I am not volunteering to be a mantainer: I don't have any interest in linux on the desktop nowadays since although I use it at work both as a server OS and as a development OS, at home I am running XPSP2 and have been for a couple of years after many years running linux exclusively (since the 1.1.98 days to give you an idea). I am talking from the perspective of somebody who has been semi on the sidelines of this, and hence I don't have any specific examples to contribute regarding my assertion, it was just a guess based on what LKML looks like.
In general am just saying that if somebody comes up and says 'let's fork!' the reaction shouldn't automatically be negative, let anybody do whatever forking they want, if it has merit it will survive, if not it will die: no need to panic.
In any case personally I think linux on the desktop as a primary OS is pointless for the general public, it's much better to just run XP/Vista (for all the win32-only apps you need, like games, cubase, photoshop, etc.) and use linux inside a VM whenever you need it (which is what I have been doing for the past couple of years, with absolutely no regrets, I so don't miss dual-booting).
So why not just let the desktop distros throw a nice command into their X init scripts?
if a nice was all that was needed to make X snappy and 3d gaming fast I would think it'd have already been done before and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Also, since you're not doing the mantaining, what would you care if a desktop branch was not 'clean'? Users want speed and responsiveness, they couldn't care less about 'clean code', if they did they wouldn't be running windows, cmon...
It's just not true that Linus doesn't care about the desktop
I didn't say he didn't care, but if something comes up that will increase the desktop performance by x% and kill server performance by y%, it won't go in as far as I can see. Linus wants the kernel to get better as a whole, of course, but this is a lot harder than having a separate branch where the focus will be shifted from 'making things better' to 'making things better FOR THE DESKTOP even if it means a significant lowering of server/big iron performance'.
what's the pain really? business will continue as usual on LKML etc., there will just be a separate tree handled by somebody interested in this which will accept 'desktop patches' and will also integrate most, if not all, of the mainline patches.
So what if you get an extra FPS in Quake
and why shouldn't desktop users get that extra fps? desktop users couldn't care less that getting an extra fps in quake will lower some Oracle benchmark by 50%. Also what if, by really messing things up for databases or network loads and by hardcoding specific scheduler behaviour for the X binary, you could make xorg 50% more responsive? No way this would go in a mainstream kernel, but I bet a lot of users would run this quite happily if they could.
Personally I'd rather have a system with more internal checks and layers to ensure stability and to protect the kernel from hacks and attacks.
I am sure there are people that feel the same way you do, maybe you could consider a fork yourself?;)
except by doing things that amount to hard-coded nice levels. All of the meaningful performance
meaningful according to whom? and desktop users couldn't care less about 'hard coded nice levels' if it means their 3d games and/or X apps work better: yes, I know this is anathema to the linux developers where only super perfect code supposedly should go in, however if this supposedly super perfect code doesn't meet desktop users' needs as well as hacks, well, I'd all be for giving desktop users as many hacks as they want/need (as long as this could be changed via either a pluggable architecture or a difference in make config).
As much as Linus has done a great job into making linux a great server side OS, if he's not willing to make compromises to make the desktop faster (because either it's too 'hacky' or it will cause issues for big iron, which is what pays the devs' bills) maybe it IS time to fork under the stewardship of somebody with the desktop users' needs more at heart. If companies like, say, NVIDIA or Adobe paid a kernel developer to make linux better on the desktop this is what would probably happen IMHO.
I don't think a fork would be the end of the world, fork it and let the best survive: if a year from now we have a 'server linux' and a 'desktop linux' kernels, so be it, if instead the 'desktop linux' project flounders due to minimal speed improvements and so on, well, so be it as well. The vast majority of the patches/changes would apply to both the same way, so I don't see this causing issues and slowing development, if at all maybe people could spend less time flaming on LKML and more time writing code.
Re:I really wanted to like bioshock...
on
BioShock Review
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· Score: 1
I fully believe that in fact, the game could've been A LOT better had it allowed you to perforate windows and flooding arbitrary sections to make your life easier/harder: with some additional things like rebreathers etc. it could've been made way more open. If you've played the game you've seen how towards the beginning there is indeed a scripted event where flooding happens, only of course nothing much comes out of it.
This is 2007, hello? having a large seamless world is not one of those unsolvable problems (oblivion anyone?). Having invisible wall and adamantium locked doors is just a sign of laziness on the designer's part, or technological limitations of the engine.
Re:I really wanted to like bioshock...
on
BioShock Review
·
· Score: 1
what major plot point? that you can't enter most doors? that you can't seem to jump over even fairly small obstacles? that you are strong enough to swing a crowbar with great force, have telekinesis, can set people on fire, but yet you can't grab an overhead ledge and pull yourself up? or what about the fact that u-invent basically means 'collect all the junk that you see so you can get some extra bullets'? or what about the 'you haven't harvested all little sisters in this level, you should do it otherwise the game becomes hard' dialog (talk about immersion!)? cmon, this game is a railroad fest hyped to high-heaven because the graphics are well done, the setting is cool, the production values are high and there is a hint of moral choice in the super-over-hyped little sisters aspect of the game.
