Really? Because the Department of energy's report claims "Biodiesel yields 3.2 units of fuel product energy for every unit of fossil energy consumed in its life cycle." That's from 1995. A similar report came out in 1998.
I'd like to know what numbers you know of that are different, maybe based on more modern numbers and not some study produced during the invention of bioethanol in the 1970s. Because processes in general become more efficient over time -- it's hard to believe that a 6 or 9 year old report was SO wrong that the 3.2 units they claim were actually negative.
I'm not doubting you (well, okay, I am). I just would like to see this counterreport. Back in 1995, I still trusted government scientists.
I didn't get one at all, because they BELONG on a cracker jack box.
Your comment illustrates why. I was proposing a new use for ICMP...a way to create a transport layer on top of a network layer that was not designed to be one by modulating the request frequency and response time to create a meaningful signal out of ping times. That signal could then be used to transfer whatever you liked.
In essence, I, a lowly code monkey, was solving a problem -- the unlikely problem of what to do if UDP and TCP became unviable but ICMP is still kicking around. While you, with your CCIE, were quibbling over details in a post that was obviously a joke.
The energy density in hydrogen is far greater than that of a similarly sized battery bank
Right. This is the whole point of hydrogen-based energy. To get hydrogen, you start with water and add energy. When you use hydrogen, you get (some of) that energy back and end up with water as a byproduct. There's no nasty greenhouse gases, no CO, no wierd pollutants, just H2, O2, and some O3. Which makes it extremely useful, if not efficient.
The only problem is that hydrogen is hard to get. Using sunlight to do it can be expensive. But like anything else, as development increases, costs will fall off...and eventually, it could be cheap and ubiquitous enough for use everywhere.
Furthermore, batteries are rather toxic, made up as they are of strongly ionized and reactive substances. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is just hydrogen.
BTW: if you don't want hydrogen, I've heard good things about "kinetic" batteries as well. Essentially, you get a big heavy magnetic, suspend it magnetically in a "frictionless" vaccum, and with your excess solar energy, you start it spinning with electromagnets. Then when the sun goes down, you generate power from the spinning magnet passing through those electromagnets.
Waiting for the technology to hit mass market? Well, then today's your lucky day. Or rather, three years ago. This solar shingle technology is simple, aestherically pleasing, and relatively cheap (pays for itself in roughly 8-10 years).
And as for it being "too damned expensive," it's funny that you mention that. The argument of the majority of the eco-doomsayers that I know is that oil will run out, and we'll have no viable solutions in place. My counterargument is that we have no incentive to PUT said alternatives into place until oil reaches a level of scarcity that the outlay price of implementing the alternative is less than the price of just burning oil over a period of time. Right now, hydrocarbon fuels are insanely cheap -- cheaper than electricity generated by any other fasion. But with crude production shrinking and demand increasing by almost half a billion barrels per year, we're going to reach that point fairly soon. At which point tons of manufacturers and installers will jump on the bandwagon to further decrease prices of the alternatives.
In other words: the alternatives exist thanks to show-off programs like this Malay house and like that NASA deal. But an oil crunch is the only thing that will spur installation of those alternatives. Oil is simply too easy to use and too profitable to control for solar to show up overnight.
He's an architect. He's probably great at phsyics. His weak suit is more likely English. He's probably saying "atmosphere" and meaning "universe," "bombs" and meaning "explosions."
Well, it's hard to find a good pair of earbuds. I have three sets of great phones (Sennheiser HD 580, HD 280 and an old pair of AKGs), but they're all too ostentatious, not to mention bulky and hot, to wear to the gym. The stock iPod phones blew out quickly, the Sennheiser buds I replaced them with had a short cord and crummy frequency response (nice dynamic range though) and those are the best I've found!
The other option is to get a nice pair of low resistance headphones.
See, the reason you have to BOOST the signal going in to the phones is that the phones are built to resist the maximum output of a consumer device to avoid damaging your hearing.
I have a pair of Sennheiser HD-280 Pro 64 Ohm phones that are so loud when plugged into my iPod that I can't listen to them with the volume above 70% or so. When I listen with my earbuds, I have to turn them up all the way and it's still not very loud.
Which is exactly my point, though I'll hammer it in a little harder.
