Ever try typing a *lot* of information on a laptop?
I wrote three books (1800+ pages) on IBM ThinkPad keyboards, not to mention making my way through university on them.
Call me insane, but I happen to like my 21" of crisp CRT goodness. No 15" LCD is going to quite match it.
Heh... You are insane. There's no way I will ever go back to CRTs after the clarity of LCD displays with subpixel AA. There's just no comparison; even a 21" CRT now makes me think that the world has "gone blurry."
Well aside from conditions of animal cruelty in modern meat farming, there's also the fact that eating meet as a dietary staple is a very inefficient (read: poor) use of planetary resources and probably should be avoided for ethical reasons on those grounds as well. There's also the question of the general healthiness of a farmed meat raised on hormone supplements and vast quantities of antibiotics, and in some cases slaughtered only because it grew too ill or unhealthy to produce milk any longer (or even to stand on its own).
But you're right, the grass in any cow that you happen to eat is unlikely to harm you.
All of them ran/run Linux, all of them were desktop replacements, all of them had hundreds if not thousands hours logged logged before they were "retired" and all of them still run (they have been handed down through my family as I have upgraded).
For one brief moment I bought a non-IBM laptop (a Fujitsu), but frankly you can tell just by holding a ThinkPad in one hand and another make in the other that the IBM build quality is far better than the competition and less likely to result in cracked casings, floppy screens, overheating problems, creaky "flexi"ness, and so on... I moved back to ThinkPad within a couple of months and haven't looked back.
If they turn to email... Spamassassin's Bayes filter is your friend. It's damn good....though of course it doesn't do anything about wasted bandwitdh.:-(
Competition. There will not be an "uberdevice" unless it is the be-all and end-all of entertainment, with accessories and games, etc. sold everywhere and shareable with everyone.
But no manufacturer wants to share the market with other manufacturers. Microsoft and Sony will not have compatible games or accessories on their "superdevice" and because of this, consumers lose interest because they can't share with their friends and neighbors with different "superdevices," be sure of buying an accessory and being able to use it for many years and across brands, etc. And thus no "superdevice" will become an "uberdevice."
This will remain true until manufacturers are willing to cling to standards like the DVD standard not just for films and music but also for games, for accessories, for connectivity, etc. and also until they are willing to sacrifice repeat sales (a.k.a. "upgrades" to the new model) in the interest of backward and forward compatibility.
Since neither of these things will ever happen, there will never be an "uberdevice" because not enough consumers will really want one (given these limitations) to make it universal.
Sigma has a pro (EX) line, and Tokina does as well (AT-X). Some of Sigma's EX lenses are very highly regarded these days.
I think the previous poster may actually commit some of the sin that he spoke of when he recommends a K-1000 before asking what the person intends to shoot...
Each lens line is different. Canon has certain options that may be useful for sports/wildlife shooting that Nikon does not, etc. So rather than just decide on the "cheapest manual body," take some time to find out whose lens lines most closely match the things that you intend to take pictures of.
Then buy the cheapest body that works with that lens line. Some of the classic families include the Nikon lenses (all one big sort of happy family), the Canon FD series, the Canon EOS series, the Olympus OM series, and of course the Pentax series already mentioned.
Also note the other (and for me much more insightful) assertion that Eco makes: we value "inflexible" texts like books, scrolls, obelisks precisely because they are so inflexible...
Jazz is lovely for some entertainment, but is a poor substitute for fate and destiny, which we project onto the libraries of printed matter in ways that we cannot project onto the Internet, precisely because on the Internet, we create the content, even if not in the HTML, in the hyper-reading. Wherever I am the author (and every hyper-reader in some sense becomes his own author), fate and destiny have been killed by my own will.
In some cases (i.e. the encyclopedic search), this is helpful. In others (i.e. meaning making, metaphysics, the desire for a collective memory) it is not.
I agree. The "sub-par" comment infuriates me when I have moved many friends and relatives over to Linux over the last year or so (oddly enough, most of them women). Many of them also own Digital Cameras. I've even had great experiences moving someone to gimp-print (which comes with Red Hat) using a USB Epson Stylus Color 740; no additional configuration work was needed. I've also pointed a few of them to tuxgames.com with good results.
