of the two parties have, in the past, been fairly moderate. You get your extremists periodically, and they don't last really long, but they're generally the most vocal and so they appear to represent the party as a whole. Regardless, the moderate ones do make names for themselves when they do great things.
In Rowling's books, you can see similarities. In wizarding history, there have been wizards quite vocal about the blood lines, about muggles, etc. but you also get great leaders from all houses (and other countries) who aren't so extreme.
Nowadays, in America, it seems like everyone really is polarized. Ever politician seems to vote along party lines, and the only way policy changes is during a regime change. Old president leaves office, new one comes in with new ideals (if he's of the opposing party) or with very, very similar ones (same party.) Congress either opposes the president or supports him, but it's usually unanimous and consistent (until now, where the current President's approval rating is through the floor and his party is scrambling to disassociate themselves so that they can get re-elected.)
In modern Potterworld, you seem to have the same situation. Now, all Slytherins stick together, whereas before, there might have been differences.
It probably doesn't help (America) that you've got the football team mentality going on. I've met Republicans who actually believed in a lot of Democrat ideals once you started talking to them, however their parents were Republican, and their grandparents, and great-grandparents...and so they are Republican. And vice-versa, of course (most notably, Democrats who believe in small government.)
There were too many inconsistencies around that wand. It may be attributed to the fact that a lot of what is known about it was hidden in legend, but I'm going to assume that it has more to do with Rowling's weaknesses as a writer and lack of an overall plan for the series.
There are implications that the wand doesn't transfer ownership until its owner has been killed. In the final scene in the headmaster's office, Harry and Dumbledore even say as much ('and if I die a natural death, the wand will have no master?') Harry alludes to the fact that mere disarming is enough to become the wand's master (and indeed, this appears to be why Voldemort kills himself instead of Harry.) This would be fine, but it would appear to mean that if anyone ever disarms Harry in the future, they would gain the wand's fealty. After all, Harry won the Elder Wand, not by taking it from Draco, but by taking Draco's normal wand, long after Dumbledore was buried.
The whole thing felt like a cop out. Rowling probably didn't want Harry to actually kill Voldemort. She didn't want to redeem Voldemort. And yet she had set up the series such that had someone else killed him, huge portions of the series would have to be retconned. I think that she either wrote herself into the corner and failed to adequately get out of it, or she simply hadn't thought everything through like she's done so many times--there are loads of similar inconsistencies throuhout the series.
Don't get me wrong--I love these books. They're great stories. But I would have enjoyed them even more if there had been a little more cohesion from the first book to the last, rather than simply adding some duct tape to tie things together.
Wow, that was a pretty abrasive reply (and I'm not even the person to whom you replied.)
The barrier to entry for spam is higher. That doesn't mean you won't get spam, but it does mean that it's more work for the spammer. Right now, it's trivial to automate spam. It's slightly less trivial to automate creating Facebook accounts, logging in, passing the captchas, etc.
He's also right about the authentication issue. E-mail can be spoofed. Though efforts have been made to mitigate this, there hasn't been a magic bullet solution yet. Social-networking (and most instant messaging network) messages are generally spoofable only through a vulnerability (like XSS) or through a compromised login/password. So generally speaking, you should always know which account sent you the message.
They provide a place for people who can't figure out how to make an RSS feed.
Facebook, Myspace, Livejournal, etc. work because they handle the gritty details. The user doesn't have to set up any software or do any configuration in order to participate in the online community. It's also aggregate--rather than bookmarking all of your friends' websites, you just add them as a friend on whatever social networking site you're on. Want to send them a quick message or 'poke' or something? The links are right there. With individual websites, some users might not implement all the features. Face it, people want a consistent experience (which is part of the reason that Linux has failed on the desktop until very recently.)
These sites make it easy, and the general population will gravitate towards things that are easy.
Wireless ethernet cable is a joke. The rest of my post was meant to be serious :)
Some of us who joke about how much big retailers rip people off on cables (the markup is absurdly high) have suggested that Big Box retailer start selling wireless ethernet cables to go with their wireless routers.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of Bluetooth keyboards/mice. Either you have to charge them on a dock (which has a power cable), rechargeable batteries (which have to plug in somewhere, but you can opt to plug it in elsewhere, technically), or you're constantly buying batteries to power the thing.
You also forgot the power to the desktop itself.
Then, on top of that, I'm always running wireless ethernet cable all over the damned house....
Generally speaking, heat is bad for batteries. If you' leave the battery plugged in, it probably is warmer than if you unplugged it. But I don't imagine it saves it that much.
