Being that money does not exist, and it is a relative, man-made item based on conscious agreement, you cannot compare the pirated reimbursement price of Windows in Indonesia with the agreement to pay $X legally from no on to the retail price here in the US.
Do you want to start working at an Indonesian's wage and get Windows for a $1?
Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.
on
The Death of Folders?
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· Score: 1
With the next gen move/copy function, you'll basically do "move the files with the following label/metadata to XYZ".
Meanwhile, if each file were in a database, with search keywords, I could find anything I wanted just as easily as anything else - there's no predetermined hierarchy that makes it easier to find some things than others.
If (l)users are too lazy to put stuff with meaningful filenames in relevant folders, why are they going to correctly add search keywords to every document.
If I labeled all my proposals with proposal in the filename, I could find them all very quickly.
Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.
on
The Death of Folders?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I don't see how or why folders or directories should disappear.
An improved search mechanism is welcomed, but how do I associate a bunch of related files together without labeling as being together? How do I move or copy something that is now relevant together with the other files?
Lets say I'm working with research on penguins. I'll have jpeg images, url's, word documents, etc. And I'll put them in "My penguins" folder (exclude the My if your on longhorn:).
I can archive "My Penguins", I can throw the whole thing in the trash if I'm sick of penguins.
What I guess I'm getting at, is that folders or directories are convenient for organizational purposes. Another thing, is with no folders, how do you share a folder? Do I have to add metadata to each file saying who, when and why I want that document shared over the network?
Even since searching has become so good with google, the web is still put into "folders" by different websites. If I'm looking to buy something and I do a search, by seeing that the domain ends in.uk, I will not go there since its not worth paying to convert to pounds and pay for shipping across the Atlantic for a $20 item.
If I'm looking into "folder elimination research" on google, I can see that Microsoft's website may have an entry, or slashdot may have an entry, and I'm already starting to form opinions about the content based on who is hosting it.
So, are libraries doing it all wrong too? Those bozo's put all the related books together in one building. With a small rfid tag I could search on the computer and be able to find any book even if its not on the shelf where it is supposed to be. I dunno, I've found great books about something I was interested in because they were all grouped together. I've found "open directories" of good stuff because they were all put together.
The simple & dumb way as OS X handles packages is just that: it can not handle dependencies, or anything, it just puts some files on your computer. It works moderately well, if you only use it for applications and those are statically linked, but nothing else. Now, take Debian's package system: it handles dependencies, version conflicts, alternative packages that serve the same purpose, etc, etc, ec. And it is absolutely easy: an apt-get install xyz installs/updates package xyz and all the necessary shared libs, updates file associations, whatever (and it does not takes exactly rocket science to create some GUI for that single command line).
I have never had any "dependancy" problems with any application for my Mac except those through fink, a debian package system ported for the Mac.
Mac apps are actually directories that hold everything necessary to run the application. I have only heard of a couple of Mac apps that are frontends to commandline applications that may need those commandline applications to be installed on your system, but those are small freeware or shareware applications.
I agree. I also believe that it should be renewable by the copyright owner until the owner dies, and that the copyright is not transferable to anyone else.
When you hear about the great grandchildren suing over "their" rights that their dead great grandmother's work (dead over 50 years mind you), something is wrong. I'm thinking of the recent "Gone with the wind" lawsuit.
So, can I sue the government for Social Security from my dead grandparents and great grandparents? Or their employers? Hey, you guys owe me money because my great grandfather worked for you over 50 years ago, plus pain and suffering to boot! WTF?
Now things of physical value that can be physically transfered from one individual to another is another story. If I had my great grandparent's original transcript for a work they did when they are alive, I'm entitled to sell it and deprive myself of ownership of that property, but I don't see where I have any right to rent the arrangement of words indefinitely.
I doubt many people here know who actually wrote the "Happy Birthday" song, but everyone knows it, everyone sings it at a birthday party, and yet it's still under copyright.
