The 8150 has many problems, but that's the first time I see anyone complain about its upgrade path. The thing is the 8150 is currently the flagship. Vishera is about to be released for the same AM3+ socket, with modest improvements. If you had an i7 3770k, you'd be complaining about the same thing, unless you went LGA 2011 (then again, if you did and got a $1000 processor, you'd be in a position to make the same complaint again). In fact, you're relatively better off than an i7 2600k owner because Vishera will probably bring a bigger performance improvement over Bulldozer than Ivy brought over Sandy (which, considering how the 8150 performs, isn't exactly impressive).
1) A bar of soap ends. Much more quickly than an OS reaches EOL (insert witticism here about it not being so for RMS), and then you have to buy a new one; 2) There's no competition from FreeSoap; 3) One great thing about soap is flawless interoperability - I can glue a leftover soap to a new bar and it attaches flawlessly, no matter the brand; 4) Soap is much more slippery than any OS, except for the GNU/HURD; 5) I believe I had a point, when I started.
I'd argue that kids shouldn't read novels... At least to the degree that they shouldn't watch television. Both are merely forms of entertainment
That's the problem right there. They really shouldn't be. I'm all for prohibiting children - and adults, for that matter - from keeping up with the Kardashians and reading Twilight, but there are nice things out there, too. There are lots of science or sciency shows on cable, at least.
Regarding your analysis about book habits, I don't remember who said that it's not reading, it's what you read. I'd add that it's not just what you read, but how you read it. Forcing children to read "good" books also hasn't worked, since they're being forced and aren't paying that much attention. A tiny subset of children actually enjoy splendid books such as The Catcher in the Rye or Lord of the Flies, while the rest of them are simply vaccinated against reading more complex works because they feel dull. What we do in schools is commit literary rape, not foster enthusiasm for reading. Good works won't really be appreciated by children or most teens, anyway, since they're not mature enough and they don't have the emotional baggage needed for the written words to resonate with them.
As for spelling, while I agree, I believe the same thing could be said about math. We should focus on the broader areas, like scientific thinking and critical analysis. Once kids learn to use those, specific skillsets like spelling and math will be learned when and if they are needed.
It's either tragic or funny, but Brazil's traffic dept. doesn't have the first clue about IT security. They use ye olde Windows and don't even bother configuring anything. Which means every user is an administrator and autorun is enabled. Keylogging is a real problem, but I suspect no one wants to secure anything properly because "oh, all those traffic tickets disappeared? I guess someone broke into my system again" is a great excuse for when you want to bail a friend or make a few extra bucks.
I see I have three replies disagreeing with me - and none of them begins with "your a moron", which is a tell that there's something off about their authors. While I can certainly relate to your objection (it's the reason I read/., after all - to better inform myself), I think it's fair to say neither of us is a typical internet debater. For the most part, the axiom "arguing on the internet is like competing on the special olympics - even if you win, you're still retarded" is terribly valid. I present as evidence any discussion regarding Apple versus Android here on Slashdot or the comment section of any political Youtube video.
And I have just realized that the ratio of legitimate questions is also very low. People do not usually comment searching for information, they comment simply to express theirs or to vent.
Battery life, yes, but Apple isn't about performance. Both Intel and Nvidia GPUs perform worse on OSX than even on Linux, according to a plethora of benchmarks. That minute difference in performance, though, has never scared an Apple customer, so I don't think Apple would mind trading an i3 for an A10 in terms of x86 alacrity. Even considering their more demanding customers, like video editors, image manipulators and other stereotypical mac owners, those are areas AMD chips currently excel at, being threaded workloads. As for battery life, AMD currently uses a less juice than Intel when idle. The end result is that notebooks with Trinity chips are doing very well on battery life, last I heard. Makes sense, since most of the time a PC is idling.
Then again, even if they fare well versus the i3, AMD probably won't have anything to compete with cores i5 and i7. Piledriver is around the corner, but those listed 125W TDPs are a major sign that they aren't about to redeem Bulldozer. And Apple currently has a huge line of i5 and i7 PCs. Plus, there would be drivers to consider. A theoretical AMD OSX driver would probably be derived from Catalyst, which isn't all that great, to put it mildly. Nvidia isn't on performance parity with Windows on Macs, but they work very well.
So I agree with your disbelief that Apple would use AMD, but for slightly different reasons.
