Hey, the N64 was fucking awesome... still the most sleek system ever released in my opinion. And it was home to some amazing games. And a damn good, truly innovative controller for its time, and quite comfortable at that.
And I should add, I *did* investigate, with the help of Google. I found nothing but "answers" saying to adjust the DPI. I spent probably 15 minutes searching, finding the same Fonts/DPI crap. 15 minutes is far more than it should take to find an answer on Google, and yet... I didn't find squat.
Window Color?!?! Are you fucking kidding? I looked all over the god damn OS for *anything* to do with font sizes, and it's under... WINDOW COLOR?! The last thing I give a fuck about?! Well there you go, another thing that drives me nuts about Windows: Microsoft's complete nonsense OS layout, which seems to only be getting WORSE after Windows XP, where it actually made some sense. I thought Vista made the Control Panel worse, then 7 improved the slop job that was in Vista by just a bit... but this is the most illogical thing I have ever heard. Move on over Start -> Shutdown, I think you've been over taken by something hundreds of times more retarded and illogical.
That's so hard to believe, that FONT settings would be under WINDOW COLOR, that I can't wait to go to my cousin's house and see it with my own eyes. If so... Microsoft has really outdone themselves to make their OS as difficult to such simple things as font size configuration done as possible. And there I was, clicking all the things in the Control Panel/Personalize screen relating to... get this... "fonts" to do this. Well, I guess I should have been worried about the window colors for some reason instead, then I might have "accidentally" stumbled across it.
Truly amazing. It should help though, so thanks, but still drives me crazy that the developers are this braindead with design and organization of such simple OS functions.
Here's one thing that drives me fucking nuts. Windows 7--also Windows Vista I recall. My cousin is running it connected to a ~40" HDTV. Any way to adjust INDIVIDUAL font sizes? You know, the way it was possible probably since Windows 95, and maybe earlier? And don't say DPI: I increased the screen DPI as much as it can comfortably be increased. I'm talking individual font sizes here. I don't want everything else to blow up with the size of the fonts as if the resolution is going down, just the fonts themselves.
And that's just one thing that really grates on my nerves in Windows still. And ironically, this irritation didn't exist in Windows XP. Now that this kind of functionality would actually be useful since TVs are being equipped with computer inputs and people are starting to use them, Microsoft fucking takes the functionality out.
And no, it's not my genious idea to connect a computer to a bigscreen HDTV, avoid the keyboard like a computer-illiterate idiot, and just use the mouse. IMO, the only way to use a "general-purpose" computer these days is with a decent size 16x10 computer monitor, a keyboard and a mouse on a desk. Leave the HDTV to specialized systems.
Metro is the big one on that list for Windows 8. In fact, it could take up the slots for feature numbers 1 through 30.
I would put the protected media path up there too. It was only put in Vista to shut the people behind Blu-Ray up so Microsoft could allow playing Blu-Ray movies in the OS. The Blu-Ray backers wanted DRM so strong that it went down to the hardware level. Now that Windows 8 will not support DVD or Blu-Ray video playback without installing optional codecs/DRM, I bet Microsoft will *still* leave the protected media path enabled in the base install, forced upon every user, whether they ever have any intentions of watching Hollywood's movies or not.
Microsoft is really just an Office + Windows company selling to corporations these days.
How is that? I mean, when I go out to one of the major local stores and go to their electronics department, I unfortunately still see plenty of desktop and laptop "PCs" that are running Windows. Those things are sold to plain old customers (what, are you telling me Wal-Mart sells primarily to knowlegeable business people...?). Same thing when you go to Dell's or Gateway's site, or any of the other desktop or laptop computer OEMs; just look at their personal laptops and home desktops... same thing, it's all Windows. Simple fact is, Windows is sold everywhere... except for with tablet computers (dominated by Android and iOS currently), cell phones for the most part (ditto... mostly Android and iOS right now), and... well, that's about it. Planning on buying a laptop? A desktop? Enjoy your shiny new license of Windows 7, suckers!
Unfortunately, not only will Windows 8 likely change the whole tablet computer thing, Microsoft will be actively locking out every other operating system from any tablet computer sold with Windows 8. Which, given Microsoft's (typically illegally leveraged) strength [I like to think of it as steroids...] to monopolize yet another market. Yay for... uh... completely blocking out competition! HELLO, worthless and corrupt Federal Government of mine... ARE YOU PAYING ANY FUCKING ATTENTION?!? Get off you god damn pointless anti-drug crusade and do something decent for once!
Just watch. I predict that Android tablets will quickly be pushed out of the market in favor of Windows 8 devices with sleazy deals only a slimy company like Microsoft could come up with, just like netbooks with the resurrected Windows XP and the butchered Windows 7 Starter. Just flash that green stuff in front of the hardware manufacturers' faces, that's all they need--and Microsoft has shitloads of it to toss around. Those tablet computer manufacturers that stand by Android will succomb to Microsoft's bullshit patent licensing agreements, effectively paying them just to use the operating system, passing yet another "excise" Microsoft tax onto us consumers who do not want to support Microsoft in any way, and are in fact not buying anything Microsoft sells... except for a bunch of bullshit, unspecified patents that they *claim* Android infringes, which the pussies--er, I mean cell phone manufacturers refuse to challenge. Meanwhile Apple, being a for-profit and relatively successful corporation, will be able to keep their overpriced and increasingly locked-down walled gardens on the market to compete with Microsoft simply because of their massive stash of money. Linux (in this case, Android) will likely die a quick death of tablet computers.
