Since I started using GNU/Linux exclusively back in 2002, I'd say that was the "Year of the Linux Desktop" for me. Every passing year I feel more sure I made the correct decision. I feel that Windows continues to get more difficult to use, and more intrusive, while Linux gets more applications and more choice, centralised installation programs and package management, everything gets easier to use, things look better. Yes, I have to trawl forums to makes things work sometimes, but the same is true for Windows. It's been the YotLD over and over again for me. And no, I don't run Ubuntu.
With regards to KDE, I know you can change the look to make things appear as professional or flashy or geeky as you want, but GNOME usually looks like something I'd want to use, whereas KDE doesn't. Both have totally configurable panels and menus (something I feel Windows desperately needs), but again I feel it is easier to achieve something usable with GNOME than with KDE. GNOME feels considerably better polished than Windows, although I'd rate Windows slightly higher or about the same as KDE.
Once wine does a better job of running Half-Life 2, then I'll be able to get rid of Windows completely. Wine already runs older games like Thief better with fewer crashes (although a little forum searching was required to make it work). I suppose that would be the true YotLD for other people.
P.S. I've only used Mac OS X once or twice, but it didn't impress me much, and I don't know of anything it offers that really make me switch.
The usual arguments against GNOME are that it hides too much configuration, and that it is too slow compared to KDE. However, I find that GNOME usually has things configured correctly first time, and most of the options I do need are merely cosmetic (mouse focus etc), and these can be set in the preferences. Yes it hides things, but it makes the correct default options so most people probably never really need to find them. I've never found GNOME to be particularly slow, except for loading applications which probably does take too long, but once they're up they're fast enough. It's usually pretty easy to figure something out, and things usually work first time (e.g. CD burning, CUPS, HAL and D-BUS).
The only things I find that let GNOME down are its slow loading applications, Nautilus, and Totem (which I have to wrestle with to do what I want). Fortunately I have the command line and mplayer which taker care of most of these things.
KDE on the other hand, I find clunky, it's difficult to find where change the settings (which rarely default to the way I'd want them), and there are a host of little things which put me off, and I think GTK looks much better than QT. I can't put my finger on what exactly they are, but KDE always drives me back to GNOME after a few days' use. Really, the only thing I like about KDE is its wallpaper settings, which are not enough to make me switch, and Kile, which I can run quite happily under GNOME.
Well, just move the goal posts slightly. If you tossed a coin 50 times, would you expect to see 40 heads very often? How about 50 heads? What you get is a bell curve which is tight around the expected value (25), and the probability rapidly decreases to nearly 0.
Since the variance is 0.25*n, you'd expect the standard deviation to be 0.5*sqrt(n), i.e. the average distance from the expected value if n=5 is 1.118, and if n=50 is 3.5355. Doing a little Normal approximation to the binomial distribution, we get that 95% of values should lie within 1.96 std deviations, which for n=5 is (1.382,3.618), and for n=50 is (21.464,28.536). Just to really hammer it home, let n=500, and 95% of the values will lie within (238.82,261.18). See how those intervals are getting proportionally closer?
I recall that the original Doom did random amounts of damage (since the designers were also roleplayers). This was most evident for the berserk pack, where you might do the same damage as an ordinary punch, but occasionally your fist would cause demons to explode. Also the shotgun would usually kill an imp in one shot, but not always. I loved this style of randomness, as it makes the game a little different each time, and not completely deterministic.
Meanwhile, I like the idea of adding a random direction to a shot fired. It means that a pixel perfect shooter doesn't always get his mark, but on average he'll still be more accurate than a poor shooter. I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain that their machine gun has spread, so unless it becomes too random, why worry if it affects the rest of the weapons? In real life there are plenty of factors that make guns not shoot the exact same spot every time.
Finally, (being someone who enjoys tabletop roleplaying, and also a researcher who mainly deals with stochastic simulation), randomness is a great way to allow people to play games without substituting the character's abilities for the player's. If your character is supposed to be good at shooting, and you point him at an enemy, then he'll hit more often if he's good. If you give your mook a gun, don't expect him to shoot accurately just because you can move the mouse to the right spot, because your character isn't very good at it. Conversely, he'll sometimes make a shot which is very difficult, but less often than the trained sniper (the same argument applies to other activities than shooting guns).
