Actually the fact that everyone at her college has one can make it a better choice. The more people that use a system the bigger the local experience base and the easier it is to get help. If she is not a CS student going with what the majority of people at her school are using can be a real benefit to a system.
Can a CPU which is hardware be Free Open Source Software? And actually there are some FOSS MIPS and other CPU cores that are available and do run Linux. These are FOSS because they are files you use to program PLDs. At that point hardware and software start to get fuzzy.
"haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone." I have to disagree with this one as well. Linux is on more systems than OS/X everything from Supercomputers to Wifi routers to cell phones. More of the Internet is powered by Linux Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, and Perl. Firefox is on how many system? OpenSSH? and let's not forget that OS/X is built on BSD. FOSS has not built any desktop systems as useful as OS/X. Android vs iPhone is still an on going battle but I would put them as equally as useful of not as polished. OS/X is a great desktop and Linux really could learn from same as the iPhone. Since both OS/X and the iPhone have been built using FOSS as their foundation I would say that it goes both ways.
What phone? I had the Samsung A900 and a Sanyo before I got my Moment. I have been on them for about 8 years now. I could load lots of none Sprint software on the A900 and Sanyo including Opera and other Brew software. They had the Sanyo and Samsung chargers but that was a manufacture thing and not Sprint. What phone are you claiming was crippled and couldn't load apps?
The new WebOS sdk now offers the ability to add "native" modules. You are starting to see real games like Need for Speed on the Pre and they are fast and pretty. The whole javascript+Dom+HTML development model was DOA but this seems to have fixed. The Card interface is very nice. I don't hate Android at all. The UI just isn't as polished as WebOS or the iPhone but it is better IMHO than Blackberry or WinMo. Also I have high hopes that they will improve the UI over time. The iPhone I actually really like except for the requirement to use a Mac for development and the cost to be a Dev. That and the lack of multitasking and the cost of the carrier. No phone is perfect but we have a lot of great options.
The lack of driver support can hit every OS. I have an old scanner that will not work XP much less Windows 7. I have also gone to install XP on a new motherboard only to have it fail until I "slipstream" an new XP install CD which is a clear case of not "Just working" on the same motherboard Linux installed with no problem. I will say that the lack of driver support is in part caused by the lack of stable binary driver interface but the faithful will raise up there heads at that. So I would say that is only part Linux's problem and that it can happen to Windows as well.
Linux not haveing Microsoft Office? Blame Microsoft. Really I find that OpenOffice does what I need and it is free. The cost of the Microsoft office upgrade merry-go-round us to high for the value it brings to me and I would say most people. If you really need Office then you are right you really need Office. The same goes with Photoshop and Solidworks. But a lot of people don't need those and free software has given people new options.
As far as the Linux community caring when things don't work I think they do for the most part. Companies not releasing drivers of the docs to write drivers is something out of their control. OpenOffice isn't Linux and runs very well under Windows. Microsoft not porting Office to Linux is also not under the Linux developers control. Things just working? Well I find that Linux just works about as well as Windows. I use both and find that for most things Linux just works better for me than Windows. The exceptions are for CAD and playing FSX which of course only works under Windows. Your complaints are typical and in large part caused by the small number of Linux users for now and because it is "different". Not having Office available just isn't anything that the Linux community can control. Well that and the bad manners that I often see in the Zealots but I see that in every breed of Zealot including windows and Mac,
Well I text my brother all the time. He is on tMobile and I am on Sprint. I never have had an issue with delay of texts. I had a friend on Virgin that would text me often and no real problem. Where I have seen delays is from non phone texts like from Yahoo and Twitter but that has been much better of late.
I would love to see what plane you got. Not one for the iPhone for sure. The iPhone is a very good phone with lots of very good apps. I have an iPod touch and a Samsung Moment. My wife has a Palm Pre so I have access to an Apple device, Palm Pre, and Android. Apple has a better app store than any of them. The Pre I feel actually has a better UI than the iPhone and the cards are really nice. The new SDK really seems to have opened up the possibilities on the Pre so I expect to see it doing really well. The Pre has a keyboard and a lot of people really like that. Android is good, the app store is better than the Pre's but there is too many versions of Android right now. Everybody really needs to get up on 2.1 and Google really needs to add multitouch to the softkeyboard and browser.