I really don't want to see that happen, but facing facts and history here, that seems like a likely (and unfortunate) outcome. In fact... god damn I hope I'm wrong. But I'm not betting on it; I never expect the best outcome, because it almost never fucking happens.
The real question seems simple enough to me: Qt or GTK+?
If you want to develop something more KDE-like, the answer is simple: choose Qt. If you want to develop something that will work well in GNOME, Xfce and others, choose GTK+. Really, it's not rocket science. You can run Qt programs in GNOME and Xfce, and you can just as easily run GTK+ programs in KDE.
Of course, if you have special needs, like you want to develop something with as little bloat as possible (ie. for running in lightweight window managers instead of more complex desktop environments and with less RAM), then you could always choose something else.
All of these would be played the an enhanced PA system I'd mod on the car to generate up to 110db of sound, because we wouldn't want anyone to not hear me coming.
But... if you're like me, you'll get pulled over for "disturbing the peace" for your non-deliberate courtesy to pedestrians and other traffic, not to mention your own pleasurable enjoyment of all those high-decibal sounds at every human-detectable wavelength (whether by sound or just by feel). Nevermind the fact that you're allowed to use a lawn mower or chainsaw at almost any time, as long as it's not after 9 or 10 at night. I got pulled over in the early afternoon (around 3 or 4), was given a ticket, and was required to appear in court for simply blasting the song "Crazy Bitch" by Buckcherry a few years ago. Considering I'm almost always moving while in my car and typically turn down the volume a bit at stop signs and red lights or in other situations when the traffic is moving slowly, I don't know how I was "disturbing the peace" any more than the typical lawn mower, but whatever--fuck them. The officer claimed he could hear my car from 100 yards away... can't remember exactly, but I think that's what he and my ticket said, but seriously, it'll take me maybe 2 minutes of driving (even at 25 MPH) to stop being heard by someone in an area, if that. So seriously, compared to a lawn mower, what does it fucking hurt? Other than the fact that I am not blaring nigger music?
The pig kept trying to find something... literally ANYTHING... that he could to bust my ass on and get a win, because apprently loud music alone was not a good enough case for him, but he failed miserably. Seatbelt? Fail, Mr. Officer, I had it on, and so did the passenger (my friend). Driver's license, registration? Fail again--I had all the documentation I needed, I was insured, and the car was in my name. Turn signals, general driving maneuvers? Once again, I was following all of the laws. He kept looking in the car for any suspicions (including drugs--what a shock) that would help his case. He also kept interrogating me to find out if I was fucking doped up or something, repeatedly asking the same completely pointless questions about my audio setup--he must have asked how much power was going to my subs and my four internal speakers at least four fucking times. I was seriously getting sick of him asking and I would be surprised if he could not tell.
I should've turned the car off to save some gas like I often do at train stops, but I wasn't expected to be pulled over for fucking 25-30 minutes over one god damn song. But once again, it wasn't just music--it was white music in a fucked up black town. But oh, no! The lyrics were offensive! They talk about that dreaded thing called sex and aren't afraid to call it by the word "fuck!" And they say Crazy Bitch! Oh no, that somehow makes it even worse! I would like to point them toward all those god damn niggers in this city that blast shitty fucking rap "music" (if you can really call it that) with even more blatantly bad (and even more blatantly violent) lyrics. Not that my preferred types of music are generally less violent (black metal, death metal), but at least the average human (including pig) cannot understand the singer. If I was a fucking nigger listening to rap about fucking and beating bitches and robbing banks for the Benjamins, I probably wouldn't have been bothered.
There are good cops and there are bad cops. The one that got me was a fucking dick, and I can only laugh that he failed miserably to get me for anything other than loud music. Take that, motherfucker. The judge was semi-cool, though, because he was joking, saying that if I was listening to country music, the cops wouldn't mind that and I wouldn't have been bothered. At least he was nice and had a sense of humor. Still--I was given a higher fine for loud music than another guy in the courtroom before me who was caught crossing railroad tracks, while the railroad crossing gates were aparently
You make it seem as if the herpes family of viruses are actually as bad as Microsoft is. I think you might be putting the poor family of viruses in bad light.
"If you're obviously this difficult to please, why on earth would you keep downloading movies? Once you're on to movie #47 and it's still not to your tastes I think it's time to do something else. Like go for a walk."
Or better yet and more creatively, take a shit. And then mail it to them. And tell them that the garbage that they put out is less valuable than this excrement.
Somehow I stumbled across Google+ on my phone earlier when I was playing around with it. I figured, well, some of the things it did sounded pretty cool, so I'll give it a try. I could always get back out of it, I guess. So I did, grudgingly and forcibly "agreeing" to the terms of service which I thought were a crock of shit and were about cause me to just say fuck the whole thing. I barely did anything on Google+ though, I gave up quick. Just didn't see the point.
Then somehow I came across the Google+ article on Wikipedia last night. It's a social networking web site? Like Facebook and Myspace? Fuck that. Deleted my Google+ account on the spot. Gave them my reasoning while I was at it--I don't want any social networking bullshit. And that includes the other two I mentioned. I just do not get the whole point of social networking. Give me instant messaging and e-mail for occasional use and I'm set. Giving up so much privacy is not worth going all-out social networking, I just don't get the point of those services and can't justify putting everything out there in public, while giving companies tons of personal information to sell.