Saving is essential in some games, particularly if they're long (e.g. get a call and need to head out, don't want to leave computer running). The nethack style of one attempt at the whole thing is pretty evil, and gives games an arcade feeling. Maybe it didn't matter for certain games in the past, and for a very few current ones (e.g. Ikaruga, which is short anyway, and the point is to get a high score), but games these days normally have far more taking place and last longer.
If games like Half-Life decided that if you died then that was it - you'd have to start the game again from scratch, people would quickly get very annoyed, and the end parts of the game would never be reached by 90% of players. Some things need a lot of thought for a very small time frame, and you may need to try the same part again with a different strategy. This is just unworkable without a checkpoint.
I'm pretty confident that if game designers tried to remove checkpoints, then gamers would be outraged, and the game be only played by the hardcore few. Imagine playing Neverwinter Nights, knowing that death meant a new game from scratch. This is a clear indication that it's a bad idea. Or you could make the game so easy that death is unlikely to occur, but you end up with an unsatisfying game. If you feel that checkpoints makes things too easy, then set yourself a challenge and don't die, or don't use them.
As a mathematician, it's important to me that a CAS application is useful, which includes instructive and correct. However as a researcher it's more important to me that it is free (as in speech). Commercial software should be avoided in academia whenever possible, otherwise the world is reliant on commercial companies to further our knowledge, instead of the brains of people. I do insist on this, and I've been lucky that the people in my department tend to think likewise, so the free alternatives are always available.
If a free alternative to maple/mathematica were available then I would immediately switch to it. However, if the current software is not useful (see above), then I cannot use it and must wait until it matures (although I would agree to test it in my spare time to help get it there).
P.S. I know it's not CAS, but I use GNU Octave rather than Matlab, despite Matlab being superior in many cases.
Excuse me. What about drift? This can have a greater effect than selection in small populations (or for mutations with a low selection coefficient) and it is entirely random.
I loved Metroid Prime, and I found its graphics amazing. I just completed (100%) Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii about two hours ago, and the graphics are only mildly better - things are a bit more rounded - but it was great fun too. I do think that games on the GameCube looked good. I am impressed when really shiny games come out, but it's not my primary reason for playing them.
I'll admit I don't own any of the other consoles, and I've only occasionally seen people play them, which is what I based my comment on. I think I meant that the other consoles tend to go for the "realistic" look, whereas Nintendo just do their own thing, and I know this matters to some people.
The N64 wasn't really a blunder. It had Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which were both considered masters of the genre, and OoT is still considered one of the best games in the world. This was before people started commenting that the series were getting a little stale. Oh, and GoldenEye, and a whole pile of games done by Rare who were so good that Microsoft bought them after Nintendo were found guilty of price fixing and had to sell them off.
In fact I'd say that there were a lot of really awesome games on the N64, just none of them were Final Fantasy. Meanwhile, the N64 had a control stick, and managed to pack an awful lot into those cartridges. It was done to prevent long load times, which it managed. I still love my N64. The worst thing I can say about it is that my control stick got a bit crusty after all these years, and some of games had too low framerates, and it didn't help being in the UK with PAL's higher resolution (although that became less of an issue towards the end of the N64's lifecycle).
The GameCube had the world's most comfortable controller, and I still prefer it to the Wii Remote. It had graphics which were perfectly functional, maybe not as flashy as the other consoles, but I hold that graphics are only a very small part of what makes a game good (proof: if graphics were important, then all older games would suck, and they don't). Nintendo experimented with gameplay, and they came up with some fantastic ideas. They used a very easy SDK, so it was much easier to produce games for the NGC than the PS2, and the X-Box made it too easy to just port PC games.
The N64 and NGC were successful and good consoles, and Nintendo is still in the videogame business despite the heavy competition they faced, and growing stronger than ever. They'd have never made the Wii otherwise.
There is some evidence that the Doctor is considerably older than he lets on (for example he knew Omega and Rassilon, some 2000 years ago). And it is mentioned (Tom Baker era, possibly by Romana?) that the 4th Doctor was really on his 11th or 12th incarnation. The Doctor isn't entirely open about his past, and he's a lot more powerful than he lets on.
Hence, the writers can do what they want and get away with it.
Yes, provided the woman has been informed of the various outcomes. It's her decision what she does with *her* body, not anyone else's. And yes, I think the rights of the woman come before the rights of an unborn foetus.