It also allows to receiver of the so-called "truth" to disregard it even more easily. Which is why no one convinces anyone on the internet - any particular discussion tends to degenerate into incredibly long (and frequently rude) point-by-point rebuttals. This being slashdot, I'm sure examples are being provided as I post this.
Of course they aired it because it was exciting, and statistically, suicides are rare.
Sure, but why was it exciting? Only because there were lives at stake. No matter how you frame it, that's why people tune in. That's also why you have so many medical and police shows on TV but so few accounting shows - people are more interested when lives are at stake, even in fiction. So you can't just say "oh, but it rarely happens" when this sort of possible outcome (death) is precisely why the guy was being filmed in the first place. Otherwise you might as well follow some random lawful driver with a camera and narrate his actions ("seems like he's now stopping at a drug store... what is he buying? Is that anal lube? Do we have a confirmation that it's anal lube? Oh, ok, it's just toothpaste. Right. Back to him, he's about to leave the drug store and I don't want to miss the moment he brushes his teeth, when we'll find out if he flosses or not.)"
I'm not even against showing that sort of thing on TV. It's happening in a public space and people want to watch it, so let them. But this meaningless dance of "oh, we're sorry, we didn't really mean to show you what happened" is borderline unbelievable for a "news" channel that have been showing (and speculating on) every detail of the chase up until that point.
Seeing the mod war parent is going through, I have to ask: what is it with suicide that riles people up? The news air shootings all the time, and a lot of homicides are shown on camera - that's pretty much ok, it seems. But why are suicides a no-no? If you ask me, they're way less shocking, since no one is forcefully overriding anyone's will.
More information: it's this video and it talks about an affair the candidate had, how he pressed his ex-lover for an abortion, denied fatherhood, pays little alimony while his salary is quite high, beat his child once etc. I don't know if the information contained in the video is true or not, but it's being considered libel.
While you're right, it's only in a vacuum or for small, local services if the competition doesn't decide to also invest in ads. When you and all your competitors engage in ad wars, like you pretty much have to do in a global market, then you keep investing hefty sums in ad campaigns just so you won't lose market share, and that increases everyone's prices. Given diminishing returns, frequently these corps are already making their products pretty much as cheap as they are always going to be, so the result is only increased cost to the consumer (because someone has to foot the bill). Look at Coca-Cola, for a good example. Advertising is to them as R&D is to Intel.
If they follow the example of Mint and Firefox, inclusion and exclusion would be fair game. Even if they don't, it's open source. And unlike carrier-defiled Android, they can't remove your administrative rights from the machine so you'd have to root it (well, they can, but that would be a whole new level of stupid). Shuttleworth already said he doesn't want the Unity dock placed on the bottom of the screen, but mods are trivial and aplenty.
Like I said, they more like electric bicycles and less like electric motorcycles. To be used like motorcycles, in big cities where it just isn't safe to ride a bicycle in traffic, you'd need way better performance (or way more educated and respectful fellow drivers).
Most I've seen range from 25-50km of range and reach no more than 40km/h. I'd only be comfortable with a range of 80km, at least, and a max speed of 80km/h, otherwise it's more akin to a bicycle and would not be safe on a freeway.
I don't think cars are going to get there. Not cars like we know them. A car is, from the point of view of efficiency, a lot of dead weight. The thing weights about a ton and a half when it could easily weight just about 1/3 of that. I think electric motorcycles, which are much more efficient as personal transportation, have a higher chance of becoming viable.
I see this kind of comparison a lot, so I'll help you understand how it works: Apple bashing gets modded up because of patent lawsuits, high prices, abused workers at third-world manufacturing plants, common or old features being touted as crazy innovations and all of the above combined with gigantic lines for their products, which implies their typical customer's perceived affinity with technology. Google bashing, on the other hand, is often modded down because it happens mostly on comments pertaining to Apple stories. Which means they are probably flamebait and certainly offtopic, thus the rightful moderation. Your example fits nicely. On the other hand, on stories about either Google, privacy concerns or driverless cars, Google bashing is often modded up, so if that's what you fell like doing, lurk for a while and select your stories with more care in the future.
On a related note, X fans will always think that X's competitor Y is being given an unfair advantage, so a wiser approach would be to just let it go.
The "desktop for the masses" is Fedora. Everyone wins: Red Hat makes money from the server/enterprise market, and home users can reap the benefits of a solid distribution.
Minor nitpick: hell, no. Fedora is for developers. There are some good releases, like Goddard, but then there are lots of trainwrecks, too. You can call Fedora a good distro, for its purposes, but never say it's "solid", because it isn't. And, if you don't agree, then, in the words of a wise man: "I dare you - I double dare you, motherfucker - use Lovelock one more goddamn time". Try the KDE spin for added despair.