Now we just need to integrate apps (like this one: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/17/004229/optimizing-your-caffeine-intake-with-an-app) that run fancy portable gadgets like cell phones, so our computers can automatically give us our drug(s) of choice at specific time intervals, with no need to pop pills, shoot up, smoke a bowl of weed, hit some Salvia, pop open a beer, or crack a can of Coke. A never-ending high that needs no work to keep up the buzz. Just keep your portable device with you and make sure you don't run out of power.
Ray Kurzweil predicts that in the coming decades the term “life expectancy” will become irrelevant. By then medical advances and nanotechnology will be such effective tools with which to repair our bodies as they break down with age it will be as simple as car repair, changing out old parts for new and getting us back on the road again. Indefinitely. Even without the breakthrough technologies that allow us to regrow organs or reprogram faulty genes technological advances are making their imprint on our longevity.
If several organs, bones, etc. are in need of replacement of unnatural, man-made parts by the time I hit 100 years or older, then why the hell would I want to live to be that age in the first place? The way the article talks, you'll get quick tune-ups every so often as needed, replacing even more aging, natural body parts with man-made ones, to the point where you might as well consider yourself some weird, unnatural Frankenstein thing, not a human being. I'm sorry, but I couldn't live that way. Give me death any day.
Medical bills already cost a shitload; they're just trying to extract as many extra years of them from people that they possibly can by doing this. Suffer a stroke and go completely retarded? Oh, don't worry--we can "fix" any major (ie. life-threatening) problems, prevent you from getting another one with regular tune-ups, and extend your life much further than it would otherwise be. Oh, and your mental retardation from the stroke? Well, sorry, but you'll just have to continue for the rest of your life living that way--but at least you'll continue to be dependent on us for a longer period of time than you otherwise would have been. Enjoy many extra years stuck in a nursing home.
But on the other hand... some bosses might turn you in to PETA for giving goats blowjobs against their wills. Never mind the fact that us humans are animals ourselves.
I must be in the minority then, according to you. I had Windows XP Professional installed as a dual-boot setup for maybe six months when I first ran Linux, starting with SuSE and then Zenwalk. Shortly after, I completely nuked my hard drives, re-partitioned and formatted them, and dedicated the drives to Linux--Zenwalk at the time, then later Ubuntu, and now Debian. That was back around... late 2006. Been Windows-free ever since. I have occasionally installed WinXP Pro in a virtual machine to play around with as a "toy" OS mostly for nostalgia purposes, but also to play around with virtualization and to see how some of the unfortunately Windows-only programs I've become fond of over the years have turned out.
I have since lost my copy of Windows XP Professional ("Upgrade" copy) during a move... and guess what? I don't even care. Wine seems to run most programs I would want to run anyway; there are very few that running Windows either in a virtual machine or natively in a dual-boot setup would be optimal. Overall, I don't miss it; just some of the proprietary programs that were developed for it.
Hey, when I shut down my system, I also *shut down* my system. Sleep and hibernate both take too long, and I've given up on sleep years ago because it was so damn buggy. Aside from the bugginess, lost data (refusal to successfully leave sleep mode and get back up and running), etc., even when sleep mode *did* work, I got tired of things like the wireless card taking an additional 20-40 seconds to get up and running every time I wanted to use the machine. Hibernate has its own set of problems; it wastes massive amounts of hard drive space on machines with a good amount of memory, and these bits don't exactly get dumped back into memory in no time. Add to this the fact that you're not starting from scratch in either case, and as a result bugs and stability problems can occur.
You also won't see me waiting for my system to boot to be able to use it, because it's left on 24/7. Only the monitor has been allowed to go to standby when the system is not in use for the last decade-plus. Other than that, I just keep the system locked.
Bottom line, sleep mode and hibernation suck. I'll take a plain old reboot and shutdown any day. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but hey... they work.
Sure it could be done using a GUI, and it is in many programs. But when I enter the command, I know *exactly* what I'm telling it, and I know exactly what the software is going to do. And although I could, I wouldn't trade that in for a GUI.
As I said, these are just my preferences; trust me, I've used and compared a ton of GUI frontends over the years and I know it's possible. But I would still NOT go back any one of them after trying the command line. The simplicity, low memory use, and speed are just another advantage, but those aren't the only reasons.
Not really; people are so fucking god damn dumb in general, many are bound to believe it. Also, consider that these people were from a completely different time period, what, thousands of years ago? Humans were probably barely above monkeys back then in intelligence. Okay, many still aren't all that bright here in 2011, but still. But the point I'm trying to make is, there's centuries (millennia?) worth of tradition in these bizarre, fucked up beliefs in some god and devil, and apparently it's hard to shake that off... especially if a person's parents are religious and are made to go to church every Sunday, forcing their beliefs onto them. I was lucky to have never been forced into these weekly brainwashings... er, I mean church visits, and I look at Christianity as a fucked up cult, occult-type superstitions. It's all bullshit.
I own The Satanic Bible, and all I can say is... now *that* is some common sense stuff in there, for the most part. I don't necessarily have to "believe" in the book itself; it turns out that as I read it, it just further described my own beliefs that I've developed over the years since I was a kid. If I'm anything, I'm a Satanist. Before reading that book, I would have probably considered myself an atheist and Christian hater. Iin fact, I still *am* an atheist and Christian hater, LMAO...