What I say about 'claustrophobia' is not the 'good claustrophobia' that you get from a very well executed game, where choices abound, this is the 'bad claustrophobia' you have in games where you have a rocket launcher and yet you can't open a flimsy wooden door without getting the key from half a level away.
I really wanted to like bioshock...
on
BioShock Review
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· Score: 2, Interesting
...but after one playthrough I shelved it and I really doubt I'll every try it again.
As much as there are a few neat gimmicks (plasmids etc.) and one interesting plot twist, the experience was in my opinion ruined by a complete sense of claustrophobia in terms of player choices: I haven't played in so long a game where you are so railroaded in doing a, then b, then c with absolutely NO flexibility whatsoever (invisible walls and locked doors abound). That and the crappy AI of your opponents (honestly, the mobs were as intelligent as the ones in doom in my experience) makes for a very, very, very boring experience.
I started playing on normal difficulty, but about 1/3rd of the way through I switched to easy so I could just get over with it, since it was boring me to tears to have yet another errand to do (listen to this, do that, go there, etc.) before being allowed to go to the next level. I really wish I could have my $49 back.
Technically the game has run great for me (without upgrading the nvidia drivers, I have a 7900gto), no crashes, no bugs, just perfect, but it was not even 10% as good as the original system shock, which in my opinion was a masterpiece, and much more so than the blah-ish system shock 2 and, even worse, bioshock: the 95%+ review scores are way out of line, this game is maybe an 80%, heck, I had more fun playing Prey than bioshock, and pray had way worse reviews.
...are that much better right? The mastering that makes everything sound flat and un-dynamic just so that things sound 'loud'? I could maybe agree with this if we compare some classical/jazz music records to their mp3s, where even if I encode with the 'extreme' setting in lame I can surely hear a big difference on my (nice) stereo (on my ipod they sound the same of course), but for today's top-40 etc. mp3s at over 192 are plenty.
Personally nowadays I think nobody ought to buy any top-40 anywhere but on itunes, since it will sound the same (aka, crappy) and it will be cheaper (since you can just get the one decent song and not buy the filler), but for classical/jazz there is no way I would buy anything but physical CDs (or, even better, DVDs).
...however I sure would like to have more information about things like:
- can the controller be used wirelessly to control the playing? - does the ps3 have an IR receiver so I can program my existing remote to control it like a stand-alone blue-ray player? - does the ps3 support blue-ray profile 1.1 (with dual decoding)? - how is the quality compared to a stand-alone player? - does the ps3 have a digital out to feed to my receiver? (coax? optical?)
these are questions that right now have prevented me from purchasing one in favour of waiting for a combo blueray/hddvd player (if not I'd just get a ps3+x360 since they'd cost me the same in total and I'd have two consoles to boot). I have also found things like the following by perusing sites, things that should be made clear somewhere on sony's site
- the ps3 does play dvd movies - the ps3 does NOT upscale dvd movies to 1080i/p - the ps3 supports 1080p/24 starting from firmware 1.9
I think sony is trying hard to not position the ps3 as a blueray player with gaming capabilities, and holding back information like this is part of the game.
this is going OT, but I suggest you research 'visceral fat' and how it can affect health, the fact that all your extra fat is in your waist area unfortunately likely means you also have plenty of visceral fat, and both of them can cause significant health problems (increased risk for heart disease and type-2 diabetes notably). I know us guys tend to be more apple-shaped than women, and this puts us at a disadvantage if we don't keep our body composition in check.
When I said 'healthy' above, I didn't mean healthy in the sense of being able to be fit (I know plenty of people that weight a lot more than I do and that yet run a lot faster than me) etc., I meant it from the perspective of being at a health level conducive to you being able to lead a long and active life (which is what would lower the insurer's risks). From an insurance perspective, raising rates for people like you, that are at an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes (both very costly to treat), makes perfect business sense.
All said I would suggest you research things a bit more and possibly consider losing some weight, even if you consider yourself fairly fit: coming from a family where my father and grandfather both have had heart issues has kind of sensitized me to the whole heart risks situation.
so flat fees are going to hit tall guys unreasonably hard...
are you kidding? I could see this happening if this was, say, BMI 25, but at BMI 30 a 6'4" individual would need to be over 246lb to be hit by the penalties, and I don't know many people that are 250lb and I would classify at a 'healthy' weight even at 6'4". Heck, I am 6'0" and I'd need to be over 220lb to be hit by that, and once again, I don't think there's that many healthy six footers that weigh over 220lb, and for those there is the doctor's note route to be exempt.
Body fat % would be a much better indicator than BMI, but of course it's a bit harder to calculate so it's always BMI-this and BMI-that, I really don't see that changing in the near future (although the new impedence body fat % measuring scales that have you stand on two electrodes and hold another two in your hands are a step in the right direction, albeit still one susceptible to dehydration inaccuracies for example)
... that google abhors private offices and loves open-space plans, was the moment any temptation to go work for them evaporated for me. Now if only there was a company like MS (work-environment wise) that worked in the unix-linux-lamp-python-etc space...