I will say that Mickey Mouse is a little different because it is almost synonymous with the Disney corporation. I believe that it can and should be trademarked and protected, but Steam Boat Willy copies (if anyone really wants them) should be in the public domain by now. Disney can sell original film cells for $10 billion a frame, but the story and singing and whistling is done.
This whole copyright debate is basically almost like any extremist's position. Like the NRA, MADD, or any other fanatical group. Their views are absurd and rigid, and its up to their opponents to bring them down a little and we meet somewhere in the middle.
One thing that is different about copyrights, is to ask "Who is being benefitted by having these absurdly long copyrights?" Is it your average Joe Smoe that creates the copyrighted material?
Nope.
Does it benefit society in general?
Nope.
It only benefits already rich people and corporations. It does little to nothing for the creators, and it deprives your average citizen, and adds one more thing to their lives that could be a criminal act. Citizen rights as we know it are becoming less and less every day in favor of the government and corporations (basically the same thing). This will continue until people get pissed off enough and start a riot or revolution. The thing that kills me is that we average folk way outnumber these assholes, but I guess we are too poorly organized and busy taking care of ourselves to do much of anything.
Wrong decade. Think late 70s, its more like "wow, this is a bummer dude".
The x86 architecture is a disgrace. I know lots of people are fans of it because they have been familiar with it for so long now, but its the most rehashed legacy architecture out there, and I thought it was on its way out. I found it interesting that it was never even officially stated that its a run of the mill Pentium they are going to be using, only that Steve Jobs was demoing Tiger on a 3.6 GHz Pentium.
Not sure what this will do for apps because of the difference in byte ordering between decades of Macs and their "new" Intel chips.
I'm simply disappointed because I don't see this as progress, nor do I see this as "Thinking different". Granted that the G5 heat issues were apparently a show stopper. I simply cannot imagine running a Mac that is basically yet another PC (yet, well engineered), with an architecture that is identical to a Dell, yet unable to run normal Windows apps.
Shit, hopefully there will be some way to at least host a Windows app so I can finally have my working media player, but that was not in my original considerations of "giving anything".
Yuck. Why doesn't Jobs go ahead and just sell the software to Gates and be done with it. Monoculture in its lowest common denominator.
Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit much when coworkers who sit RIGHT NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER communicate only through e-mail? It's frightening how often that happens in my corporate office - how about you guys?
Am I the only one who gets annoyed when I'm trying to work and a coworker breaks my concentration to ask me a nonurgent and not necessarily time dependent question when they could have sent me an email?
my lappy is so hot i can't leave it on my lap and i can feel the heat through the bottom of my desk. and the fans are loud enough that i can hear them from another room. give me a tower that i can play w/ any day.
My guess is that you have one of those cheap bulky PC laptops. They do that.
Oh, I forgot the new political correct term for a laptop, they are "notebooks" now because they are too hot for laptop use.
I have a few questions that I haven't seen raised anywhere else though: 1. Will Windows run on these machines?
I seriously doubt it. Regardless of these machines were to have Intel chips, they will not be PCs. Apples have always had some kind of bind between their hardware and OS via firmware that is unlike the standard PC architecture. If Windows were to run on a new Mac, it would be some kind of a hack, it would not be likely that it would run out of the box.
2. Will Apple offer some kind of Window compatibility using something like WINE?
Why would they? There has been Virtual PC and whatnot for years, I doubt that Apple would waste their time with windows. Yuck.
3. What will happen to Yellow Dog Linux?
Nothing. Well, maybe Yellow Dog proper will go away, but Linux will always be the whore OS to run on any given machine with a CPU. That will not change.
My guess is that if Apple were to go to Intel it would be with their low voltage Itanium offerings. Apple is a marketing machine, but I don't see how they could pull off being a nonPC compatible PC with the same specs as any generic white box (aside from the peripherals) out there. Granted they do have the best OS out there, but its clear the people don't care about that. Apple is also at a big disadvantage in that there is not nearly the amount of 3rd party software out there for their systems. Take a look at my.sig.