I'm still a fan of docking stations, as long as they work. I haven't had any bad luck with them so far, except that they sometimes screw up my mouse in Linux. I'll plug the machine into the docking station, and the trackpad loses its extended abilities (still functions as a mouse, but no scrolling, etc.) I'm sure it's something that can be fixed, but I haven't taken the time to track down how.
k ing_Station_for_15_MacBook_Pro.html
Incidentally, BookEndz makes a "docking station" for the Macbook Pro, which is basically just a set of mounted connectors which can slide into place to minimize the physical number of things that you have to plug in. I'm not describing it well, so here you go:
http://www.bookendzdocks.com/Docking_Stations-Doc
They're pricey, but they're damned convenient (in my opinion.)
The need to regularly plug in the laptop. Yeah. I can't tell you how tethered I feel with my laptop, now that the battery is half dead. I can barely use it for an hour without recharging it. It's much better with my desktop, which never has to be recharged.
You're talking different eras. Maybe people today are more in touch with civil rights issues. Or maybe the media realizes that it's a great way to stir up the hornet's nest and get viewers/readers.
I've read a few stories about this issue, though I've not read how it was initially discovered.
/bin, either because an update caused printing to fail, or because their daily scripts noticed the changes. Either way, with a closed source binary, this is basically the first opportunity you have to notice the strange behavior. No one is going to install the software and then check their system for weird behavior. At best, they might use tripwire, which would alert them quickly to the changes. Manual inspection of changes made to the system after software is installed simply doesn't happen unless you're suspicious in the first place. Hell, FOSS could make changes to the system that you didn't expect.
You're right that someone might feel that FOSS is more secure, and thus be less likely to vet it themselves. If everyone does this, this means that the 'thousand eyes' theory is flawed. However, it seems likely that this flaw was discovered when someone took a closer look at their
If the code was open, however, at least the possibility would exist. All of the checks you and I mentioned above would still be true--tripwire would fire if FOSS made these modifications. The SUID checking scripts would note the new files. An update to Open Office would still cause printing to break. In addition, though, people could read through the source. It's one more way that people might notice that something's up. Because of the additional methods of detection, it might have been discovered sooner. Maybe it wouldn't have--we'll never know. But that chance exists, and I think that's all that the poster you've been replying to was saying.
And it has the benefit of not requiring that you purchase a spare controller.
First of all, you make a quite large and erroneous assumption. I actually have a CRT HDTV, so there isn't the fixed-pixel problem you mention.
Second, one of the benefits of an upscaling DVD player is that it produces a signal which is, natively, one of the common HD resolutions. No TV that I've seen takes the digital data on the disc and rescales it to the appropriate resolution--rather, they take the signal and scale it. This can lead to distortion and/or unnecessary bits of the picture being cut off. Scaling on the DVD player tends to eliminate this, from what I've seen. Your TV gets a 720p, 1080i, or 1080p signal and displays it as expected. You might have black bars, depending upon the disc, but you don't lose picture, and you don't get distorted picture.
Your arguments are wholly unsupported. I at least provided a link which gave some data.
Also, you don't have to be confrontational to get your point across. "I suppose you could substitute your own reality?" That was unnecessary to a good argument. I'll be ignoring further posts by you.
Good day to you, sir.
A forensics expert is going to know about ADS. There are plenty of utilities to search them out.
Thanks! I'm really quite capable of searching Google; I was just trying to see how obvious it was from within Ubuntu.
People don't understand economics. They don't get that bulk is cheaper. They don't understand that training on support for 5% of the sales costs the same as training for support on 95% of the sales, and that it doesn't make any business sense to bother with that 5% unless you're going to recoup your costs. They don't understand that Dell gets to price things however they want, even if it ends up killing one of their lines, or their business entirely.
That sense of entitlement is a bitch, huh?
A subjective comparison of the user experience with the varying types of RAM is really the only way to go. You could try things like startup times of the office software, web browser, etc. but there are many differences in little things like caching, preloading, etc. that will screw up objective tests that only examine processor, disk, and/or RAM. And a 300MB div-x file takes 300MB, no matter what OS, etc. More or less true, but the pedant in me needs to point out that you can have variance based upon the (in)efficiencies of the file system. A 300MB file might REALLY take up 400MB on an inefficient file system, whereas on a more efficient one, it might only take up 320MB. Also, the base install of the OS matters. If Windows is 5GB, and Ubuntu is 1GB, then it makes sense to give Windows purchasers a little more space, since they're losing it to the OS.
