I don't know. I still haven't been able to right click drag things and select move like I am in Windows in either of them. Seems like it would be easy to implement....
Did anybody here actually try Sugar? I'd have replaced it with ms dos in a heart beat. And XP is clearly superior. If only they'd have been smart and initially went with some type of xubuntu derivative, or something that made some kind of rational sense, we'd have not lost yet another battle to the corporate monopoly.
It's not that Windows is better. It's just that Microsoft is smarter than the passionate FOSS community who is apparently stubborn and arrogant, and completely unaware of what is usable or not, Sugar being an AMAZING example.
You made some valid points, but you kind of threw out an unnecessary insult, rather than sticking to the engineering. I don't think Hydrogen gas is all that expensive. I imagine with a solar panel and some water, you could produce pretty much as much hydrogen as you would need at any time. However, I'm not really proposing a zeppelin such as the previous ones that were built. I'm proposing an INERT hydrogen storage system that counteracts the weight of the vehicle to neutral at all times, and maybe a smaller helium tank that can be filled or emptied for ballast as needed.
A 48 hour trip that is essentially free will beat an expensive 10 hour flight any time, barring emergencies, or the ultra rich for whom their time is worth a lot more money than mine is.
Kevlar is not really necessary. It would be nice for safety, and to make the zeppelin mostly bullet proof, but really large carbon fiber spheres inertly storing the hydrogen gas (with no intake or exhaust) could be manufactured very cheaply in bulk. You seem to me to be inordinately opposed to the idea for some reason, and none of those reasons are purely economic or engineering as far as I can tell.
The drag issue is certainly relevant though! However if your entire zeppelin was covered in a lightweight solar panel, I think you could offset the drag with added thrust from electric fans, and again, mostly for free.
I'm not disparaging airplanes or the airplane industry, they will always have their place. I just happen to think for most of us, having a cheap self guided luxury RV zeppelin that also collected more electricity than it used would be a nice vehicle to live in and float around in. If you have any particular engineering caveats or disagreement, please state them openly and clearly, and leave the insults to some other flame war.
Again, I'm looking for venture capitalists... Thanks in advance! rhY
I am a HUGE zeppelin enthusiast. I plan on building zeppelins myself eventually, or now if you have a venture capitalist with some vision.
Let's be clear: Zeppelins are MUCH safer than airplanes. They float, and are inherently safer by design. Even in the Hindenburg, arguably one of the worst zeppelin disasters in history, over 50% of the people on board survived. Hydrogen is safe, too, the only reason the Hindenburg went down is because it had been damaged by a Nazi party show boat, and was painted in (I'm not making this up) Aluminum, gunpowder, and rocket fuel, all of which are more than just a little bit flammable.
Zeppelins are much CHEAPER than airplanes. You only need to blow a fan for propulsion, and can do so at slower (safer) speeds, as the lift is all provided by helium or hydrogen. In fact, the typical zeppelin has a LOT of surface area, and with the new cheap CIGS solar panels, even propulsion could be largely free. Done properly, zeppelins could be cheaper to travel in than ANY OTHER VEHICLE.
Zeppelins can be spacious, comfortable, and luxurious. They offer spectacular views, speedy (as the bird flies) routes, and stunning panache.
With the technology we have now, you could have a GPS-guided, radar-auto-avoiding, wifi-other-zeppelin-communicating, self-propelled zeppelin made of carbon fiber, kevlar, and CIGS solar panels which is also a luxurious home complete with hot tub, shower, bed, kitchen, sun deck, and movie theater, able to travel essentially for free, after initial purchase price.
In fact, with mass production, there is no part of this design that is expensive AT ALL, and they could eventually be much cheaper than houses and change the way we live altogether.
You can laugh if you want, but we had designs vastly superior to any of our current vehicles in the TWENTIES!!!!
I thought of a fourth model. I'll call it the Rupert Murdoch model. Just buy every competitor and relevant product. This way doesn't really work for the end user, either, but it is a slightly different model to the other 3, and is similar to the MS model quite a bit, as well.