Whenever people use the subjects paedophilia, zoophilia or necrophilia in any "if this is okay then surely this is too" argument, I always try to point out the importance of "informed consent". Paedophilia may or may not have consent, but it is never informed, and there is no consent for the other two. Hence, these activities should not be supported.
Now contrast this with homosexuality, BDSM, divorce, or any other subject which people have strong opinions on: there is usually informed consent which can justify those activities. And as long as there is informed consent, activities should usually be the decision of the participants, and no others. Yes, I include activities like drug taking here: if you want to take drugs then it's your decision, and your fault if things go bad (but demonstrating the need for drug education).
Although I'm not sure which angle the informed consent argument applies to women's rights in Afghanistan (I'm sure it does though), the paedophilia pamphlet thought experiment certainly does not prove that the Afghanis are right to think this way, only that we can understand why they might.
Trees actually emit CO2 at night when there is no light for photosynthesis. Amusingly enough, the hotter the climate, the more CO2 they produce, and another few degrees would be enough to make them net CO2 emitters, rather than the absorbers they currently are.
They performed 100 simulations and got a result compatible with our solar system. If only 1% of solar systems ended up similar to ours with planets, there would still be tremendous number of similar solar systems out there. I don't think this is anything to be worried about.
I've had that problem. It's fairly easy to slipstream SATA drivers onto the WinXP install disc (the guide is the first item on a google search for "XP SATA install"), but on modern motherboards you can tell the BIOS to emulate IDE for SATA drives, and then it just reports the drives as PATA to the XP disc, go ahead and install.
Admittedly, neither option is trivial, but then what is?
Well many of the guides are extremely good, and cover many cases. It's rarely a case of "rtfm noob!", but instead "check out the guide at..." (except for a few distributions, but you'd generally know beforehand what sort of community to expect if you tried them). You're usually going to get much more out of the guide then you will from someone on a forum who doesn't know your exact setup.
The forums I use (gentoo/ubuntu/...) are generally quite happy to answer questions where people have shown at least a token effort to solve it. Even if that's just by searching through the forums.
For me the year of GNU/Linux on the desktop was 2000. And every year since then. Sorry it wasn't yours.
You can in fact download and install the latest up-to-date versions of these applications. The reason for your problem is that Ubuntu cannot afford to update packages in its repositories until it has tested them and able to mark them as stable. Some applications can go through this process quickly, others which rely on a number of other shared libraries cannot be marked stable so easily, they have to test the updated libraries, and then test the other applications that rely on those libraries, and this can take a while.
On GNU/Linux, sharing libraries and re-use of code is usual, whereas on Windows it is common to have several different versions of a particular library for different applications to use. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, Namely stability vs speed of updating.
Debian - Ubuntu's parent distribution - is renowned for having ancient versions of its packages, due to its rigorous testing. On the other hand, it is also the most rock solid distribution available. Since it is mostly used on servers, (and I personally know a number of older hackers who would only run Debian), having up to date versions of applications was far less important than knowing that the machine would never crash or be hacked.
I started using GNU/Linux nearly 6 years ago. I had dabbled occasionally before that, but went back to Win2000, and when I first installed there were odd times when I dual booted into Windows on my old hard drive (mobile phone software, Half-Life 2 etc.).
Now, I use GNU/Linux exclusively. Everything I do at university I do on Linux (and every single maths lecturer at Edinburgh University, or Heriot Watt University - also in Edinburgh - uses Linux). When I did my master's degree in Quantitative Genetics I never used or needed Windows. In my PhD I'm looking at the role of badgers and tuberculosis in cattle, and I use Linux, mostly doing simulations in C. The one time I needed a program that was Windows only (for calculating inbreeding coefficients), it worked perfectly in Wine. Even down to the same error message:)
So that covers being Microsoft free at work and university. How about home and non-work stuff?
I can use the web no problem, flash works (there's the odd time it fails, but I hardly notice), email, IRC, etc. are fine. I can play all my DVDs, CDs, music, anime collection, episodes of House I downloaded with Bittorrent. Admittedly the games front isn't very exciting, but I can still play a few reasonably fun games, I got Half-Life 2 working (granted buggily), and my Wii covers the rest. I'm not sure what else I need it for, but when I do need to do something I can usually find a Linux solution.
My flatmate used his Linux laptop to generate a 3d-movie from scratch to use as the menu for a horror film he took part it. All the editing for the movie was done in Linux. He's also pretty good with the Gimp, but I've never used it for anything particularly interesting so I can't comment.
