Kubuntu worked right out of the box - ok, right out of the bittorrent download - for me. it recognized both my network cards, my sound card, my graphics card, monitor, serial ATA disk, etc.. i had it up and running perfectly in less than an hour.
try the same in windows XP in a similar box. it'll recognize almost nothing and will use generic stuff for the chipset and video, everything else will be marked as unknown hardware (i.e. no networking or sound). try keeping XP running for a week without shelling $$$ for a soft or hardware firewall (or both). this is, if you don't go nuts installing it in the first place.
windows is good only if it comes pre-installed in your machine. as an aftermarket option, it's awfull.
IMHO, microsoft should just takeover apple, replace the windows team with apple engineers, retire windows and start licensing OS X to others. this, or do the same as apple did. grab the sources of a *BSD, polish it a little, put a virtual environment to run "classic" windows apps and rid us of old windows.
but mob shopping is old news in brasil. usually it involves closelly related ppl, like a large familly or employees of the same company banding togheter to buy goods in bulk.
the most common itens are "back to school" goods, such as notepads, pens and stuff like that.
there's an asimov short story about a mining robot that breaks lose from US Robotics by accident (someone at USR left the door open). the robot knew it had to start cutting stone, but since it doesn't have the equipment, it builds one that's insanelly more efficient than anything that existed at the time. it was something capable of cutting thousands of tons of rock using only two D size bateries.
independent action based on a motivation. greed is not the only reason humans do things, you know ?
i know it's far fetched, but think for a moment, if you were IBM, a major IT player with lots to gain if you make peace with microsoft (after years of a bitter relationship, see MSs monopoly trial's documents for more info), who would you prefer to help: microsoft or sony ?
i'd bet on MS. making a kick ass CPU for the 360 would make easier for IBM to extract sweeter deals from MS in other areas and to placate bill's wrath in what concerns IBM's linux business. if this means screwing up sony, so be it.
nintendo don't have to worry, since MS itself already said Wii is not a competitor, but a good secondary console for 360 owners. a complement to the bigger console.
all i know is that i couldn't care less for the PS3. living where i live, earning what i earn, i can barely afford a PS2, a PS3 is waaay out of my budget. all i can hope for is to be able to afford a Wii when it launches, but i'll have to ask someone to bring it from US in his/her bag to avoid the enourmous taxes brasil charges over imports.
I believe the handsets are actually made by ericson. sony only co-brands it and gives ericson a sales channel in japan, plus the "walkman" brand for the MP3 capable models
dudes, that's what SSL tunnels exists for. if this thing passes, we'll soon see underground encrypted networks bcasting all kind of contents. with open source software, of course.
then they'll come with regulations on open source, because it "promotes criminal activities". that's when i'll start shouting "stop the world, i wanna get out".
now MS and Yahoo! will acuse google of favouring Mozilla on their search index, never mind the fact that explorer doesn't even show on the 1st 10 results in MSN search.
Yahoo! seems the most favorable search engine for Explorer. MS's browser is 4th.
two adds that i can quote from the top of my head are coke bashing adds from pepsi.
one is with monkeys in a lab. one drinks only coke the other pepsi. the coke monkey shows no improvement after a time, while the pepsi dinking one breaks away from the lab and goes to the beach in a jeep full of hot babes.
the other add shows a little boy buying soda from a vending machines. the boy takes a can of coke, puts it on the ground, gets another one, puts besides the first can, steps on top of the two cans so he can reach the topmost button to get a pepsi.
those pieces certainly helped making my mind. today if i can't find pepsi or guarana (i live in brasil), i rather buy bottled water than coke.
Re:Nintendo's Wii akin to Chevrolet's Nova?