Now would somebody PLEASE code a simple and effective cross platform video chat program using open codecs? I recommend speex, and in particular stealing the code from pidgin and mumble.
Thanks in advance, and my children and grand children will thank you also.
It seems Ludicrous to me that the next big thing (video chat) is so horrifically behind in the FOSS world. I mean, breaking the skype hegemony is going to be MUCH easier now than it will be later, when everyone already has skype (which we are very near NOW, by the way, in some places). Imagine if Firefox had been out BEFORE IE conquered 90% of the market......... Now fast forward to today and think about skype and how crappy every FOSS alternative currently is.
FOSS junkies really need to prioritize! Let's win the battles that are being fought now (Metaverse, VOIP, Video Chat), AND continue to fight the battles we already lost (Ubuntu vs MS, Firefox vs IE, GIMP vs Photoshop, Pidgin vs AIM, Wikispaces vs MySpace, etc....)
Well, eventually with molecular assembly the cost of the hardware is going to be virtually zero, and at which point if there is a computer that does 99.9% of what 99.9% of the populace needs.... A lot of these suppositions break down. With or without the advent of molecular assemblers, this is kind of where we are headed long term. I don't know how much storage you're going to need, but let me be the first to say that 64 TB should be enough for anybody!
....greatly enjoyed the hearty and vicious debate between Linux fan boys and Sun fan boys. But of course since Open Solaris doesn't run San Andreas, I'll probably be sticking with Windows x64 a little while longer.:)
Though I do enjoy mucking around on my other systems.....
Well, I for one messed with my mom's for about two hours. I'm not a guru like some of these other/.ers, but I cut my teeth on a sinclair, had a trs-80, try different distros constantly and have no problem installing any version of windows or mac OS on virtually any different modern hardware.
I couldn't do a god damned thing on the sugar OS, and that left a sour taste in my mouth. I mean, had they included a lightweight Ubuntu clone or something, they'd have had something, but that OS is just completely and insanely bad. No wonder people want windows!!! I'd prefer Windows ME to Sugar!
And I DO like the eee, but I'm still waiting for a cell phone that plugs into a USB docking station, and that station is connected to a monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and I can do everything I can do on the eee. Plus I can unplug it and use it as a phone, ipod, camera, video camera, and GPS. When that starts to happen, all regular computers are going to be supplanted, and that is a good thing, if you ask me.
I was not implying that ISPs and other tech companies provided it for free. That is obviously ludicrous. I was suggesting that the government spend the equivalent of what they spend on the highway system to allow all citizens access to wikipedia, web MD, skype (or an open clone), and google maps (or an open clone). This makes good solid sense on a lot of levels, not the least of which is what we save on education if we quit spending the money on text books that are usually outdated by the time they are printed.
Kind of silly comparing breaking and entering to using somebody's wifi. This analogy fails for a vast variety of reasons, but you're missing a larger and I believe more important point:
Internet access should be a basic human right.
Seriously, it is a very low cost thing, taken all in all, as compared to the highway system, or any number of other things we waste countless dollars on (don't get me started on the war in Iraq!). It provides communication. It provides information. It provides entertainment, health, and wealth (or at least it can). Just let people have it.
Any corporation trying to make a buck on what SHOULD for all intents and purposes be free, is just a maniacal penny pinching asshole, which honestly is how I depict any corporation in my mind. There are TONS of local coffee shops that offer free wifi, and make enough selling coffee to justify that negligible monthly expense.
Stop talking about wifi "theft". It's like water "theft", or air "theft". There's plenty to go around, and we all need it, so fuck right off.
Further, stop supporting these maniacal and insane corporations that are grossly exploiting the lowest class, charging fees for things that should be free, and voluntarily serving you stuff that is bad for you, over-priced, and addictive.
By default Starbucks uses 2% milk. Do you know how they MAKE 2% milk? Trust me, you need to stick to whole milk, and when you can get it, organic or free range whole milk.