Result: after 5 years, my knowledge of the command line is still fairly minimal, other than for re-encoding the odd movie into a VCD for a friend, and editing some config files. Things still go wrong, but I've never had a problem I couldn't fix, provided it was fixable (forums are brilliant), and my flatmates helped me at first when I got stuck. My completely non-techy fiancée uses my computer, and finds GNOME's interface easy to use. I am officially Microsoft free, and I don't look back. Also I build my own computer from components, so no Microsoft tax.
So yes, I think it's perfectly possible. It needs some patience though, and help from friends. Pre-installed Linux is definitely a good thing. However, if you gave a completely non-techy person a computer without Windows installed, and asked them to set it up themselves from scratch, they might find it difficult too.
Maybe if they programmed things properly in the first place, and didn't spend ages designing hidden APIs and other stuff that only they themselves could take advantage of, they wouldn't be in this colossal mess. And I think it speaks volumes that such a company is unable to handle its own products.
I think the biggest reason is for the most part PC gamers know what they want already. Console gamers see some pretty screenshots and art on the box and think hey, this Orange Box looks like a good deal. I disagree with this. Console gamers are just as likely as PC gamers to buy games magazines, follow what's coming out, pre-order etc. So you can casually walk into a store and pick up some pretty looking games, this applies to both PC and console games, but at least you're guaranteed that it will work on a console.
Also I know plenty of console gamers who stick with particular games, playing them endlessly until they perfect them. Some of these play multiplayer games until they are totally unbeatable by anyone else. Mario Kart on the SNES is just one example. You can play console games online against other players, and at home on a sofa, making the multiplayer experience every bit as good, if somewhat different to the PC side.
The only major difference between PC and console games is the lack of mods on console games, which is a clear plus for PC gamers.
As a web developer, I beg you, please install IE7 anyway. It's better standards support (far from being as good as gecko/webkit/khtml/opera, but still a massive improvement over IE6), support for alpha transparency, etc, makes things so much easier for us. As a web user, I beg you, please code your website so that it matches standards, and then it will work and display properly on all browsers supporting those standards (which is the whole point). I run GNU/Linux, and don't have (want) access to IEX, and doing this would makes things so much easier for me and all the others who don't/can't/won't run IEX.
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Since I started using GNU/Linux exclusively back in 2002, I'd say that was the "Year of the Linux Desktop" for me. Every passing year I feel more sure I made the correct decision. I feel that Windows continues to get more difficult to use, and more intrusive, while Linux gets more applications and more choice, centralised installation programs and package management, everything gets easier to use, things look better. Yes, I have to trawl forums to makes things work sometimes, but the same is true for Windows. It's been the YotLD over and over again for me. And no, I don't run Ubuntu.
With regards to KDE, I know you can change the look to make things appear as professional or flashy or geeky as you want, but GNOME usually looks like something I'd want to use, whereas KDE doesn't. Both have totally configurable panels and menus (something I feel Windows desperately needs), but again I feel it is easier to achieve something usable with GNOME than with KDE. GNOME feels considerably better polished than Windows, although I'd rate Windows slightly higher or about the same as KDE.
Once wine does a better job of running Half-Life 2, then I'll be able to get rid of Windows completely. Wine already runs older games like Thief better with fewer crashes (although a little forum searching was required to make it work). I suppose that would be the true YotLD for other people.
P.S. I've only used Mac OS X once or twice, but it didn't impress me much, and I don't know of anything it offers that really make me switch.
The usual arguments against GNOME are that it hides too much configuration, and that it is too slow compared to KDE. However, I find that GNOME usually has things configured correctly first time, and most of the options I do need are merely cosmetic (mouse focus etc), and these can be set in the preferences. Yes it hides things, but it makes the correct default options so most people probably never really need to find them. I've never found GNOME to be particularly slow, except for loading applications which probably does take too long, but once they're up they're fast enough. It's usually pretty easy to figure something out, and things usually work first time (e.g. CD burning, CUPS, HAL and D-BUS).
The only things I find that let GNOME down are its slow loading applications, Nautilus, and Totem (which I have to wrestle with to do what I want). Fortunately I have the command line and mplayer which taker care of most of these things.