Just because a train is not for everyone, does not mean it isn't viable for many. In fact, in regions where a lot of people have to get to the same destination from the same source, it is an invaluable and efficient solution.
Similarly, thought the Macintosh is not ideal for everyone, for the vast majority it would get what they need to get done more efficiently. If a Macintosh does not do what you need, that does not invalidate its usefulness.
And the Mac does just about everything. They're like European trains.
Nice demands. Are you willing to pay more than $500 for them?
Because if you aren't, I don't see why the digital media player market is all that worried about getting your business. Adding features is expensive, and if adding them doesn't significantly increase profits, then there's no incentive to do so.
I bought an iPod because 8 hours was enough and AAC was enough of an improvement over MP3 that I didn't pine for Vorbis. Sound quality was the only criteria. Would I like more battery life, more sound quality, a foot massage? Sure. But they didn't stop me from buying at $500...and I wouldn't pay $600 to get them.
No, but sound is only as good as your weakest component.
Personally, I'm glad they did that review, because you can't listen to the in-ear phones before you buy them. I stupidly crushed my Sennheiser buds (cord was never long enough on those anyway and an extension would make it too long) and the original iPod phones blew out the second week I had them...and it's nice to know there's a solution between the $20 phones I got at Target and the $99 studio in-ear phones...
Wait -- that's better looks? It looks like a Samsonite briefcase from the 1980s, and what's up with that scroll control? Was it designed by Ed Wood?
Furthermore, 20 gig for $400 MSRP isn't cheaper -- it's the SAME PRICE as the iPod. I know, street prices are cheaper, but MSRP was the comparison used in this article as well.
The FM tuner, voice recorder, Vorbis support and optical out are worthwhile features for some, but then again so are AAC support iTunes integration, iTMS support, FireWire and the seamless design with only three ports.
The size -- both physical and storage -- is dead on, as is the battery life. And I'll give you this: while the iPod looks kind of like a cross between a plastic Easter Egg and a shaving mirror, this thing looks like a high tech cell phone. If you don't like the looks of the iPod because it's too postmodern, this is what you want.
This is no iPod killer. But is an agressive iPod competitor. That's good for us iPod fans as well as the detractors.
Smoke and mirrors advertising sells the first unit. It does not create repeat buys. The intense brand loyalty among Mac users trumps your argument. If the emperor truly had no clothes, he wouldn't have kept warm for the past 20 winters and he might look a bit more naked.
Since it does few things compared to standard machines
I only have one bicycle. This does not mean I can't ride it to where I need to go. In fact, my bike -- a very versatile, lightweight Trek mountain bike -- may not be as fast as a road bike, nor as durable as a BMX, but it got me to work okay.
News flash: Apple has never sold a PC ever. They don't even make them.
Apple makes plenty of Personal Computers, as opposed to mainframes and servers. Apple sold their first PCs in 1976, the first IBM Personal Computer was released 5 years later. My mistake was using the term "PC" later to refer to the x86 architecture. I apologize. You trolls deserve more accuracy than that.
D'uh. It means NOT AS FAST.
And my point was that speed isn't just measured in operations per second. It can also be measured in how long it takes to get a task done. This is why an IBM mainframe with 800 MHz chips can process a trillion bank transactions faster than your whiz bang 2 GHz Duron. With a Mac, it is quicker to get a set amount of work done, even if each batch of tasks takes more time to complete. And with a G5 Mac, even the individual batches complete in equivalent or less time than on a comparable x86 machine. Nowadays, the bottleneck is often the human performing the commands while the processor is idle. The only way to eliminate this bottleneck is to streamline the usability of the computer.
If you "think different", a Mac won't do it for you.
This is making the assumption that more packages means more innovation. I propose that the entire mac PLATFORM is an alternative to x86/Wintel innovation, same as a train is an alternative to a car. You can't put a Type R sticker or a fat exhaust pipe on your train, in fact you can only go where the tracks lead -- does this make it a less viable transit solution? The millions of people who take trains to work every day wouldn't think so.
With a Mac, you'll open the lid and find out that it can't do it due to missing hardware or "no one has written a program".
I guess you know something I don't about how I use my computers. What tasks am I missing, Anonymous Troll, that I really need to perform? What bleeding edge piece of technology has been absent from my restricted Macintosh existance lo these past seven years? It must be pretty subtle that I haven't noticed it. But I have a great respect for subtle things, so please tell me: what can't I do, and why do I want to do it?