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also, in brasil at least, "pinto" is a slang for human male's genitals. sorta like "dick" in american slang.
in brasil it wouldn't be only ridiculous, it'd be downright ofensive (wich would make it ilegal).
not related to cars, but also on the subject. in the star wars prequels, the character "count Dooku" had his name changed in dubbed versions to "count dookan". "dooku" sounds to much like "do cu", which means "from the anus".
naming things or persons in this connected, globalized age can be a really complicated thing
serial fraudsters have existed since money apeared.
the world is incredibly big, with millions of potential small inverstors willing to put money on a sure-fire business plan. defraud a group of small investors. pocket the money. move to another town with a new identity. rinse, repeat.
in the case of iPod knockofs, you only need to defraud a bank ONCE. after you bought the first batch of fake iPods, the profits from it will pay for ne next batch.
selling it is also not a big deal. here in brasil there's thousands of mom and pop shops operating in galeries on the ground floor of comercial buildings specialized in selling grey and black market goods for cheap. this kind of commerce is paraguays largest "industry". so there's plenty of market ready to consume falsified goods, and for everyone the authorities bust, another one opens across the street.
the people pirating NECs brand built such an operation because the market for their fake products _already existed_, they didn't had to convince their distributors of anything.
maybe i didn't expressed myself correcly, DVD drives have buil-in protection to prevent the user from simply copying the.VOB files from the disc to the HD. but this doesn't change the fact that they still pay fees to the DVD consortium.
software DVD players like winDVD cost money not just because of the DVD consortium licensing fees, even if there was no fee, the developers would still need an MPEG decoder (either developed in-house or licensed) wich cost money, thei'd have to offset development costs, marketing costs, etc. the only diference is that without the fees the chances of having a _legal_ (at least in US. in some other countries deCSS is legal) opensource decoder would be bigger.
and no, you can't add a hardware decoder, power supply, case, AV conectors, RC and other stuff to a PC DVD reader to turn it into a standalone player for less than $10-$20 bucks, no matter how cheap the components are.
"Why else can you grab PC DVD player drives for $20 where a standalone DVD player starts around the $40 mark?"
because PC drives doesn't have power suplies, decoder chips, remote controls, AV outputs, cables and built-in OS and software to handle menus, RC events, and the like ?
DVD drives for PCs have the same CSS protections that stand-alone players do, this means they pay the same fees to those @$$holes af the DVD consortioum. they're cheaper because except for CSS decription, everything else is done by the host computer's CPU (menus, MPEG decoding, etc.)
protection has nothing to do with being left or right wing. the last military dictatorship in brasil, that lasted from 1964 to 1985, was a far right government and they were protectionists. most imports were forbiden, brasilian agriculture had several subsidies, and other stuff.
this kind of protectionism has nothing to do with being left or right. it has more to do with the oposing forces represented by populism (do things that apeal to the public. screw common sense) and pragmatism (do sensible things that work on the long term, even if they're initially unpopular). this is just my opinion. feel free to disagree or point mistakes in my interpretation.
is a simple usability thing. if you have a set of files in a folder and you don't remember the exact name of a specific file, but you remeber the date it was last edited, or you have the same file in 2 different formats (i keep my resume in 3 formats, MS word, OOo and plain text) and you want to know wich one is newer, then having details in the filechooser is a Good Thing(tm). one click and you have the information.
now, with GTK you have to open a file manager, navigate to that folder and change the view to details. a lot more work for something that should as simple as a click in the filechooser.
mozilla foundation now is linking firefox and seamonkey against GTK2 by default, wich brings that awfull filechooser along with it.
most gnome apps use that anoying dialog because GTK2 is the foundation for gnome and it's apps. let me say that this filechooser is _THE_ main reason i stay away from GTK2 apps as much as i can.
drop all the eye candy (or should i say "Kandy"? har har har), such as animated menus, transparency, animated cursors, etc.
also, select a lightwheight theme instead of more bloated things like plastik or keramic.
the first time you run KDE (or after you rm -rf ~/.kde) it shows a wizard that allows you to select, between other things, the level of eye candy. just drag the slider all the way to the left to disable all gui effects.
there's something called "virtual disk", a huge file siting on top of the host OS native filesystem (HFS+, ext3, ufs, etc) that the virtual machines maps to the guest OS as an IDE/SCSI disk.