The things my "crowd" has liked the best:
1) Konqueror. Tabs, split-window, and previews-as-icons top the list. Nearly to a one, they commented on the document, html and image previews and the great properties information.
2) Theming and eye-candy. It turns out that end users *do* like eye-candy... even if they aren't very skilled at changing it. Several times I've been told how cool it is to have a Johnny Depp wallpaper in the file manager windows, or about this really cool icon theme they found online that has a monkey as the K-menu.
3) Panel configurability... Applets, multiple menus on a panel, multiple panels on a desktop, etc. It turns out that people like to be able to control their environment.
4) Every one of them has commented on the stability of Linux+KDE vs. Windows 98/2k (haven't switched anyone from XP). They've also commented on better and more descriptive error messages that they can then call me about or search for on Google, as opposed to Windows' error messages ("This program can not work. [OK] [CANCEL]")
So far, the response has been overwhelmingly "Oh, this is cool and impressive and I use it a lot! As soon as I get a little more comfortable with it, I'll stop dual-booting and just use Linux!"
Utah is one of the most urban states in the US. Sixth most urban overall, isn't it? So basically, there aren't enough people living outside the cities to fund anything of this sort anyway. It's money from the cities, for the cities.
...and I'd be nervous coming within twenty feet of these children of yours, especially if you keep guns in your house. It sounds as though you have a perfect breeding ground for neurotic ultraconservatives going on.
I would never demonstrate so much distrust and disrespect to my own children. And no, contrary to popular conservative belief, you can't teach respect through disrespect, nor can you teach integrity through mistrust or pacifism through application of the "iron rod."
...cover the top surface of the disk with a thick layer of finish (usually paint of some kind). The media ends up being thicker/heavier and more expensive, but I've never had one die (and I have some fairly old burns at this point dating back to CD-R drives connected through dedicated ISA cards).
On the other hand, some of the CD-Rs my friends have given me from those bulk spindle packs have started to lose foil (i.e. "peel") just a few months later. A good indicator for failure seems to be that there's no brand name (or indeed marking of any kind) on the top side of the disk.
So their only income right now is that they're trying hard to sell you the product (which they hate) for $699, but at the same time they're willing to lose money if you agree to stop using it?!
Note, too, that there are both VCD and DVD versions floating around... If you can, definitely be sure to get the DVD version, as the encoding is different (VCD being much worse).:-)
There are bootleg DVDs around, encoded from the widescreen LaserDisc versions of the original trilogy. They're actually quite good, all things considered, and cheap. I got all three for about the price of a light lunch about two years ago.
Check eBay, look around the 'net. Maybe if "unofficial" sales of the original version outnumber sales of the special edition DVDs, Lucas will develop sense and release the proper, original films.
No. If they want to use Linux in a company they shouldn't be using Fedora at all.
What about on the desktop?! A lot of companies are very careful about the desktop operating systems they allow their employees to use in the workplace. Surely desktop users shouldn't be forced to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux? But now they may have to. I can just hear some of my clueless former bosses saying, "You want to use what on your PC? 'Fedora Core 1'? Bud, you really are on the computing fringes. Listen, stick to Windows 2000 for now, we don't want any new viruses spreading or incompatibilities taking down the network."
And how about all of the ISPs that used Red Hat Linux in blade racks? They should replace all of those installations with Red Hat Enterprise Linux? The cost is prohibitive; they'll just switch to *BSD.
I said Fedora is a project, not that Fedora is called Project.
Either way, it has no bearing on my original comment. Fedora is a project. Fedora is a name. Either way it's no longer "Red Hat" nor is it "Linux" as far as anyone outside the slashdot crowd is concerned. And (contrary to what people here think) those are the people that matter, because a) there are so many more of them, b) many more of them are in positions of power and c) they drive the marketplace.
So you suggest that people should tell their boss "I want to install Fedora Project."
Or should they just say "I want to install Linux." And he'll say, "as in Red Hat?" and they'll say, "no, as in Fedora Project."
