I am also using the 64 bit version of Ubuntu - for no better reason than having a 64 bit chip in my desktop:) Anyway, last week I updated to Feisty after reading some other article here or on digg, then this week decided to try searching for Wine yet another time. Someone has actually made a.deb package for wine on amd64, including some of the other required stuff like winecfg etc. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it after a bit of searching - I'm at work right now, and can't remember the exact name of the file.
But it does exist, and can be installed by simply double clicking on it after downloading once the dependencies are met. Ubuntu already installs ia32-libs, or else maybe I had installed that earlier and forgot. Anyway, I just had to install libasound32 (iirc) before I could successfully install wine on my system. Checked and it appears to be working fine, Warcraft III started without much issues (earlier I forgot to use -opengl and the dx version gfx appeared to have no anti-aliasing etc.)
As for the speed difference, I don't know much about that - but imho 30% gain is highly doubtful for normal applications, maybe ones that use a lot of cache or 64 bit floating point calculations? Can't really give any useful info on that, sorry. Will try and post a link to the 64 bit Feisty deb after I get home.
I can't say much about commerce graduates, since I graduated with a B.E. degree in Computers (there is no seperate B.S. degree in India for software). But I certainly believe the computer education syllabus could do with a major overhaul, as well as better teachers. NOTE: The following is also a rant, if you read it you can understand how dissatisfied I am with wasting several years to get a stupid paper certificate which I am not in the least bit proud of. Be warned that this is all highly subjective and biased opinion.
The syllabus for any degree in India is revised very infrequently, maybe once every 5 or 10 years - this is especially bad for a fast-changing field like computers, I guess it may be OK for mature disciplines such as mechanical or civil engineering. The first year of the 4 year Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) course for *any* specialization (computers, electronics, mechanical...) is common - in other words, 25% of my time in college is going to be wasted studying about irrelevant topics that are extremely unlikely to be useful in my chosen profession. To give a few examples, I had to learn (by rote of course): 1. How cement is mixed etc. (in Chemistry) 2. Engineering drawing (isometric projection etc., useful in Civil Engg.) 3. Mechanical engg. concepts like stresses and struts (no, not Java Struts!:) ) Now, I can understand that students need to be exposed to different fields so they can decide which one they want etc. - but why do you have to waste an entire year after someone has decided his trade, just for the 0.001% of people who might wish to change professions?
Unlike many people, I went into C.S. (its actually called Computer Engg. degree) because I like programming, not just because of earning potential. As such, I had grouped with a couple of friends and we tried to make small programs, games etc. even before entering college. Now, the only first year subject relevant to C.S. is Computer Programming - where we are initiated into the mysteries of Pascal. In the first semester (we have 2 semesters in a year btw.), I got an assignment to print 1 to 10 as output. When I hand it in, I actually get told off by the teacher for using the 'for' loop - since we hadn't got to that stage in the syllabus, it was Not Allowed to use looping constructs! This should give you some idea of the quality of teaching in our hallowed halls of learning. I quickly learned to keep inquisitive experimentation seperate from class assignments, and got through college by copying almost all assignments (which activity is *very* common btw.)
The teaching staff in most Indian colleges is abysmal, due to extremely poor salary the only people who end up there are rejects from industry who would never get a job elsewhere. I doubt most could even hold a data entry position - there were the few intelligent teachers who did explain and teach well, but they were a minority. Also, when I write a board exam the paper will be corrected by some random teacher, who might be illiterate for all I know. If questions are based on solved problems in standard textbooks, the teacher will likely expect the exact same answer - if you use a 'while' loop instead of 'for', it might not satisfy the prof. who only wants similar structure and doesn't understand there is more than one way to do a problem. In this environment, how do you expect anyone to use modular structure, descriptive variable names or recursion etc.? The problem of 'should be done acc. to the textbook' applies in other disciplines too - although I read a lot, when answering an English paper I wouldn't dream of using abstruse erudite diction as it would be incomprehensible to the examiner. In other words, we're actually taught to use small words since few teachers would understand complex verbiage.