Again, this is a big if, I would guess that they would go with the low voltage Itanium chip. Once they are offered at the higher clock rates, they will be excellent for a very fast PC. It would also be cool in that the price of the Itaniums should drop.
In looking at the issues Apple have had with their G5s, heat, heat, and heat. And there does not appear to be any signs of this changing any time soon. Intel has been working hard the past couple of years by reducing heat from their chips with things like the Pentium M, and the low voltage Itaniums.
It seems like most people assume that they are just going to throw Pentiums inside of their boxes. I seriously doubt that. If so, I believe that this would be a big flop for them.
Also take into account that there is almost exactly 10x the number of people in China vs Japan and they are much more spread out geographically, that in itself would almost account for the power consumption difference as well. Also Japan is much more affluent than China so their people can afford to buy newer, more efficient things (although I don't know how this is offset by Chinese not buying as much).
if microsoft is advertising pro and home as two distinct products, when in fact they are not, isn't this false advertising? it's like buying a ford with a V6 and finding that it's really a V8, just two cylinders turned off...
Intel has been doing this for years with their SMP vs nonSMP chips and years back with the math coprocessors. An example is here.
What performance is he measuring? The hardware or the OS? Comparing both with no baseline control for each is about as informative as pulling numbers out of my ass.
Its well known that benchmarks are excellent at producing benchmark scores.
I'm guessing the parent didn't read the article, because some of the benchmarks were low level things like memory access and assembler math stuff. These things do not make kernel system calls.
I will say that the threading issues were interesting. Looks like Apple needs to pay some attention there.
I want to see how Linux on PPC compares to Linux on x386 these days!
Well, anandtech, nor most of the other hardware comparison companies would provide reliable data to you. Considering that they used gcc for the Linux benchmarks instead of a performance compiler like Intel's, PathScale's, or the Portland Group's, I would assume that they would use gcc for a PowerPC and x86 comparison as well. My psychic forecast is that the PowerPC would outperform the x86 setup because Apple has tuned gcc for the PowerPC platform.
I actually have one of these cards. Its a cute Tux penguin on a mastercard. I got it because it had Tux on it and it was supposed to fund Linux development in some way, but I was never clear on the details. I rarely ever use that card anymore after MBNA (the backing bank) pissed me off. They had the nerve to try and convince me that they could incur interest in a balance that was greater than any given balance on any given day for that whole billing period. I called them and they could not explain the charges whatsoever, so they took them off. I normally pay my CC off every month, but this particular month I was a little shy on cash, so I paid the minimum until I was paid 2 or 3 days later, and then I immediately paid it off.
If you don't pay off your CC every month, you will never truly be able to tell what they are billing you for, but if you normally do pay it off, read the bill very carefully. You could be very surprised.
I've never once in 3 years called Red Hat for support but management is happy to pay that price to point the finger at someone to blame.
I'm not trolling here, but what could you blame on RedHat?
Is there something that blaming RH could get a PHB out of trouble or something?
Re:I think it is a good idea not to update quickly
on
Debian 3.0r6 Released
·
· Score: 1
When the Linux version of Neverwinter Nights shipped in 2003, I couldn't install it on Woody, (and still can't, AFAIK) because of Woody's ancient version of gcc.
I'm sorry, but knocking an extremely reliable and stable OS that is not known for its bleeding-edge packages vs known stable ones, and an OS that is more meant to be a server vs a game console, I don't even consider your troubles with the Neverwinter Nights game informative or even any kind of a datapoint besides Debian is not meant to run games (or any Linux distro if your into games that much, but thats another story).
Go buy Windows or an Xbox or Playstatiion for games. That is what they are for.
The Debian release cycle just keeps getting worse, and I see no end in sight for that. An update every three years might well be fine if the updates weren't falling further behind with each one.