But really, it's not called Fedora Project, it's called Fedora Core. Go ahead, download, burn an boot it. It says "Welcome to Fedora Core" not "Welcome to Linux" or "Welcome to the Fedora Project."
So I still stand by my statement that in terms of naming (and if you use it, you'll have to call it by something or other), "Fedora Core" is probably the most awkward name they could have chosen.
Fedora Linux would have been better... You know... Debian Project -> Debian GNU/Linux. Fedora Project -> Fedora Linux. But if I had walked up to a login screen a month ago and seen "Welcome to Fedora Core" I wouldn't have known I was using Linux at all until I finally got to the command line.
I think the biggest problem with Fedora Core is that it doesn't associate itself by name either to Red Hat or to Linux, the two biggest branding assets in the Linux world. D'oh!
You say "Linux" or "Red Hat" to the electronics store geeks and they finally know what you are talking about these days. You can tell your boss that you want to run "Red Hat Linux" and he'll consider it.
Now you have to go to the electronics store and answer the "What kind of computer do you have?" question with "I use Fedora Core." Will your boss consider letting you use "Fedora Core 1" even if you promise him that it's really "Red Hat Linux 10" in disguise?
Why not "Red Hat Fedora 10?"
Why not "Fedora Linux 10?"
Why instead the relatively obscure "Fedora Core 1?"
And it's a very awkward phrase... Think of the authors of "For Dummies" books who will how have to say "in Fedora Core, XYZ" over and over in their books instead of just "in Linux, XYZ" so as not to confuse the reader!
And will readers that set out to buy books about Linux even figure out that they now want the book about "Fedora Core?"
Similarly, most of the people that I know who have considered toying with Linux know only about Red Hat Linux. When they finally get a free afternoon and try to locate it, will they make the connection and figure out to download Fedora Core 1 over their broadband connection, or will newbies be downloading Red Hat Linux 9 for the next four years because it's the highest numbered Red Hat Linux they can find?
Seems like a dumb marketing move, as far as I'm concerned.
One on-the-Web account with a few citations is below, though I would disagree with some of the game-hunting claims even at these levels; the archaeological evidence for the regular hunting and consumption of big game in pre-agricultural societies is hotly debated.
http://www.nutritionreporter.com/stone_age_diet. ht ml
see also
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/paleodiet. ht ml
for a mailing list dedicated to discussion of the paleolithic diet.
Most of the information we have about the paleolithic diet is archaeological; i.e. coprolite (preserved poop) or tissue (generally bone) that can be analyzed medically, or archaeological artifacts that may bear on behavior (i.e. tools, bones of animals that early man consumed that may show tool marks or give insight into hunting), etc.
Perhaps more simply, just phone up the anthropology department at local "U" and ask them... what did we evolve to eat? Avoid the Barnes & Noble stacks, most of the information that claims to be about the history human nutrition on their shelves is coming out of the diet industry.
I won't bother with the claim that in order to investigate diet or behavior in prehistory all one needs to do is move into the woods, or convince enough people to move into the woods that you have enough datapoints, then wait until they eventually stumble back out to a 7-11 on the road somewhere and phone in their experiences. If nothing else, I don't want to put that many anthropologists out of work!
As far as why you're a foe, I couldn't tell you. But I trust my own judgment. I often mark as foes people whose opinions on hot issues I find to be irreconcilable with my own. No, it's not censorship, since I can still see the posts of my foes, as can everyone else. But it does clue me in if I'm responding to something you've said that in the past I found you to be wacky.
Because naturally we can learn precisely how humans have evolved over the millenia in response to environment and nutritional needs by watching Eric Robert Rudolph wander around in the backwoods of modern America for a few months.
Yes, he's snaring racoons. By God, we must all be carnivores!
Re:What were we eating then?
on
Hackers On Atkins
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It was hunted animals (PROTEIN), nuts (PROTEIN), and the occasional bit of wild vegetable, fruit or honey.
No. It was roughage, roughage, the occasional bit of small game (i.e. a bird/rodent/etc. probably 2-3 times a week) and very rarely a big game animal (once or twice per season). 60-80% of human caloric intake in hunter-gatherer populations was from vegetable matter.