Are graphics of a real-life activity somehow not at all important for a computer simulation to fully, you know, simulate that activity?
You can have the most amazing physics and weather simulation capabilities around, but if the cars in a racing simulation sound like they're being generated by the PC speaker and the graphics look like Pole Position or something, I think that would be pretty damn pathetic now in 2011. IMO, while graphics are not absolutely critical in a simulation, better graphics can only improve the overall feel of the simulation.
To be fair, you also mentioned "dumbing down" the physics and plane models. I'm not exactly a pilot myself so I can't say how realistic it really is, but I do know that the game is totally full of assists and handicaps that are on by default, but can be turned off. I tend to leave many of them on myself, but I want to have fun and relax for a while--not get pissed off and quit in five minutes. So I guess there's the "game vs. simulation" aspect. I prefer game, so I don't turn every assist off (although in a racing game I most certainly do--except for the automatic transmission).
Also, it helps to have things to actually *do* in a simulation, so you don't get bored too easily. Adding objectives might make it more game-like in that you're trying to achieve something, but if you don't like the idea of them don't use them. I don't; I just choose a place to start and go on a peaceful flight wherever the hell I want for a half-hour or so.
Meanwhile, the current Ubuntu LTS desktop release will only be supported until April 2013. I use Ubuntu myself, but this decision seems like a no-brainer to me.
I wouldn't foist Ubuntu onto anyone these days, since they seem to be on a hell-bent path of changing just about everything in the system, and making major changes with every single version (often highly questionable). Even if you're assuming going from the current LTS to the next, the users are going to have one hell of a time getting used to the massive changes being brought upon them.
You would be better off installing Debian, which is on a ~2-year schedule and is supported for at least a year after the next version is released. Squeeze came out in February this year, so it's got quite a bit of life left in it. The user could then upgrade to the next version of Debian if they want, and eventually switch to Ubuntu if they truly like what they're doing. Maybe by then Ubuntu won't be such a fast-moving target and will finally stabilize, making it a decent alternative again. That is--if the Wayland transition goes smoothly and they do some serious improvements in Unity.
Then again--you (or they at a later date, if they want more up-to-date-packages) could always install something else more user-friendly, like openSUSE, Mageia, or even the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint.
It would vary by person, but one thing I wouldn't trade the command line in for a GUI program is audio encoding.
Say I have wave or FLAC files, and I want to make a quick Ogg Vorbis encoding at, say, quality level 5.5. I go to the directory containing the CD/files (which could, by the way, be as simple as finding it in the file manager and "open in terminal" if I really wanted).
Also, wget -- I almost exclusively use wget to download files. The only exceptions are when I can't, because of the way the file is put up. Nothing beats its stability and minuscule resource usage for downloading large files, as well as its options and timestamp preservation. And best of all, I don't have to worry about the browser crashing since it's not downloading, or its GUI crashing since it doesn't have a GUI. In fact, X.Org could crash and it wouldn't phase it, especially if it was running in another virtual tty.
I am someone who came from Windows and still primarily use the GUI, but there are just some things I love having the terminal available for. As I said though, it would very per person; I'm sure a lot of people don't give a damn about these two things.
The X-Window standard was select text --> middle mouse button to paste. This is much more intuitive and much faster than MS Windows two key combo to copy and another two keys to paste.
I won't use the buzzword "intuitive" (it has no real meaning to me) but I will say that yeah, select-and-middle click is usually a nice way to copy/paste, compared to the whole repetitious right-click, select menu item, move mouse to other window/section of document, click, and repeat the whole menu thing.
BUT... it can be irritating or even disastrous if you don't leave the window with the selected text open! If you close it, poof--there it goes. If I want to make sure my selection won't be lost by me accidentally closing the window without thinking, I'll use Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to paste. This seems to reduce the chances of a screw-up. But usually, I just select and middle-click, and make sure the window stays open.
You want to know how to get Linux some share? As a retailer I'll be happy to let you know, it is really easy...1.-GET RID OF THE DAMNED TERMINAL! It ain't 1979 anymore and disco is fricking dead, let go of the fucking blinking cursor, alright? Consumers ain't gonna put up with that shit, it has to go DIAF.
What blinking cursor? You mean that one that is right at home in pretty much every text editor used today? Or the one in all Web browsers' location/address/search bars? Or the ones in those various other text entry boxes in just about any other program?
The above quote was pretty damn dumb, but the rest of your post is just plain retarded. You better tell Apple and Microsoft to ditch their respective command line terminals. Modern Linux distros that focus on new users (and there are a lot of them) rely on the command line about as much as Windows and Mac OS do for the most part. The only time I use the terminal is when I *want* to use the terminal; ie., to do things quicker and more efficiently that I would otherwise be able to with *any* GUI. And in those times... I'm happy to have a terminal that works so well compared to the crap Command Prompt included with Windows.
It could've been [R]AID5, caused by the WIV (Windows immunodeficiency virus).
Not that Windows needs to be any more vulnerable to parasites... it is generally up and ready for infection right after a fresh installation. I guess such a young, just-installed copy has a weak immune system...
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Hey, the N64 was fucking awesome... still the most sleek system ever released in my opinion. And it was home to some amazing games. And a damn good, truly innovative controller for its time, and quite comfortable at that.