You are right in many ways. There is a shortage of Arm Boards but there is this one. http://beagleboard.org/ which will work just great if you don't need an HD or are willing to live with a USB HD, flashdrve , or have a NAS at home.
The new Tegra 2 is really looking good but I have not seen any small board for it yet. I am hoping that we will see a BeagleboardII when the OMAP 4 comes out. Maybe they will throw on some SATA connectors and more USB ports on it. The one problem I see is the lack of Flash for it. That may change very soon. I think that a Beagleboard with a good sized flash drive would make an almost viable desktop replacement depending if you can live without Flash.
If you could just get Flash for the Beagleboard I could see this as a modern Commodore 64. Right down to the external drives.
But that PC comes with a monitor, a much better CPU, and a bigger HD. I think one reason that so many people in the US think this is a ripe off is that like me they didn't first drill down and read the specs. The Open-PC has a twin core atom and most people probably assume that it is a single core. Once you add in VAT and the fact that it is a twin core it isn't that out of line for the EU. I think the "Open" part is why over hyped since it is nothing but all Intel and doesn't even use a FOSS BIOS, but hype is typical of sales stuff.
But odds are this PC is also made in china. It is nothing but a mini-itx system with all intel parts. It does have a nice duel core Atom which I didn't see when I first looked at the device. It is just a little pricey compared to the say the Revo dual core system that comes with in ION gpu which has much better performance but isn't as FOSS religion friendly but works just dandy with Linux. I wonder if the distro is OpenSuse. It is nice but the big "Open" push I find very annoying. Big deal it uses an Intel GPU. I would say that in Europe the price to spec ratio doesn't look terrible but the pride in "Open Source Frendly" hardware is all hype. So I give this product maybe two to three stars. Two stars if they use some no name or new distro three if they use OpenSuse, Kbuntu, or even Maemo.
What would be really sweet is if they built one using the new Tegra2 and had a major distro supporting it with repositories.
I know you are trying to be funny but let's also throw in some facts. 1. This PC as far as I could tell is not using a free and open BIOS. 2. There is still some closed frimware on this for the sata drive and other bits a pieces.
It is just a silly spin at this point. Just about any netbook is as FOSS friendly as long as it is all Intel stuff.
Have you used the Sprint network lately? My guess is that you have not. Sprint used to be bashed because of customer support and rightly so but they have made a lot of effort to improve in that area. Sprint used to have a not great selection of phones. Right now they have a few really good phones like the Blackberry Tour, the Samsung Moment, the HTC Hero, the Palm Pre, and Palm Pixie. Their prices are cheaper than Verizon and AT&T and the didn't cripple their phones like Verizon did as far as Bluetooth, WiFI, and even loading software. They are CDMA which is a downer if you are going to travel outside the US but so is Verizon. Oh and you get to roam on the Verizon network. I have never been without service on my phone for more than five minutes anywhere in the US. I would say that unless you MUST have an iPhone or you really want a Droid that Sprint is a really good choice. The crappy old Sprint has been gone for a while but then you will find people that hate every carrier.
Where is it that Opera is number one? I am shocked that anyplace has any other browser than IE as the number one browser of for no other reason that it is the path of least resistance. Hey don't get me wrong. Not using IE is always a good thing in my book but I am shocked if this is true.
The Monoculture of OpenSSH is also a vulnerability. OpenSSH is different from a browser in a few ways. 1. It has a much smaller user base than IE 2. It has a much smaller code base than any of the major browsers. The smaller the code base the easier to secure. That being said OpenSSH is still a great example of a well written and very secure program. However if there ever was a serious security issue in OpenSSH the monoculture nature of it would make that issue far worse than if there was a great variety of SSH clients. But IE gets hacked left and right because of a number of reasons. 1. It has vulnerabilities. 2. Because it is so common it is a prize target so people hunt out the vulnerabilities.
