Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean cryptic, undocumented code which, if that particular developer quits, dies or is otherwise unable to work on the driver, becomes a black box? It is still incredibly open-source unfriendly.
Not the point I was trying to argue, but ok: first of all, the dock isn't just a Mac issue. Since Windows 7 the taskbar has been "dockified", with pinned, textless icons (though it's easy to revert it to a more classic mode) and Linux has had all sorts of docks and taskbars for quite some time, now. My opinion isn't about OSs, it's mainly about docks. It just happens that OSX has not a lot of options other than its main dock, which leads me to explain my point of view: the taskbar is more useful because it conveys more information (like what document is open in a particular instance of a program), text is easier to read than icons, it takes less vertical space while still being visible and accessible, can comfortably host menus and widgets... I could go on with my particular point of view, but my point was, and still is, that such sort of difference is much more important than if the book icon features leather bindings or not.
Really? There's so much to criticize about Apple's design, like OSX's big and cluttered dock versus a tradicional taskbar, and they go straight for the superfluous fluff? Who cares about the icons? They are just fucking icons, replace them if you want to! What the hell happened to functionality in this world? It's like no one cares anymore, and "design" only means "making shit look fancy".
I'd just like to second that, and stress an important point. Many of these Big Charities spend about half their money on their own administration activities, like expensive lawyer fees.
That's true. So you might as well donate to institutions that have those expensive lawyer fees as their main focus, like the EFF or, depending on your moral leanings, even The Piratebay. You can, by the way, donate to the EFF via the Humble Bundle VI, right now, and still get a few cool games in the process.
That's actually a great idea. There's one big problem, though: hardware support. Your custom distro would only support hardware up until that point in time, which meant you'd have to look for legacy hardware two years from now. But what if you offered the hardware, too, in a bundle? That way you'd have control over both hardware and software - there's nothing easier to support of develop for. And, to reduce costs, you could share a platform like that across many games, so... oh, wait...
Well, tell me why an Athlon 64 wouldn't be perfectly fine to view e-mail, pay your bills, a few older games etc. I have one from 2003 and, coupled with a GeForce FX 5200 - crappy even for its day -, I can even play a few Source games. Why should I have to upgrade my hardware - or OS, for that matter - when it's still perfectly capable to comfortably accommodate my workflow?
This is all rhetorical, of course, since said system is running Debian and, other than the aforementioned GeForce on Gnome Shell, has no issues with hardware support.
Seconded. I have been using Debian for a long time, mostly because its installation is a lot more modular than other distros and because you can find.debs pretty much anywhere. Though I have been thinking of moving to Mint on my next PC (probably Debian Edition, though). Debian stable is also great for installing on the machines of senior family members. Other than the outdated version of Firefox, they're fine. So I just install a recent version Opera or Chrome and they're good to go for a year or so (getting a newer Firefox from testing is a no-no, because it pulls pretty much the whole distro - even Gnome 3, which is verboten on old PCs, especially the ones with NV30-40 chips - and newer versions of Firefox can't use the old openjdk, which is needed for banking).
Work with most integrated audio chipsets out of the box? (Windows has me hunting for drivers whenever I have to reinstall and the mb cd is missing - actually Linux plug-and-play has been way better than Windows for quite some time, now. When it fails, though, it sucks badly.)
Repositories (or ye olde app store)? (Windows 8 might negate that advantage)
In that same vein, the absence of a registry.
Oh, memory requirements. Windows needs way more RAM at boot than even Kubuntu.
There's plenty of things, really. Windows came a long way in recent years and 7 is the best yet, but it's not a perfect system. Though I support your view that for the average user Linux offers little more advantage than whatever the Windows license cost, that's not why Linux isn't as ubiquitous as it should be. It's a mix of lack of software support and alternatives (getting better all the time) and the neverending breakage of shit. If people ran only CentOS or Debian stable, then their outdated crap would keep running flawlessly forever and annoying changes would only come every two years or so. But we don't.
True. And that's mostly because they are now making games too full of shiny. Lots of cutscenes, voice actors, gorgeous maps and models, a plethora of sidequests... which is great, really, but it drives the cost of the thing way up. And in the midst of all that, they often forget to make the game interesting to play. Or even finish the damn thing. Me, I'd rather have lots of 9.99 games like Braid than 59.99 + 9.99 DLC like Mass Effect 3. The first is way cheaper to make, but incredible from start to finish and never, ever, feels stale. An engrossing experience from start to finish. The latter is amazing mostly because of its magnitude, but its gameplay is quite repetitive, most of its characters feel superfluous because of the current trend towards extreme story modularization (which is The Way Of The DLC, BTW) and... let's just not speak about that sorry excuse for an ending, ok?