Passing college exams in India is not done through understanding the course material and applying learned concepts, this would be a foreign concept to most Indian students. The right way to pass, is of cour
If only this was around a few decades ago, the beggar in Pushpak wouldn't have to hide all his cash under jute bags:)
Btw, this isn't really offtopic - just a tangential reference to an old (and really enjoyable) Hindi movie. The movie itself is entirely without any dialogue, so you don't even have to know Hindi (or any other language!) to watch it:D
Mars isn't supposed to have much of an atmosphere, but I have often thought of a similar question but for Venus instead. If we send a few probes with the kinds of bacteria that survive in volcano calderas and hot geysers on Earth, couldn't they perhaps change the atmosphere and temperature to be more hospitable over a few centuries? Maybe people could one day colonize Venus and settle on the poles (which would be relatively cooler) if it could be 'terraformed' by such methods?
'Type and Learn C' (iirc, by Tom Swan) was a really good book, it helped me a lot too when I was initially exploring the language. That and the online help in Borland's Turbo C++, which imho was highly impressive. OTOH, I also bought 'Type and Learn C++', but that was quite a disappointment - the entire book was an ongoing exercise in making an editor, so I couldn't jump from chapter to chapter as I wished, and due to several other things didn't get utilized remotely as much as the C book.
I do like the '24 hours' books in some cases when I want a quick intro to a topic, but 'Learn' is probably too strong a word - its more like 'Get Acquainted With', which is what I use them for.
I'm trying for the Nth time to move to Linux (I keep failing due to games:( ) and am currently using Ubuntu Breezy on my desktop. I was quite dismayed to find that the new dumbed-down dialogs are instant-apply, I often like to browse among options and don't want to remember what was the original value every time!
Since my priority is to make sure I use Linux for everything except games, I'm going to keep using Gnome as I'm more familiar with that rather than KDE (was using it earlier in FC3 and RH). But I'm already thinking of switching to Kubuntu later, two things I disliked about the drive to 'simplify UI' for Gnome are: 1) Preferences insta-apply - I consider this a very BAD thing:( 2) Same wallpaper across desktops in Nautilus - if I use multiple desktops, would like an easy indication of the current one.
I'm quite happy with either UI, though personally I wish E 0.17 would crawl out from wherever its hiding:D Just wanted to vent on things I disliked about Gnome, and also - can someone confirm that the latest KDE still has the Apply/Reset options for prefs? I've checked online and that seems to be the case, but would like a confirmation.
Also - if anyone has tips on using Ubuntu on amd64 w/ 64 bit kernel (apart from info in ubuntu forums or guide) please post that in a reply to this comment. I'm especially interested in precompiled packages for Wine - so I can try to run War3:)
Wouldn't that only work if the Sony rootkit was still hiding files using $sys$, and hadn't been hacked to use some other prefix as mentioned in some earlier post?
I'm not really sure that the non-violence movement was the major reason for the British to withdraw from India. Ever think that a whole lot of Commonwealth countries got their independence just after World War II, when British military might was very weak and they had enough problems at home to deal with? In fact, India became independent *later* than most of the other countries in Asia and Africa.
I'm an Indian, and had to read all about Gandhi's non-violence movement in History class at school. I consider him to be an idealist, while his intentions may have been good he just succeeded in getting lots of people lathi-charged (hit with batons), rendering them injured and crippled in some cases. I don't recall the British planning to withdraw prior to WW II.
Just stating my opinions, I know most people hold Gandhi personally responsible for our independence:-) Note that I do have a bias, I agree more with Subhash Chandra Bose (fight to the death against occupying armies) rather than M.K. Gandhi (let them beat you till they realize the error of their ways!).