It's funny how little most of Apple's detractors understand who buys macs.
The thought process that goes into buying a mac is something like this: I want a machine that will do what I need to do. I want a machine that won't make me do a lot of things I don't want to do.
In short, I want to run the computer. I don't want it to run me. Some people are willing to pay for a computer that tries to give them more time to work or play by streamlining the process of using a computer. That's what Apple's all about. If Gateway shed mouse buttons and brought out colours (news flash: apple hasn't sold a PC in colours since 2001), they'd still be no closer to that appliance mentality.
Does it run slower than a PC? Not how I define slower. If I can get more computations done in a cycle, but have to spend an hour a week cleaning viruses and spyware off my system, what did I save? If I have to reformat the OS twice a year because installing programs causes it to become doggedly slow, what good is an extra few clock cycles?
Does it have less software? Oh yeah. Drastically fewer packages exist for the mac. But the software I need to use runs on it, and any new function I would like to perform has an option for mac. And it's good software. I don't really miss not being able to play the latest game, since I don't have time to play it anyway.
If you need to have the latest, fastest stuff, if you need the cheapest, most ubiquitous hardware, if you need access to the most software and just need more choices and more control, then of course you don't want a mac, where there is often only one way to do something. And of course you won't be able to see the value in owning one.
Maybe when you get older, and you have a wife to hang out with, dogs and kids to play with, a house to repair, mountains to climb, trails to ride, software to write, art to create, music to play, shows to produce, friends to laugh with, food to cook, rants to post -- you'll see the merit in having a computer you can ignore for six weeks and when you need to, open the lid, perform a task, and shut it again.
Well, Pine's not Linux. It's not even "Free," some rules lawyers would tell you. Personally, I like academic software...prefer it to GNU, because academic software has a dedicated support staff and often better usability. Academic software brought us both the Mach kernel and BSD itself -- and there's the rocketsled OS X is built on.
Incidentally, the fact that it wasn't "Free" caused several groups to clone the Pine and Pico interfaces. And that pissed me off as much as this Linspire initiative. When I found out Ryan had installed Nano instead of Pico on Webslum, I flipped my shit. Clones are for Raelians, man.
I don't see how it's hypocritical to think that it's okay to clone a common interface (which is itself a clone of WordPerfect and others), and not okay to clone an innovative new interface that is the sole selling point of the software.
In fact, I don't think we'd mind if they'd used some of the interface, or made a similar layout.
With that said, I do get pretty pissed off at OpenOffice. It does nothing new -- nothing at all! Word has a shitty interface...for fuck's sake, guys, if you want to clone something, clone Word Perfect! My wife has been demanding an MS Word with the Show Codes functionality for years...and no, I can't get her to use stylesheets or LaTex. As she says, "That's too much like programming. I'm trying to write a report here!" Not my words or my opinion, but I thought I'd mention it since she's the most technically savvy woman at her office...and she wants WP!
In autoracing, they call this drafting. You hang out behind the race leader, letting him burn up his fuel from wind resistance. Then, when you get to the final lap, you hang back, hammer on the accelerator, build up a nice top speed in his wake and pull out ahead of him.
Of course, I don't think Linspire has a good enough engine to pass anybody. What's their big innovation: selling cheap PCs at Walmart.com? I think it's obvious that segment's not in Apple's target demographic. Somehow, I think dropping $2000 on a computer with a smooth aluminum shell isn't probable for somebody who insists on paying $1.88 instead of $1.99 for Doritos.
It's news because Windows 95 WASN'T behind on drivers.
Meaning that Linux is at least 9 years behind the times. The only thing I have in my computer that is that old is the floppy drive (a classic over/under EHD unit...Mandrake didn't autodetect that either, thought gentoo knows it well).
convince suppliers like IBM and ATI keep them competitive, etc. Which is very expensive.
Is it? Maybe. But outside of the clonebox PC market, that's exactly what every electronics manufacturer has to do. There is no chip with the ubiquity and appeal of the "x86" chip in, say, the PVR market, or the car stereo media decoder market. Sure, there are market leaders, but very rarely do you see one that has 97% of the market.