These corporations want you to buy their shit, get sick, buy their pills, and then die as quickly as possible, uneducated, poor, in debt, and miserable, so the next batch of "consumers" (your kids!) can ignorantly get directly in line and start buying all the same old disposable useless crap that killed you and made you broke and kept your standard of living sub-par.
Buy local. Better yet, start a business and SELL local, and while you're at it, set up free wifi. It's easy, it's cheap, and it will make you better than these corporate fucks who seem single mindedly hell bent on killing every living thing on the planet while completely subverting every democracy and making the populace retarded through the E channel, Prozac, and Cheetos.
I've got a design that will beat all of these, and not be limited to road travel.
I'd like to build a large carbon fiber solar powered, lithium ion battery toting zeppelin. I think for many reasons this vehicle will surpass the capabilities of all other entries, and go many, many more miles without using any gas at all. Unless it's the big model with a stove in it (and other RV accouterments). I prefer gas stoves.
Any engineers want to help me lay out the blue prints? Any VCs want to pwn Honda and every other auto manufacturer? Feel free to email me....
First let me say that I am a pidgin user. I myself have been using it, and am happy with the latest version. However, I do agree that giving users options is important. I would yet again take it another step, though, and recommend an open source Skype replacement feature. We've got the speex codec. We've got some video alternatives I'm sure (xvid, others?). It is kind of silly to me that I can't use pidgin's various protocols (MSN, Y!, Google, MySpace, MSN, AIM, ICQ, IRC, I think I'm missing yet another one that I actually use sometimes....) to connect directly with a buddy and start a video chat, and have it be scientifically better than a Skype call.
I mean, I like Pidgin now, and major kudos to the devs who have made it happen up to today, but let's pass the corporate infrastructure this time, and win on merits and usability, and let's do it on all 3 platforms (MS,LINUX, MAC OS). Put out a distro with that functionality out of the box with an easy wizard, and you can beat Vista, since it is a dogshit botched release. You could package the CD and a webcam and make a killing with some markup. Hell even sell the whole system....
Have a distro like that that might also play san andreas or some other game in wine, and I'm in. And yes I want the pretty compiz spinny window cube.
Now is the time FOSS people. In the words of Mortal Kombat: "FINISH HIM!!!!"
You are implying that the jury DID have all the facts, which, sadly, I doubt in the extreme. I live in California, and my limited experience with the "justice" system here has been no better than a horrific farce every time.
Again, I'd say I have NO idea weather he is guilty or not, because I have less facts than the jury, than the defendant, or than anyone else closer to the case, but to assume the jury had much of an idea about what really happened also seems pretty unlikely. I've dealt with two or three California lawyers, and they seem more apt to distort relevant facts even when they're trying not to than to actually be cogent in any way. Don't even get me started on judges!
Now we can really show the benefits of online open ended album sales: Not giving asshole "artists" our money directly and honestly. These guys are such incredible douches. They shut down Napster, they have that god awful reality show, and now they are emulating the leading bands who have so wisely championed the online model, and done so successfully by understanding: A) The fans, and B) The market. Leave it to Metallica to FAIL at this and then give the RIAA et al a reason to say, "See?!? The online model doesn't work!!"
What a bunch of pedantic, sold-out, no-talent hack corporate whores.
Rot in hell Metallica.
Oh, and your voice sounds like the shitty caricature of real metal, by the way.
...that money doesn't always equal brains. Or maybe he's just lying. Take your pic, his products, his persona, and his legacy are all pretty much a standing joke for most tech people already, and it's not going to get better when he continues this ludicrous Luddite act.
Next thing you know him and Jobs will start a foundation against Linux. Oh wait, I think they already have that.....
Slashdot Mirror
Rip all the batteries out, throw 'em in an old Dodge Dart, and you've got an electric car.
I don't know. I still haven't been able to right click drag things and select move like I am in Windows in either of them. Seems like it would be easy to implement....
Did anybody here actually try Sugar? I'd have replaced it with ms dos in a heart beat. And XP is clearly superior. If only they'd have been smart and initially went with some type of xubuntu derivative, or something that made some kind of rational sense, we'd have not lost yet another battle to the corporate monopoly.