To keep this from being completely OT - as GP said, people don't really give up power easily. More power = more choices on what you can do. Would you willingly forfeit existing rights / abilities in hopes that you will never need them? For e.g., I don't sign up for the online statements that banks like to pester me about, because they don't promise an easy way to switch back if I want. I would like to save paper, but not when I might have to pay if I ever need a copy of my statement; just because I clicked 'Yes' to an online pdf statement:)
> I sometimes wonder if part (and only a small part to be sure) of the Game Cube's lackluster sales was the fact that is played "games only", removing the "but we can play CDs/DVDs on it" excuse. However, that is much less of an issue every day as DVD players are nearly available as toy surprises in cereal boxes.
Even though dvd players are getting quite cheap now, having multiple boxes connected to the tv, each taking up its own set of A/V inputs, can be quite a hassle at times. As such, being able to combine two of those boxes (dvd player + game console) into one can be quite an advantage in some cases imho. IF I were to buy a console (I only play PC games, esp. bcoz I like RPGs, strategy games where keyboard is a must) then 'getting a dvd capability as well' would definitely be a plus point.
I wonder if the comparatively lower piracy for GameCube (iirc the supposed reason for the non-standard disks?) was better for Nintendo than the sales they would've lost due to the different disk formats. For e.g., I might buy a used XBox when they drop further in price, mainly to use xbmc. Can't do that w/ GC, thus one less potential customer who's not even interested in their clearance stocks:)
I agree with parent - I don't see any point in blaming Yahoo when they are forced by a government to do something, you can't really expect them to fight that.
On the other hand, whether to use adware or not, and things like changing settings on user machines, is definitely within their control. I dislike the bloated Ymsgr which has to include stock quotes, news and lots of other things I don't want or need; but Y! doesn't offer a lighter option. Result: I use msn msgr which actually loads faster (atleast, that's the impression I had), and now am moving to gtalk and planning to dump msn msgr.
Yahoo seems to think that users need to know everything that they can potentially do at Yahoo, no matter if the user actually *knows* he only wants a simple chat client. No - he just hasn't tried our fantastic stock quotes, so what if he's got no money?:-)
In summary, I differ from GP's view in that I don't really blame them for taking actions beyond their control; but I do consider them responsible for only caring about users as a source of revenue.
I admit I haven't been keeping up with all the various Vista flavors, but I think you missed my basic point. For XP now, we have a single version (Media Center) which is a superset of the others (dunno where Tablet PC fits in though). So, MS can just test that to make sure everything is working. Presumably if, say, a newer version of IE works in Media Center, it will also work for Pro and Home. Similarly, for Vista there may well be 10 variants; but if they're all inclusive subsets of, say, Vista Enterprise Edition then MS can just test that thoroughly, and for the others they just have to make sure they removed the right files to downsize the version. I remember some article (probably on/.) about how XP Home install cd even has all the files for Pro, all it takes is changing a few bits to get it to install the Pro-only stuff.
In short, while there may *appear* 10 different versions, I'm guessing that MS isn't really going to have 10x testing woes - more like 1x + 9y, where y is the testing to ensure the right settings are tweaked and files included/excluded etc.
The testing alone on all the various current and future versions of Windows will suck up a significant amount of their resources. I'd be willing to bet that just a few years after Vista is released that Microsoft starts talking about end-of-life for XP because they can't sustain all those different releases.
What different releases? From what I've read so far, XP Home is a subset of Pro, which in turn is a subset of Media Center. All they have to do is test Media Center, and they're done - the little testing to make sure that they remove the right files so they label it as Pro or Home is hardly going to be much of a strain.
I imagine it will be a similar scenario for Vista as well!
When I was studying for my B.E. (equiv. to B.S.) degree in Bombay, the college I went to was famous for its annual festival where famous Indian bands would perform on the final day. After skipping it for a couple of years, I decided I should atleast attend once to see everyone else screaming and yelling;) (I don't listen to rock or over-loud music) Well, when I was halfway from the train station and still around 10-15 mins walking distance the noise was already considerable - I chickened out, did an about turn and went back home instead:-)
For FireFox, search for FlashBlock - it replaces Flash ads with an icon that you can click to actually start the flash. Quite nice imho, I definitely appreciate it the few times I visit sites loaded with Flash. Though, I don't know if it works on Macs - but since it should be in xul I *suppose* it will.