Yes, fglrx is terrible when it comes to support, both for not-so-old cards and for newer Xorg versions. NVIDIA's blob is much better in that case. What I meant is that AMD's superior (though still lacking, IMHO) open-source efforts lead to better support for old cards. Your notebook seems to be a special case. From Wikipedia:
Since Intel has not given the 1333 MHz FSB license to ATI Technologies after the company was purchased by AMD, the Radeon Xpress 1250 only comes with official support of 1066 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB).
Other than that, though, the norm is that old AMD GPUs work well with the open driver, while old NVIDIA GPUs are just plain broken with both the open driver and the blob. And, as I said, AMD is not a particularly good example, it is merely better than NVIDIA on the open front.
And NVIDIA have been screwing up lately in a big way, while fglrx has been getting slightly better (and still by no means accceptable - Kwin and fglrx seem to be promoting a daily orgy on my machine). Seems like the best option we have on Linux is still Intel's underpowered hardware.
How is NVIDIA unfriendly toward open source. They have the only high-end cards that work consistently on both Linux and FreeBSD. They've been maintaining their drivers for open source operating systems for years.
Right. Tell that to my GeForce FX. Or to a GeForce 6xxx. Or to an integrated 7xxx chipset. Neither Nouveau nor the blob work on anything GTK3 and NVIDIA already said they won't be fixing the blob anytime soon. Compare that with AMD - the open driver is already at near performance parity with the blob on their cards from the same period (r300). But AMD isn't a great example. Look at how Intel publishes their drivers and read what the folks from Valve are saying about how easy that makes everything for developers.
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The 8150 has many problems, but that's the first time I see anyone complain about its upgrade path. The thing is the 8150 is currently the flagship. Vishera is about to be released for the same AM3+ socket, with modest improvements. If you had an i7 3770k, you'd be complaining about the same thing, unless you went LGA 2011 (then again, if you did and got a $1000 processor, you'd be in a position to make the same complaint again). In fact, you're relatively better off than an i7 2600k owner because Vishera will probably bring a bigger performance improvement over Bulldozer than Ivy brought over Sandy (which, considering how the 8150 performs, isn't exactly impressive).
1) A bar of soap ends. Much more quickly than an OS reaches EOL (insert witticism here about it not being so for RMS), and then you have to buy a new one;
2) There's no competition from FreeSoap;
3) One great thing about soap is flawless interoperability - I can glue a leftover soap to a new bar and it attaches flawlessly, no matter the brand;
4) Soap is much more slippery than any OS, except for the GNU/HURD;
5) I believe I had a point, when I started.
I'd argue that kids shouldn't read novels... At least to the degree that they shouldn't watch television. Both are merely forms of entertainment
That's the problem right there. They really shouldn't be. I'm all for prohibiting children - and adults, for that matter - from keeping up with the Kardashians and reading Twilight, but there are nice things out there, too. There are lots of science or sciency shows on cable, at least.
Regarding your analysis about book habits, I don't remember who said that it's not reading, it's what you read. I'd add that it's not just what you read, but how you read it. Forcing children to read "good" books also hasn't worked, since they're being forced and aren't paying that much attention. A tiny subset of children actually enjoy splendid books such as The Catcher in the Rye or Lord of the Flies, while the rest of them are simply vaccinated against reading more complex works because they feel dull. What we do in schools is commit literary rape, not foster enthusiasm for reading. Good works won't really be appreciated by children or most teens, anyway, since they're not mature enough and they don't have the emotional baggage needed for the written words to resonate with them.
As for spelling, while I agree, I believe the same thing could be said about math. We should focus on the broader areas, like scientific thinking and critical analysis. Once kids learn to use those, specific skillsets like spelling and math will be learned when and if they are needed.
Because DMCA notices (and the protection it grants for compliance) are only valid in the US and Google has offices in a lot of countries.
It's either tragic or funny, but Brazil's traffic dept. doesn't have the first clue about IT security. They use ye olde Windows and don't even bother configuring anything. Which means every user is an administrator and autorun is enabled. Keylogging is a real problem, but I suspect no one wants to secure anything properly because "oh, all those traffic tickets disappeared? I guess someone broke into my system again" is a great excuse for when you want to bail a friend or make a few extra bucks.