if you prepare beforehand, it's possible to have a way to check the whole system independent of which distro you use. just run tripwire (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tripwire) or some other similar tool and you'll have a comprehensive database of MD5 checksums for everything important in your system. you can even monitor changes to config files. it makes for some nice "immune system" for your *NIX
the package "debsums" also adds a database of know MD5s for most debian packages. even if you don't have debsums or if your RPM database is hosed (that would make rpm -V useless) you can still count with knowngoods.org (http://www.knowngoods.org/ a database of checksums for several default binaries shipped with several linux distros, BSDs and even solaris.
want to know the checkums for solaris 9's/usr/bin/bash ? here
it didn't fried the machines because at that time PCs were not as sensitive to heat as they are today. what chernobyl did to some low end machines was to simply OVERWITE THE FLASH BIOS. the result was boxes that would even POST, requiring an external FLSH/EEPROM writer to restore it to a working state. that's why today (good) motherboards have either a BIOS setting or a jumper to block writings to flash BIOS, a redundant BIOS or a write-protected "boot block" to restore the flash BIOS in case of failure during an upgrade or virus atack.
i also heard reports of virii that moves hard drives heads in a "buterfly" fashion, ie. moves the head constantly between the first and last cilinders of the disk, greatly reducing the drives life, or in some cases damaging it.
"fry" a machine by skewing thermal management may be impossible today, but may be possible in the future. presently damaging hardware is possible under certain circumstances.
now, about your FUD detector, it's giving false alarms. better check if it's not virus infected ^_-
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Kubuntu worked right out of the box - ok, right out of the bittorrent download - for me. it recognized both my network cards, my sound card, my graphics card, monitor, serial ATA disk, etc.. i had it up and running perfectly in less than an hour.
try the same in windows XP in a similar box. it'll recognize almost nothing and will use generic stuff for the chipset and video, everything else will be marked as unknown hardware (i.e. no networking or sound). try keeping XP running for a week without shelling $$$ for a soft or hardware firewall (or both). this is, if you don't go nuts installing it in the first place.
windows is good only if it comes pre-installed in your machine. as an aftermarket option, it's awfull.
IMHO, microsoft should just takeover apple, replace the windows team with apple engineers, retire windows and start licensing OS X to others. this, or do the same as apple did. grab the sources of a *BSD, polish it a little, put a virtual environment to run "classic" windows apps and rid us of old windows.
it's called "arrastão", if you care to know.
we even exported this technology. a few years ago we heard of an "arrastão" in a portuguese beach. i wonder if they paid royalties...
but mob shopping is old news in brasil. usually it involves closelly related ppl, like a large familly or employees of the same company banding togheter to buy goods in bulk.
the most common itens are "back to school" goods, such as notepads, pens and stuff like that.
there's an asimov short story about a mining robot that breaks lose from US Robotics by accident (someone at USR left the door open). the robot knew it had to start cutting stone, but since it doesn't have the equipment, it builds one that's insanelly more efficient than anything that existed at the time. it was something capable of cutting thousands of tons of rock using only two D size bateries.
independent action based on a motivation. greed is not the only reason humans do things, you know ?
i know it's far fetched, but think for a moment, if you were IBM, a major IT player with lots to gain if you make peace with microsoft (after years of a bitter relationship, see MSs monopoly trial's documents for more info), who would you prefer to help: microsoft or sony ?
i'd bet on MS. making a kick ass CPU for the 360 would make easier for IBM to extract sweeter deals from MS in other areas and to placate bill's wrath in what concerns IBM's linux business. if this means screwing up sony, so be it.
nintendo don't have to worry, since MS itself already said Wii is not a competitor, but a good secondary console for 360 owners. a complement to the bigger console.
all i know is that i couldn't care less for the PS3. living where i live, earning what i earn, i can barely afford a PS2, a PS3 is waaay out of my budget. all i can hope for is to be able to afford a Wii when it launches, but i'll have to ask someone to bring it from US in his/her bag to avoid the enourmous taxes brasil charges over imports.
sony owns a studio, this means they could copy a movie of their own without breaking the law.