KDE on the other hand, I find clunky, it's difficult to find where change the settings (which rarely default to the way I'd want them), and there are a host of little things which put me off, and I think GTK looks much better than QT. I can't put my finger on what exactly they are, but KDE always drives me back to GNOME after a few days' use. Really, the only thing I like about KDE is its wallpaper settings, which are not enough to make me switch, and Kile, which I can run quite happily under GNOME.
Well, just move the goal posts slightly. If you tossed a coin 50 times, would you expect to see 40 heads very often? How about 50 heads? What you get is a bell curve which is tight around the expected value (25), and the probability rapidly decreases to nearly 0.
Since the variance is 0.25*n, you'd expect the standard deviation to be 0.5*sqrt(n), i.e. the average distance from the expected value if n=5 is 1.118, and if n=50 is 3.5355. Doing a little Normal approximation to the binomial distribution, we get that 95% of values should lie within 1.96 std deviations, which for n=5 is (1.382,3.618), and for n=50 is (21.464,28.536). Just to really hammer it home, let n=500, and 95% of the values will lie within (238.82,261.18). See how those intervals are getting proportionally closer?
Absolutely correct.
I checked: http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/binomialX.html
Inputs are n=50, k=30, p=0.5
P(X > 30) ~= 0.101
I recall that the original Doom did random amounts of damage (since the designers were also roleplayers). This was most evident for the berserk pack, where you might do the same damage as an ordinary punch, but occasionally your fist would cause demons to explode. Also the shotgun would usually kill an imp in one shot, but not always. I loved this style of randomness, as it makes the game a little different each time, and not completely deterministic.
Meanwhile, I like the idea of adding a random direction to a shot fired. It means that a pixel perfect shooter doesn't always get his mark, but on average he'll still be more accurate than a poor shooter. I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain that their machine gun has spread, so unless it becomes too random, why worry if it affects the rest of the weapons? In real life there are plenty of factors that make guns not shoot the exact same spot every time.
Finally, (being someone who enjoys tabletop roleplaying, and also a researcher who mainly deals with stochastic simulation), randomness is a great way to allow people to play games without substituting the character's abilities for the player's. If your character is supposed to be good at shooting, and you point him at an enemy, then he'll hit more often if he's good. If you give your mook a gun, don't expect him to shoot accurately just because you can move the mouse to the right spot, because your character isn't very good at it. Conversely, he'll sometimes make a shot which is very difficult, but less often than the trained sniper (the same argument applies to other activities than shooting guns).
Dedicated to randomness. Maybe.
Saving is essential in some games, particularly if they're long (e.g. get a call and need to head out, don't want to leave computer running). The nethack style of one attempt at the whole thing is pretty evil, and gives games an arcade feeling. Maybe it didn't matter for certain games in the past, and for a very few current ones (e.g. Ikaruga, which is short anyway, and the point is to get a high score), but games these days normally have far more taking place and last longer.
If games like Half-Life decided that if you died then that was it - you'd have to start the game again from scratch, people would quickly get very annoyed, and the end parts of the game would never be reached by 90% of players. Some things need a lot of thought for a very small time frame, and you may need to try the same part again with a different strategy. This is just unworkable without a checkpoint.
I'm pretty confident that if game designers tried to remove checkpoints, then gamers would be outraged, and the game be only played by the hardcore few. Imagine playing Neverwinter Nights, knowing that death meant a new game from scratch. This is a clear indication that it's a bad idea. Or you could make the game so easy that death is unlikely to occur, but you end up with an unsatisfying game. If you feel that checkpoints makes things too easy, then set yourself a challenge and don't die, or don't use them.
As a mathematician, it's important to me that a CAS application is useful, which includes instructive and correct. However as a researcher it's more important to me that it is free (as in speech). Commercial software should be avoided in academia whenever possible, otherwise the world is reliant on commercial companies to further our knowledge, instead of the brains of people. I do insist on this, and I've been lucky that the people in my department tend to think likewise, so the free alternatives are always available.
If a free alternative to maple/mathematica were available then I would immediately switch to it. However, if the current software is not useful (see above), then I cannot use it and must wait until it matures (although I would agree to test it in my spare time to help get it there).
P.S. I know it's not CAS, but I use GNU Octave rather than Matlab, despite Matlab being superior in many cases.
Excuse me. What about drift? This can have a greater effect than selection in small populations (or for mutations with a low selection coefficient) and it is entirely random.