And I should add, I *did* investigate, with the help of Google. I found nothing but "answers" saying to adjust the DPI. I spent probably 15 minutes searching, finding the same Fonts/DPI crap. 15 minutes is far more than it should take to find an answer on Google, and yet... I didn't find squat.
Window Color?!?! Are you fucking kidding? I looked all over the god damn OS for *anything* to do with font sizes, and it's under... WINDOW COLOR?! The last thing I give a fuck about?! Well there you go, another thing that drives me nuts about Windows: Microsoft's complete nonsense OS layout, which seems to only be getting WORSE after Windows XP, where it actually made some sense. I thought Vista made the Control Panel worse, then 7 improved the slop job that was in Vista by just a bit... but this is the most illogical thing I have ever heard. Move on over Start -> Shutdown, I think you've been over taken by something hundreds of times more retarded and illogical.
That's so hard to believe, that FONT settings would be under WINDOW COLOR, that I can't wait to go to my cousin's house and see it with my own eyes. If so... Microsoft has really outdone themselves to make their OS as difficult to such simple things as font size configuration done as possible. And there I was, clicking all the things in the Control Panel/Personalize screen relating to... get this... "fonts" to do this. Well, I guess I should have been worried about the window colors for some reason instead, then I might have "accidentally" stumbled across it.
Truly amazing. It should help though, so thanks, but still drives me crazy that the developers are this braindead with design and organization of such simple OS functions.
Here's one thing that drives me fucking nuts. Windows 7--also Windows Vista I recall. My cousin is running it connected to a ~40" HDTV. Any way to adjust INDIVIDUAL font sizes? You know, the way it was possible probably since Windows 95, and maybe earlier? And don't say DPI: I increased the screen DPI as much as it can comfortably be increased. I'm talking individual font sizes here. I don't want everything else to blow up with the size of the fonts as if the resolution is going down, just the fonts themselves.
And that's just one thing that really grates on my nerves in Windows still. And ironically, this irritation didn't exist in Windows XP. Now that this kind of functionality would actually be useful since TVs are being equipped with computer inputs and people are starting to use them, Microsoft fucking takes the functionality out.
And no, it's not my genious idea to connect a computer to a bigscreen HDTV, avoid the keyboard like a computer-illiterate idiot, and just use the mouse. IMO, the only way to use a "general-purpose" computer these days is with a decent size 16x10 computer monitor, a keyboard and a mouse on a desk. Leave the HDTV to specialized systems.
Metro is the big one on that list for Windows 8. In fact, it could take up the slots for feature numbers 1 through 30.
I would put the protected media path up there too. It was only put in Vista to shut the people behind Blu-Ray up so Microsoft could allow playing Blu-Ray movies in the OS. The Blu-Ray backers wanted DRM so strong that it went down to the hardware level. Now that Windows 8 will not support DVD or Blu-Ray video playback without installing optional codecs/DRM, I bet Microsoft will *still* leave the protected media path enabled in the base install, forced upon every user, whether they ever have any intentions of watching Hollywood's movies or not.
Microsoft is really just an Office + Windows company selling to corporations these days.
How is that? I mean, when I go out to one of the major local stores and go to their electronics department, I unfortunately still see plenty of desktop and laptop "PCs" that are running Windows. Those things are sold to plain old customers (what, are you telling me Wal-Mart sells primarily to knowlegeable business people...?). Same thing when you go to Dell's or Gateway's site, or any of the other desktop or laptop computer OEMs; just look at their personal laptops and home desktops... same thing, it's all Windows. Simple fact is, Windows is sold everywhere... except for with tablet computers (dominated by Android and iOS currently), cell phones for the most part (ditto... mostly Android and iOS right now), and... well, that's about it. Planning on buying a laptop? A desktop? Enjoy your shiny new license of Windows 7, suckers!
Unfortunately, not only will Windows 8 likely change the whole tablet computer thing, Microsoft will be actively locking out every other operating system from any tablet computer sold with Windows 8. Which, given Microsoft's (typically illegally leveraged) strength [I like to think of it as steroids...] to monopolize yet another market. Yay for... uh... completely blocking out competition! HELLO, worthless and corrupt Federal Government of mine... ARE YOU PAYING ANY FUCKING ATTENTION?!? Get off you god damn pointless anti-drug crusade and do something decent for once!
Just watch. I predict that Android tablets will quickly be pushed out of the market in favor of Windows 8 devices with sleazy deals only a slimy company like Microsoft could come up with, just like netbooks with the resurrected Windows XP and the butchered Windows 7 Starter. Just flash that green stuff in front of the hardware manufacturers' faces, that's all they need--and Microsoft has shitloads of it to toss around. Those tablet computer manufacturers that stand by Android will succomb to Microsoft's bullshit patent licensing agreements, effectively paying them just to use the operating system, passing yet another "excise" Microsoft tax onto us consumers who do not want to support Microsoft in any way, and are in fact not buying anything Microsoft sells... except for a bunch of bullshit, unspecified patents that they *claim* Android infringes, which the pussies--er, I mean cell phone manufacturers refuse to challenge. Meanwhile Apple, being a for-profit and relatively successful corporation, will be able to keep their overpriced and increasingly locked-down walled gardens on the market to compete with Microsoft simply because of their massive stash of money. Linux (in this case, Android) will likely die a quick death of tablet computers.