This is slightly OT, but I was wondering if anyone here might know of software that would allow me to plug in a standard phone into the computer modem port, and then use that when talking on Skype, or MSN/Y/GTalk voice chat etc. I definitely would prefer using a conventional cordless phone rather than my headset.
Note that I'm not referring to using a SIP device like the DTA-310 that Packet8 used to give (maybe still does, dunno). Though if you have any info on how to use that and use a normal phone through Skype or IMs, that would be useful as well.
I actually live pretty close to Vulcan Park, I can vouch he hasn't moved atleast for the short time I've been here:-)
The area falls somewhere between Birmingham proper and Homewood (the satellite township where I live) and I heard from my roommate that there was some controversy over where his hand should point. Well, they ended up making him point towards downtown, so Homewood is quite literally behind his butt;)
Especially since Toshiba isn't doing *anything* with this particular product... except maybe coming up with a competing product (as this one is by Hitachi).
I do think that people who can afford this might buy it and record lots of shows, which they end up never watching due to lack of time. Just because people buy expensive toys doesn't mean they always use them:)
There was an old game (for 286, with horrible polygon graphics) called DeathTrack - which featured car racing where you also fought with your competitors, upgrading armor and defense as well as buying missiles, lasers etc. by winning/placing high in races.
I also remember some movie that had a similar premise - from an imdb search, I think its Cannonball.
Only difference is that here we're talking about automated cars, a la Robocop (Robocar?) instead of having human drivers.
This comment reminded me of Star Control 2, where the Chenjesu and Mmrhmrhm(?) merge to form the Chmmr Avatar (great fighter ship btw).
If the combination had the stability of Solaris (or so I've heard, never used Solaris myself) and the a good GUI like Windows which is nice for newbies; that might be an interesting combination.
But on the other hand, there is this apocryphal story (as much as I remember of it):
A woman wrote a letter to George Bernard Shaw - "I am beautiful and you are a genius. Let's get married, our children will be good-looking as well as intelligent."
GBS reportedly wrote back - "What if they inherited my looks and your brains?" (or something to that effect:D )
Heh somewhat true... but that's just because the good deals for cheap laptops after rebates etc. are always for name brands. And, I'm just a stingy guy who looks at price as a major factor for purchases. As an example, I would have actually preferred to buy an Athlon desktop a couple of years back, but ended up getting a Dell w/ P4 and RDRAM(!!) because it was ridiculously cheap:D
There seem to be a lot of comments here about how lower-cost laptops are lower quality, outsourcing is a bad thing for companies etc. But from a consumer standpoint, cheap 3rd party suppliers = cheaper end product. And while the sub-$1000 laptops might not be suitable for business use, they are great for personal use where the functioning of the computer isn't critcal; and perhaps the only affordable option for a lot of students and others.
Sometimes, with a little research its possible to buy even cheaper laptops that might not be branded HP or Dell but contain the same components inside, just sourced by a different laptop manufacturer. For example, BestBuy used to carry a store brand called (iirc) VPR Matrix. My friend bought one for around $700 when his $1500 Vaio (bought around 1 - 1 1/2 years earlier) started having problems. He was quite happy with the build quality, and of course with the price as well! As an added bonus, the outer case was a sleek design that got him asked several times if it was a PowerBook or iBook, this at a time (circa 2002) when most PC notebooks offered nothing but a black box with prominent manufacturer decals. Sadly, people are mostly lemmings who just want to buy known brands, and afaik BestBuy doesn't carry these laptops any more - else I would've definitely considered one when I went for a Toshiba S161 recently.
I thought he meant that if the hardware is supported / you manage to get it working, then atleast you shouldn't have problems with distro layout changes to add to your woes.