Being that Microsoft comes out with service packs every year plus or minus, go ask any Windows admin how much fun it is to validate a service pack with all required 3rd party software. In many cases it takes months, and its a major PITA.
Having a few dozen to hundreds of Debian boxes that can be quietly updated without even needing a reboot (unless there is some drastic kernel issues, but those are very, very rare) AND having your 3rd party apps work the same as they did when they were first installed is pleasant. Almost makes a PHB feel bad because there is nothing for him to say. It just works.
Why does everyone assume that because a question is asked, that the person asking has not gone to google and sifted through reams of search results already.
If they have, they must suck at using google most of the time.
A good number of the ask.slashdot.org questions I almost cut and paste into google and report the findings and get modded up as informative or insightful.
Yes, a good number of the ask questions are that lame. Either that, or they are very void of pertinent information.
In other words, without Richard, we'd be stuck in the 80's or early 90's where all software is commercial crap, shareware crap, and all of the power over computer users would belong to big companies - forever locking them in and controlling their computer usage.
So, who is to credit for the car industry of the 70's getting their act in gear?
Back then we were stuck with the cheap crap from Japan and the expensive gas guzzling crap from the US. Most cars at 100,000 miles were about ready for the junk yard if they were not already housed there.
I'll give Richard Stallaman credit for the philosophical side of things, but I believe that the software industry has simply evolved and improved. Look at the CGI. CAD, and audio applications. There is no free equivalent in that area. Some may use free OSes, but the software is nowhere available in the free domain.
That is the same process I have to go through in order to copy my recorded TV shows off of my DVR. I can even use the firewire interface and get a HD digital transfer.
Although there have been things I would like to keep from my DVR, I have not even attempted to make one copy of a show.
Why?
Its simply not worth my time to copy the show in realtime. I cannot watch another show while doing it. I loose the convenient labeling and immediate access that I get with my DVR to my TV if I put it on a computer. Granted I could label it myself, but then it would take a considerable amount of time to edit out commercials and possibly transcode the audio and video into another more compact format. Then I have to keep up with the rat race of buying more storage.
Yes, there are people willing and do go through all this trouble. There are also people that are very accomplished serial killers, but both of these people are a very small subset of the population, and I would guess that more people are more like me, actually, they are probably more technogadgetly lazy than I am, being that geeks are also a small subset within society.
We all know that if something can be played it can be recorded. But I believe that a DRM scheme like this from Sony that commercially recorded and store bought recordings can be copied once, but cannot be copied from the copy is a compromise between fair use to make a backup copy and a more strict DRM.
I have been familiar with various DRM schemes over the years. I'm a music collector and although I never owned and traded DAT recordings, I am familiar with their issues with SCMS that plagued traders for years. SCMS is similar to this Sony DRM, but it applied to _all_ things recorded onto a DAT machine. The common way of getting around it was for tape traders to buy "professional" DAT decks that cost big bucks which did not do SCMS, or do some other way to bypass SCMS. It was of course also always possible to do a digital to analog back to digital recording like the parent suggested, but this is frowned upon among most serious tape traders.
I've also been the victim of Macrovision DRM when I bought my first DVD player because I attached it to my TV/VCR combo through the only video input that was on the TV was through the VCR and it was scrambled a bit by the Macrovision. A less restrictive DRM like the Sony one would not have made me spend $20 bucks for a Macrovision defeater.
Now, given Sony's track record for establishing consumer standards is about nil, the hardcore anti-DRM people, probably have nothing to worry about.
the vast majority of people also believe in Astrology. A large percentage of people believe that earth has already been visited by aliens (in particular to help build the pyramids) and some people believe that aliens are studying earth right now.
Kinda makes you wonder the benefits of democracy, now doesn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
Being that money does not exist, and it is a relative, man-made item based on conscious agreement, you cannot compare the pirated reimbursement price of Windows in Indonesia with the agreement to pay $X legally from no on to the retail price here in the US.
Do you want to start working at an Indonesian's wage and get Windows for a $1?