I loved Metroid Prime, and I found its graphics amazing. I just completed (100%) Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii about two hours ago, and the graphics are only mildly better - things are a bit more rounded - but it was great fun too. I do think that games on the GameCube looked good. I am impressed when really shiny games come out, but it's not my primary reason for playing them.
I'll admit I don't own any of the other consoles, and I've only occasionally seen people play them, which is what I based my comment on. I think I meant that the other consoles tend to go for the "realistic" look, whereas Nintendo just do their own thing, and I know this matters to some people.
The N64 wasn't really a blunder. It had Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which were both considered masters of the genre, and OoT is still considered one of the best games in the world. This was before people started commenting that the series were getting a little stale. Oh, and GoldenEye, and a whole pile of games done by Rare who were so good that Microsoft bought them after Nintendo were found guilty of price fixing and had to sell them off.
In fact I'd say that there were a lot of really awesome games on the N64, just none of them were Final Fantasy. Meanwhile, the N64 had a control stick, and managed to pack an awful lot into those cartridges. It was done to prevent long load times, which it managed. I still love my N64. The worst thing I can say about it is that my control stick got a bit crusty after all these years, and some of games had too low framerates, and it didn't help being in the UK with PAL's higher resolution (although that became less of an issue towards the end of the N64's lifecycle).
The GameCube had the world's most comfortable controller, and I still prefer it to the Wii Remote. It had graphics which were perfectly functional, maybe not as flashy as the other consoles, but I hold that graphics are only a very small part of what makes a game good (proof: if graphics were important, then all older games would suck, and they don't). Nintendo experimented with gameplay, and they came up with some fantastic ideas. They used a very easy SDK, so it was much easier to produce games for the NGC than the PS2, and the X-Box made it too easy to just port PC games.
The N64 and NGC were successful and good consoles, and Nintendo is still in the videogame business despite the heavy competition they faced, and growing stronger than ever. They'd have never made the Wii otherwise.
There is some evidence that the Doctor is considerably older than he lets on (for example he knew Omega and Rassilon, some 2000 years ago). And it is mentioned (Tom Baker era, possibly by Romana?) that the 4th Doctor was really on his 11th or 12th incarnation. The Doctor isn't entirely open about his past, and he's a lot more powerful than he lets on.
Hence, the writers can do what they want and get away with it.
Yes, provided the woman has been informed of the various outcomes. It's her decision what she does with *her* body, not anyone else's. And yes, I think the rights of the woman come before the rights of an unborn foetus.
Whenever people use the subjects paedophilia, zoophilia or necrophilia in any "if this is okay then surely this is too" argument, I always try to point out the importance of "informed consent". Paedophilia may or may not have consent, but it is never informed, and there is no consent for the other two. Hence, these activities should not be supported.
Now contrast this with homosexuality, BDSM, divorce, or any other subject which people have strong opinions on: there is usually informed consent which can justify those activities. And as long as there is informed consent, activities should usually be the decision of the participants, and no others. Yes, I include activities like drug taking here: if you want to take drugs then it's your decision, and your fault if things go bad (but demonstrating the need for drug education).
Although I'm not sure which angle the informed consent argument applies to women's rights in Afghanistan (I'm sure it does though), the paedophilia pamphlet thought experiment certainly does not prove that the Afghanis are right to think this way, only that we can understand why they might.
Okay, one reference is http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1561615/plants_may_not_absorb_additional_co2_from_warming/index.html
Plants can only perform photosynthesis during the day, under exposure to light. They perform respiration at night, and emit CO2.
Trees actually emit CO2 at night when there is no light for photosynthesis. Amusingly enough, the hotter the climate, the more CO2 they produce, and another few degrees would be enough to make them net CO2 emitters, rather than the absorbers they currently are.
Or you get distributions like Red Hat who contribute all their patches upstream, so everybody gets to take advantage of them.
They performed 100 simulations and got a result compatible with our solar system. If only 1% of solar systems ended up similar to ours with planets, there would still be tremendous number of similar solar systems out there. I don't think this is anything to be worried about.
I've had that problem. It's fairly easy to slipstream SATA drivers onto the WinXP install disc (the guide is the first item on a google search for "XP SATA install"), but on modern motherboards you can tell the BIOS to emulate IDE for SATA drives, and then it just reports the drives as PATA to the XP disc, go ahead and install.
Admittedly, neither option is trivial, but then what is?