Linux, after all, is not a Unix "derivative", but a Unix work-alike. It looks like Unix, smells like Unix, but is not a direct branch from other Unices (except, possibly, with code from various BSDs contributed over time). Its tool suite is not from Unix, but from the GNU work-alikes. SCO's seriously reaching here.
Don't forget, this is the same SCO that told Byte that all computer operating systems currently in use (including Windows and BSD) are their "IP" because every operating system can be traced back to a SysV influence and is therefore in one way or another a "derivative."
By that definition (influenced by SysV), Linux is easily "their IP."
But at local photo groups where both amateurs and pros get together to have photo-fun, I've noticed that a lot of people move to DSLR, buy the cheapest $100 lens they can find for their pro-level EOS-1D body, and then start to rubbish it: "I spent $$$$ on this camera body and my Sony 717 took sharper pictures, look!"
They then proceed to produce "evidence" in the form of side-by-side shots which, given the lens that they bought, certainly show that the 717 has outperformed the 1D by a large margin.
Then everyone has tiredly chime in that it's probably a bum lens, not a bum camera (Someone once though that a Tokina AT-X hyperzoom "had" to be a better lens than his old Minolta Di7 because the AT-X had a much bigger front element and therefore "can't possibly be worse because it lets more light in!")
I suppose my post is just a way of trying to plant a spark for a few who are considering a D-rebel that if you buy a D-rebel and a Canon kit lens or a cheap hyperzoon, your corner sharpness (and perhaps your center sharpness, too) will be worse that can be had with a lot of the "prosumer" cameras like Olympus E-10/20, Minolta Di7 or Sony 707/717. So there's no point spending $1k to "upgrade" if you're going to get worse results in the end... better to wait until you can afford equipment (i.e. lenses) that will give you better results.
The X network layer is not a "bloated" bolt-on kit or added feature that someone wedged into X as a gimmick... X is itself just a specification for a data stream, like umpteen other protocols you have in your/etc/services file. At its core it is really quite simple and lightweight.
Furthermore, when the client and server are on the same machine, the data stream is NOT sent over the network, but is routed through local UNIX sockets or shared memory, making X essentially as slow or as fast as your system bus and graphics hardware. Only when you actually separate client and server on to different machines does X use the network sockets.
Overhead is simply not a factor on an average Linux desktop.
This feature bloat everyone is frightened of is in other places, like for example the KDE and GNOME architectures and the desire of most users to drown in pixmaps and theme engines.
With that said, on my own Linux desktop (a lowly 900MHz PIII) I use KDE 3 and play Quake III and so on and I don't find it to be any slower than Windows 2000.
Maybe there is just a small crowd (the ones who keep submitting "3D site" or "hardware site" stories) who won't feel elite at LAN parties until their Linux box can beat Windows boxen by at least 6fps in frame rate tests, 403fps. vs. 397fps.... and they're somehow convinced that if they can just get rid of that damn protocol and somehow drop "abstract" graphic ideas directly into video memory rather than organizing and processing them, that extra 6fps will be forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the rest of us continue to use the god-send network features of X to administer large installations from a single point of access, or to deploy narrow-application thin clients at greatly reduced cost.
Ever wonder if in a decade the business world will be upset at all of the "business method pirates" who are "stealing action" from society by engaging in all kinds of everyday activity without paying license fees to whomever holds a "method patent" on that sort of activity?
And of course there will be a BMAA (Business Method Advancement Association) who are "standing up to method piracy." They go to bat for all of the method patent owners to sue & shut you down for having a garage sale (infringes on "method for maximizing latent value through informal transactional processes on sheltered horizontal flat surface") or going to a different petrol station to fill your car (infringes on "method for surveying and selecting maximal cost-benefit through cost analysis in close-proximity petroleum installations")....
Whoever thought it was a good thing that ideas and "methods" should be owned in the first place?
Slashdot Mirror
Ever try typing a *lot* of information on a laptop?
I wrote three books (1800+ pages) on IBM ThinkPad keyboards, not to mention making my way through university on them.
Call me insane, but I happen to like my 21" of crisp CRT goodness. No 15" LCD is going to quite match it.