Which is, I think, the POINT to Apple's dogged insistance to keep running with their own chips. They want to be an alternative and they want to assert the 1980s idea that a computer is not an abstract concept that separates OS from hardware.
I disagree with that. The quality is about average for a mid-sized sedan(mostly electrical demons, 2/3 of that car is heavily overengineered and you'll never hear about them), better than most US cars and the design is above average as well. After 105k, my suspension and handling are nearly as tight as when I bought it and engine output hasn't dropped a whit.
I would say that often VW dealers are crap. I had EXACTLY the same problem, and replaced it (without replacing anti-theft, can't believe you fell for that) for about $3.50 at radio shack.
Maybe that's why you're so baffled -- you've never even tried.
I bought a Passat in 2000. Volkswagens are about average when it comes to reliability, and after 80,000 miles I've had some troubles since then, ranging from tie rods to loss of a cylinder to some body repairs and general maintenance.
In that time, I've spent about $250 on labor, and in retrospect I should have done that job myself (tie rod end needed replacement, I did my passenger's side and it took a half hour, but I needed that inspection sticker!). The repair manual I have calls for specialized parts all the time, but there's only been two cases where I've REALLY needed them. One was for the rear brakes (you need to push in while twisting...i could have used a C-clamp but the part only cost me $19) and the other was a special wrench for the transmission fluid (necessary so some vo-tec drop out at an oil center wouldn't drain the tranny fluid...if you're smart enough to know about the wrench, you were smart enough to know where the oil pan was). A lot of times, they tell you to use a custom tool because the custom tool will make the job go faster, essential for a dealership trying to complete the job in less than blue book.
I estimate that if I hadn't penny pinched on parts, and done my own labor, I'd have sunk about $5000 into this car. Instead, I've pushed out less than $1500 including tires and oil. That's less than 2 cents per mile. Really, it's the only thing that's kept it affordable.
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Really? Because the Department of energy's report claims "Biodiesel yields 3.2 units of fuel product energy for every unit of fossil energy consumed in its life cycle." That's from 1995. A similar report came out in 1998.
I'd like to know what numbers you know of that are different, maybe based on more modern numbers and not some study produced during the invention of bioethanol in the 1970s. Because processes in general become more efficient over time -- it's hard to believe that a 6 or 9 year old report was SO wrong that the 3.2 units they claim were actually negative.
I'm not doubting you (well, okay, I am). I just would like to see this counterreport. Back in 1995, I still trusted government scientists.
I didn't get one at all, because they BELONG on a cracker jack box.
Your comment illustrates why. I was proposing a new use for ICMP...a way to create a transport layer on top of a network layer that was not designed to be one by modulating the request frequency and response time to create a meaningful signal out of ping times. That signal could then be used to transfer whatever you liked.
In essence, I, a lowly code monkey, was solving a problem -- the unlikely problem of what to do if UDP and TCP became unviable but ICMP is still kicking around. While you, with your CCIE, were quibbling over details in a post that was obviously a joke.
The energy density in hydrogen is far greater than that of a similarly sized battery bank
Right. This is the whole point of hydrogen-based energy. To get hydrogen, you start with water and add energy. When you use hydrogen, you get (some of) that energy back and end up with water as a byproduct. There's no nasty greenhouse gases, no CO, no wierd pollutants, just H2, O2, and some O3. Which makes it extremely useful, if not efficient.
The only problem is that hydrogen is hard to get. Using sunlight to do it can be expensive. But like anything else, as development increases, costs will fall off...and eventually, it could be cheap and ubiquitous enough for use everywhere.
Furthermore, batteries are rather toxic, made up as they are of strongly ionized and reactive substances. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is just hydrogen.
BTW: if you don't want hydrogen, I've heard good things about "kinetic" batteries as well. Essentially, you get a big heavy magnetic, suspend it magnetically in a "frictionless" vaccum, and with your excess solar energy, you start it spinning with electromagnets. Then when the sun goes down, you generate power from the spinning magnet passing through those electromagnets.
Waiting for the technology to hit mass market? Well, then today's your lucky day. Or rather, three years ago. This solar shingle technology is simple, aestherically pleasing, and relatively cheap (pays for itself in roughly 8-10 years).