I believe the handsets are actually made by ericson. sony only co-brands it and gives ericson a sales channel in japan, plus the "walkman" brand for the MP3 capable models
limit broadcasting over the internet ? right.
dudes, that's what SSL tunnels exists for. if this thing passes, we'll soon see underground encrypted networks bcasting all kind of contents. with open source software, of course.
then they'll come with regulations on open source, because it "promotes criminal activities". that's when i'll start shouting "stop the world, i wanna get out".
"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a movie is insignificant next to the power of the Force."
with my apologies to Lord Vader.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=browser&btnG= Google+Search
explorer shows up in 7th place.
now MS and Yahoo! will acuse google of favouring Mozilla on their search index, never mind the fact that explorer doesn't even show on the 1st 10 results in MSN search.
Yahoo! seems the most favorable search engine for Explorer. MS's browser is 4th.
i wouldn't be so sure.
two adds that i can quote from the top of my head are coke bashing adds from pepsi.
one is with monkeys in a lab. one drinks only coke the other pepsi. the coke monkey shows no improvement after a time, while the pepsi dinking one breaks away from the lab and goes to the beach in a jeep full of hot babes.
the other add shows a little boy buying soda from a vending machines. the boy takes a can of coke, puts it on the ground, gets another one, puts besides the first can, steps on top of the two cans so he can reach the topmost button to get a pepsi.
those pieces certainly helped making my mind. today if i can't find pepsi or guarana (i live in brasil), i rather buy bottled water than coke.
also, in brasil at least, "pinto" is a slang for human male's genitals. sorta like "dick" in american slang.
in brasil it wouldn't be only ridiculous, it'd be downright ofensive (wich would make it ilegal).
not related to cars, but also on the subject. in the star wars prequels, the character "count Dooku" had his name changed in dubbed versions to "count dookan". "dooku" sounds to much like "do cu", which means "from the anus".
naming things or persons in this connected, globalized age can be a really complicated thing
serial fraudsters have existed since money apeared.
the world is incredibly big, with millions of potential small inverstors willing to put money on a sure-fire business plan. defraud a group of small investors. pocket the money. move to another town with a new identity. rinse, repeat.
in the case of iPod knockofs, you only need to defraud a bank ONCE. after you bought the first batch of fake iPods, the profits from it will pay for ne next batch.
selling it is also not a big deal. here in brasil there's thousands of mom and pop shops operating in galeries on the ground floor of comercial buildings specialized in selling grey and black market goods for cheap. this kind of commerce is paraguays largest "industry". so there's plenty of market ready to consume falsified goods, and for everyone the authorities bust, another one opens across the street.
the people pirating NECs brand built such an operation because the market for their fake products _already existed_, they didn't had to convince their distributors of anything.
maybe "Larinx".
"larry" plus "*nix", got it ? no ? well, whatever.
maybe i didn't expressed myself correcly, DVD drives have buil-in protection to prevent the user from simply copying the .VOB files from the disc to the HD. but this doesn't change the fact that they still pay fees to the DVD consortium.
software DVD players like winDVD cost money not just because of the DVD consortium licensing fees, even if there was no fee, the developers would still need an MPEG decoder (either developed in-house or licensed) wich cost money, thei'd have to offset development costs, marketing costs, etc. the only diference is that without the fees the chances of having a _legal_ (at least in US. in some other countries deCSS is legal) opensource decoder would be bigger.
and no, you can't add a hardware decoder, power supply, case, AV conectors, RC and other stuff to a PC DVD reader to turn it into a standalone player for less than $10-$20 bucks, no matter how cheap the components are.
"Why else can you grab PC DVD player drives for $20 where a standalone DVD player starts around the $40 mark?"
because PC drives doesn't have power suplies, decoder chips, remote controls, AV outputs, cables and built-in OS and software to handle menus, RC events, and the like ?