With the next gen move/copy function, you'll basically do "move the files with the following label/metadata to XYZ".
What is XYZ? It can't be a folder right?
Meanwhile, if each file were in a database, with search keywords, I could find anything I wanted just as easily as anything else - there's no predetermined hierarchy that makes it easier to find some things than others.
If (l)users are too lazy to put stuff with meaningful filenames in relevant folders, why are they going to correctly add search keywords to every document.
If I labeled all my proposals with proposal in the filename, I could find them all very quickly.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I don't see how or why folders or directories should disappear.
An improved search mechanism is welcomed, but how do I associate a bunch of related files together without labeling as being together? How do I move or copy something that is now relevant together with the other files?
Lets say I'm working with research on penguins. I'll have jpeg images, url's, word documents, etc. And I'll put them in "My penguins" folder (exclude the My if your on longhorn:).
I can archive "My Penguins", I can throw the whole thing in the trash if I'm sick of penguins.
What I guess I'm getting at, is that folders or directories are convenient for organizational purposes. Another thing, is with no folders, how do you share a folder? Do I have to add metadata to each file saying who, when and why I want that document shared over the network?
Even since searching has become so good with google, the web is still put into "folders" by different websites. If I'm looking to buy something and I do a search, by seeing that the domain ends in
If I'm looking into "folder elimination research" on google, I can see that Microsoft's website may have an entry, or slashdot may have an entry, and I'm already starting to form opinions about the content based on who is hosting it.
So, are libraries doing it all wrong too? Those bozo's put all the related books together in one building. With a small rfid tag I could search on the computer and be able to find any book even if its not on the shelf where it is supposed to be. I dunno, I've found great books about something I was interested in because they were all grouped together. I've found "open directories" of good stuff because they were all put together.
Seems more logical and "real life" to me.
Perhaps this gentleman should present us with a GOOD DESIGN isntead of just complaining about BAD DESIGN.
Nah, lets just knock his website instead.
The simple & dumb way as OS X handles packages is just that: it can not handle dependencies, or anything, it just puts some files on your computer.
It works moderately well, if you only use it for applications and those are statically linked, but nothing else.
Now, take Debian's package system: it handles dependencies, version conflicts, alternative packages that serve the same purpose, etc, etc, ec. And it is absolutely easy: an apt-get install xyz installs/updates package xyz and all the necessary shared libs, updates file associations, whatever (and it does not takes exactly rocket science to create some GUI for that single command line).
I have never had any "dependancy" problems with any application for my Mac except those through fink, a debian package system ported for the Mac.
Mac apps are actually directories that hold everything necessary to run the application. I have only heard of a couple of Mac apps that are frontends to commandline applications that may need those commandline applications to be installed on your system, but those are small freeware or shareware applications.
Copyright should last at most 10-20 years.
I agree. I also believe that it should be renewable by the copyright owner until the owner dies, and that the copyright is not transferable to anyone else.
When you hear about the great grandchildren suing over "their" rights that their dead great grandmother's work (dead over 50 years mind you), something is wrong. I'm thinking of the recent "Gone with the wind" lawsuit.
So, can I sue the government for Social Security from my dead grandparents and great grandparents? Or their employers? Hey, you guys owe me money because my great grandfather worked for you over 50 years ago, plus pain and suffering to boot! WTF?
Now things of physical value that can be physically transfered from one individual to another is another story. If I had my great grandparent's original transcript for a work they did when they are alive, I'm entitled to sell it and deprive myself of ownership of that property, but I don't see where I have any right to rent the arrangement of words indefinitely.
I doubt many people here know who actually wrote the "Happy Birthday" song, but everyone knows it, everyone sings it at a birthday party, and yet it's still under copyright.
Yup. Some rich fuck "owns" it and gladly collects about $2 mil a year for it. Its an interesting read, find it here: http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.htm.