Well many of the guides are extremely good, and cover many cases. It's rarely a case of "rtfm noob!", but instead "check out the guide at ..." (except for a few distributions, but you'd generally know beforehand what sort of community to expect if you tried them). You're usually going to get much more out of the guide then you will from someone on a forum who doesn't know your exact setup.
The forums I use (gentoo/ubuntu/...) are generally quite happy to answer questions where people have shown at least a token effort to solve it. Even if that's just by searching through the forums.
For me the year of GNU/Linux on the desktop was 2000. And every year since then. Sorry it wasn't yours.
You can in fact download and install the latest up-to-date versions of these applications. The reason for your problem is that Ubuntu cannot afford to update packages in its repositories until it has tested them and able to mark them as stable. Some applications can go through this process quickly, others which rely on a number of other shared libraries cannot be marked stable so easily, they have to test the updated libraries, and then test the other applications that rely on those libraries, and this can take a while.
On GNU/Linux, sharing libraries and re-use of code is usual, whereas on Windows it is common to have several different versions of a particular library for different applications to use. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, Namely stability vs speed of updating.
Debian - Ubuntu's parent distribution - is renowned for having ancient versions of its packages, due to its rigorous testing. On the other hand, it is also the most rock solid distribution available. Since it is mostly used on servers, (and I personally know a number of older hackers who would only run Debian), having up to date versions of applications was far less important than knowing that the machine would never crash or be hacked.
I started using GNU/Linux nearly 6 years ago. I had dabbled occasionally before that, but went back to Win2000, and when I first installed there were odd times when I dual booted into Windows on my old hard drive (mobile phone software, Half-Life 2 etc.).
:)
Now, I use GNU/Linux exclusively. Everything I do at university I do on Linux (and every single maths lecturer at Edinburgh University, or Heriot Watt University - also in Edinburgh - uses Linux). When I did my master's degree in Quantitative Genetics I never used or needed Windows. In my PhD I'm looking at the role of badgers and tuberculosis in cattle, and I use Linux, mostly doing simulations in C. The one time I needed a program that was Windows only (for calculating inbreeding coefficients), it worked perfectly in Wine. Even down to the same error message
So that covers being Microsoft free at work and university. How about home and non-work stuff?
I can use the web no problem, flash works (there's the odd time it fails, but I hardly notice), email, IRC, etc. are fine. I can play all my DVDs, CDs, music, anime collection, episodes of House I downloaded with Bittorrent. Admittedly the games front isn't very exciting, but I can still play a few reasonably fun games, I got Half-Life 2 working (granted buggily), and my Wii covers the rest. I'm not sure what else I need it for, but when I do need to do something I can usually find a Linux solution.
My flatmate used his Linux laptop to generate a 3d-movie from scratch to use as the menu for a horror film he took part it. All the editing for the movie was done in Linux. He's also pretty good with the Gimp, but I've never used it for anything particularly interesting so I can't comment.
Result: after 5 years, my knowledge of the command line is still fairly minimal, other than for re-encoding the odd movie into a VCD for a friend, and editing some config files. Things still go wrong, but I've never had a problem I couldn't fix, provided it was fixable (forums are brilliant), and my flatmates helped me at first when I got stuck. My completely non-techy fiancée uses my computer, and finds GNOME's interface easy to use. I am officially Microsoft free, and I don't look back. Also I build my own computer from components, so no Microsoft tax.
So yes, I think it's perfectly possible. It needs some patience though, and help from friends. Pre-installed Linux is definitely a good thing. However, if you gave a completely non-techy person a computer without Windows installed, and asked them to set it up themselves from scratch, they might find it difficult too.
6^-2 = 0.02777777...
Okay, this is a rational number with an infinite decimal expansion, but the last digit to any precision is 8.
(Sorry, pedant).
Maybe if they programmed things properly in the first place, and didn't spend ages designing hidden APIs and other stuff that only they themselves could take advantage of, they wouldn't be in this colossal mess. And I think it speaks volumes that such a company is unable to handle its own products.
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Insert plug for Free Software plug here --
Also I know plenty of console gamers who stick with particular games, playing them endlessly until they perfect them. Some of these play multiplayer games until they are totally unbeatable by anyone else. Mario Kart on the SNES is just one example. You can play console games online against other players, and at home on a sofa, making the multiplayer experience every bit as good, if somewhat different to the PC side.
The only major difference between PC and console games is the lack of mods on console games, which is a clear plus for PC gamers.