Many pieces of GNOME software live on Launchpad and are not strictly part of GNOME upstream (Simple Scan, for instance).
That's the problem: Canonical is not doing the hard work to get what little they do write upstream. Stuff that is not upstream is just balkanized, fractured, non-maintainable code. It doesn't provide any benefit to the rest of the GNU/Linux community, i.e. the people that write all the rest of the code and upstream it so that Canonical can exist in the first place.
Usability research is useful, but when I click your link I see one study (on Empathy) and further clicking around on the Canonical Design team site reveals that, as so much of Canonical appears to be, it's all about marketing. Seriously: ONE study and then three guides devoted to "guidelines to support the brand documentation and help create consistent brand usage."?
I don't entirely disagree with you, but any free-market will result in monopolies and de-facto states unless there is a societal decision that these are undesirable.
It's easy. If you're left-wing and anti-authoritarian then you're against unrestrained capitalism and government. From that vantage point Obama is a right-wing shill that implements the policies that benefit the health-care industry, the military industrial complex and the beltway insiders that benefit from all that.
If you're right-wing then he hasn't started lynching all the "coloreds" yet and hasn't dropped enough bombs on the non-Christian "savages" and so obviously he's the second coming of Marx.
Read/watch the link if you want to know why moderate leftists are worried that this appointment does not counteract the right-wing drift the court has taken over the years. If Obama wanted to leave a left-wing legacy then he'd have appointed a counterbalance... not a "moderate" "consensus-builder".
Mod parent up. This is the single most important point about the whole thing. Incidents like the above are just one INEVITABLE consequence of invading and occupying OTHER PEOPLE'S COUNTRIES.
In fact someone NOT carrying some sort of weapon in Iraq at that time would be taking a big risk. Mere presence of a weapon on someone is not justification for murdering them under ANY legal regime in the world.
THe whole video displays the hysterical, hyper-cautious, over-reacting, callous stupidity of the armed forces of the USA. Kinda like cops, but with more encouragement to murder people.
Color me confused, this is a brand of open source that I haven't heard of before: Are you saying that any company that uses open source software should also support Linux with all their projects?
Can you please point me to the text in the GPL/APL/BSD licenses that states that?
No, you're not confused. Just disingenuous. Of course there are no licensing obligations to do that, but if Google puffs itself up and struts about mouthing "do no evil" while not releasing Linux versions of its clients then it looks, and is, hypocritical.
No, the entire premise of publishing in journals is to allow others to see what _might_ be work worth replicating or falsifying.
Anyone can start their own journal and be their own editorial board otherwise.
Journals convey a certain level of probability that the work is even worth bothering reading.
If there is the slightest whiff that there is good contradictory data or a solid alternate model to explain data then nearly everyone in each field is all over it in an attempt to gain reputation and glory.
The stuff that doesn't get in is considered to be garbage by most reasonable people in the field. People with brilliant "unconventional" ideas can publish them themselves on geocities homepages with blink tags and rainbow text.
Journals exist to communicate skeptically-reviewed state-of-the-art in a field so that we don't all have to dig through exactly the same crap finding the same errors and wasting our time. The journals are conveyors of probable good material. Some of it sometimes completely disrupts a field, but it has to be exceptionally good to do so... NOT exceptionally BAD.
I always thought scientific journals should judge submissions based upon the quality of the data and the research, not if they passed some popularity contest.
And it's exactly because these scientists reckon that the un-named editor at Climate Research is publishing papers of low quality and poor data that they don't want to publish in it.
The "popularity contest" in science is based on who has the what most other accredited scientists believe to be the best data and the best hypothesis explaining that data... not some nebulous fucking idealized "good science". It is a human process.
Unsurprisingly, it appears some of these "serious" scientists appear to b e sacrificing the scientific method
Yeah? Yeah? What is this scientific method of which you speak?
and data transparency
Doesn't exist and never has in science in the sense that you are using it, namely the complete and immediate publication of every piece of data gathered even if the scientist believes that much of that data is flawed or irrelevant.