My point is that even if Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari are no secure than IE increasing the variety of browsers will decrease the value of exploits and the impact of the exploit. Also have a large and thriving choice of browsers means that when an exploit is found in any one of them it is easy to stop using the vulnerable one until it is patched and use one of the good alternatives.
Not because Microsoft sucks per say but because computer security is becoming a classic monoculture problem. IE is such a valuable target because of the number of users. The greater the variation in software the less valuable each exploit becomes. Let's face it most people will not change so saying that everybody should change will probably get you 30% A very real problem is there is only three browser engines at this time Geko, Webkit, and IE.
I wouldn't call it depressing at all. It is what interest them. They want to do it. If they want to do it then more power too them. One of the ideas behind FOSS is that people can work on what they see value in. If you see no value in it don't contribute.
Well sort of. Frankly I think it has less to do with the RIAA and IP then US Sugar. US Sugar has pushed for limits on Sugar imports for years maybe decades and has done very well at it. The town of Clewiston Florida is a company town for the most part and is built on sugar. You can drive through that town at harvest and it smells like cotton candy. Add in the Corn lobby and I will bet that the IP law is just an excuse for agricultural protectionism.
Actually I don't I think that a very large number of his fans are now his former fans. Only the most greedy troll with buy into this and frankly he his really risking his base. Every church on the planet is trying to get help to the people of Haiti. So with the religious right he is going the opposite way of what there leaders are teaching. And frankly every conservative Christian can be informed as to the evil with just one scripture just say "Matthew 25:41-46". I promise you that will do more good than calling names. Insulting does no good. Trying to put it as a conservative vs liberal terms can only hurt.
Actually I got involved in a very minor version that kind of discussion at church. I mentioned that our faiths website had a link to donate. I also mentioned the Red Cross and Doctors without Boarders. The person that I mentioned it too said, "I would rather go through the church's charity". I simply told her that was a good choice but that her friends people in the community may not be as comfortable with going through our faiths charity and that we are obligated by what we believe to try and help as much as possible. Even to the point of guiding others to help in ways that legitimate and they are comfortable with. I guess I have have more faith than you that the good in people will stop them from following the greedy and clueless talking heads. Those that can not be moved by scripture, good examples, or their own hearts will not be moved by insults.
I have to second this. I am on Sprint and they have been good. BTW the Palm Pre now that they have fixed the SDK is actually looking like a very good phone. The UI is better than Android "I have an Android phone my wife has the Pre" and I would say that it is as good and some ways better than the iPhone.
Sprint is cheaper than Verizon and their phones roam in the Verizon network. I have had almost no customer service problems with them at all. Maybe I have been lucky. I have the Samsung Moment Android phone and I like it. My wife has the Palm Pre and now that they have fixed the SDK I must say that I think it is actually got a good future. The OS was always very nice and fankly better than Android from a UI point of view. The problem was that they really borked the SDK but they have fixed that now. Had I waited until after CES I would have gotten the Pre. I wouldn't dismiss Sprint if you are going to get a Smart Phone. If you like the Palm Pre, HTC Hero, Samsung Moment, or one of the Blackberries they are a good choice. If you want a "World" phone your only choice really is the Tour. If a World phone is important to you than I would say got with AT&T or T-Mobile.
Maybe some instruction would be in order. Rule one. Don't scare the sheep. Rule two. Don't scare the sheep that thinks they are in charge.
I think that making this guy look like a fool might be a good thing. I would have been all with letting him keep his dignity up till the CYA part at the end.
Not at all. It is resources. Will it in anyway help? Anyone with a clue hears that crap will turn away in disgust. And that wasn't bigotry that was just greed speaking. But the way I feel about it is simply this. If you think you have given enough then fine. You have to live with yourself. If you think your tax money is enough that is up to you. All I can say is that is not enough for me and I will chip in more. I don't think you can fight evil by making fun of it. Frankly attention is power to talking heads. In nobody paid attention they will just go away. To fight evil I feel one must do good.
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Actually the fact that everyone at her college has one can make it a better choice. The more people that use a system the bigger the local experience base and the easier it is to get help. If she is not a CS student going with what the majority of people at her school are using can be a real benefit to a system.