I'll second that. Huxley seems to have constructed the book so that you'd revile the society for the first few chapters, including plenty of our taboos occuring often, like children being introduced to sexuality, and then be swept away by the ruler's exposition. People really were mostly happy. Not very philosophical or deep, but they mostly don't seem to miss it, so what problem is there? What I found most intriguing about the book wasn't the society being contrasted, it was how that scenario exposed and explored the emotions of too human characters. That's the point of good Sci-Fi, and it pains me when people think Huxley was warning people against getting caught in frivolities. He was exploring societal influence on individuals. Perhaps not quite masterfully (I have a few qualms with the Savage's progression), but it's still a very strong book.
Not that they're that much better, but at least they tried to.
Actually they're still trying, and improvements are being made. Slowly, but steadily. The Radeon driver is miles ahead of Nouveau, now. It's on its way to performance parity on older hardware (circa 2004). Nouveau, on the other hand, simply doesn't work with a card from those era (NV30-NV44 do not work with anything GTK3 - Gnome Shell, Unity and Cinnamon are all unusable). Neither does the legacy driver, by the way - it doesn't draw garbage like Nouveau, but it runs at about 0.2 fps and crashes in under a minute. As they already said they won't update the legacy driver on Nvnews, I'd say AMD's OS driver initiative is starting to pay off.
If Gnome died now, MATE could gain more traction, which would be a good thing. I'd mourn the loss of Cinnamon, though - it's a genuine step forward from Gnome 2.3 and depends on Gnome 3. Something would eventually pick up the slack, though. KDE, MATE, XFCE, LXDE, E17... there's a lot of options, and with the userbase migrating from Gnome, those DEs would gain a greater userbase and, therefore, more resources and developers.
Actually, Unity has one nifty feature that others lack: you can search for programs available for download right from the dash. While people are getting more used to the concept of repositories via exposition to various "app stores", Windows users who don't use smartphones seem to find that particular feature helpful. Search for "image editor" and it will suggest Photoshop, automatically open the Software Center and ease you into the process. I'd say it's better for casual Windows users, since Unity is pretty - and I know, I hate that word too - intuitive to figure out, even though it lacks basic functionality and customizability that we power users need. Also most help topics and third party debs out there are about Ubuntu.
Then there's Zorin, made for that specific reason. It looks and behaves a lot like a mix of XP and 7. I have used it a little and it seems pretty ok. Also, as a bonus, no Shell crap - it still uses Gnome 2, though a very customized and pimped up version. Better for people who know their way around Windows, as it even has a Control Panel and whatnot.
Mint is also very good option (especially with Cinnamon), but isn't particularly useful to aid in the transition. And any KDE distro will be just as helpful (and is not a bad choice at all, as long as you don't stray from 4.6 - 4.7. Seriously, 4.5 and down and 4.8 are buggy messes.)
Finally, an affordable ARM SBC that doesn't actually suck.
It sucks a bit harder than the MK802 [engadget.com], I think
I merely meant to point out that the MK802 was a bit better than the Gooseberry (and already available for some time, at approximately the same price). I used a comparative scale of "suckiness" because that was the terminology used by the OP. I could equally use a scale of "awesomeness" and say that the MK802 is "a bit more awesome" than the Gooseberry.
So in all of technology, only Apple users ever upgrade?
Only Apple suckers ever need to! Go on, iSheeple, buy your fancy, expensive new iGadgets, while I have access to the same functionality with my non-Apple PC from the 90s. It has about as much processing power as an iPhone 4S, also runs apps, plays games and I can use its modem to make phone calls by attaching it to a landline. Some faggy Apple shills will claim it's not as portable, but it's mounted on a fucking wheelbarrel.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean cryptic, undocumented code which, if that particular developer quits, dies or is otherwise unable to work on the driver, becomes a black box? It is still incredibly open-source unfriendly.