The only data that needs to be published is that which the scientist claims to support the model.
Yes, yes, but you've got to remember that your point of view originates in your rectum and is clouded by matter other than a knowledge and experience of science.
And very often it's because you know or suspect that there's a reason why the data is flawed in some way, e.g. Milikan's Oil Drop experiment, or Mendel's work on variation
Yes, this sounds like the scientific method at its best - try to shut up and demean anyone who disagrees with you, ensure that they aren't published or cited, and hence are shut out of the grant money gravy train. Meanwhile, hide your data from public view, and privately chat about how you manipulated it.
Why the fuck would anyone publish their work in a journal with an editor that is busy exercising editorial control completely at odds with what most people in the field believe?
Why the fuck would anyone want to be published in the same forum as a wack-job?
There are fringe journals which published weird shit in every field. Some of them are even nearly completely fake (google for Vioxx and the journal created by the drug companies to distort the publication record on it). No one wants to be associated with them unless they share the biases of the editors.
The quotations are entirely reasonable and reflect a worry that Climate Research is a biased journal which gives undue consideration and billing to anti-global-warming nutters. The scientists in question are completely right that publishing in it would be elevating the trash shoe-horned in by the editor in question to a greater prominence than it deserves. Solution: boycott the journal.
Contrary to your belief scientists do not privilege all data as exactly the same. They have hunches, good reasons and suspicions about why some data is crap and should be ignored. Milikan's famous oil-drop experiment to determine the charge on an electron is backed by several hundred (IIRC) attempts which he deemed "failures" (see this). There are MANY other examples.
Also, if you think science doesn't operate by the same politicking as any other human field then you've NEVER had ANYTHING to do with science. For a good outsider perspective you might try reading some of the sociological studies (e.g. David Hull's _Science as a Process_).
The models and the data which are claimed to support them are published for everyone to see and are open for refutation, examination and improvement. Science as an aggregate stumbles towards the truth even when individual parts are not perfect. It achieves this by clear, open statements of data and hypothesis which allows a clear basis for challenge or confirmation.
In other words, fuck all to see here unless you know nothing about how science works or are desperate to believe that global warming is not due to your fat ass.
In the absence of such evidence, we are left with two possibilities. One is that flu vaccine is in fact highly beneficial, or at least helpful. Solid evidence to that effect would encourage more citizens--and particularly more health professionals--to get their shots and prevent the flu's spread. As it stands, more than 50 percent of health-care workers say they do not intend to get vaccinated for swine flu and don't routinely get their shots for seasonal flu, in part because many of them doubt the vaccines' efficacy. The other possibility, of course, is that we're relying heavily on vaccines and antivirals that simply don't work, or don't work as well as we believe. And as a result, we may be neglecting other, proven measures that could minimize the death rate during pandemics.
Bah, in your rush to dismiss the author as an "anti-vaccine nut" (and I admit they exist) you obviously didn't bother to read the article very carefully. See the above quote which covers your point and then read the one below which explains that the CDC and others who are heavily invested in the dogma that this particular vaccine is useful won't actually do the trials:
These questions have led to the most controversial aspect of Jefferson's work: his call for placebo-controlled trials, studies that would randomly give half the test subjects vaccine and the other half a dummy shot, or placebo. Only such large, well-constructed, randomized trials can show with any precision how effective vaccine really is, and for whom.
In the flu-vaccine world, Jefferson's call for placebo-controlled studies is considered so radical that even some of his fellow skeptics oppose it. Majumdar, the Ottawa researcher, says he believes that evidence of a benefit among children is established and that public-health officials should try to protect seniors by immunizing children, health-care workers, and other people around them, and thus reduce the spread of the flu. Lone Simonsen explains the prevailing view: "It is considered unethical to do trials in populations that are recommended to have vaccine," a stance that is shared by everybody from the CDC's Nancy Cox to Anthony Fauci at the NIH. They feel strongly that vaccine has been shown to be effective and that a sham vaccine would put test subjects at unnecessary risk of getting a serious case of the flu. In a phone interview, Fauci at first voiced the opinion that a placebo trial in the elderly might be acceptable, but he called back later to retract his comment, saying that such a trial "would be unethical." Jefferson finds this view almost exactly backward: "What do you do when you have uncertainty? You test," he says. "We have built huge, population-based policies on the flimsiest of scientific evidence. The most unethical thing to do is to carry on business as usual."