Can a CPU which is hardware be Free Open Source Software?
And actually there are some FOSS MIPS and other CPU cores that are available and do run Linux.
These are FOSS because they are files you use to program PLDs. At that point hardware and software start to get fuzzy.
"haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone."
I have to disagree with this one as well.
Linux is on more systems than OS/X everything from Supercomputers to Wifi routers to cell phones. More of the Internet is powered by Linux Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, and Perl.
Firefox is on how many system? OpenSSH? and let's not forget that OS/X is built on BSD.
FOSS has not built any desktop systems as useful as OS/X. Android vs iPhone is still an on going battle but I would put them as equally as useful of not as polished.
OS/X is a great desktop and Linux really could learn from same as the iPhone. Since both OS/X and the iPhone have been built using FOSS as their foundation I would say that it goes both ways.
What phone? I had the Samsung A900 and a Sanyo before I got my Moment. I have been on them for about 8 years now.
I could load lots of none Sprint software on the A900 and Sanyo including Opera and other Brew software.
They had the Sanyo and Samsung chargers but that was a manufacture thing and not Sprint.
What phone are you claiming was crippled and couldn't load apps?
That was a very long time ago like 10 years ago.
The new WebOS sdk now offers the ability to add "native" modules. You are starting to see real games like Need for Speed on the Pre and they are fast and pretty. The whole javascript+Dom+HTML development model was DOA but this seems to have fixed.
The Card interface is very nice.
I don't hate Android at all. The UI just isn't as polished as WebOS or the iPhone but it is better IMHO than Blackberry or WinMo. Also I have high hopes that they will improve the UI over time.
The iPhone I actually really like except for the requirement to use a Mac for development and the cost to be a Dev. That and the lack of multitasking and the cost of the carrier.
No phone is perfect but we have a lot of great options.
The lack of driver support can hit every OS. I have an old scanner that will not work XP much less Windows 7. I have also gone to install XP on a new motherboard only to have it fail until I "slipstream" an new XP install CD which is a clear case of not "Just working" on the same motherboard Linux installed with no problem.
I will say that the lack of driver support is in part caused by the lack of stable binary driver interface but the faithful will raise up there heads at that. So I would say that is only part Linux's problem and that it can happen to Windows as well.
Linux not haveing Microsoft Office? Blame Microsoft. Really I find that OpenOffice does what I need and it is free. The cost of the Microsoft office upgrade merry-go-round us to high for the value it brings to me and I would say most people. If you really need Office then you are right you really need Office. The same goes with Photoshop and Solidworks. But a lot of people don't need those and free software has given people new options.
As far as the Linux community caring when things don't work I think they do for the most part. Companies not releasing drivers of the docs to write drivers is something out of their control. OpenOffice isn't Linux and runs very well under Windows. Microsoft not porting Office to Linux is also not under the Linux developers control.
Things just working? Well I find that Linux just works about as well as Windows. I use both and find that for most things Linux just works better for me than Windows. The exceptions are for CAD and playing FSX which of course only works under Windows.
Your complaints are typical and in large part caused by the small number of Linux users for now and because it is "different". Not having Office available just isn't anything that the Linux community can control.
Well that and the bad manners that I often see in the Zealots but I see that in every breed of Zealot including windows and Mac,
Well I text my brother all the time. He is on tMobile and I am on Sprint. I never have had an issue with delay of texts.
I had a friend on Virgin that would text me often and no real problem.
Where I have seen delays is from non phone texts like from Yahoo and Twitter but that has been much better of late.
I would love to see what plane you got. Not one for the iPhone for sure.
The iPhone is a very good phone with lots of very good apps. I have an iPod touch and a Samsung Moment. My wife has a Palm Pre so I have access to an Apple device, Palm Pre, and Android.
Apple has a better app store than any of them.
The Pre I feel actually has a better UI than the iPhone and the cards are really nice. The new SDK really seems to have opened up the possibilities on the Pre so I expect to see it doing really well. The Pre has a keyboard and a lot of people really like that.