Heh... You are insane. There's no way I will ever go back to CRTs after the clarity of LCD displays with subpixel AA. There's just no comparison; even a 21" CRT now makes me think that the world has "gone blurry."
there's probably little wrong with eating a cow
Well aside from conditions of animal cruelty in modern meat farming, there's also the fact that eating meet as a dietary staple is a very inefficient (read: poor) use of planetary resources and probably should be avoided for ethical reasons on those grounds as well. There's also the question of the general healthiness of a farmed meat raised on hormone supplements and vast quantities of antibiotics, and in some cases slaughtered only because it grew too ill or unhealthy to produce milk any longer (or even to stand on its own).
But you're right, the grass in any cow that you happen to eat is unlikely to harm you.
Except for i-series (I've heard bad things about them).
...and my current machine is a ThinkPad T22.
Over the years I've gone through:
ThinkPad 700
ThinkPad 760cd
ThinkPad 760xd
ThinkPad 770z
All of them ran/run Linux, all of them were desktop replacements, all of them had hundreds if not thousands hours logged logged before they were "retired" and all of them still run (they have been handed down through my family as I have upgraded).
For one brief moment I bought a non-IBM laptop (a Fujitsu), but frankly you can tell just by holding a ThinkPad in one hand and another make in the other that the IBM build quality is far better than the competition and less likely to result in cracked casings, floppy screens, overheating problems, creaky "flexi"ness, and so on... I moved back to ThinkPad within a couple of months and haven't looked back.
If they turn to email... Spamassassin's Bayes filter is your friend. It's damn good. ...though of course it doesn't do anything about wasted bandwitdh. :-(
Competition. There will not be an "uberdevice" unless it is the be-all and end-all of entertainment, with accessories and games, etc. sold everywhere and shareable with everyone.
But no manufacturer wants to share the market with other manufacturers. Microsoft and Sony will not have compatible games or accessories on their "superdevice" and because of this, consumers lose interest because they can't share with their friends and neighbors with different "superdevices," be sure of buying an accessory and being able to use it for many years and across brands, etc. And thus no "superdevice" will become an "uberdevice."
This will remain true until manufacturers are willing to cling to standards like the DVD standard not just for films and music but also for games, for accessories, for connectivity, etc. and also until they are willing to sacrifice repeat sales (a.k.a. "upgrades" to the new model) in the interest of backward and forward compatibility.
Since neither of these things will ever happen, there will never be an "uberdevice" because not enough consumers will really want one (given these limitations) to make it universal.
And how many gigs of storage does your PDA have? Zero?! Wow, now I know what I'm going to buy to hold my music... (hint: not a PDA.)
...are not necessarily so bad.
Sigma has a pro (EX) line, and Tokina does as well (AT-X). Some of Sigma's EX lenses are very highly regarded these days.
I think the previous poster may actually commit some of the sin that he spoke of when he recommends a K-1000 before asking what the person intends to shoot...
Each lens line is different. Canon has certain options that may be useful for sports/wildlife shooting that Nikon does not, etc. So rather than just decide on the "cheapest manual body," take some time to find out whose lens lines most closely match the things that you intend to take pictures of.
Then buy the cheapest body that works with that lens line. Some of the classic families include the Nikon lenses (all one big sort of happy family), the Canon FD series, the Canon EOS series, the Olympus OM series, and of course the Pentax series already mentioned.
Also note the other (and for me much more insightful) assertion that Eco makes: we value "inflexible" texts like books, scrolls, obelisks precisely because they are so inflexible...
Jazz is lovely for some entertainment, but is a poor substitute for fate and destiny, which we project onto the libraries of printed matter in ways that we cannot project onto the Internet, precisely because on the Internet, we create the content, even if not in the HTML, in the hyper-reading. Wherever I am the author (and every hyper-reader in some sense becomes his own author), fate and destiny have been killed by my own will.
In some cases (i.e. the encyclopedic search), this is helpful. In others (i.e. meaning making, metaphysics, the desire for a collective memory) it is not.
Interesting.