In short, yes, there are anti-science, anti-immunization nutters but this article definitely doesn't fall into that camp. It's a considered examination of the lack of evidence and actually calls for gathering more data.
The true cost of your motoring is probably a LOT more than that.
There is never going to be a simple transition between cheap, convenient, comfortable public transportation and the current car-centered system. Cars take up too much space and resources and slow buses on the roads and monopolize likely routes for light-rail/trams for urban travel.
As for the totally independent cycle routes you talk about, most of them are built on the ruins of old intercity rail tracks (thanks Sustrans enviro-whackjobs) and are no earthly use for anyone using a bicycle for anything but a holiday.
Fuck that. I bicycle to work and have arranged my life so that is convenient and doable. I pay a bit more for my house but I make up for it by owning no car. Part of my recreation involves cycling on the weekends on the roads that *I* already effing pay for and I have no time for people whinging about me using public goods which I have chipped in to pay for _while they are inconveniencing me with their unnecessary, antiquated, selfish vehicle_.
Get off my roads or get onto a bike.
What is it with convoys of cars? Stretched out in indian file, sometimes 3 or 4 abreast slowing traffic substantially or preventing it completely. Don't these people realise that there are people who worked hard to buy a bicycle, paid huge contributions to the general tax pool to fund road development and subsidize cheap gas for them and now those same free-loading car drivers are blocking the damn roads? Sheesh!
Either two (or more) abreast, stretching the overtaking distance substantially or preventing it completely,
Two abreast makes conversation much easier than one behind the other. It's more social and more enjoyable if you're going at a relaxed pace and not worried about aerodynamics.
or in indian file leaving no gaps for cars to pull into, meaning you either have to try and overtake anywhere from 2 to 6 bikes at once, or not at all.
Riding in a peleton one behind the other substantially reduces aerodynamic drag especially if there are headwinds. If there are only two to six bicycles then the length of overtaking is not much greater than a small family sedan to a large van. Count yourself lucky that you don't get peletons of 30 to 40 which would be equivalent to a tractor trailer.
I'm a realist. I know we're going to have to throttle back on car use a lot in the future. I'm quite happy to pay more road tax to fund better public transport, and if it was better I would use it.
Nah, you're not realistic. The subsidies that go into funding a fucking big army that goes around securing cheap gas and a road network that in some U.S. urban areas covers over 60% of the land surface (when parking lots are included) is not sustainable at any price. It's going to be a choice between you paying what you currently do for your prius PLUS more in order to fund public transport that is convenient. You won't like it and you're never going to pay for it voluntarily. So right now you're just whining.
Perhaps we can build more off-road cycle lanes too?
And where would these go, start and end? Frankly there's no spare room for them in the places where they'd be useful. The choice is stark if your an "either-cars-or-bikes" kinda guy.
Bikes and cars just don't mix - the size, vulnerability, and speed differentials are just too great.
Bollocks. There's no problem with cars and bicycles mixing as long as both obey the rules of the road. Actual incidence of bike-automobile collisions is very low thanks to the competence and training of most road users. Your chance of death-per-hour-travelled is higher as an automobile user than a bicyclist.
In the meantime I wish cyclists would realise that some people still have to drive to make a living. We're not arseholes, most of us have good spatial awareness and don't really fancy the idea of killing anyone. Any chance of some consideration going in the other direction?
The consideration which you ask for involves moving out of your way to our detriment. No thanks. There are already rules of the road which govern precedence and reasonable interaction. Whining about what you'd like while promising to take public transport in Never-never-land is just irritating. Suck it up. You non-arseholes are creating the congestion, not they bicyclists. As for the "we're not arseholes", you're talking about the general population here: it includes a similar percentage of arseholes as the population of cyclists. As a cyclist I've encountered a good few of your arsehole-car-buddies and can't take your "we're not arseholes" line very seriously.