Not the point I was trying to argue, but ok: first of all, the dock isn't just a Mac issue. Since Windows 7 the taskbar has been "dockified", with pinned, textless icons (though it's easy to revert it to a more classic mode) and Linux has had all sorts of docks and taskbars for quite some time, now. My opinion isn't about OSs, it's mainly about docks. It just happens that OSX has not a lot of options other than its main dock, which leads me to explain my point of view: the taskbar is more useful because it conveys more information (like what document is open in a particular instance of a program), text is easier to read than icons, it takes less vertical space while still being visible and accessible, can comfortably host menus and widgets... I could go on with my particular point of view, but my point was, and still is, that such sort of difference is much more important than if the book icon features leather bindings or not.
Really? There's so much to criticize about Apple's design, like OSX's big and cluttered dock versus a tradicional taskbar, and they go straight for the superfluous fluff? Who cares about the icons? They are just fucking icons, replace them if you want to! What the hell happened to functionality in this world? It's like no one cares anymore, and "design" only means "making shit look fancy".
I'd just like to second that, and stress an important point. Many of these Big Charities spend about half their money on their own administration activities, like expensive lawyer fees.
That's true. So you might as well donate to institutions that have those expensive lawyer fees as their main focus, like the EFF or, depending on your moral leanings, even The Piratebay. You can, by the way, donate to the EFF via the Humble Bundle VI, right now, and still get a few cool games in the process.
Ok:
Does touching each others dongs and playing butt-butt count as hooking up?
unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
And remember, folks: using sudo is NOT OK!
That's actually a great idea. There's one big problem, though: hardware support. Your custom distro would only support hardware up until that point in time, which meant you'd have to look for legacy hardware two years from now. But what if you offered the hardware, too, in a bundle? That way you'd have control over both hardware and software - there's nothing easier to support of develop for. And, to reduce costs, you could share a platform like that across many games, so... oh, wait...
Well, tell me why an Athlon 64 wouldn't be perfectly fine to view e-mail, pay your bills, a few older games etc. I have one from 2003 and, coupled with a GeForce FX 5200 - crappy even for its day -, I can even play a few Source games. Why should I have to upgrade my hardware - or OS, for that matter - when it's still perfectly capable to comfortably accommodate my workflow?
This is all rhetorical, of course, since said system is running Debian and, other than the aforementioned GeForce on Gnome Shell, has no issues with hardware support.
Ears, nostrils, bellybutton, eye sockets. Everything else is fair game.
Why should we not have two standards for two different things? Authors of fiction are not moral leaders.
Ever heard of that Bible thingy?
FOR YOUR SINS against uninteroperability!
Seconded. I have been using Debian for a long time, mostly because its installation is a lot more modular than other distros and because you can find .debs pretty much anywhere. Though I have been thinking of moving to Mint on my next PC (probably Debian Edition, though). Debian stable is also great for installing on the machines of senior family members. Other than the outdated version of Firefox, they're fine. So I just install a recent version Opera or Chrome and they're good to go for a year or so (getting a newer Firefox from testing is a no-no, because it pulls pretty much the whole distro - even Gnome 3, which is verboten on old PCs, especially the ones with NV30-40 chips - and newer versions of Firefox can't use the old openjdk, which is needed for banking).
Support a wider variety of filesystems?
Work with most integrated audio chipsets out of the box? (Windows has me hunting for drivers whenever I have to reinstall and the mb cd is missing - actually Linux plug-and-play has been way better than Windows for quite some time, now. When it fails, though, it sucks badly.)
Repositories (or ye olde app store)? (Windows 8 might negate that advantage)
In that same vein, the absence of a registry.
Oh, memory requirements. Windows needs way more RAM at boot than even Kubuntu.
There's plenty of things, really. Windows came a long way in recent years and 7 is the best yet, but it's not a perfect system. Though I support your view that for the average user Linux offers little more advantage than whatever the Windows license cost, that's not why Linux isn't as ubiquitous as it should be. It's a mix of lack of software support and alternatives (getting better all the time) and the neverending breakage of shit. If people ran only CentOS or Debian stable, then their outdated crap would keep running flawlessly forever and annoying changes would only come every two years or so. But we don't.
True. And that's mostly because they are now making games too full of shiny. Lots of cutscenes, voice actors, gorgeous maps and models, a plethora of sidequests... which is great, really, but it drives the cost of the thing way up. And in the midst of all that, they often forget to make the game interesting to play. Or even finish the damn thing. Me, I'd rather have lots of 9.99 games like Braid than 59.99 + 9.99 DLC like Mass Effect 3. The first is way cheaper to make, but incredible from start to finish and never, ever, feels stale. An engrossing experience from start to finish. The latter is amazing mostly because of its magnitude, but its gameplay is quite repetitive, most of its characters feel superfluous because of the current trend towards extreme story modularization (which is The Way Of The DLC, BTW) and... let's just not speak about that sorry excuse for an ending, ok?