I really don't want to see that happen, but facing facts and history here, that seems like a likely (and unfortunate) outcome. In fact... god damn I hope I'm wrong. But I'm not betting on it; I never expect the best outcome, because it almost never fucking happens.
Yes, why not? Come on... get a sense of humor.
The real question seems simple enough to me: Qt or GTK+?
If you want to develop something more KDE-like, the answer is simple: choose Qt. If you want to develop something that will work well in GNOME, Xfce and others, choose GTK+. Really, it's not rocket science. You can run Qt programs in GNOME and Xfce, and you can just as easily run GTK+ programs in KDE.
Of course, if you have special needs, like you want to develop something with as little bloat as possible (ie. for running in lightweight window managers instead of more complex desktop environments and with less RAM), then you could always choose something else.
All of these would be played the an enhanced PA system I'd mod on the car to generate up to 110db of sound, because we wouldn't want anyone to not hear me coming.
But... if you're like me, you'll get pulled over for "disturbing the peace" for your non-deliberate courtesy to pedestrians and other traffic, not to mention your own pleasurable enjoyment of all those high-decibal sounds at every human-detectable wavelength (whether by sound or just by feel). Nevermind the fact that you're allowed to use a lawn mower or chainsaw at almost any time, as long as it's not after 9 or 10 at night. I got pulled over in the early afternoon (around 3 or 4), was given a ticket, and was required to appear in court for simply blasting the song "Crazy Bitch" by Buckcherry a few years ago. Considering I'm almost always moving while in my car and typically turn down the volume a bit at stop signs and red lights or in other situations when the traffic is moving slowly, I don't know how I was "disturbing the peace" any more than the typical lawn mower, but whatever--fuck them. The officer claimed he could hear my car from 100 yards away... can't remember exactly, but I think that's what he and my ticket said, but seriously, it'll take me maybe 2 minutes of driving (even at 25 MPH) to stop being heard by someone in an area, if that. So seriously, compared to a lawn mower, what does it fucking hurt? Other than the fact that I am not blaring nigger music?
The pig kept trying to find something... literally ANYTHING... that he could to bust my ass on and get a win, because apprently loud music alone was not a good enough case for him, but he failed miserably. Seatbelt? Fail, Mr. Officer, I had it on, and so did the passenger (my friend). Driver's license, registration? Fail again--I had all the documentation I needed, I was insured, and the car was in my name. Turn signals, general driving maneuvers? Once again, I was following all of the laws. He kept looking in the car for any suspicions (including drugs--what a shock) that would help his case. He also kept interrogating me to find out if I was fucking doped up or something, repeatedly asking the same completely pointless questions about my audio setup--he must have asked how much power was going to my subs and my four internal speakers at least four fucking times. I was seriously getting sick of him asking and I would be surprised if he could not tell.
I should've turned the car off to save some gas like I often do at train stops, but I wasn't expected to be pulled over for fucking 25-30 minutes over one god damn song. But once again, it wasn't just music--it was white music in a fucked up black town. But oh, no! The lyrics were offensive! They talk about that dreaded thing called sex and aren't afraid to call it by the word "fuck!" And they say Crazy Bitch! Oh no, that somehow makes it even worse! I would like to point them toward all those god damn niggers in this city that blast shitty fucking rap "music" (if you can really call it that) with even more blatantly bad (and even more blatantly violent) lyrics. Not that my preferred types of music are generally less violent (black metal, death metal), but at least the average human (including pig) cannot understand the singer. If I was a fucking nigger listening to rap about fucking and beating bitches and robbing banks for the Benjamins, I probably wouldn't have been bothered.
There are good cops and there are bad cops. The one that got me was a fucking dick, and I can only laugh that he failed miserably to get me for anything other than loud music. Take that, motherfucker. The judge was semi-cool, though, because he was joking, saying that if I was listening to country music, the cops wouldn't mind that and I wouldn't have been bothered. At least he was nice and had a sense of humor. Still--I was given a higher fine for loud music than another guy in the courtroom before me who was caught crossing railroad tracks, while the railroad crossing gates were aparently
You make it seem as if the herpes family of viruses are actually as bad as Microsoft is. I think you might be putting the poor family of viruses in bad light.
"If you're obviously this difficult to please, why on earth would you keep downloading movies? Once you're on to movie #47 and it's still not to your tastes I think it's time to do something else. Like go for a walk."
Or better yet and more creatively, take a shit. And then mail it to them. And tell them that the garbage that they put out is less valuable than this excrement.
Somehow I stumbled across Google+ on my phone earlier when I was playing around with it. I figured, well, some of the things it did sounded pretty cool, so I'll give it a try. I could always get back out of it, I guess. So I did, grudgingly and forcibly "agreeing" to the terms of service which I thought were a crock of shit and were about cause me to just say fuck the whole thing. I barely did anything on Google+ though, I gave up quick. Just didn't see the point.
Then somehow I came across the Google+ article on Wikipedia last night. It's a social networking web site? Like Facebook and Myspace? Fuck that. Deleted my Google+ account on the spot. Gave them my reasoning while I was at it--I don't want any social networking bullshit. And that includes the other two I mentioned. I just do not get the whole point of social networking. Give me instant messaging and e-mail for occasional use and I'm set. Giving up so much privacy is not worth going all-out social networking, I just don't get the point of those services and can't justify putting everything out there in public, while giving companies tons of personal information to sell.