I will say that Mickey Mouse is a little different because it is almost synonymous with the Disney corporation. I believe that it can and should be trademarked and protected, but Steam Boat Willy copies (if anyone really wants them) should be in the public domain by now. Disney can sell original film cells for $10 billion a frame, but the story and singing and whistling is done.
This whole copyright debate is basically almost like any extremist's position. Like the NRA, MADD, or any other fanatical group. Their views are absurd and rigid, and its up to their opponents to bring them down a little and we meet somewhere in the middle.
One thing that is different about copyrights, is to ask "Who is being benefitted by having these absurdly long copyrights?" Is it your average Joe Smoe that creates the copyrighted material?
Nope.
Does it benefit society in general?
Nope.
It only benefits already rich people and corporations. It does little to nothing for the creators, and it deprives your average citizen, and adds one more thing to their lives that could be a criminal act. Citizen rights as we know it are becoming less and less every day in favor of the government and corporations (basically the same thing). This will continue until people get pissed off enough and start a riot or revolution. The thing that kills me is that we average folk way outnumber these assholes, but I guess we are too poorly organized and busy taking care of ourselves to do much of anything.
Just because they're changing their processor does not mean you're going to be able to run it on your hardware.
Doesn't mean I want to either.
Why would I ever pay Apple prices for a Dell computer?
Allow me to speak for everybody: Fuck.
Wrong decade. Think late 70s, its more like "wow, this is a bummer dude".
The x86 architecture is a disgrace. I know lots of people are fans of it because they have been familiar with it for so long now, but its the most rehashed legacy architecture out there, and I thought it was on its way out. I found it interesting that it was never even officially stated that its a run of the mill Pentium they are going to be using, only that Steve Jobs was demoing Tiger on a 3.6 GHz Pentium.
Not sure what this will do for apps because of the difference in byte ordering between decades of Macs and their "new" Intel chips.
I'm simply disappointed because I don't see this as progress, nor do I see this as "Thinking different". Granted that the G5 heat issues were apparently a show stopper. I simply cannot imagine running a Mac that is basically yet another PC (yet, well engineered), with an architecture that is identical to a Dell, yet unable to run normal Windows apps.
Shit, hopefully there will be some way to at least host a Windows app so I can finally have my working media player, but that was not in my original considerations of "giving anything".
Yuck. Why doesn't Jobs go ahead and just sell the software to Gates and be done with it. Monoculture in its lowest common denominator.
Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit much when coworkers who sit RIGHT NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER communicate only through e-mail? It's frightening how often that happens in my corporate office - how about you guys?
Am I the only one who gets annoyed when I'm trying to work and a coworker breaks my concentration to ask me a nonurgent and not necessarily time dependent question when they could have sent me an email?
my lappy is so hot i can't leave it on my lap and i can feel the heat through the bottom of my desk. and the fans are loud enough that i can hear them from another room. give me a tower that i can play w/ any day.
My guess is that you have one of those cheap bulky PC laptops. They do that.
Oh, I forgot the new political correct term for a laptop, they are "notebooks" now because they are too hot for laptop use.
how is that a longer life?
How are iPods free?
Marketers have a different vocabulary than most of the real world.
I have a few questions that I haven't seen raised anywhere else though:
.sig.
1. Will Windows run on these machines?
I seriously doubt it. Regardless of these machines were to have Intel chips, they will not be PCs. Apples have always had some kind of bind between their hardware and OS via firmware that is unlike the standard PC architecture. If Windows were to run on a new Mac, it would be some kind of a hack, it would not be likely that it would run out of the box.
2. Will Apple offer some kind of Window compatibility using something like WINE?
Why would they? There has been Virtual PC and whatnot for years, I doubt that Apple would waste their time with windows. Yuck.
3. What will happen to Yellow Dog Linux?
Nothing. Well, maybe Yellow Dog proper will go away, but Linux will always be the whore OS to run on any given machine with a CPU. That will not change.