Yeah, well, Piratebay is great to unmonetize content, so we'll see how that DLC strategy goes.
I'll second that. Huxley seems to have constructed the book so that you'd revile the society for the first few chapters, including plenty of our taboos occuring often, like children being introduced to sexuality, and then be swept away by the ruler's exposition. People really were mostly happy. Not very philosophical or deep, but they mostly don't seem to miss it, so what problem is there? What I found most intriguing about the book wasn't the society being contrasted, it was how that scenario exposed and explored the emotions of too human characters. That's the point of good Sci-Fi, and it pains me when people think Huxley was warning people against getting caught in frivolities. He was exploring societal influence on individuals. Perhaps not quite masterfully (I have a few qualms with the Savage's progression), but it's still a very strong book.
the 800 gorilla.
Wow, that's a lot of gorillum.
Correct. That's why i choose AMD.
Not that they're that much better, but at least they tried to.
Actually they're still trying, and improvements are being made. Slowly, but steadily. The Radeon driver is miles ahead of Nouveau, now. It's on its way to performance parity on older hardware (circa 2004). Nouveau, on the other hand, simply doesn't work with a card from those era (NV30-NV44 do not work with anything GTK3 - Gnome Shell, Unity and Cinnamon are all unusable). Neither does the legacy driver, by the way - it doesn't draw garbage like Nouveau, but it runs at about 0.2 fps and crashes in under a minute. As they already said they won't update the legacy driver on Nvnews, I'd say AMD's OS driver initiative is starting to pay off.
If Gnome died now, MATE could gain more traction, which would be a good thing. I'd mourn the loss of Cinnamon, though - it's a genuine step forward from Gnome 2.3 and depends on Gnome 3. Something would eventually pick up the slack, though. KDE, MATE, XFCE, LXDE, E17... there's a lot of options, and with the userbase migrating from Gnome, those DEs would gain a greater userbase and, therefore, more resources and developers.
Actually, Unity has one nifty feature that others lack: you can search for programs available for download right from the dash. While people are getting more used to the concept of repositories via exposition to various "app stores", Windows users who don't use smartphones seem to find that particular feature helpful. Search for "image editor" and it will suggest Photoshop, automatically open the Software Center and ease you into the process. I'd say it's better for casual Windows users, since Unity is pretty - and I know, I hate that word too - intuitive to figure out, even though it lacks basic functionality and customizability that we power users need. Also most help topics and third party debs out there are about Ubuntu.
Then there's Zorin, made for that specific reason. It looks and behaves a lot like a mix of XP and 7. I have used it a little and it seems pretty ok. Also, as a bonus, no Shell crap - it still uses Gnome 2, though a very customized and pimped up version. Better for people who know their way around Windows, as it even has a Control Panel and whatnot.
Mint is also very good option (especially with Cinnamon), but isn't particularly useful to aid in the transition. And any KDE distro will be just as helpful (and is not a bad choice at all, as long as you don't stray from 4.6 - 4.7. Seriously, 4.5 and down and 4.8 are buggy messes.)
Finally, an affordable ARM SBC that doesn't actually suck.
It sucks a bit harder than the MK802 [engadget.com], I think
I merely meant to point out that the MK802 was a bit better than the Gooseberry (and already available for some time, at approximately the same price). I used a comparative scale of "suckiness" because that was the terminology used by the OP. I could equally use a scale of "awesomeness" and say that the MK802 is "a bit more awesome" than the Gooseberry.
It sucks a bit harder than the MK802, I think. If they end up similarly priced, then the Pi is still a better deal.
So in all of technology, only Apple users ever upgrade?
Only Apple suckers ever need to! Go on, iSheeple, buy your fancy, expensive new iGadgets, while I have access to the same functionality with my non-Apple PC from the 90s. It has about as much processing power as an iPhone 4S, also runs apps, plays games and I can use its modem to make phone calls by attaching it to a landline. Some faggy Apple shills will claim it's not as portable, but it's mounted on a fucking wheelbarrel.
Run a cutting edge distro of Linux and do a blind apt-get upgrade or similar every 28 days and they're about the same.
They're saving that for when they launch Steam for the Hurd.