Android is good, the app store is better than the Pre's but there is too many versions of Android right now. Everybody really needs to get up on 2.1 and Google really needs to add multitouch to the softkeyboard and browser.
You are right in many ways.
There is a shortage of Arm Boards but there is this one. http://beagleboard.org/ which will work just great if you don't need an HD or are willing to live with a USB HD, flashdrve , or have a NAS at home.
The new Tegra 2 is really looking good but I have not seen any small board for it yet. I am hoping that we will see a BeagleboardII when the OMAP 4 comes out. Maybe they will throw on some SATA connectors and more USB ports on it.
The one problem I see is the lack of Flash for it. That may change very soon.
I think that a Beagleboard with a good sized flash drive would make an almost viable desktop replacement depending if you can live without Flash.
If you could just get Flash for the Beagleboard I could see this as a modern Commodore 64. Right down to the external drives.
But that PC comes with a monitor, a much better CPU, and a bigger HD.
I think one reason that so many people in the US think this is a ripe off is that like me they didn't first drill down and read the specs. The Open-PC has a twin core atom and most people probably assume that it is a single core. Once you add in VAT and the fact that it is a twin core it isn't that out of line for the EU.
I think the "Open" part is why over hyped since it is nothing but all Intel and doesn't even use a FOSS BIOS, but hype is typical of sales stuff.
But odds are this PC is also made in china. It is nothing but a mini-itx system with all intel parts. It does have a nice duel core Atom which I didn't see when I first looked at the device.
It is just a little pricey compared to the say the Revo dual core system that comes with in ION gpu which has much better performance but isn't as FOSS religion friendly but works just dandy with Linux.
I wonder if the distro is OpenSuse.
It is nice but the big "Open" push I find very annoying. Big deal it uses an Intel GPU.
I would say that in Europe the price to spec ratio doesn't look terrible but the pride in "Open Source Frendly" hardware is all hype.
So I give this product maybe two to three stars.
Two stars if they use some no name or new distro three if they use OpenSuse, Kbuntu, or even Maemo.
What would be really sweet is if they built one using the new Tegra2 and had a major distro supporting it with repositories.
I know you are trying to be funny but let's also throw in some facts.
1. This PC as far as I could tell is not using a free and open BIOS.
2. There is still some closed frimware on this for the sata drive and other bits a pieces.
It is just a silly spin at this point. Just about any netbook is as FOSS friendly as long as it is all Intel stuff.
Have you used the Sprint network lately?
My guess is that you have not.
Sprint used to be bashed because of customer support and rightly so but they have made a lot of effort to improve in that area.
Sprint used to have a not great selection of phones. Right now they have a few really good phones like the Blackberry Tour, the Samsung Moment, the HTC Hero, the Palm Pre, and Palm Pixie.
Their prices are cheaper than Verizon and AT&T and the didn't cripple their phones like Verizon did as far as Bluetooth, WiFI, and even loading software.
They are CDMA which is a downer if you are going to travel outside the US but so is Verizon.
Oh and you get to roam on the Verizon network. I have never been without service on my phone for more than five minutes anywhere in the US.
I would say that unless you MUST have an iPhone or you really want a Droid that Sprint is a really good choice.
The crappy old Sprint has been gone for a while but then you will find people that hate every carrier.
Where is it that Opera is number one?
I am shocked that anyplace has any other browser than IE as the number one browser of for no other reason that it is the path of least resistance.
Hey don't get me wrong. Not using IE is always a good thing in my book but I am shocked if this is true.
I thought Opera had moved to webkit. Thank your for the information.
My bad.
The Monoculture of OpenSSH is also a vulnerability. OpenSSH is different from a browser in a few ways.
1. It has a much smaller user base than IE
2. It has a much smaller code base than any of the major browsers.
The smaller the code base the easier to secure.
That being said OpenSSH is still a great example of a well written and very secure program. However if there ever was a serious security issue in OpenSSH the monoculture nature of it would make that issue far worse than if there was a great variety of SSH clients.
But IE gets hacked left and right because of a number of reasons.