It's not that Windows is better. It's just that Microsoft is smarter than the passionate FOSS community who is apparently stubborn and arrogant, and completely unaware of what is usable or not, Sugar being an AMAZING example.
Yep. That's the case here..... Cox only. and they are horrible.
You made some valid points, but you kind of threw out an unnecessary insult, rather than sticking to the engineering. I don't think Hydrogen gas is all that expensive. I imagine with a solar panel and some water, you could produce pretty much as much hydrogen as you would need at any time. However, I'm not really proposing a zeppelin such as the previous ones that were built. I'm proposing an INERT hydrogen storage system that counteracts the weight of the vehicle to neutral at all times, and maybe a smaller helium tank that can be filled or emptied for ballast as needed.
A 48 hour trip that is essentially free will beat an expensive 10 hour flight any time, barring emergencies, or the ultra rich for whom their time is worth a lot more money than mine is.
Kevlar is not really necessary. It would be nice for safety, and to make the zeppelin mostly bullet proof, but really large carbon fiber spheres inertly storing the hydrogen gas (with no intake or exhaust) could be manufactured very cheaply in bulk. You seem to me to be inordinately opposed to the idea for some reason, and none of those reasons are purely economic or engineering as far as I can tell.
The drag issue is certainly relevant though! However if your entire zeppelin was covered in a lightweight solar panel, I think you could offset the drag with added thrust from electric fans, and again, mostly for free.
I'm not disparaging airplanes or the airplane industry, they will always have their place. I just happen to think for most of us, having a cheap self guided luxury RV zeppelin that also collected more electricity than it used would be a nice vehicle to live in and float around in. If you have any particular engineering caveats or disagreement, please state them openly and clearly, and leave the insults to some other flame war.
Again, I'm looking for venture capitalists... Thanks in advance!
rhY
While I'm sure this is a popular opinion, I'd rather here a factual refutation. I'm not sure what I over looked from an engineering point of view.
Despite your amusing comment I still feel from an engineering point of view I haven't missed anything.
I am a HUGE zeppelin enthusiast. I plan on building zeppelins myself eventually, or now if you have a venture capitalist with some vision.
Let's be clear: Zeppelins are MUCH safer than airplanes. They float, and are inherently safer by design. Even in the Hindenburg, arguably one of the worst zeppelin disasters in history, over 50% of the people on board survived. Hydrogen is safe, too, the only reason the Hindenburg went down is because it had been damaged by a Nazi party show boat, and was painted in (I'm not making this up) Aluminum, gunpowder, and rocket fuel, all of which are more than just a little bit flammable.
Zeppelins are much CHEAPER than airplanes. You only need to blow a fan for propulsion, and can do so at slower (safer) speeds, as the lift is all provided by helium or hydrogen. In fact, the typical zeppelin has a LOT of surface area, and with the new cheap CIGS solar panels, even propulsion could be largely free. Done properly, zeppelins could be cheaper to travel in than ANY OTHER VEHICLE.
Zeppelins can be spacious, comfortable, and luxurious. They offer spectacular views, speedy (as the bird flies) routes, and stunning panache.
With the technology we have now, you could have a GPS-guided, radar-auto-avoiding, wifi-other-zeppelin-communicating, self-propelled zeppelin made of carbon fiber, kevlar, and CIGS solar panels which is also a luxurious home complete with hot tub, shower, bed, kitchen, sun deck, and movie theater, able to travel essentially for free, after initial purchase price.
In fact, with mass production, there is no part of this design that is expensive AT ALL, and they could eventually be much cheaper than houses and change the way we live altogether.
You can laugh if you want, but we had designs vastly superior to any of our current vehicles in the TWENTIES!!!!
And it is switching to a shareware based model.
And, it kind of sucks, and will now focus mainly on Windows.
So.....
I thought of a fourth model. I'll call it the Rupert Murdoch model. Just buy every competitor and relevant product. This way doesn't really work for the end user, either, but it is a slightly different model to the other 3, and is similar to the MS model quite a bit, as well.