For e.g. say I find a Debian or Ubuntu.deb for Atheros drivers (for wifi) and I'm using Fedora, I should be able to use the.deb and expect it to install in the correct locations instead of having to hunt for the.rpm version (and making sure the rpm is for Fedora Core 3, just getting one for RH9 or even Core2 is probably not a good idea!:( )
Slashdot Mirror
I am also using the 64 bit version of Ubuntu - for no better reason than having a 64 bit chip in my desktop :) Anyway, last week I updated to Feisty after reading some other article here or on digg, then this week decided to try searching for Wine yet another time. Someone has actually made a .deb package for wine on amd64, including some of the other required stuff like winecfg etc. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it after a bit of searching - I'm at work right now, and can't remember the exact name of the file.
But it does exist, and can be installed by simply double clicking on it after downloading once the dependencies are met. Ubuntu already installs ia32-libs, or else maybe I had installed that earlier and forgot. Anyway, I just had to install libasound32 (iirc) before I could successfully install wine on my system. Checked and it appears to be working fine, Warcraft III started without much issues (earlier I forgot to use -opengl and the dx version gfx appeared to have no anti-aliasing etc.)
As for the speed difference, I don't know much about that - but imho 30% gain is highly doubtful for normal applications, maybe ones that use a lot of cache or 64 bit floating point calculations? Can't really give any useful info on that, sorry. Will try and post a link to the 64 bit Feisty deb after I get home.
I can't say much about commerce graduates, since I graduated with a B.E. degree in Computers (there is no seperate B.S. degree in India for software). But I certainly believe the computer education syllabus could do with a major overhaul, as well as better teachers.
...) is common - in other words, 25% of my time in college is going to be wasted studying about irrelevant topics that are extremely unlikely to be useful in my chosen profession. To give a few examples, I had to learn (by rote of course): :) )
NOTE: The following is also a rant, if you read it you can understand how dissatisfied I am with wasting several years to get a stupid paper certificate which I am not in the least bit proud of. Be warned that this is all highly subjective and biased opinion.
The syllabus for any degree in India is revised very infrequently, maybe once every 5 or 10 years - this is especially bad for a fast-changing field like computers, I guess it may be OK for mature disciplines such as mechanical or civil engineering. The first year of the 4 year Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) course for *any* specialization (computers, electronics, mechanical
1. How cement is mixed etc. (in Chemistry)
2. Engineering drawing (isometric projection etc., useful in Civil Engg.)
3. Mechanical engg. concepts like stresses and struts (no, not Java Struts!
Now, I can understand that students need to be exposed to different fields so they can decide which one they want etc. - but why do you have to waste an entire year after someone has decided his trade, just for the 0.001% of people who might wish to change professions?
Unlike many people, I went into C.S. (its actually called Computer Engg. degree) because I like programming, not just because of earning potential. As such, I had grouped with a couple of friends and we tried to make small programs, games etc. even before entering college. Now, the only first year subject relevant to C.S. is Computer Programming - where we are initiated into the mysteries of Pascal. In the first semester (we have 2 semesters in a year btw.), I got an assignment to print 1 to 10 as output. When I hand it in, I actually get told off by the teacher for using the 'for' loop - since we hadn't got to that stage in the syllabus, it was Not Allowed to use looping constructs! This should give you some idea of the quality of teaching in our hallowed halls of learning. I quickly learned to keep inquisitive experimentation seperate from class assignments, and got through college by copying almost all assignments (which activity is *very* common btw.)
The teaching staff in most Indian colleges is abysmal, due to extremely poor salary the only people who end up there are rejects from industry who would never get a job elsewhere. I doubt most could even hold a data entry position - there were the few intelligent teachers who did explain and teach well, but they were a minority. Also, when I write a board exam the paper will be corrected by some random teacher, who might be illiterate for all I know.
If questions are based on solved problems in standard textbooks, the teacher will likely expect the exact same answer - if you use a 'while' loop instead of 'for', it might not satisfy the prof. who only wants similar structure and doesn't understand there is more than one way to do a problem. In this environment, how do you expect anyone to use modular structure, descriptive variable names or recursion etc.?