I see I have three replies disagreeing with me - and none of them begins with "your a moron", which is a tell that there's something off about their authors. While I can certainly relate to your objection (it's the reason I read /., after all - to better inform myself), I think it's fair to say neither of us is a typical internet debater. For the most part, the axiom "arguing on the internet is like competing on the special olympics - even if you win, you're still retarded" is terribly valid. I present as evidence any discussion regarding Apple versus Android here on Slashdot or the comment section of any political Youtube video.
And I have just realized that the ratio of legitimate questions is also very low. People do not usually comment searching for information, they comment simply to express theirs or to vent.
Battery life, yes, but Apple isn't about performance. Both Intel and Nvidia GPUs perform worse on OSX than even on Linux, according to a plethora of benchmarks. That minute difference in performance, though, has never scared an Apple customer, so I don't think Apple would mind trading an i3 for an A10 in terms of x86 alacrity. Even considering their more demanding customers, like video editors, image manipulators and other stereotypical mac owners, those are areas AMD chips currently excel at, being threaded workloads. As for battery life, AMD currently uses a less juice than Intel when idle. The end result is that notebooks with Trinity chips are doing very well on battery life, last I heard. Makes sense, since most of the time a PC is idling.
Then again, even if they fare well versus the i3, AMD probably won't have anything to compete with cores i5 and i7. Piledriver is around the corner, but those listed 125W TDPs are a major sign that they aren't about to redeem Bulldozer. And Apple currently has a huge line of i5 and i7 PCs. Plus, there would be drivers to consider. A theoretical AMD OSX driver would probably be derived from Catalyst, which isn't all that great, to put it mildly. Nvidia isn't on performance parity with Windows on Macs, but they work very well.
So I agree with your disbelief that Apple would use AMD, but for slightly different reasons.
It also allows to receiver of the so-called "truth" to disregard it even more easily. Which is why no one convinces anyone on the internet - any particular discussion tends to degenerate into incredibly long (and frequently rude) point-by-point rebuttals. This being slashdot, I'm sure examples are being provided as I post this.
Of course they aired it because it was exciting, and statistically, suicides are rare.
Sure, but why was it exciting? Only because there were lives at stake. No matter how you frame it, that's why people tune in. That's also why you have so many medical and police shows on TV but so few accounting shows - people are more interested when lives are at stake, even in fiction. So you can't just say "oh, but it rarely happens" when this sort of possible outcome (death) is precisely why the guy was being filmed in the first place. Otherwise you might as well follow some random lawful driver with a camera and narrate his actions ("seems like he's now stopping at a drug store... what is he buying? Is that anal lube? Do we have a confirmation that it's anal lube? Oh, ok, it's just toothpaste. Right. Back to him, he's about to leave the drug store and I don't want to miss the moment he brushes his teeth, when we'll find out if he flosses or not.)"
I'm not even against showing that sort of thing on TV. It's happening in a public space and people want to watch it, so let them. But this meaningless dance of "oh, we're sorry, we didn't really mean to show you what happened" is borderline unbelievable for a "news" channel that have been showing (and speculating on) every detail of the chase up until that point.
Seeing the mod war parent is going through, I have to ask: what is it with suicide that riles people up? The news air shootings all the time, and a lot of homicides are shown on camera - that's pretty much ok, it seems. But why are suicides a no-no? If you ask me, they're way less shocking, since no one is forcefully overriding anyone's will.
Teh ehll you are ydslexic!
Brazil's official name is Estados Unidos do Brasil
Brazil is actually the Federative Republic of Brazil (República Federativa do Brasil), but thanks for playing.
More information: it's this video and it talks about an affair the candidate had, how he pressed his ex-lover for an abortion, denied fatherhood, pays little alimony while his salary is quite high, beat his child once etc. I don't know if the information contained in the video is true or not, but it's being considered libel.
You could just imprison people IN a woman's uterus. It's a win-win.
I think you just invented double rape.
While you're right, it's only in a vacuum or for small, local services if the competition doesn't decide to also invest in ads. When you and all your competitors engage in ad wars, like you pretty much have to do in a global market, then you keep investing hefty sums in ad campaigns just so you won't lose market share, and that increases everyone's prices. Given diminishing returns, frequently these corps are already making their products pretty much as cheap as they are always going to be, so the result is only increased cost to the consumer (because someone has to foot the bill). Look at Coca-Cola, for a good example. Advertising is to them as R&D is to Intel.
2.) Ads don't increase prices, nor does consumption.
Unless the ad is free, they do.