Give me a break. It's another talented, unethical scumbag joining up with the even bigger scumbags in government so that they can fuck us over more efficiently. Immunity and privilege for him, surveillance for the rest of us.
FOSS drivers are only available for GMA945, GMA950 chipsets in current notebooks. Anything with the GMA500 may or may not work with some hard-to-get-ahold-of proprietary blobs. See my post abopve. It sucks. Intel have made a good name for themselves in the past with Freeing their drivers but this GMA500 thing is muddying the market and causing uncertainty. In the past I would have felt happy that choosing Intel was going to mean FOSS drivers but now I'd think twice before recommending them or purchasing them.
It's an interesting point you make.
Currently it's worth avoiding netbooks that have the following hardware:
1. Intel GMA500 aka Poulsbo graphics chipsets. There is no FOSS driver for these. That's because there's a PowerVR core in them. The Fedora Project's Adam Williamson seems to have found some partial drivers hidden away in a quiet little Ubuntu repository where they were dumped by the Intel team. But success seems partial. So for now avoid anything with GMA500.
2. Broadcom wireless. Again avoid these Broadcom 4322 like the fscking plague. Dan Williams (again a Red Hat / Fedora person) has a fairly scathing take on them based on his experiences of trying to get suspend/resume and wireless to work consistently.
3. Elantech touchpads. Bastien Nocera (what is it with all those Red Hat people, don't they like closed-source binary drivers?) may have had some success at wringing some code out of Ubuntu and Intel people to share with the rest of us, but it still seems uncertain.
4. CPU. The Intel Z-series draw less power than the N-series apparently.
5. RAM expansion. Lots of the netbooks have a single, soldered slot. So if you like being stuck with 1GB of RAM while you try to run OpenOffice.org-3 then go ahead, have fun.
So, the bottom line is that the Dell Mini 10v might be OK as regards the graphics (it's GMA950) which in turn means that it doesn't do HDMI and has an unfortunately lower vertical resolution than the Mini10v, but the wireless sucks and the touchpad probably sucks, the RAM is fixed too low.
Looking at the HP Mini 1000s its difficult to tell what wireless they use. Graphics are GMA950 unlike the older HP2133 which used Chrome9 graphics chipsets for which VIA has failed to release FOSS drivers.
Seems like a lot of the netbook producers (even those such as Intel, Dell and Ubuntu that pay lipservice to "Open Source") are having a hard time being honest and straightforward with us.
That was an old link that I supplied and the correct name for PK is a catalog. The idea is that it's more appropriate to define such relationships at a level higher than that of actual package (whether.deb,.rpm or whatever) relationships. That way if you want to be able to provide a simple way for someone to get the ideal environment for developing on Whizzbang compiler with Whacko-lib then you can provide the catalog and it will work not just for rpm-based systems, but also deb-based and whatever else.
http://www.packagekit.org/pk-faq.html#catalogs
Sounds like you might be interested in SuSE's patterns. Supposedly PackageKit will be doing this stuff in the near future too.
I think you might be able to solve that problem with YUM by defining your own groups in a comp file for your own repository (or spin of Fedora) (see this link and also search "man yum.conf" for group_package_types) and choosing to make your hypothetical standard library a "Default" package type.
Not quite as simple as.deb Suggests, Enhances and Recommends but still do-able and PackageKit "bundles" will supposedly be even simpler and address exactly your hypothetical example
Slashdot Mirror
That's the problem: Canonical is not doing the hard work to get what little they do write upstream. Stuff that is not upstream is just balkanized, fractured, non-maintainable code. It doesn't provide any benefit to the rest of the GNU/Linux community, i.e. the people that write all the rest of the code and upstream it so that Canonical can exist in the first place. Usability research is useful, but when I click your link I see one study (on Empathy) and further clicking around on the Canonical Design team site reveals that, as so much of Canonical appears to be, it's all about marketing. Seriously: ONE study and then three guides devoted to "guidelines to support the brand documentation and help create consistent brand usage."?