My guess is that if Apple were to go to Intel it would be with their low voltage Itanium offerings. Apple is a marketing machine, but I don't see how they could pull off being a nonPC compatible PC with the same specs as any generic white box (aside from the peripherals) out there. Granted they do have the best OS out there, but its clear the people don't care about that. Apple is also at a big disadvantage in that there is not nearly the amount of 3rd party software out there for their systems. Take a look at my
Again, this is a big if, I would guess that they would go with the low voltage Itanium chip. Once they are offered at the higher clock rates, they will be excellent for a very fast PC. It would also be cool in that the price of the Itaniums should drop.
In looking at the issues Apple have had with their G5s, heat, heat, and heat. And there does not appear to be any signs of this changing any time soon. Intel has been working hard the past couple of years by reducing heat from their chips with things like the Pentium M, and the low voltage Itaniums.
It seems like most people assume that they are just going to throw Pentiums inside of their boxes. I seriously doubt that. If so, I believe that this would be a big flop for them.
Also take into account that there is almost exactly 10x the number of people in China vs Japan and they are much more spread out geographically, that in itself would almost account for the power consumption difference as well. Also Japan is much more affluent than China so their people can afford to buy newer, more efficient things (although I don't know how this is offset by Chinese not buying as much).
if microsoft is advertising pro and home as two distinct products, when in fact they are not, isn't this false advertising? it's like buying a ford with a V6 and finding that it's really a V8, just two cylinders turned off...
Intel has been doing this for years with their SMP vs nonSMP chips and years back with the math coprocessors. An example is here.
What performance is he measuring? The hardware or the OS? Comparing both with no baseline control for each is about as informative as pulling numbers out of my ass.
Its well known that benchmarks are excellent at producing benchmark scores.
I'm guessing the parent didn't read the article, because some of the benchmarks were low level things like memory access and assembler math stuff. These things do not make kernel system calls.
I will say that the threading issues were interesting. Looks like Apple needs to pay some attention there.
I want to see how Linux on PPC compares to Linux on x386 these days!
Well, anandtech, nor most of the other hardware comparison companies would provide reliable data to you. Considering that they used gcc for the Linux benchmarks instead of a performance compiler like Intel's, PathScale's, or the Portland Group's, I would assume that they would use gcc for a PowerPC and x86 comparison as well. My psychic forecast is that the PowerPC would outperform the x86 setup because Apple has tuned gcc for the PowerPC platform.
I actually have one of these cards. Its a cute Tux penguin on a mastercard. I got it because it had Tux on it and it was supposed to fund Linux development in some way, but I was never clear on the details. I rarely ever use that card anymore after MBNA (the backing bank) pissed me off. They had the nerve to try and convince me that they could incur interest in a balance that was greater than any given balance on any given day for that whole billing period. I called them and they could not explain the charges whatsoever, so they took them off. I normally pay my CC off every month, but this particular month I was a little shy on cash, so I paid the minimum until I was paid 2 or 3 days later, and then I immediately paid it off.
If you don't pay off your CC every month, you will never truly be able to tell what they are billing you for, but if you normally do pay it off, read the bill very carefully. You could be very surprised.
I've never once in 3 years called Red Hat for support but management is happy to pay that price to point the finger at someone to blame.
I'm not trolling here, but what could you blame on RedHat?
Is there something that blaming RH could get a PHB out of trouble or something?
When the Linux version of Neverwinter Nights shipped in 2003, I couldn't install it on Woody, (and still can't, AFAIK) because of Woody's ancient version of gcc.
I'm sorry, but knocking an extremely reliable and stable OS that is not known for its bleeding-edge packages vs known stable ones, and an OS that is more meant to be a server vs a game console, I don't even consider your troubles with the Neverwinter Nights game informative or even any kind of a datapoint besides Debian is not meant to run games (or any Linux distro if your into games that much, but thats another story).
Go buy Windows or an Xbox or Playstatiion for games. That is what they are for.
The Debian release cycle just keeps getting worse, and I see no end in sight for that. An update every three years might well be fine if the updates weren't falling further behind with each one.