And as for it being "too damned expensive," it's funny that you mention that. The argument of the majority of the eco-doomsayers that I know is that oil will run out, and we'll have no viable solutions in place. My counterargument is that we have no incentive to PUT said alternatives into place until oil reaches a level of scarcity that the outlay price of implementing the alternative is less than the price of just burning oil over a period of time. Right now, hydrocarbon fuels are insanely cheap -- cheaper than electricity generated by any other fasion. But with crude production shrinking and demand increasing by almost half a billion barrels per year, we're going to reach that point fairly soon. At which point tons of manufacturers and installers will jump on the bandwagon to further decrease prices of the alternatives.
In other words: the alternatives exist thanks to show-off programs like this Malay house and like that NASA deal. But an oil crunch is the only thing that will spur installation of those alternatives. Oil is simply too easy to use and too profitable to control for solar to show up overnight.
He's an architect. He's probably great at phsyics. His weak suit is more likely English. He's probably saying "atmosphere" and meaning "universe," "bombs" and meaning "explosions."
Not if we ship our houses over there! And best of all, it'll be good for the American construction market as well!
Compress that shit, man. I'm sure you can do some kind of dictionary compression on those books, at least.
And what's ICMP, chopped liver?
I want a new internet based on morse code ping responses... 10 ms for a dah.
Well, it's hard to find a good pair of earbuds. I have three sets of great phones (Sennheiser HD 580, HD 280 and an old pair of AKGs), but they're all too ostentatious, not to mention bulky and hot, to wear to the gym. The stock iPod phones blew out quickly, the Sennheiser buds I replaced them with had a short cord and crummy frequency response (nice dynamic range though) and those are the best I've found!
The other option is to get a nice pair of low resistance headphones.
See, the reason you have to BOOST the signal going in to the phones is that the phones are built to resist the maximum output of a consumer device to avoid damaging your hearing.
I have a pair of Sennheiser HD-280 Pro 64 Ohm phones that are so loud when plugged into my iPod that I can't listen to them with the volume above 70% or so. When I listen with my earbuds, I have to turn them up all the way and it's still not very loud.
Which is exactly my point, though I'll hammer it in a little harder.
Just because a train is not for everyone, does not mean it isn't viable for many. In fact, in regions where a lot of people have to get to the same destination from the same source, it is an invaluable and efficient solution.
Similarly, thought the Macintosh is not ideal for everyone, for the vast majority it would get what they need to get done more efficiently. If a Macintosh does not do what you need, that does not invalidate its usefulness.
And the Mac does just about everything. They're like European trains.
Nice demands. Are you willing to pay more than $500 for them?
Because if you aren't, I don't see why the digital media player market is all that worried about getting your business. Adding features is expensive, and if adding them doesn't significantly increase profits, then there's no incentive to do so.
I bought an iPod because 8 hours was enough and AAC was enough of an improvement over MP3 that I didn't pine for Vorbis. Sound quality was the only criteria. Would I like more battery life, more sound quality, a foot massage? Sure. But they didn't stop me from buying at $500...and I wouldn't pay $600 to get them.
No, but sound is only as good as your weakest component.
Personally, I'm glad they did that review, because you can't listen to the in-ear phones before you buy them. I stupidly crushed my Sennheiser buds (cord was never long enough on those anyway and an extension would make it too long) and the original iPod phones blew out the second week I had them...and it's nice to know there's a solution between the $20 phones I got at Target and the $99 studio in-ear phones...
Wait -- that's better looks? It looks like a Samsonite briefcase from the 1980s, and what's up with that scroll control? Was it designed by Ed Wood?
Furthermore, 20 gig for $400 MSRP isn't cheaper -- it's the SAME PRICE as the iPod. I know, street prices are cheaper, but MSRP was the comparison used in this article as well.
The FM tuner, voice recorder, Vorbis support and optical out are worthwhile features for some, but then again so are AAC support iTunes integration, iTMS support, FireWire and the seamless design with only three ports.
The size -- both physical and storage -- is dead on, as is the battery life. And I'll give you this: while the iPod looks kind of like a cross between a plastic Easter Egg and a shaving mirror, this thing looks like a high tech cell phone. If you don't like the looks of the iPod because it's too postmodern, this is what you want.