I agree. The "sub-par" comment infuriates me when I have moved many friends and relatives over to Linux over the last year or so (oddly enough, most of them women). Many of them also own Digital Cameras. I've even had great experiences moving someone to gimp-print (which comes with Red Hat) using a USB Epson Stylus Color 740; no additional configuration work was needed. I've also pointed a few of them to tuxgames.com with good results.
The things my "crowd" has liked the best:
1) Konqueror. Tabs, split-window, and previews-as-icons top the list. Nearly to a one, they commented on the document, html and image previews and the great properties information.
2) Theming and eye-candy. It turns out that end users *do* like eye-candy... even if they aren't very skilled at changing it. Several times I've been told how cool it is to have a Johnny Depp wallpaper in the file manager windows, or about this really cool icon theme they found online that has a monkey as the K-menu.
3) Panel configurability... Applets, multiple menus on a panel, multiple panels on a desktop, etc. It turns out that people like to be able to control their environment.
4) Every one of them has commented on the stability of Linux+KDE vs. Windows 98/2k (haven't switched anyone from XP). They've also commented on better and more descriptive error messages that they can then call me about or search for on Google, as opposed to Windows' error messages ("This program can not work. [OK] [CANCEL]")
So far, the response has been overwhelmingly "Oh, this is cool and impressive and I use it a lot! As soon as I get a little more comfortable with it, I'll stop dual-booting and just use Linux!"
That's a far cry from "sub-par user experience."
Utah is one of the most urban states in the US. Sixth most urban overall, isn't it? So basically, there aren't enough people living outside the cities to fund anything of this sort anyway. It's money from the cities, for the cities.
...and I'd be nervous coming within twenty feet of these children of yours, especially if you keep guns in your house. It sounds as though you have a perfect breeding ground for neurotic ultraconservatives going on.
I would never demonstrate so much distrust and disrespect to my own children. And no, contrary to popular conservative belief, you can't teach respect through disrespect, nor can you teach integrity through mistrust or pacifism through application of the "iron rod."
...cover the top surface of the disk with a thick layer of finish (usually paint of some kind). The media ends up being thicker/heavier and more expensive, but I've never had one die (and I have some fairly old burns at this point dating back to CD-R drives connected through dedicated ISA cards).
On the other hand, some of the CD-Rs my friends have given me from those bulk spindle packs have started to lose foil (i.e. "peel") just a few months later. A good indicator for failure seems to be that there's no brand name (or indeed marking of any kind) on the top side of the disk.
So their only income right now is that they're trying hard to sell you the product (which they hate) for $699, but at the same time they're willing to lose money if you agree to stop using it?!
Note, too, that there are both VCD and DVD versions floating around... If you can, definitely be sure to get the DVD version, as the encoding is different (VCD being much worse). :-)
There are bootleg DVDs around, encoded from the widescreen LaserDisc versions of the original trilogy. They're actually quite good, all things considered, and cheap. I got all three for about the price of a light lunch about two years ago.
Check eBay, look around the 'net. Maybe if "unofficial" sales of the original version outnumber sales of the special edition DVDs, Lucas will develop sense and release the proper, original films.
No. If they want to use Linux in a company they shouldn't be using Fedora at all.
What about on the desktop?! A lot of companies are very careful about the desktop operating systems they allow their employees to use in the workplace. Surely desktop users shouldn't be forced to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux? But now they may have to. I can just hear some of my clueless former bosses saying, "You want to use what on your PC? 'Fedora Core 1'? Bud, you really are on the computing fringes. Listen, stick to Windows 2000 for now, we don't want any new viruses spreading or incompatibilities taking down the network."
And how about all of the ISPs that used Red Hat Linux in blade racks? They should replace all of those installations with Red Hat Enterprise Linux? The cost is prohibitive; they'll just switch to *BSD.
I said Fedora is a project, not that Fedora is called Project.
Either way, it has no bearing on my original comment. Fedora is a project. Fedora is a name. Either way it's no longer "Red Hat" nor is it "Linux" as far as anyone outside the slashdot crowd is concerned. And (contrary to what people here think) those are the people that matter, because a) there are so many more of them, b) many more of them are in positions of power and c) they drive the marketplace.