Being that Microsoft comes out with service packs every year plus or minus, go ask any Windows admin how much fun it is to validate a service pack with all required 3rd party software. In many cases it takes months, and its a major PITA.
Having a few dozen to hundreds of Debian boxes that can be quietly updated without even needing a reboot (unless there is some drastic kernel issues, but those are very, very rare) AND having your 3rd party apps work the same as they did when they were first installed is pleasant. Almost makes a PHB feel bad because there is nothing for him to say. It just works.
Why does everyone assume that because a question is asked, that the person asking has not gone to google and sifted through reams of search results already.
If they have, they must suck at using google most of the time.
A good number of the ask.slashdot.org questions I almost cut and paste into google and report the findings and get modded up as informative or insightful.
Yes, a good number of the ask questions are that lame. Either that, or they are very void of pertinent information.
In other words, without Richard, we'd be stuck in the 80's or early 90's where all software is commercial crap, shareware crap, and all of the power over computer users would belong to big companies - forever locking them in and controlling their computer usage.
So, who is to credit for the car industry of the 70's getting their act in gear?
Back then we were stuck with the cheap crap from Japan and the expensive gas guzzling crap from the US. Most cars at 100,000 miles were about ready for the junk yard if they were not already housed there.
I'll give Richard Stallaman credit for the philosophical side of things, but I believe that the software industry has simply evolved and improved. Look at the CGI. CAD, and audio applications. There is no free equivalent in that area. Some may use free OSes, but the software is nowhere available in the free domain.
- Insert CD
- Plug audio output into sound card.
- Push record on digital recording software
- Play CD
...That is the same process I have to go through in order to copy my recorded TV shows off of my DVR. I can even use the firewire interface and get a HD digital transfer.
Although there have been things I would like to keep from my DVR, I have not even attempted to make one copy of a show.
Why?
Its simply not worth my time to copy the show in realtime. I cannot watch another show while doing it. I loose the convenient labeling and immediate access that I get with my DVR to my TV if I put it on a computer. Granted I could label it myself, but then it would take a considerable amount of time to edit out commercials and possibly transcode the audio and video into another more compact format. Then I have to keep up with the rat race of buying more storage.
Yes, there are people willing and do go through all this trouble. There are also people that are very accomplished serial killers, but both of these people are a very small subset of the population, and I would guess that more people are more like me, actually, they are probably more technogadgetly lazy than I am, being that geeks are also a small subset within society.
We all know that if something can be played it can be recorded. But I believe that a DRM scheme like this from Sony that commercially recorded and store bought recordings can be copied once, but cannot be copied from the copy is a compromise between fair use to make a backup copy and a more strict DRM.
I have been familiar with various DRM schemes over the years. I'm a music collector and although I never owned and traded DAT recordings, I am familiar with their issues with SCMS that plagued traders for years. SCMS is similar to this Sony DRM, but it applied to _all_ things recorded onto a DAT machine. The common way of getting around it was for tape traders to buy "professional" DAT decks that cost big bucks which did not do SCMS, or do some other way to bypass SCMS. It was of course also always possible to do a digital to analog back to digital recording like the parent suggested, but this is frowned upon among most serious tape traders.
I've also been the victim of Macrovision DRM when I bought my first DVD player because I attached it to my TV/VCR combo through the only video input that was on the TV was through the VCR and it was scrambled a bit by the Macrovision. A less restrictive DRM like the Sony one would not have made me spend $20 bucks for a Macrovision defeater.
Now, given Sony's track record for establishing consumer standards is about nil, the hardcore anti-DRM people, probably have nothing to worry about.
the vast majority of people also believe in Astrology. A large percentage of people believe that earth has already been visited by aliens (in particular to help build the pyramids) and some people believe that aliens are studying earth right now.
Kinda makes you wonder the benefits of democracy, now doesn't it?
This is a great idea.
Whenever I buy something in a store, they give me an itemized receipt. Is that not an option?