1. It has vulnerabilities.
2. Because it is so common it is a prize target so people hunt out the vulnerabilities.
My point is that even if Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari are no secure than IE increasing the variety of browsers will decrease the value of exploits and the impact of the exploit.
Also have a large and thriving choice of browsers means that when an exploit is found in any one of them it is easy to stop using the vulnerable one until it is patched and use one of the good alternatives.
Not because Microsoft sucks per say but because computer security is becoming a classic monoculture problem.
IE is such a valuable target because of the number of users.
The greater the variation in software the less valuable each exploit becomes.
Let's face it most people will not change so saying that everybody should change will probably get you 30%
A very real problem is there is only three browser engines at this time Geko, Webkit, and IE.
I wouldn't call it depressing at all.
It is what interest them. They want to do it.
If they want to do it then more power too them. One of the ideas behind FOSS is that people can work on what they see value in. If you see no value in it don't contribute.
Well sort of. Frankly I think it has less to do with the RIAA and IP then US Sugar.
US Sugar has pushed for limits on Sugar imports for years maybe decades and has done very well at it.
The town of Clewiston Florida is a company town for the most part and is built on sugar.
You can drive through that town at harvest and it smells like cotton candy.
Add in the Corn lobby and I will bet that the IP law is just an excuse for agricultural protectionism.
Actually I don't I think that a very large number of his fans are now his former fans. Only the most greedy troll with buy into this and frankly he his really risking his base. Every church on the planet is trying to get help to the people of Haiti. So with the religious right he is going the opposite way of what there leaders are teaching. And frankly every conservative Christian can be informed as to the evil with just one scripture just say "Matthew 25:41-46".
I promise you that will do more good than calling names. Insulting does no good. Trying to put it as a conservative vs liberal terms can only hurt.
Actually I got involved in a very minor version that kind of discussion at church. I mentioned that our faiths website had a link to donate. I also mentioned the Red Cross and Doctors without Boarders. The person that I mentioned it too said, "I would rather go through the church's charity". I simply told her that was a good choice but that her friends people in the community may not be as comfortable with going through our faiths charity and that we are obligated by what we believe to try and help as much as possible. Even to the point of guiding others to help in ways that legitimate and they are comfortable with.
I guess I have have more faith than you that the good in people will stop them from following the greedy and clueless talking heads. Those that can not be moved by scripture, good examples, or their own hearts will not be moved by insults.
I have to second this. I am on Sprint and they have been good. BTW the Palm Pre now that they have fixed the SDK is actually looking like a very good phone.
The UI is better than Android "I have an Android phone my wife has the Pre" and I would say that it is as good and some ways better than the iPhone.
Sprint is cheaper than Verizon and their phones roam in the Verizon network.
I have had almost no customer service problems with them at all. Maybe I have been lucky.
I have the Samsung Moment Android phone and I like it. My wife has the Palm Pre and now that they have fixed the SDK I must say that I think it is actually got a good future. The OS was always very nice and fankly better than Android from a UI point of view. The problem was that they really borked the SDK but they have fixed that now.
Had I waited until after CES I would have gotten the Pre.
I wouldn't dismiss Sprint if you are going to get a Smart Phone. If you like the Palm Pre, HTC Hero, Samsung Moment, or one of the Blackberries they are a good choice.
If you want a "World" phone your only choice really is the Tour. If a World phone is important to you than I would say got with AT&T or T-Mobile.
Maybe some instruction would be in order.
Rule one. Don't scare the sheep.
Rule two. Don't scare the sheep that thinks they are in charge.
I think that making this guy look like a fool might be a good thing. I would have been all with letting him keep his dignity up till the CYA part at the end.
Not at all. It is resources. Will it in anyway help? Anyone with a clue hears that crap will turn away in disgust.
And that wasn't bigotry that was just greed speaking.
But the way I feel about it is simply this. If you think you have given enough then fine. You have to live with yourself. If you think your tax money is enough that is up to you. All I can say is that is not enough for me and I will chip in more.
I don't think you can fight evil by making fun of it. Frankly attention is power to talking heads. In nobody paid attention they will just go away.
To fight evil I feel one must do good.