Yep, this is pseudo-science bullshit on a par with water-dowsing
I don't entirely disagree with you, but any free-market will result in monopolies and de-facto states unless there is a societal decision that these are undesirable.
It's easy. If you're left-wing and anti-authoritarian then you're against unrestrained capitalism and government. From that vantage point Obama is a right-wing shill that implements the policies that benefit the health-care industry, the military industrial complex and the beltway insiders that benefit from all that.
If you're right-wing then he hasn't started lynching all the "coloreds" yet and hasn't dropped enough bombs on the non-Christian "savages" and so obviously he's the second coming of Marx.
Read/watch the link if you want to know why moderate leftists are worried that this appointment does not counteract the right-wing drift the court has taken over the years. If Obama wanted to leave a left-wing legacy then he'd have appointed a counterbalance... not a "moderate" "consensus-builder".
Another right-wing move by President Hope. I guess the lobbyists really got what they paid for when they backed Obama.
Mod parent up. This is the single most important point about the whole thing. Incidents like the above are just one INEVITABLE consequence of invading and occupying OTHER PEOPLE'S COUNTRIES.
In fact someone NOT carrying some sort of weapon in Iraq at that time would be taking a big risk. Mere presence of a weapon on someone is not justification for murdering them under ANY legal regime in the world. THe whole video displays the hysterical, hyper-cautious, over-reacting, callous stupidity of the armed forces of the USA. Kinda like cops, but with more encouragement to murder people.
http://khanacademy.org/
That is a probably incorrect entry: http://www.politics.ie/fianna-fail/10828-what-does-fianna-fail-mean-english.html
Gnote is a fully compatible rewrite of Tomboy in C++ with GTK+. It's excellent. Give it a try, it's more responsive than Tomboy which is amusing.
No, you're not confused. Just disingenuous. Of course there are no licensing obligations to do that, but if Google puffs itself up and struts about mouthing "do no evil" while not releasing Linux versions of its clients then it looks, and is, hypocritical.
No, the entire premise of publishing in journals is to allow others to see what _might_ be work worth replicating or falsifying. Anyone can start their own journal and be their own editorial board otherwise. Journals convey a certain level of probability that the work is even worth bothering reading.
The stuff that doesn't get in is considered to be garbage by most reasonable people in the field. People with brilliant "unconventional" ideas can publish them themselves on geocities homepages with blink tags and rainbow text.
Journals exist to communicate skeptically-reviewed state-of-the-art in a field so that we don't all have to dig through exactly the same crap finding the same errors and wasting our time. The journals are conveyors of probable good material. Some of it sometimes completely disrupts a field, but it has to be exceptionally good to do so ... NOT exceptionally BAD.
And it's exactly because these scientists reckon that the un-named editor at Climate Research is publishing papers of low quality and poor data that they don't want to publish in it.
The "popularity contest" in science is based on who has the what most other accredited scientists believe to be the best data and the best hypothesis explaining that data ... not some nebulous fucking idealized "good science". It is a human process.
Yeah? Yeah? What is this scientific method of which you speak?
Doesn't exist and never has in science in the sense that you are using it, namely the complete and immediate publication of every piece of data gathered even if the scientist believes that much of that data is flawed or irrelevant.
Yes, yes, but you've got to remember that your point of view originates in your rectum and is clouded by matter other than a knowledge and experience of science.
And very often it's because you know or suspect that there's a reason why the data is flawed in some way, e.g. Milikan's Oil Drop experiment, or Mendel's work on variation
Why the fuck would anyone publish their work in a journal with an editor that is busy exercising editorial control completely at odds with what most people in the field believe?
Why the fuck would anyone want to be published in the same forum as a wack-job?
There are fringe journals which published weird shit in every field. Some of them are even nearly completely fake (google for Vioxx and the journal created by the drug companies to distort the publication record on it). No one wants to be associated with them unless they share the biases of the editors.