This is no iPod killer. But is an agressive iPod competitor. That's good for us iPod fans as well as the detractors.
smoke-and-mirrors advertising
Smoke and mirrors advertising sells the first unit. It does not create repeat buys. The intense brand loyalty among Mac users trumps your argument. If the emperor truly had no clothes, he wouldn't have kept warm for the past 20 winters and he might look a bit more naked.
Since it does few things compared to standard machines
I only have one bicycle. This does not mean I can't ride it to where I need to go. In fact, my bike -- a very versatile, lightweight Trek mountain bike -- may not be as fast as a road bike, nor as durable as a BMX, but it got me to work okay.
News flash: Apple has never sold a PC ever. They don't even make them.
Apple makes plenty of Personal Computers, as opposed to mainframes and servers. Apple sold their first PCs in 1976, the first IBM Personal Computer was released 5 years later. My mistake was using the term "PC" later to refer to the x86 architecture. I apologize. You trolls deserve more accuracy than that.
D'uh. It means NOT AS FAST.
And my point was that speed isn't just measured in operations per second. It can also be measured in how long it takes to get a task done. This is why an IBM mainframe with 800 MHz chips can process a trillion bank transactions faster than your whiz bang 2 GHz Duron. With a Mac, it is quicker to get a set amount of work done, even if each batch of tasks takes more time to complete. And with a G5 Mac, even the individual batches complete in equivalent or less time than on a comparable x86 machine. Nowadays, the bottleneck is often the human performing the commands while the processor is idle. The only way to eliminate this bottleneck is to streamline the usability of the computer.
If you "think different", a Mac won't do it for you.
This is making the assumption that more packages means more innovation. I propose that the entire mac PLATFORM is an alternative to x86/Wintel innovation, same as a train is an alternative to a car. You can't put a Type R sticker or a fat exhaust pipe on your train, in fact you can only go where the tracks lead -- does this make it a less viable transit solution? The millions of people who take trains to work every day wouldn't think so.
With a Mac, you'll open the lid and find out that it can't do it due to missing hardware or "no one has written a program".
I guess you know something I don't about how I use my computers. What tasks am I missing, Anonymous Troll, that I really need to perform? What bleeding edge piece of technology has been absent from my restricted Macintosh existance lo these past seven years? It must be pretty subtle that I haven't noticed it. But I have a great respect for subtle things, so please tell me: what can't I do, and why do I want to do it?
It's funny how little most of Apple's detractors understand who buys macs.
The thought process that goes into buying a mac is something like this: I want a machine that will do what I need to do. I want a machine that won't make me do a lot of things I don't want to do.
In short, I want to run the computer. I don't want it to run me. Some people are willing to pay for a computer that tries to give them more time to work or play by streamlining the process of using a computer. That's what Apple's all about. If Gateway shed mouse buttons and brought out colours (news flash: apple hasn't sold a PC in colours since 2001), they'd still be no closer to that appliance mentality.
Does it run slower than a PC? Not how I define slower. If I can get more computations done in a cycle, but have to spend an hour a week cleaning viruses and spyware off my system, what did I save? If I have to reformat the OS twice a year because installing programs causes it to become doggedly slow, what good is an extra few clock cycles?
Does it have less software? Oh yeah. Drastically fewer packages exist for the mac. But the software I need to use runs on it, and any new function I would like to perform has an option for mac. And it's good software. I don't really miss not being able to play the latest game, since I don't have time to play it anyway.
If you need to have the latest, fastest stuff, if you need the cheapest, most ubiquitous hardware, if you need access to the most software and just need more choices and more control, then of course you don't want a mac, where there is often only one way to do something. And of course you won't be able to see the value in owning one.
Maybe when you get older, and you have a wife to hang out with, dogs and kids to play with, a house to repair, mountains to climb, trails to ride, software to write, art to create, music to play, shows to produce, friends to laugh with, food to cook, rants to post -- you'll see the merit in having a computer you can ignore for six weeks and when you need to, open the lid, perform a task, and shut it again.
Well, Pine's not Linux. It's not even "Free," some rules lawyers would tell you. Personally, I like academic software...prefer it to GNU, because academic software has a dedicated support staff and often better usability. Academic software brought us both the Mach kernel and BSD itself -- and there's the rocketsled OS X is built on.
