If Windows would indeed "just plain work", I personally know A LOT OF people that would be out of their jobs. I made the switch, because Debian (which still sucks, but much less so than other operating systems I encountered) gave me sooooo many less headaches than Windows.
Did you ever touch a computer before you wrote this comment?
FYI Windows does work with a bunch of stuff pretty good for a couple reasons. One of them simply, because it comes preinstalled and preconfigured on and for the computer sold with it and the user doesn't do much more than just surf the web with the machine. And even still Windows does NOT "just plain work" in this setting. To surf the web the user has to get some anti virus solution and some anti spyware solution as well and keep some updated. The other reason is simply because it is a monopoly all hardware makers design their hardware to work with it (and write drivers for it).
Apple OSX maybe is an OS that "just plain works", but here again just because they preinstall it. No installation or configuration headache for the user. Have you installed Windows XP lately? Or compared that to an installation of Fedora or Ubuntu? Most Linux distributions geared towards the end user are much easier to install than Windows.
Because the market itself is growing very fast. Even if the market share for Linux on the desktop would remain the same it would mean lots more Linux desktops out there.
Also have you considered that 0.81% is more than twice as much as 0.37%? If Linux on the desktop can keep up that growth rate another 5 to 7 years it will end up at more than 120% market share;-)
They need to lock down their OS, because they want to sell their overpriced hardware along. Same with all their devices. They need to make it easy to develope for the Mac, because the PC is all about the apps. But not (yet) in the phone market. So there is actually no reason for them to let you run your own apps. OTOH Symbian is about as open as Windows. Same with the Linux Motorola sells with their phones. But at least you can develope for Symbian and sell you apps.
We live in a world where terrorism is supposed to be the biggest threat to humankind. Especially in the country where the Dreamliner ist built they wage a so called "Global War on Terror (GWOT)". The money spent on this war and the additional money that went into security measures on the ground in relation to the lives lost or the potential lives lost to terror in the future is beyond any sane comparison. For example: Even if you believe that there is only a very limited chance (lets say 10%) that global warming is in some part connected to the emision of greenhouse gases like methane or carbon dioxide the investment/benefit ratio in that area is so redicilously low compared to the fight against terror it is not even funny (especially, since this is a global issue and does not only effect Americans). At this point I won't go into traffic safety, disease control (like developement and treatment in vaccines) or simply health care, because those are so much better researched that any comparison to terror in the investment/benefit ratio would be outrageous. I also don't want to go into the problems caused by limiting freedom in many ways (it does cost a lot of money to listen in on every telepone call).
And anyone here is surprised that shit like "carbon is unsafe, so we shouldn't fly Boeing" works in said country?
I thought they would freshen up the Lotus SmartSuit and release it for free. Now that would have been news. A new competitor on the market backed by a million dollar company.
But they will just rename OpenOffice.Org That won't change anything except maybe hurt the OpenOffice brand.
If you are in a noisy environment (car, subway, work) you want compression (e.g. loudness), because otherwise you either won't hear the quiet parts or blow your ears out on the loud parts. If you have a decent stereo (or decent headphones) and listen to the music in a quiet environment it sounds much better if there is less compression. I suppose this would even go for clubs. I have never used compression when playing prerecorded music to an audience.
Since nowdays you could get decent compression out of an el cheapo chip in your average mp3 player (I dunno, do they already put those in?) they could go back to produce albums with some dynamic range. I mean you wouldn't even hear it if your mp3 player compression isn't the best, because you are in a noisy environment anyways. Radio stations compress it anyways.
This way everyone wins. But the record industry has a much better idea. They are just going to sell you two versions of each song. One for home and one for the car. This way they can retain at least part of the income they used to generate when people had to buy a new media of the same content they already purchased, because they couldn't back up their songs and their old media broke. Maybe they will do much more than two versions. How about one more for the computer, one more for running etc. -> Damn, I should be a music industry exec.