I guess the point is, Linux and Windows are different beasts, and it's really hard to objectively compare them. Regardless, I imagine that the extra deals for Windows users are simply there because Dell is only halfway serious about promoting Linux. Or because the deals/promotions are semi-random. Or a combination of the two. It's definitely a different model number, so I could even see them accidentally neglecting the Linux line because the marketer didn't think about it.
I haven't yet found a way to remove that icon, but I also haven't tried that much. My screen real-estate isn't super precious (1900x1200 on my notebook, where I want the icon anyway, and 1600x1200 on my desktop.)
And yet Ubuntu doesn't 'just work'.
As a Ubuntu user since 6.05, I have to say that for me it does 'just work'.
Me, too, 95% of the time. I've played around with Ubuntu since the second 5.xx release, and used it more or less full-time since 6.05. Not only was it great then, it's constantly improving.
Why is the bottom panel on my desktop missing about 20% of the time? I have to log out and log back in. Usually it comes back, sometimes it takes 2 logins.
I have never had this problem, but it seems your gnome setup has some problems (I'm assuming it's not just your screen resolution not displaying the bottom of the screen).
I've never had this problem with Ubuntu, but I have had it with Gnome under other distributions (Gentoo, several years ago.)
Why is the application built into Ubuntu to play music named "Movie Player"?
It's not, I've never seen Rythmbox (Ubuntu's music player) called "Movie Player". The "Movie Player" (Totem, I think) can play MP3s, but that isn't what it setup as default for music files.
I think you're wrong, there. I've never modified my player settings or file associations, and double-clicking an mp3 in Nautilus brings up Totem. This is a stock 7.04 install.
Why do I just get a black square when playing a movie with Movie Player? If I move the window I see the movie playing, but the black box comes back as soon as I drop the window.
It sounds like your video card driver hasn't properly implemented video playback in X11.
Indeed. I bet he's using an ATI card. I've seen lots of problems with that driver--whereas the nv or Nvidia binary driver both work great for everyone I talk to.
Why, when I explicity specify I want 2 workspace, does the second workspace disappear and I'm left with one for half of my logins? Even when I do get 2 the second one has no panels at all 75% of the time.
Again, I've never had this problem. It seems you have something seriously broken in Gnome. Try creating a new user account and logging in with that and don't change anything with Gnome when you do. If the new account has the same problems, the Gnome install is hosed, re-install it. If the new account is fine, then it's something you did in your account that is causing the problems.
Interestingly, I experienced this problem just the other day. I had a video file that just wouldn't play on my machine (through either Totem or mplayer), so I started troubleshooting. Tried another video driver in mplayer, and it started working. Tried switching off Desktop Effects (which was only on for the Expose-like feature, anyway), and suddenly I lost my desktops. Turned them back on, and I still only had one. It's definitely a bug, but one that I haven't been able to recreate so far. That said, it's one bug so far. How many bugs have you seen in Windows? OS X?
Why can't I Add/Remove certain software from Add/Remove? Why does it even show up on the list with a checkbox if all it is going to is tell me to run Synaptic?
I've heard this complaint before, and honestly it sounds like some stupid configuration. I can't say that I've ever actually used Add/Remove, I prefer synaptic for everything, but this seems a legitimate bug.
Agreed. Add/Remove should really call Synaptic, and anything in there which is not currently in a repository should probably be moved there.
Why is the Software Update notification so annoying? I know Linux generally makes poor use of screen space, but why is the popup so huge? Why isn't it transparent like every other popup on a modern desktop?
Uh, huge? It's tiny for me. What is your screen resolution? Are you running 640x480? Because that might be causing some of your other Gnome display problems
Right. Getting into bed with Microsoft means that your business expansion opportunities aren't limited by the computers and software that you use. Decide you want to get into CAD? No problem. AutoCAD runs on your current infrastructure.
A company which runs Linux on the desktop isn't going to have the option of moving to AutoCAD without introducing Windows into the mix. That's not to say that bringing in one Windows machine for this specific purpose is unreasonable, necessarily, but it does grant Microsoft a license to audit your infrastructure (it's right there in the EULA--check it out.) It also means you have to deal with interoperability issues in the other direction. Can Windows talk to all of your other machines? Can it share files? You have to do similar testing and evaluation as one would have to do migrating from Windows to Linux.
Microsoft managed to gain market dominance, and software developers followed suit. It only makes sense in the general case--you code to the marketshare where you have the most potential customers, and for general purpose desktops, that's Windows. But now that their dominance is so large and the gap so wide, they've very nearly got carte blanche to dictate how things are going to work. Interoperability with competitors is taboo, and unnecessary for the same reasons that people code for Windows--why interoperate with less than 5% of the market?
This is absolutely nothing like toothpaste.