Now we just need to integrate apps (like this one: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/17/004229/optimizing-your-caffeine-intake-with-an-app) that run fancy portable gadgets like cell phones, so our computers can automatically give us our drug(s) of choice at specific time intervals, with no need to pop pills, shoot up, smoke a bowl of weed, hit some Salvia, pop open a beer, or crack a can of Coke. A never-ending high that needs no work to keep up the buzz. Just keep your portable device with you and make sure you don't run out of power.
Ray Kurzweil predicts that in the coming decades the term “life expectancy” will become irrelevant. By then medical advances and nanotechnology will be such effective tools with which to repair our bodies as they break down with age it will be as simple as car repair, changing out old parts for new and getting us back on the road again. Indefinitely. Even without the breakthrough technologies that allow us to regrow organs or reprogram faulty genes technological advances are making their imprint on our longevity.
If several organs, bones, etc. are in need of replacement of unnatural, man-made parts by the time I hit 100 years or older, then why the hell would I want to live to be that age in the first place? The way the article talks, you'll get quick tune-ups every so often as needed, replacing even more aging, natural body parts with man-made ones, to the point where you might as well consider yourself some weird, unnatural Frankenstein thing, not a human being. I'm sorry, but I couldn't live that way. Give me death any day.
Medical bills already cost a shitload; they're just trying to extract as many extra years of them from people that they possibly can by doing this. Suffer a stroke and go completely retarded? Oh, don't worry--we can "fix" any major (ie. life-threatening) problems, prevent you from getting another one with regular tune-ups, and extend your life much further than it would otherwise be. Oh, and your mental retardation from the stroke? Well, sorry, but you'll just have to continue for the rest of your life living that way--but at least you'll continue to be dependent on us for a longer period of time than you otherwise would have been. Enjoy many extra years stuck in a nursing home.
Might as well pay for death and get it over with.
But on the other hand... some bosses might turn you in to PETA for giving goats blowjobs against their wills. Never mind the fact that us humans are animals ourselves.
I must be in the minority then, according to you. I had Windows XP Professional installed as a dual-boot setup for maybe six months when I first ran Linux, starting with SuSE and then Zenwalk. Shortly after, I completely nuked my hard drives, re-partitioned and formatted them, and dedicated the drives to Linux--Zenwalk at the time, then later Ubuntu, and now Debian. That was back around... late 2006. Been Windows-free ever since. I have occasionally installed WinXP Pro in a virtual machine to play around with as a "toy" OS mostly for nostalgia purposes, but also to play around with virtualization and to see how some of the unfortunately Windows-only programs I've become fond of over the years have turned out.
I have since lost my copy of Windows XP Professional ("Upgrade" copy) during a move... and guess what? I don't even care. Wine seems to run most programs I would want to run anyway; there are very few that running Windows either in a virtual machine or natively in a dual-boot setup would be optimal. Overall, I don't miss it; just some of the proprietary programs that were developed for it.
Hey, when I shut down my system, I also *shut down* my system. Sleep and hibernate both take too long, and I've given up on sleep years ago because it was so damn buggy. Aside from the bugginess, lost data (refusal to successfully leave sleep mode and get back up and running), etc., even when sleep mode *did* work, I got tired of things like the wireless card taking an additional 20-40 seconds to get up and running every time I wanted to use the machine. Hibernate has its own set of problems; it wastes massive amounts of hard drive space on machines with a good amount of memory, and these bits don't exactly get dumped back into memory in no time. Add to this the fact that you're not starting from scratch in either case, and as a result bugs and stability problems can occur.
You also won't see me waiting for my system to boot to be able to use it, because it's left on 24/7. Only the monitor has been allowed to go to standby when the system is not in use for the last decade-plus. Other than that, I just keep the system locked.
Bottom line, sleep mode and hibernation suck. I'll take a plain old reboot and shutdown any day. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but hey... they work.
Sure it could be done using a GUI, and it is in many programs. But when I enter the command, I know *exactly* what I'm telling it, and I know exactly what the software is going to do. And although I could, I wouldn't trade that in for a GUI.
As I said, these are just my preferences; trust me, I've used and compared a ton of GUI frontends over the years and I know it's possible. But I would still NOT go back any one of them after trying the command line. The simplicity, low memory use, and speed are just another advantage, but those aren't the only reasons.
Not really; people are so fucking god damn dumb in general, many are bound to believe it. Also, consider that these people were from a completely different time period, what, thousands of years ago? Humans were probably barely above monkeys back then in intelligence. Okay, many still aren't all that bright here in 2011, but still. But the point I'm trying to make is, there's centuries (millennia?) worth of tradition in these bizarre, fucked up beliefs in some god and devil, and apparently it's hard to shake that off... especially if a person's parents are religious and are made to go to church every Sunday, forcing their beliefs onto them. I was lucky to have never been forced into these weekly brainwashings... er, I mean church visits, and I look at Christianity as a fucked up cult, occult-type superstitions. It's all bullshit.
I own The Satanic Bible, and all I can say is... now *that* is some common sense stuff in there, for the most part. I don't necessarily have to "believe" in the book itself; it turns out that as I read it, it just further described my own beliefs that I've developed over the years since I was a kid. If I'm anything, I'm a Satanist. Before reading that book, I would have probably considered myself an atheist and Christian hater. Iin fact, I still *am* an atheist and Christian hater, LMAO...