The quotations are entirely reasonable and reflect a worry that Climate Research is a biased journal which gives undue consideration and billing to anti-global-warming nutters. The scientists in question are completely right that publishing in it would be elevating the trash shoe-horned in by the editor in question to a greater prominence than it deserves. Solution: boycott the journal.
Contrary to your belief scientists do not privilege all data as exactly the same. They have hunches, good reasons and suspicions about why some data is crap and should be ignored. Milikan's famous oil-drop experiment to determine the charge on an electron is backed by several hundred (IIRC) attempts which he deemed "failures" (see this). There are MANY other examples.
Also, if you think science doesn't operate by the same politicking as any other human field then you've NEVER had ANYTHING to do with science. For a good outsider perspective you might try reading some of the sociological studies (e.g. David Hull's _Science as a Process_).
The models and the data which are claimed to support them are published for everyone to see and are open for refutation, examination and improvement. Science as an aggregate stumbles towards the truth even when individual parts are not perfect. It achieves this by clear, open statements of data and hypothesis which allows a clear basis for challenge or confirmation.
In other words, fuck all to see here unless you know nothing about how science works or are desperate to believe that global warming is not due to your fat ass.
Bah, in your rush to dismiss the author as an "anti-vaccine nut" (and I admit they exist) you obviously didn't bother to read the article very carefully. See the above quote which covers your point and then read the one below which explains that the CDC and others who are heavily invested in the dogma that this particular vaccine is useful won't actually do the trials:
In short, yes, there are anti-science, anti-immunization nutters but this article definitely doesn't fall into that camp. It's a considered examination of the lack of evidence and actually calls for gathering more data.
The true cost of your motoring is probably a LOT more than that. There is never going to be a simple transition between cheap, convenient, comfortable public transportation and the current car-centered system. Cars take up too much space and resources and slow buses on the roads and monopolize likely routes for light-rail/trams for urban travel. As for the totally independent cycle routes you talk about, most of them are built on the ruins of old intercity rail tracks (thanks Sustrans enviro-whackjobs) and are no earthly use for anyone using a bicycle for anything but a holiday. Fuck that. I bicycle to work and have arranged my life so that is convenient and doable. I pay a bit more for my house but I make up for it by owning no car. Part of my recreation involves cycling on the weekends on the roads that *I* already effing pay for and I have no time for people whinging about me using public goods which I have chipped in to pay for _while they are inconveniencing me with their unnecessary, antiquated, selfish vehicle_. Get off my roads or get onto a bike.
What is it with convoys of cars? Stretched out in indian file, sometimes 3 or 4 abreast slowing traffic substantially or preventing it completely. Don't these people realise that there are people who worked hard to buy a bicycle, paid huge contributions to the general tax pool to fund road development and subsidize cheap gas for them and now those same free-loading car drivers are blocking the damn roads? Sheesh!
Two abreast makes conversation much easier than one behind the other. It's more social and more enjoyable if you're going at a relaxed pace and not worried about aerodynamics.
Riding in a peleton one behind the other substantially reduces aerodynamic drag especially if there are headwinds. If there are only two to six bicycles then the length of overtaking is not much greater than a small family sedan to a large van. Count yourself lucky that you don't get peletons of 30 to 40 which would be equivalent to a tractor trailer.
Nah, you're not realistic. The subsidies that go into funding a fucking big army that goes around securing cheap gas and a road network that in some U.S. urban areas covers over 60% of the land surface (when parking lots are included) is not sustainable at any price. It's going to be a choice between you paying what you currently do for your prius PLUS more in order to fund public transport that is convenient. You won't like it and you're never going to pay for it voluntarily. So right now you're just whining.
And where would these go, start and end? Frankly there's no spare room for them in the places where they'd be useful. The choice is stark if your an "either-cars-or-bikes" kinda guy.
Bollocks. There's no problem with cars and bicycles mixing as long as both obey the rules of the road. Actual incidence of bike-automobile collisions is very low thanks to the competence and training of most road users. Your chance of death-per-hour-travelled is higher as an automobile user than a bicyclist.