The lower the marketshare, the lower the chance that your browser ist targeted by malware authors. Since Firefox is gaining at such a great speed I have started to advise Windows users to use Opera for security reasons. Other than for security neither Firefox, IE7, nor Opera make a difference for the casual PC user.
Personally I use Iceweasel, because it comes directly from my good ol' trusted repository, but I also have Opera installed and use it as a secondary browser for sites that don't work in Firefox. I also prefer the cookie management in Firefox to that in Opera. Opera used to be way ahead, but they stopped making progress on that front a long time ago. Though I realize that privacy is more of a myth now with special Flash and Java supercookies and the likes that never show up anywhere.
The playing surface is the silver surface that has the wrtiting on it. Just the underside. The surface you are probabely referring to is the underside, which is a very durable transparent layer, that is very thick compared to the actual playing surface. The laser reads through that. Good players shouldn't give a damn about most scratches.
Some other posters already mentioned all the other stuff that you got wrong in your post, but I thought I would mention this bit, because most people get this one wrong.
To everyone their own sever! Just kidding, but imagine that: Too old hardware so you can't upgrade? Never again with hardware virtualization. No I know that this probabely wouldn't work with very old hardware, because the performance loss would be too great, but remember this, when setting up your next system. Time to get into Xen! They promise almost no performance loss with the new processors.
This will only lead to the use of proxies to edit entries. Especially for companies that sell the service to keep the internet clean for anyone who is paying.
I would install a Debian server using the minimum install cds and then apt-getting just the services I need from the mirrors (which should have current patches). I mean, if it is going to be a server it should have a somewhat fast internet connection, right?
As well as www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu www.dell.de/ubuntu also presents an Ubuntu page in German with the same results if you click on the links.
The only option for the Inspiron 6400 in Germany remains Windows Vista for now (going through the normal www.dell.de pages). They don't even have XP any more. I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot pole before the first service pack comes out.
Are there notebooks with Ubuntu that have a modem built in? A modem can be your only option on the road sometimes. And I even got my brothers Thinkpad A20 modem to work with Debian.
I bought r200 hardware exactly because of this and I am still running it.
Ati Radeon 9200 or 9250. Cheap and passiv cooling. The computer I am running right now has r300 (free drivers) though. The Radeon 9550 is also passivly cooled. The reason I am running it is because a friend dropped it.
and they have a hard time catching up. Maybe they will finally "get it" and release the specs. I think the Open Source Windows drivers will also be a favourite for their stability and lack of bugs. Game developers could also check much better what went wrong and will send in bug reports. Open Specs would help Ati in the Windows market as well.
And it should come as soon as possible, because the USA is loosing it's control over the Internet. Just make something like the ICRA mandatory by law and the filters that parents install can be much more usefull. Then parents can decide what their children can see and the internet still stay free. If they would implement this now and put some pressure on other countries they could set a standard. You then can choose yourself what to see and what not.
will be corrected in the next edition. So the Encyclopedia Britannica even gets some 'wisdom of crowds' in addtion to their own editors. The best of two worlds, and it would not have been possible without Wikipedia. Hurray for competition, hurray for Britannica, hurray for Wikipedia.
I bet that Wikipedia editors sectetly read the Encyclopedia Britannica.
I guess all those computers are botnets (check out the other connections, DoD is only one among a whole bunch of seemingly random international sites including a couple universities from Brazil and China) trying to get more bots using security holes and trying if they have yet been patched on random IPs.
Because those are trying to connect TO his computer from the outside, not the other way around.
What a load of bullcrap. Where does/. pick up its editors?
Slashdot Mirror
CivII?
FreeCiv has about the same gameplay and is the open source game with the longes running developement.
freeciv.org
Ports for all major (and many minor) platforms available.
If Windows would indeed "just plain work", I personally know A LOT OF people that would be out of their jobs. I made the switch, because Debian (which still sucks, but much less so than other operating systems I encountered) gave me sooooo many less headaches than Windows.