Incidentally, the fact that it wasn't "Free" caused several groups to clone the Pine and Pico interfaces. And that pissed me off as much as this Linspire initiative. When I found out Ryan had installed Nano instead of Pico on Webslum, I flipped my shit. Clones are for Raelians, man.
I don't see how it's hypocritical to think that it's okay to clone a common interface (which is itself a clone of WordPerfect and others), and not okay to clone an innovative new interface that is the sole selling point of the software.
In fact, I don't think we'd mind if they'd used some of the interface, or made a similar layout.
With that said, I do get pretty pissed off at OpenOffice. It does nothing new -- nothing at all! Word has a shitty interface...for fuck's sake, guys, if you want to clone something, clone Word Perfect! My wife has been demanding an MS Word with the Show Codes functionality for years...and no, I can't get her to use stylesheets or LaTex. As she says, "That's too much like programming. I'm trying to write a report here!" Not my words or my opinion, but I thought I'd mention it since she's the most technically savvy woman at her office...and she wants WP!
Really? I chose PCX. And that has made all the difference.
(with all due respect to Robert Frost)
In autoracing, they call this drafting. You hang out behind the race leader, letting him burn up his fuel from wind resistance. Then, when you get to the final lap, you hang back, hammer on the accelerator, build up a nice top speed in his wake and pull out ahead of him.
Of course, I don't think Linspire has a good enough engine to pass anybody. What's their big innovation: selling cheap PCs at Walmart.com? I think it's obvious that segment's not in Apple's target demographic. Somehow, I think dropping $2000 on a computer with a smooth aluminum shell isn't probable for somebody who insists on paying $1.88 instead of $1.99 for Doritos.
It's news because Windows 95 WASN'T behind on drivers.
Meaning that Linux is at least 9 years behind the times. The only thing I have in my computer that is that old is the floppy drive (a classic over/under EHD unit...Mandrake didn't autodetect that either, thought gentoo knows it well).
convince suppliers like IBM and ATI keep them competitive, etc. Which is very expensive.
Is it? Maybe. But outside of the clonebox PC market, that's exactly what every electronics manufacturer has to do. There is no chip with the ubiquity and appeal of the "x86" chip in, say, the PVR market, or the car stereo media decoder market. Sure, there are market leaders, but very rarely do you see one that has 97% of the market.
Which is, I think, the POINT to Apple's dogged insistance to keep running with their own chips. They want to be an alternative and they want to assert the 1980s idea that a computer is not an abstract concept that separates OS from hardware.
not only is the quality CRAP, the design is CRAP!
I disagree with that. The quality is about average for a mid-sized sedan(mostly electrical demons, 2/3 of that car is heavily overengineered and you'll never hear about them), better than most US cars and the design is above average as well. After 105k, my suspension and handling are nearly as tight as when I bought it and engine output hasn't dropped a whit.
I would say that often VW dealers are crap. I had EXACTLY the same problem, and replaced it (without replacing anti-theft, can't believe you fell for that) for about $3.50 at radio shack.
I don't even try anymore
Maybe that's why you're so baffled -- you've never even tried.
I bought a Passat in 2000. Volkswagens are about average when it comes to reliability, and after 80,000 miles I've had some troubles since then, ranging from tie rods to loss of a cylinder to some body repairs and general maintenance.
In that time, I've spent about $250 on labor, and in retrospect I should have done that job myself (tie rod end needed replacement, I did my passenger's side and it took a half hour, but I needed that inspection sticker!). The repair manual I have calls for specialized parts all the time, but there's only been two cases where I've REALLY needed them. One was for the rear brakes (you need to push in while twisting...i could have used a C-clamp but the part only cost me $19) and the other was a special wrench for the transmission fluid (necessary so some vo-tec drop out at an oil center wouldn't drain the tranny fluid...if you're smart enough to know about the wrench, you were smart enough to know where the oil pan was). A lot of times, they tell you to use a custom tool because the custom tool will make the job go faster, essential for a dealership trying to complete the job in less than blue book.
I estimate that if I hadn't penny pinched on parts, and done my own labor, I'd have sunk about $5000 into this car. Instead, I've pushed out less than $1500 including tires and oil. That's less than 2 cents per mile. Really, it's the only thing that's kept it affordable.