So you suggest that people should tell their boss "I want to install Fedora Project."
Or should they just say "I want to install Linux." And he'll say, "as in Red Hat?" and they'll say, "no, as in Fedora Project."
But really, it's not called Fedora Project, it's called Fedora Core. Go ahead, download, burn an boot it. It says "Welcome to Fedora Core" not "Welcome to Linux" or "Welcome to the Fedora Project."
So I still stand by my statement that in terms of naming (and if you use it, you'll have to call it by something or other), "Fedora Core" is probably the most awkward name they could have chosen.
Fedora Linux would have been better... You know... Debian Project -> Debian GNU/Linux. Fedora Project -> Fedora Linux. But if I had walked up to a login screen a month ago and seen "Welcome to Fedora Core" I wouldn't have known I was using Linux at all until I finally got to the command line.
I think the biggest problem with Fedora Core is that it doesn't associate itself by name either to Red Hat or to Linux, the two biggest branding assets in the Linux world. D'oh!
You say "Linux" or "Red Hat" to the electronics store geeks and they finally know what you are talking about these days. You can tell your boss that you want to run "Red Hat Linux" and he'll consider it.
Now you have to go to the electronics store and answer the "What kind of computer do you have?" question with "I use Fedora Core." Will your boss consider letting you use "Fedora Core 1" even if you promise him that it's really "Red Hat Linux 10" in disguise?
Why not "Red Hat Fedora 10?"
Why not "Fedora Linux 10?"
Why instead the relatively obscure "Fedora Core 1?"
And it's a very awkward phrase... Think of the authors of "For Dummies" books who will how have to say "in Fedora Core, XYZ" over and over in their books instead of just "in Linux, XYZ" so as not to confuse the reader!
And will readers that set out to buy books about Linux even figure out that they now want the book about "Fedora Core?"
Similarly, most of the people that I know who have considered toying with Linux know only about Red Hat Linux. When they finally get a free afternoon and try to locate it, will they make the connection and figure out to download Fedora Core 1 over their broadband connection, or will newbies be downloading Red Hat Linux 9 for the next four years because it's the highest numbered Red Hat Linux they can find?
Seems like a dumb marketing move, as far as I'm concerned.
One on-the-Web account with a few citations is below, though I would disagree with some of the game-hunting claims even at these levels; the archaeological evidence for the regular hunting and consumption of big game in pre-agricultural societies is hotly debated.
. ht ml
. ht ml
http://www.nutritionreporter.com/stone_age_diet
see also
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/paleodiet
for a mailing list dedicated to discussion of the paleolithic diet.
Most of the information we have about the paleolithic diet is archaeological; i.e. coprolite (preserved poop) or tissue (generally bone) that can be analyzed medically, or archaeological artifacts that may bear on behavior (i.e. tools, bones of animals that early man consumed that may show tool marks or give insight into hunting), etc.
Perhaps more simply, just phone up the anthropology department at local "U" and ask them... what did we evolve to eat? Avoid the Barnes & Noble stacks, most of the information that claims to be about the history human nutrition on their shelves is coming out of the diet industry.
I won't bother with the claim that in order to investigate diet or behavior in prehistory all one needs to do is move into the woods, or convince enough people to move into the woods that you have enough datapoints, then wait until they eventually stumble back out to a 7-11 on the road somewhere and phone in their experiences. If nothing else, I don't want to put that many anthropologists out of work!
As far as why you're a foe, I couldn't tell you. But I trust my own judgment. I often mark as foes people whose opinions on hot issues I find to be irreconcilable with my own. No, it's not censorship, since I can still see the posts of my foes, as can everyone else. But it does clue me in if I'm responding to something you've said that in the past I found you to be wacky.
Because naturally we can learn precisely how humans have evolved over the millenia in response to environment and nutritional needs by watching Eric Robert Rudolph wander around in the backwoods of modern America for a few months.
Yes, he's snaring racoons. By God, we must all be carnivores!
It was hunted animals (PROTEIN), nuts (PROTEIN), and the occasional bit of wild vegetable, fruit or honey.