Did you ever touch a computer before you wrote this comment?
FYI Windows does work with a bunch of stuff pretty good for a couple reasons. One of them simply, because it comes preinstalled and preconfigured on and for the computer sold with it and the user doesn't do much more than just surf the web with the machine. And even still Windows does NOT "just plain work" in this setting. To surf the web the user has to get some anti virus solution and some anti spyware solution as well and keep some updated. The other reason is simply because it is a monopoly all hardware makers design their hardware to work with it (and write drivers for it).
Apple OSX maybe is an OS that "just plain works", but here again just because they preinstall it. No installation or configuration headache for the user. Have you installed Windows XP lately? Or compared that to an installation of Fedora or Ubuntu? Most Linux distributions geared towards the end user are much easier to install than Windows.
Because the market itself is growing very fast. Even if the market share for Linux on the desktop would remain the same it would mean lots more Linux desktops out there.
;-)
Also have you considered that 0.81% is more than twice as much as 0.37%? If Linux on the desktop can keep up that growth rate another 5 to 7 years it will end up at more than 120% market share
it will be the only platform to run Duke Nukem Forever.
They need to lock down their OS, because they want to sell their overpriced hardware along. Same with all their devices. They need to make it easy to develope for the Mac, because the PC is all about the apps. But not (yet) in the phone market. So there is actually no reason for them to let you run your own apps.
OTOH Symbian is about as open as Windows. Same with the Linux Motorola sells with their phones. But at least you can develope for Symbian and sell you apps.
We live in a world where terrorism is supposed to be the biggest threat to humankind. Especially in the country where the Dreamliner ist built they wage a so called "Global War on Terror (GWOT)". The money spent on this war and the additional money that went into security measures on the ground in relation to the lives lost or the potential lives lost to terror in the future is beyond any sane comparison.
For example: Even if you believe that there is only a very limited chance (lets say 10%) that global warming is in some part connected to the emision of greenhouse gases like methane or carbon dioxide the investment/benefit ratio in that area is so redicilously low compared to the fight against terror it is not even funny (especially, since this is a global issue and does not only effect Americans).
At this point I won't go into traffic safety, disease control (like developement and treatment in vaccines) or simply health care, because those are so much better researched that any comparison to terror in the investment/benefit ratio would be outrageous. I also don't want to go into the problems caused by limiting freedom in many ways (it does cost a lot of money to listen in on every telepone call).
And anyone here is surprised that shit like "carbon is unsafe, so we shouldn't fly Boeing" works in said country?
I thought they would freshen up the Lotus SmartSuit and release it for free. Now that would have been news. A new competitor on the market backed by a million dollar company.
But they will just rename OpenOffice.Org That won't change anything except maybe hurt the OpenOffice brand.
Actually, IRiver has much better players than Apple, but they are also expensive. I guess a good player (or one hyped by marketing) comes at a price.
How about someone that doesn't want to search for good AntiSpyware solutions?
Otherwise Skype ist dead for me. The outage was bad enough. There are many alternatives. Ekiga rulz for example.
If you are in a noisy environment (car, subway, work) you want compression (e.g. loudness), because otherwise you either won't hear the quiet parts or blow your ears out on the loud parts. If you have a decent stereo (or decent headphones) and listen to the music in a quiet environment it sounds much better if there is less compression. I suppose this would even go for clubs. I have never used compression when playing prerecorded music to an audience.
Since nowdays you could get decent compression out of an el cheapo chip in your average mp3 player (I dunno, do they already put those in?) they could go back to produce albums with some dynamic range. I mean you wouldn't even hear it if your mp3 player compression isn't the best, because you are in a noisy environment anyways. Radio stations compress it anyways.
This way everyone wins. But the record industry has a much better idea. They are just going to sell you two versions of each song. One for home and one for the car. This way they can retain at least part of the income they used to generate when people had to buy a new media of the same content they already purchased, because they couldn't back up their songs and their old media broke. Maybe they will do much more than two versions. How about one more for the computer, one more for running etc. -> Damn, I should be a music industry exec.