The problem of 'should be done acc. to the textbook' applies in other disciplines too - although I read a lot, when answering an English paper I wouldn't dream of using abstruse erudite diction as it would be incomprehensible to the examiner. In other words, we're actually taught to use small words since few teachers would understand complex verbiage.
Passing college exams in India is not done through understanding the course material and applying learned concepts, this would be a foreign concept to most Indian students. The right way to pass, is of cour
If only this was around a few decades ago, the beggar in Pushpak wouldn't have to hide all his cash under jute bags :)
:D
Btw, this isn't really offtopic - just a tangential reference to an old (and really enjoyable) Hindi movie. The movie itself is entirely without any dialogue, so you don't even have to know Hindi (or any other language!) to watch it
Mars isn't supposed to have much of an atmosphere, but I have often thought of a similar question but for Venus instead. If we send a few probes with the kinds of bacteria that survive in volcano calderas and hot geysers on Earth, couldn't they perhaps change the atmosphere and temperature to be more hospitable over a few centuries? Maybe people could one day colonize Venus and settle on the poles (which would be relatively cooler) if it could be 'terraformed' by such methods?
'Type and Learn C' (iirc, by Tom Swan) was a really good book, it helped me a lot too when I was initially exploring the language. That and the online help in Borland's Turbo C++, which imho was highly impressive. OTOH, I also bought 'Type and Learn C++', but that was quite a disappointment - the entire book was an ongoing exercise in making an editor, so I couldn't jump from chapter to chapter as I wished, and due to several other things didn't get utilized remotely as much as the C book.
I do like the '24 hours' books in some cases when I want a quick intro to a topic, but 'Learn' is probably too strong a word - its more like 'Get Acquainted With', which is what I use them for.
I'm trying for the Nth time to move to Linux (I keep failing due to games :( ) and am currently using Ubuntu Breezy on my desktop. I was quite dismayed to find that the new dumbed-down dialogs are instant-apply, I often like to browse among options and don't want to remember what was the original value every time!
:(
:D Just wanted to vent on things I disliked about Gnome, and also - can someone confirm that the latest KDE still has the Apply/Reset options for prefs? I've checked online and that seems to be the case, but would like a confirmation.
:)
Since my priority is to make sure I use Linux for everything except games, I'm going to keep using Gnome as I'm more familiar with that rather than KDE (was using it earlier in FC3 and RH). But I'm already thinking of switching to Kubuntu later, two things I disliked about the drive to 'simplify UI' for Gnome are:
1) Preferences insta-apply - I consider this a very BAD thing
2) Same wallpaper across desktops in Nautilus - if I use multiple desktops, would like an easy indication of the current one.
I'm quite happy with either UI, though personally I wish E 0.17 would crawl out from wherever its hiding
Also - if anyone has tips on using Ubuntu on amd64 w/ 64 bit kernel (apart from info in ubuntu forums or guide) please post that in a reply to this comment. I'm especially interested in precompiled packages for Wine - so I can try to run War3
Wouldn't that only work if the Sony rootkit was still hiding files using $sys$, and hadn't been hacked to use some other prefix as mentioned in some earlier post?
I'm not really sure that the non-violence movement was the major reason for the British to withdraw from India. Ever think that a whole lot of Commonwealth countries got their independence just after World War II, when British military might was very weak and they had enough problems at home to deal with? In fact, India became independent *later* than most of the other countries in Asia and Africa.
:-) Note that I do have a bias, I agree more with Subhash Chandra Bose (fight to the death against occupying armies) rather than M.K. Gandhi (let them beat you till they realize the error of their ways!).
:)
I'm an Indian, and had to read all about Gandhi's non-violence movement in History class at school. I consider him to be an idealist, while his intentions may have been good he just succeeded in getting lots of people lathi-charged (hit with batons), rendering them injured and crippled in some cases. I don't recall the British planning to withdraw prior to WW II.