The consideration which you ask for involves moving out of your way to our detriment. No thanks. There are already rules of the road which govern precedence and reasonable interaction. Whining about what you'd like while promising to take public transport in Never-never-land is just irritating. Suck it up. You non-arseholes are creating the congestion, not they bicyclists. As for the "we're not arseholes", you're talking about the general population here: it includes a similar percentage of arseholes as the population of cyclists. As a cyclist I've encountered a good few of your arsehole-car-buddies and can't take your "we're not arseholes" line very seriously.
Give me a break. It's another talented, unethical scumbag joining up with the even bigger scumbags in government so that they can fuck us over more efficiently. Immunity and privilege for him, surveillance for the rest of us.
FOSS drivers are only available for GMA945, GMA950 chipsets in current notebooks. Anything with the GMA500 may or may not work with some hard-to-get-ahold-of proprietary blobs. See my post abopve. It sucks. Intel have made a good name for themselves in the past with Freeing their drivers but this GMA500 thing is muddying the market and causing uncertainty. In the past I would have felt happy that choosing Intel was going to mean FOSS drivers but now I'd think twice before recommending them or purchasing them.
It's an interesting point you make.
Currently it's worth avoiding netbooks that have the following hardware:
1. Intel GMA500 aka Poulsbo graphics chipsets. There is no FOSS driver for these. That's because there's a PowerVR core in them. The Fedora Project's Adam Williamson seems to have found some partial drivers hidden away in a quiet little Ubuntu repository where they were dumped by the Intel team. But success seems partial. So for now avoid anything with GMA500.
2. Broadcom wireless. Again avoid these Broadcom 4322 like the fscking plague. Dan Williams (again a Red Hat / Fedora person) has a fairly scathing take on them based on his experiences of trying to get suspend/resume and wireless to work consistently.
3. Elantech touchpads. Bastien Nocera (what is it with all those Red Hat people, don't they like closed-source binary drivers?) may have had some success at wringing some code out of Ubuntu and Intel people to share with the rest of us, but it still seems uncertain.
4. CPU. The Intel Z-series draw less power than the N-series apparently.
5. RAM expansion. Lots of the netbooks have a single, soldered slot. So if you like being stuck with 1GB of RAM while you try to run OpenOffice.org-3 then go ahead, have fun.
So, the bottom line is that the Dell Mini 10v might be OK as regards the graphics (it's GMA950) which in turn means that it doesn't do HDMI and has an unfortunately lower vertical resolution than the Mini10v, but the wireless sucks and the touchpad probably sucks, the RAM is fixed too low.
Looking at the HP Mini 1000s its difficult to tell what wireless they use. Graphics are GMA950 unlike the older HP2133 which used Chrome9 graphics chipsets for which VIA has failed to release FOSS drivers.
Seems like a lot of the netbook producers (even those such as Intel, Dell and Ubuntu that pay lipservice to "Open Source") are having a hard time being honest and straightforward with us.
That was an old link that I supplied and the correct name for PK is a catalog. The idea is that it's more appropriate to define such relationships at a level higher than that of actual package (whether .deb, .rpm or whatever) relationships. That way if you want to be able to provide a simple way for someone to get the ideal environment for developing on Whizzbang compiler with Whacko-lib then you can provide the catalog and it will work not just for rpm-based systems, but also deb-based and whatever else.
http://www.packagekit.org/pk-faq.html#catalogs
Sounds like you might be interested in SuSE's patterns. Supposedly PackageKit will be doing this stuff in the near future too.
I think you might be able to solve that problem with YUM by defining your own groups in a comp file for your own repository (or spin of Fedora) (see this link and also search "man yum.conf" for group_package_types) and choosing to make your hypothetical standard library a "Default" package type.
Not quite as simple as .deb Suggests, Enhances and Recommends but still do-able and PackageKit "bundles" will supposedly be even simpler and address exactly your hypothetical example