The lower the marketshare, the lower the chance that your browser ist targeted by malware authors. Since Firefox is gaining at such a great speed I have started to advise Windows users to use Opera for security reasons. Other than for security neither Firefox, IE7, nor Opera make a difference for the casual PC user.
Personally I use Iceweasel, because it comes directly from my good ol' trusted repository, but I also have Opera installed and use it as a secondary browser for sites that don't work in Firefox. I also prefer the cookie management in Firefox to that in Opera. Opera used to be way ahead, but they stopped making progress on that front a long time ago. Though I realize that privacy is more of a myth now with special Flash and Java supercookies and the likes that never show up anywhere.
The playing surface is the silver surface that has the wrtiting on it. Just the underside. The surface you are probabely referring to is the underside, which is a very durable transparent layer, that is very thick compared to the actual playing surface. The laser reads through that. Good players shouldn't give a damn about most scratches.
Some other posters already mentioned all the other stuff that you got wrong in your post, but I thought I would mention this bit, because most people get this one wrong.
To everyone their own sever! Just kidding, but imagine that: Too old hardware so you can't upgrade? Never again with hardware virtualization. No I know that this probabely wouldn't work with very old hardware, because the performance loss would be too great, but remember this, when setting up your next system. Time to get into Xen! They promise almost no performance loss with the new processors.
This will only lead to the use of proxies to edit entries. Especially for companies that sell the service to keep the internet clean for anyone who is paying.
I would install a Debian server using the minimum install cds and then apt-getting just the services I need from the mirrors (which should have current patches). I mean, if it is going to be a server it should have a somewhat fast internet connection, right?
Vista ist still crap!
As well as www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu www.dell.de/ubuntu also presents an Ubuntu page in German with the same results if you click on the links.
The only option for the Inspiron 6400 in Germany remains Windows Vista for now (going through the normal www.dell.de pages). They don't even have XP any more. I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot pole before the first service pack comes out.
Are there notebooks with Ubuntu that have a modem built in? A modem can be your only option on the road sometimes. And I even got my brothers Thinkpad A20 modem to work with Debian.
I bought r200 hardware exactly because of this and I am still running it.
Ati Radeon 9200 or 9250. Cheap and passiv cooling. The computer I am running right now has r300 (free drivers) though. The Radeon 9550 is also passivly cooled. The reason I am running it is because a friend dropped it.
and they have a hard time catching up. Maybe they will finally "get it" and release the specs. I think the Open Source Windows drivers will also be a favourite for their stability and lack of bugs. Game developers could also check much better what went wrong and will send in bug reports. Open Specs would help Ati in the Windows market as well.
And it should come as soon as possible, because the USA is loosing it's control over the Internet. Just make something like the ICRA mandatory by law and the filters that parents install can be much more usefull. Then parents can decide what their children can see and the internet still stay free.
If they would implement this now and put some pressure on other countries they could set a standard. You then can choose yourself what to see and what not.
even though some mainboard chipsets don't even include PATA any more. I hope for a bigger push for optical drives to go SATA.
will be corrected in the next edition. So the Encyclopedia Britannica even gets some 'wisdom of crowds' in addtion to their own editors. The best of two worlds, and it would not have been possible without Wikipedia. Hurray for competition, hurray for Britannica, hurray for Wikipedia.
I bet that Wikipedia editors sectetly read the Encyclopedia Britannica.
I guess all those computers are botnets (check out the other connections, DoD is only one among a whole bunch of seemingly random international sites including a couple universities from Brazil and China) trying to get more bots using security holes and trying if they have yet been patched on random IPs.
/. pick up its editors?
Because those are trying to connect TO his computer from the outside, not the other way around.
What a load of bullcrap. Where does
the Flashblock plugin has made the web much faster for me. Are their plugins that block Javascript selectively?