DVD drives for PCs have the same CSS protections that stand-alone players do, this means they pay the same fees to those @$$holes af the DVD consortioum. they're cheaper because except for CSS decription, everything else is done by the host computer's CPU (menus, MPEG decoding, etc.)
protection has nothing to do with being left or right wing. the last military dictatorship in brasil, that lasted from 1964 to 1985, was a far right government and they were protectionists. most imports were forbiden, brasilian agriculture had several subsidies, and other stuff.
this kind of protectionism has nothing to do with being left or right. it has more to do with the oposing forces represented by populism (do things that apeal to the public. screw common sense) and pragmatism (do sensible things that work on the long term, even if they're initially unpopular). this is just my opinion. feel free to disagree or point mistakes in my interpretation.
is a simple usability thing. if you have a set of files in a folder and you don't remember the exact name of a specific file, but you remeber the date it was last edited, or you have the same file in 2 different formats (i keep my resume in 3 formats, MS word, OOo and plain text) and you want to know wich one is newer, then having details in the filechooser is a Good Thing(tm). one click and you have the information.
now, with GTK you have to open a file manager, navigate to that folder and change the view to details. a lot more work for something that should as simple as a click in the filechooser.
will i be able to use KDEs superior dialogs such as kdeprint, filechooser, etc. with GTK2/gnome apps ?
also, will interface items like toolbars look and work like KDEs ?
done already. it's called "vile" (vi like emacs). here: http://dickey.his.com/vile/vile.html
what he meant is the same thing i complained here
mozilla foundation now is linking firefox and seamonkey against GTK2 by default, wich brings that awfull filechooser along with it.
most gnome apps use that anoying dialog because GTK2 is the foundation for gnome and it's apps. let me say that this filechooser is _THE_ main reason i stay away from GTK2 apps as much as i can.
drop all the eye candy (or should i say "Kandy"? har har har), such as animated menus, transparency, animated cursors, etc.
also, select a lightwheight theme instead of more bloated things like plastik or keramic.
the first time you run KDE (or after you rm -rf ~/.kde) it shows a wizard that allows you to select, between other things, the level of eye candy. just drag the slider all the way to the left to disable all gui effects.
or just do what i do. run windowmaker.
so, you never used vmware, did you ?
there's something called "virtual disk", a huge file siting on top of the host OS native filesystem (HFS+, ext3, ufs, etc) that the virtual machines maps to the guest OS as an IDE/SCSI disk.
if you prepare beforehand, it's possible to have a way to check the whole system independent of which distro you use. just run tripwire (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tripwire) or some other similar tool and you'll have a comprehensive database of MD5 checksums for everything important in your system. you can even monitor changes to config files. it makes for some nice "immune system" for your *NIX
/usr/bin/bash ? here
the package "debsums" also adds a database of know MD5s for most debian packages. even if you don't have debsums or if your RPM database is hosed (that would make rpm -V useless) you can still count with knowngoods.org (http://www.knowngoods.org/ a database of checksums for several default binaries shipped with several linux distros, BSDs and even solaris.
want to know the checkums for solaris 9's
kinda usefull when diagnosing a system
what about chrnobyl, AKA CIH virus ?
it didn't fried the machines because at that time PCs were not as sensitive to heat as they are today. what chernobyl did to some low end machines was to simply OVERWITE THE FLASH BIOS. the result was boxes that would even POST, requiring an external FLSH/EEPROM writer to restore it to a working state. that's why today (good) motherboards have either a BIOS setting or a jumper to block writings to flash BIOS, a redundant BIOS or a write-protected "boot block" to restore the flash BIOS in case of failure during an upgrade or virus atack.
i also heard reports of virii that moves hard drives heads in a "buterfly" fashion, ie. moves the head constantly between the first and last cilinders of the disk, greatly reducing the drives life, or in some cases damaging it.
"fry" a machine by skewing thermal management may be impossible today, but may be possible in the future. presently damaging hardware is possible under certain circumstances.
now, about your FUD detector, it's giving false alarms. better check if it's not virus infected ^_-