No. It was roughage, roughage, the occasional bit of small game (i.e. a bird/rodent/etc. probably 2-3 times a week) and very rarely a big game animal (once or twice per season). 60-80% of human caloric intake in hunter-gatherer populations was from vegetable matter.
Linux, after all, is not a Unix "derivative", but a Unix work-alike. It looks like Unix, smells like Unix, but is not a direct branch from other Unices (except, possibly, with code from various BSDs contributed over time). Its tool suite is not from Unix, but from the GNU work-alikes. SCO's seriously reaching here.
Don't forget, this is the same SCO that told Byte that all computer operating systems currently in use (including Windows and BSD) are their "IP" because every operating system can be traced back to a SysV influence and is therefore in one way or another a "derivative."
By that definition (influenced by SysV), Linux is easily "their IP."
If you're satisfied with your lenses, great!
But at local photo groups where both amateurs and pros get together to have photo-fun, I've noticed that a lot of people move to DSLR, buy the cheapest $100 lens they can find for their pro-level EOS-1D body, and then start to rubbish it: "I spent $$$$ on this camera body and my Sony 717 took sharper pictures, look!"
They then proceed to produce "evidence" in the form of side-by-side shots which, given the lens that they bought, certainly show that the 717 has outperformed the 1D by a large margin.
Then everyone has tiredly chime in that it's probably a bum lens, not a bum camera (Someone once though that a Tokina AT-X hyperzoom "had" to be a better lens than his old Minolta Di7 because the AT-X had a much bigger front element and therefore "can't possibly be worse because it lets more light in!")
I suppose my post is just a way of trying to plant a spark for a few who are considering a D-rebel that if you buy a D-rebel and a Canon kit lens or a cheap hyperzoon, your corner sharpness (and perhaps your center sharpness, too) will be worse that can be had with a lot of the "prosumer" cameras like Olympus E-10/20, Minolta Di7 or Sony 707/717. So there's no point spending $1k to "upgrade" if you're going to get worse results in the end... better to wait until you can afford equipment (i.e. lenses) that will give you better results.
Does that make any sense?
The X network layer is not a "bloated" bolt-on kit or added feature that someone wedged into X as a gimmick... X is itself just a specification for a data stream, like umpteen other protocols you have in your /etc/services file. At its core it is really quite simple and lightweight.
Furthermore, when the client and server are on the same machine, the data stream is NOT sent over the network, but is routed through local UNIX sockets or shared memory, making X essentially as slow or as fast as your system bus and graphics hardware. Only when you actually separate client and server on to different machines does X use the network sockets.
Overhead is simply not a factor on an average Linux desktop.
This feature bloat everyone is frightened of is in other places, like for example the KDE and GNOME architectures and the desire of most users to drown in pixmaps and theme engines.
With that said, on my own Linux desktop (a lowly 900MHz PIII) I use KDE 3 and play Quake III and so on and I don't find it to be any slower than Windows 2000.
Maybe there is just a small crowd (the ones who keep submitting "3D site" or "hardware site" stories) who won't feel elite at LAN parties until their Linux box can beat Windows boxen by at least 6fps in frame rate tests, 403fps. vs. 397fps.... and they're somehow convinced that if they can just get rid of that damn protocol and somehow drop "abstract" graphic ideas directly into video memory rather than organizing and processing them, that extra 6fps will be forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the rest of us continue to use the god-send network features of X to administer large installations from a single point of access, or to deploy narrow-application thin clients at greatly reduced cost.
Ever wonder if in a decade the business world will be upset at all of the "business method pirates" who are "stealing action" from society by engaging in all kinds of everyday activity without paying license fees to whomever holds a "method patent" on that sort of activity?
And of course there will be a BMAA (Business Method Advancement Association) who are "standing up to method piracy." They go to bat for all of the method patent owners to sue & shut you down for having a garage sale (infringes on "method for maximizing latent value through informal transactional processes on sheltered horizontal flat surface") or going to a different petrol station to fill your car (infringes on "method for surveying and selecting maximal cost-benefit through cost analysis in close-proximity petroleum installations")....
Whoever thought it was a good thing that ideas and "methods" should be owned in the first place?