Now would somebody PLEASE code a simple and effective cross platform video chat program using open codecs? I recommend speex, and in particular stealing the code from pidgin and mumble.
.... Now fast forward to today and think about skype and how crappy every FOSS alternative currently is.
Thanks in advance, and my children and grand children will thank you also.
It seems Ludicrous to me that the next big thing (video chat) is so horrifically behind in the FOSS world. I mean, breaking the skype hegemony is going to be MUCH easier now than it will be later, when everyone already has skype (which we are very near NOW, by the way, in some places). Imagine if Firefox had been out BEFORE IE conquered 90% of the market.....
FOSS junkies really need to prioritize! Let's win the battles that are being fought now (Metaverse, VOIP, Video Chat), AND continue to fight the battles we already lost (Ubuntu vs MS, Firefox vs IE, GIMP vs Photoshop, Pidgin vs AIM, Wikispaces vs MySpace, etc....)
Well, eventually with molecular assembly the cost of the hardware is going to be virtually zero, and at which point if there is a computer that does 99.9% of what 99.9% of the populace needs.... A lot of these suppositions break down. With or without the advent of molecular assemblers, this is kind of where we are headed long term. I don't know how much storage you're going to need, but let me be the first to say that 64 TB should be enough for anybody!
....greatly enjoyed the hearty and vicious debate between Linux fan boys and Sun fan boys. But of course since Open Solaris doesn't run San Andreas, I'll probably be sticking with Windows x64 a little while longer. :)
Though I do enjoy mucking around on my other systems.....
Well, I for one messed with my mom's for about two hours. I'm not a guru like some of these other /.ers, but I cut my teeth on a sinclair, had a trs-80, try different distros constantly and have no problem installing any version of windows or mac OS on virtually any different modern hardware.
I couldn't do a god damned thing on the sugar OS, and that left a sour taste in my mouth. I mean, had they included a lightweight Ubuntu clone or something, they'd have had something, but that OS is just completely and insanely bad. No wonder people want windows!!! I'd prefer Windows ME to Sugar!
And I DO like the eee, but I'm still waiting for a cell phone that plugs into a USB docking station, and that station is connected to a monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and I can do everything I can do on the eee. Plus I can unplug it and use it as a phone, ipod, camera, video camera, and GPS. When that starts to happen, all regular computers are going to be supplanted, and that is a good thing, if you ask me.
I was not implying that ISPs and other tech companies provided it for free. That is obviously ludicrous. I was suggesting that the government spend the equivalent of what they spend on the highway system to allow all citizens access to wikipedia, web MD, skype (or an open clone), and google maps (or an open clone). This makes good solid sense on a lot of levels, not the least of which is what we save on education if we quit spending the money on text books that are usually outdated by the time they are printed.
Kind of silly comparing breaking and entering to using somebody's wifi. This analogy fails for a vast variety of reasons, but you're missing a larger and I believe more important point:
Internet access should be a basic human right.
Seriously, it is a very low cost thing, taken all in all, as compared to the highway system, or any number of other things we waste countless dollars on (don't get me started on the war in Iraq!). It provides communication. It provides information. It provides entertainment, health, and wealth (or at least it can). Just let people have it.
Any corporation trying to make a buck on what SHOULD for all intents and purposes be free, is just a maniacal penny pinching asshole, which honestly is how I depict any corporation in my mind. There are TONS of local coffee shops that offer free wifi, and make enough selling coffee to justify that negligible monthly expense.
Stop talking about wifi "theft". It's like water "theft", or air "theft". There's plenty to go around, and we all need it, so fuck right off.
Further, stop supporting these maniacal and insane corporations that are grossly exploiting the lowest class, charging fees for things that should be free, and voluntarily serving you stuff that is bad for you, over-priced, and addictive.
By default Starbucks uses 2% milk. Do you know how they MAKE 2% milk? Trust me, you need to stick to whole milk, and when you can get it, organic or free range whole milk.