4.) Charging a price for Ubuntu is, IMO, a more serious violation of FOSS than ads are regarding privacy.
No, it's not, as long as they publish the source so anyone can redistribute a "Freebuntu". Like Red Hat and CentOS.
If they follow the example of Mint and Firefox, inclusion and exclusion would be fair game. Even if they don't, it's open source. And unlike carrier-defiled Android, they can't remove your administrative rights from the machine so you'd have to root it (well, they can, but that would be a whole new level of stupid). Shuttleworth already said he doesn't want the Unity dock placed on the bottom of the screen, but mods are trivial and aplenty.
Like I said, they more like electric bicycles and less like electric motorcycles. To be used like motorcycles, in big cities where it just isn't safe to ride a bicycle in traffic, you'd need way better performance (or way more educated and respectful fellow drivers).
Most I've seen range from 25-50km of range and reach no more than 40km/h. I'd only be comfortable with a range of 80km, at least, and a max speed of 80km/h, otherwise it's more akin to a bicycle and would not be safe on a freeway.
I don't think cars are going to get there. Not cars like we know them. A car is, from the point of view of efficiency, a lot of dead weight. The thing weights about a ton and a half when it could easily weight just about 1/3 of that. I think electric motorcycles, which are much more efficient as personal transportation, have a higher chance of becoming viable.
Here's an in-depth analysis of why electric cars won't happen anytime soon (I think he sets the bar for single-change mileage way too high, but nevertheless it's a good read): http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/08/battery-performance-deficit-disorder/
I see this kind of comparison a lot, so I'll help you understand how it works: Apple bashing gets modded up because of patent lawsuits, high prices, abused workers at third-world manufacturing plants, common or old features being touted as crazy innovations and all of the above combined with gigantic lines for their products, which implies their typical customer's perceived affinity with technology. Google bashing, on the other hand, is often modded down because it happens mostly on comments pertaining to Apple stories. Which means they are probably flamebait and certainly offtopic, thus the rightful moderation. Your example fits nicely. On the other hand, on stories about either Google, privacy concerns or driverless cars, Google bashing is often modded up, so if that's what you fell like doing, lurk for a while and select your stories with more care in the future.
On a related note, X fans will always think that X's competitor Y is being given an unfair advantage, so a wiser approach would be to just let it go.
You're thinking of Dead Steve. Zombie Steve is still at Microsoft.
The "desktop for the masses" is Fedora. Everyone wins: Red Hat makes money from the server/enterprise market, and home users can reap the benefits of a solid distribution.
Minor nitpick: hell, no. Fedora is for developers. There are some good releases, like Goddard, but then there are lots of trainwrecks, too. You can call Fedora a good distro, for its purposes, but never say it's "solid", because it isn't. And, if you don't agree, then, in the words of a wise man: "I dare you - I double dare you, motherfucker - use Lovelock one more goddamn time". Try the KDE spin for added despair.
Yes, fglrx is terrible when it comes to support, both for not-so-old cards and for newer Xorg versions. NVIDIA's blob is much better in that case. What I meant is that AMD's superior (though still lacking, IMHO) open-source efforts lead to better support for old cards. Your notebook seems to be a special case. From Wikipedia:
Since Intel has not given the 1333 MHz FSB license to ATI Technologies after the company was purchased by AMD, the Radeon Xpress 1250 only comes with official support of 1066 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB).
Other than that, though, the norm is that old AMD GPUs work well with the open driver, while old NVIDIA GPUs are just plain broken with both the open driver and the blob. And, as I said, AMD is not a particularly good example, it is merely better than NVIDIA on the open front.
And NVIDIA have been screwing up lately in a big way, while fglrx has been getting slightly better (and still by no means accceptable - Kwin and fglrx seem to be promoting a daily orgy on my machine). Seems like the best option we have on Linux is still Intel's underpowered hardware.
How is NVIDIA unfriendly toward open source. They have the only high-end cards that work consistently on both Linux and FreeBSD. They've been maintaining their drivers for open source operating systems for years.
Right. Tell that to my GeForce FX. Or to a GeForce 6xxx. Or to an integrated 7xxx chipset. Neither Nouveau nor the blob work on anything GTK3 and NVIDIA already said they won't be fixing the blob anytime soon. Compare that with AMD - the open driver is already at near performance parity with the blob on their cards from the same period (r300). But AMD isn't a great example. Look at how Intel publishes their drivers and read what the folks from Valve are saying about how easy that makes everything for developers.