Are graphics of a real-life activity somehow not at all important for a computer simulation to fully, you know, simulate that activity?
You can have the most amazing physics and weather simulation capabilities around, but if the cars in a racing simulation sound like they're being generated by the PC speaker and the graphics look like Pole Position or something, I think that would be pretty damn pathetic now in 2011. IMO, while graphics are not absolutely critical in a simulation, better graphics can only improve the overall feel of the simulation.
To be fair, you also mentioned "dumbing down" the physics and plane models. I'm not exactly a pilot myself so I can't say how realistic it really is, but I do know that the game is totally full of assists and handicaps that are on by default, but can be turned off. I tend to leave many of them on myself, but I want to have fun and relax for a while--not get pissed off and quit in five minutes. So I guess there's the "game vs. simulation" aspect. I prefer game, so I don't turn every assist off (although in a racing game I most certainly do--except for the automatic transmission).
Also, it helps to have things to actually *do* in a simulation, so you don't get bored too easily. Adding objectives might make it more game-like in that you're trying to achieve something, but if you don't like the idea of them don't use them. I don't; I just choose a place to start and go on a peaceful flight wherever the hell I want for a half-hour or so.
Meanwhile, the current Ubuntu LTS desktop release will only be supported until April 2013. I use Ubuntu myself, but this decision seems like a no-brainer to me.
I wouldn't foist Ubuntu onto anyone these days, since they seem to be on a hell-bent path of changing just about everything in the system, and making major changes with every single version (often highly questionable). Even if you're assuming going from the current LTS to the next, the users are going to have one hell of a time getting used to the massive changes being brought upon them.
You would be better off installing Debian, which is on a ~2-year schedule and is supported for at least a year after the next version is released. Squeeze came out in February this year, so it's got quite a bit of life left in it. The user could then upgrade to the next version of Debian if they want, and eventually switch to Ubuntu if they truly like what they're doing. Maybe by then Ubuntu won't be such a fast-moving target and will finally stabilize, making it a decent alternative again. That is--if the Wayland transition goes smoothly and they do some serious improvements in Unity.
Then again--you (or they at a later date, if they want more up-to-date-packages) could always install something else more user-friendly, like openSUSE, Mageia, or even the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint.
It would vary by person, but one thing I wouldn't trade the command line in for a GUI program is audio encoding.
Say I have wave or FLAC files, and I want to make a quick Ogg Vorbis encoding at, say, quality level 5.5. I go to the directory containing the CD/files (which could, by the way, be as simple as finding it in the file manager and "open in terminal" if I really wanted).
mkdir Band-CDTitle; oggenc -q 5.5 *.flac; mv *.ogg Band-CDTitle
Also, wget -- I almost exclusively use wget to download files. The only exceptions are when I can't, because of the way the file is put up. Nothing beats its stability and minuscule resource usage for downloading large files, as well as its options and timestamp preservation. And best of all, I don't have to worry about the browser crashing since it's not downloading, or its GUI crashing since it doesn't have a GUI. In fact, X.Org could crash and it wouldn't phase it, especially if it was running in another virtual tty.
I am someone who came from Windows and still primarily use the GUI, but there are just some things I love having the terminal available for. As I said though, it would very per person; I'm sure a lot of people don't give a damn about these two things.
The X-Window standard was select text --> middle mouse button to paste. This is much more intuitive and much faster than MS Windows two key combo to copy and another two keys to paste.
I won't use the buzzword "intuitive" (it has no real meaning to me) but I will say that yeah, select-and-middle click is usually a nice way to copy/paste, compared to the whole repetitious right-click, select menu item, move mouse to other window/section of document, click, and repeat the whole menu thing.
BUT... it can be irritating or even disastrous if you don't leave the window with the selected text open! If you close it, poof--there it goes. If I want to make sure my selection won't be lost by me accidentally closing the window without thinking, I'll use Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to paste. This seems to reduce the chances of a screw-up. But usually, I just select and middle-click, and make sure the window stays open.
You want to know how to get Linux some share? As a retailer I'll be happy to let you know, it is really easy...1.-GET RID OF THE DAMNED TERMINAL! It ain't 1979 anymore and disco is fricking dead, let go of the fucking blinking cursor, alright? Consumers ain't gonna put up with that shit, it has to go DIAF.
What blinking cursor? You mean that one that is right at home in pretty much every text editor used today? Or the one in all Web browsers' location/address/search bars? Or the ones in those various other text entry boxes in just about any other program?
The above quote was pretty damn dumb, but the rest of your post is just plain retarded. You better tell Apple and Microsoft to ditch their respective command line terminals. Modern Linux distros that focus on new users (and there are a lot of them) rely on the command line about as much as Windows and Mac OS do for the most part. The only time I use the terminal is when I *want* to use the terminal; ie., to do things quicker and more efficiently that I would otherwise be able to with *any* GUI. And in those times... I'm happy to have a terminal that works so well compared to the crap Command Prompt included with Windows.
It could've been [R]AID5, caused by the WIV (Windows immunodeficiency virus).
Not that Windows needs to be any more vulnerable to parasites... it is generally up and ready for infection right after a fresh installation. I guess such a young, just-installed copy has a weak immune system...