These corporations want you to buy their shit, get sick, buy their pills, and then die as quickly as possible, uneducated, poor, in debt, and miserable, so the next batch of "consumers" (your kids!) can ignorantly get directly in line and start buying all the same old disposable useless crap that killed you and made you broke and kept your standard of living sub-par.
Buy local. Better yet, start a business and SELL local, and while you're at it, set up free wifi. It's easy, it's cheap, and it will make you better than these corporate fucks who seem single mindedly hell bent on killing every living thing on the planet while completely subverting every democracy and making the populace retarded through the E channel, Prozac, and Cheetos.
Where the fuck is my gun?!?!
I've got a design that will beat all of these, and not be limited to road travel.
I'd like to build a large carbon fiber solar powered, lithium ion battery toting zeppelin. I think for many reasons this vehicle will surpass the capabilities of all other entries, and go many, many more miles without using any gas at all. Unless it's the big model with a stove in it (and other RV accouterments). I prefer gas stoves.
Any engineers want to help me lay out the blue prints? Any VCs want to pwn Honda and every other auto manufacturer? Feel free to email me....
myspace.com/khanz
First let me say that I am a pidgin user. I myself have been using it, and am happy with the latest version. However, I do agree that giving users options is important. I would yet again take it another step, though, and recommend an open source Skype replacement feature. We've got the speex codec. We've got some video alternatives I'm sure (xvid, others?). It is kind of silly to me that I can't use pidgin's various protocols (MSN, Y!, Google, MySpace, MSN, AIM, ICQ, IRC, I think I'm missing yet another one that I actually use sometimes....) to connect directly with a buddy and start a video chat, and have it be scientifically better than a Skype call.
I mean, I like Pidgin now, and major kudos to the devs who have made it happen up to today, but let's pass the corporate infrastructure this time, and win on merits and usability, and let's do it on all 3 platforms (MS,LINUX, MAC OS). Put out a distro with that functionality out of the box with an easy wizard, and you can beat Vista, since it is a dogshit botched release. You could package the CD and a webcam and make a killing with some markup. Hell even sell the whole system....
Have a distro like that that might also play san andreas or some other game in wine, and I'm in. And yes I want the pretty compiz spinny window cube.
Now is the time FOSS people. In the words of Mortal Kombat: "FINISH HIM!!!!"
Pantera.
The End.
You are implying that the jury DID have all the facts, which, sadly, I doubt in the extreme. I live in California, and my limited experience with the "justice" system here has been no better than a horrific farce every time.
Again, I'd say I have NO idea weather he is guilty or not, because I have less facts than the jury, than the defendant, or than anyone else closer to the case, but to assume the jury had much of an idea about what really happened also seems pretty unlikely. I've dealt with two or three California lawyers, and they seem more apt to distort relevant facts even when they're trying not to than to actually be cogent in any way. Don't even get me started on judges!
Now we can really show the benefits of online open ended album sales: Not giving asshole "artists" our money directly and honestly. These guys are such incredible douches. They shut down Napster, they have that god awful reality show, and now they are emulating the leading bands who have so wisely championed the online model, and done so successfully by understanding: A) The fans, and B) The market. Leave it to Metallica to FAIL at this and then give the RIAA et al a reason to say, "See?!? The online model doesn't work!!"
What a bunch of pedantic, sold-out, no-talent hack corporate whores.
Rot in hell Metallica.
Oh, and your voice sounds like the shitty caricature of real metal, by the way.
I can either start downloading a torrent of XP SP3, or I can start downloading a torrent of GTA IV.....
Hmmmm
Which torrent am I going to be leeching?!?!?
Wait, he didn't GPL that speech, you are so gonna get sued for that code fix! HACKER!
...that money doesn't always equal brains. Or maybe he's just lying. Take your pic, his products, his persona, and his legacy are all pretty much a standing joke for most tech people already, and it's not going to get better when he continues this ludicrous Luddite act.
Next thing you know him and Jobs will start a foundation against Linux. Oh wait, I think they already have that.....
Bush is so unpopular it is almost impossible for us Republicans to win. Why even try!?!