Just stating my opinions, I know most people hold Gandhi personally responsible for our independence
To keep this from being completely OT - as GP said, people don't really give up power easily. More power = more choices on what you can do. Would you willingly forfeit existing rights / abilities in hopes that you will never need them? For e.g., I don't sign up for the online statements that banks like to pester me about, because they don't promise an easy way to switch back if I want. I would like to save paper, but not when I might have to pay if I ever need a copy of my statement; just because I clicked 'Yes' to an online pdf statement
> I sometimes wonder if part (and only a small part to be sure) of the Game Cube's lackluster sales was the fact that is played "games only", removing the "but we can play CDs/DVDs on it" excuse. However, that is much less of an issue every day as DVD players are nearly available as toy surprises in cereal boxes.
:)
Even though dvd players are getting quite cheap now, having multiple boxes connected to the tv, each taking up its own set of A/V inputs, can be quite a hassle at times. As such, being able to combine two of those boxes (dvd player + game console) into one can be quite an advantage in some cases imho. IF I were to buy a console (I only play PC games, esp. bcoz I like RPGs, strategy games where keyboard is a must) then 'getting a dvd capability as well' would definitely be a plus point.
I wonder if the comparatively lower piracy for GameCube (iirc the supposed reason for the non-standard disks?) was better for Nintendo than the sales they would've lost due to the different disk formats. For e.g., I might buy a used XBox when they drop further in price, mainly to use xbmc. Can't do that w/ GC, thus one less potential customer who's not even interested in their clearance stocks
I agree with parent - I don't see any point in blaming Yahoo when they are forced by a government to do something, you can't really expect them to fight that.
:-)
On the other hand, whether to use adware or not, and things like changing settings on user machines, is definitely within their control. I dislike the bloated Ymsgr which has to include stock quotes, news and lots of other things I don't want or need; but Y! doesn't offer a lighter option. Result: I use msn msgr which actually loads faster (atleast, that's the impression I had), and now am moving to gtalk and planning to dump msn msgr.
Yahoo seems to think that users need to know everything that they can potentially do at Yahoo, no matter if the user actually *knows* he only wants a simple chat client. No - he just hasn't tried our fantastic stock quotes, so what if he's got no money?
In summary, I differ from GP's view in that I don't really blame them for taking actions beyond their control; but I do consider them responsible for only caring about users as a source of revenue.
I admit I haven't been keeping up with all the various Vista flavors, but I think you missed my basic point. For XP now, we have a single version (Media Center) which is a superset of the others (dunno where Tablet PC fits in though). So, MS can just test that to make sure everything is working. Presumably if, say, a newer version of IE works in Media Center, it will also work for Pro and Home. Similarly, for Vista there may well be 10 variants; but if they're all inclusive subsets of, say, Vista Enterprise Edition then MS can just test that thoroughly, and for the others they just have to make sure they removed the right files to downsize the version. I remember some article (probably on /.) about how XP Home install cd even has all the files for Pro, all it takes is changing a few bits to get it to install the Pro-only stuff.
In short, while there may *appear* 10 different versions, I'm guessing that MS isn't really going to have 10x testing woes - more like 1x + 9y, where y is the testing to ensure the right settings are tweaked and files included/excluded etc.
The testing alone on all the various current and future versions of Windows will suck up a significant amount of their resources. I'd be willing to bet that just a few years after Vista is released that Microsoft starts talking about end-of-life for XP because they can't sustain all those different releases.
What different releases? From what I've read so far,
XP Home is a subset of Pro, which in turn is a subset of Media Center. All they have to do is test Media Center, and they're done - the little testing to make sure that they remove the right files so they label it as Pro or Home is hardly going to be much of a strain.
I imagine it will be a similar scenario for Vista as well!
When I was studying for my B.E. (equiv. to B.S.) degree in Bombay, the college I went to was famous for its annual festival where famous Indian bands would perform on the final day. After skipping it for a couple of years, I decided I should atleast attend once to see everyone else screaming and yelling ;) (I don't listen to rock or over-loud music) Well, when I was halfway from the train station and still around 10-15 mins walking distance the noise was already considerable - I chickened out, did an about turn and went back home instead :-)
For FireFox, search for FlashBlock - it replaces Flash ads with an icon that you can click to actually start the flash. Quite nice imho, I definitely appreciate it the few times I visit sites loaded with Flash. Though, I don't know if it works on Macs - but since it should be in xul I *suppose* it will.
This is slightly OT, but I was wondering if anyone here might know of software that would allow me to plug in a standard phone into the computer modem port, and then use that when talking on Skype, or MSN/Y/GTalk voice chat etc. I definitely would prefer using a conventional cordless phone rather than my headset.
Note that I'm not referring to using a SIP device like the DTA-310 that Packet8 used to give (maybe still does, dunno). Though if you have any info on how to use that and use a normal phone through Skype or IMs, that would be useful as well.
Just don't troll on /., and you should always have Good Karma ;)
I actually live pretty close to Vulcan Park, I can vouch he hasn't moved atleast for the short time I've been here :-)
;)
The area falls somewhere between Birmingham proper and Homewood (the satellite township where I live) and I heard from my roommate that there was some controversy over where his hand should point. Well, they ended up making him point towards downtown, so Homewood is quite literally behind his butt
Especially since Toshiba isn't doing *anything* with this particular product ... except maybe coming up with a competing product (as this one is by Hitachi).
:)
I do think that people who can afford this might buy it and record lots of shows, which they end up never watching due to lack of time. Just because people buy expensive toys doesn't mean they always use them
I see you haven't heard of HURD :-)
There was an old game (for 286, with horrible polygon graphics) called DeathTrack - which featured car racing where you also fought with your competitors, upgrading armor and defense as well as buying missiles, lasers etc. by winning/placing high in races.
I also remember some movie that had a similar premise - from an imdb search, I think its Cannonball.
Only difference is that here we're talking about automated cars, a la Robocop (Robocar?) instead of having human drivers.
This comment reminded me of Star Control 2, where the Chenjesu and Mmrhmrhm(?) merge to form the Chmmr Avatar (great fighter ship btw). If the combination had the stability of Solaris (or so I've heard, never used Solaris myself) and the a good GUI like Windows which is nice for newbies; that might be an interesting combination. But on the other hand, there is this apocryphal story (as much as I remember of it): A woman wrote a letter to George Bernard Shaw - "I am beautiful and you are a genius. Let's get married, our children will be good-looking as well as intelligent." GBS reportedly wrote back - "What if they inherited my looks and your brains?" (or something to that effect :D )
Same here - but in my case, I'll probably wait until well after the systems have lost their premium pricing, I mostly play on my desktop anyway.
Heh somewhat true ... but that's just because the good deals for cheap laptops after rebates etc. are always for name brands. And, I'm just a stingy guy who looks at price as a major factor for purchases. As an example, I would have actually preferred to buy an Athlon desktop a couple of years back, but ended up getting a Dell w/ P4 and RDRAM(!!) because it was ridiculously cheap :D
Sometimes, with a little research its possible to buy even cheaper laptops that might not be branded HP or Dell but contain the same components inside, just sourced by a different laptop manufacturer. For example, BestBuy used to carry a store brand called (iirc) VPR Matrix. My friend bought one for around $700 when his $1500 Vaio (bought around 1 - 1 1/2 years earlier) started having problems. He was quite happy with the build quality, and of course with the price as well! As an added bonus, the outer case was a sleek design that got him asked several times if it was a PowerBook or iBook, this at a time (circa 2002) when most PC notebooks offered nothing but a black box with prominent manufacturer decals. Sadly, people are mostly lemmings who just want to buy known brands, and afaik BestBuy doesn't carry these laptops any more - else I would've definitely considered one when I went for a Toshiba S161 recently.
For e.g. say I find a Debian or Ubuntu .deb for Atheros drivers (for wifi) and I'm using Fedora, I should be able to use the .deb and expect it to install in the correct locations instead of having to hunt for the .rpm version (and making sure the rpm is for Fedora Core 3, just getting one for RH9 or even Core2 is probably not a good idea! :( )