Once running, the Pico establishes an SSL (secure sockets layer) http connection to Yoggie's central servers, where it checks for updated firewall policies and rule sets, Touboul said. It subsequently checks every every five minutes, by default.
so basically this means allowing a black box to hijack completely my IP stack, a black box which phones home every 5 minute and arbitrarily downloads software updates... just think if this company's server was compromised even for an hour, given that all of the devices update every 5 minutes you could compromise pretty much all of them at the same time.
Not to mention that if this device can insert a 'low level driver' that hijacks the IP stack, I'm sure a virus will come up sooner or later that will re-hijack this and compromise it. The only really 'safe' hardware firewall is, guess what, a completely separate hardware firewall (like my custom LEAF install on my old p3-500), this sounds like those 'one time pad, guaranteed!' crypto products we often lambast here on/.
and not just for people interested in the best viewing experience
you mean not just for interior designers that have no clue about what constitutes a good viewing experience? The same interior designers that are in umpteen tv shows, avidly followed by your significant others, that think that the top of the fireplace is the best place for an HDTV? That also seem to think that it's perfectly fine to connect that 52" LCDTV with an RCA coax cable displaying SDTV because they have no clue about how to actually run a proper set of interconnects (or what a media server is, or the difference between 720p/1080i and 1080p)?
Next time you're talking with any of your married friends that are going to buy an HDTV, after a month or two ask them where they ended up putting it: if in the perfect place for best viewing, together with a good 5.1/7.1 system (good = costs at least as much as the HDTV, and must not be a bose), or if stuck 7 feet off the ground in their living room on top of the fireplace, so that you end up watching TV on the sofa at 90deg angle and craning your neck upwards to see something, and listening through the built-in 10W speakers.
that works for me, when I need to drive from point a to point b I don't want my car to factor in the equation: I don't think about my fridge day after day, polishing it, cleaning the freezer section, lubing the door handles, having to take it in for service multiple times a year because its compressor has yet again broken down. Yeah, it can freeze my leftovers to -120C in 20 seconds, but when am I ever going to be able to use all that cooling power given that most things I eat can do just fine at -10/-15C?
My fridge serves my needs, keeping my food fresh, just like my car serves my needs, going from point a to point b as safely and as worry-free as possible, hence why I drive a toyota: because outside of taking it in for maintenance every 5,000 miles it's just like another appliance, reliable, efficient, and that does what I need with a minimum of fuss.
... and I really, really, really don't belive it's ready for non-technical users at all unless they have a fairly basic PC configuration: I have two (older) video cards in my linux box, and there was absolutely no way to get ubuntu to actually initialize/configure them both in dualscreen/xinerama without serious editing of xorg.conf (basically creating the device entries for the non-detected card from scratch and configuring xinerama etc.).
Having been using linux since the 1.2pre days I do know how to gets my hands dirty, but if I had been a non technical user there'd have been no way I could've managed. On the other hand the networking and general system configuration was quite painless, automatix and synaptic have been a pleasure to use and the install was very straightforward, even to the point of putting my 2k partition in the grub boot menu (and it actually working, which is definitely a new experience).
With a slightly more robust x configuration (quite a few folks nowadays run dual screen, most developers for sure) it would be nearly perfect.
I do kick in the cruise control at speed limit speeds
that's one thing you can do to save gas: NOT use the cruise control, it's counter-intuitive but usually c/cs are a lot more aggressive than you'd be in mantaining the speed on rolling terrain and using more gas. I was thinking about getting a c/c myself and decided not to after reading up on it...
what kind of financial institution couldn't afford to spend 50 grand to register a domain name? or even 50 grand a year to keep it? If it was me I'd make it 500 grand a year: this way only reputable institutions would sign up for this (institutions that realize that this is peanuts compared to the damage phishing can cause, not to mention that half a million these days seems to be pocket change compared to some banks' advertising budgets)
Linux users are not forced to upgrade like Windows users are.
you're kidding right? I was trying to compile something recent on FC3 the other day and ended up in rpm dependency hell (this needs that, which needs that, which needs that, which needs that,...) and basically it looks like if I want to get it running without having to recompile half the system I'll have to upgrade to at least FC5. This is not the first time it's happened either, and it was fine when I was in university and had a lot of time to tinker and live on the bleeding edge, but now that I have a job and just want things to work in the least amount of time, it sucks having to do a reinstall just because of an application...
The 4.0 student who took shop as his electives is still in my hometown working on cars possibly missing a finger. I'm working half way across the country on computer systems for probably better pay.
the 4.0 student also probably will never work over 40 hours a week, is in no danger of outsourcing, and can set up shop anywhere in the US (hence having the choice of living in places where real estate is not insanely priced). You on the other hand will be squeezed as much as possible by your employer in terms of hours, paid less than your mechanic friend (when you factor the amount of hours worked) and will be forced to live in a major (and expensive) metropolitan area in order to have a chance to get another job once you'll be outsourced from your current position.
If I could go back in time when I was starting university I for sure would tell my 18 year old self to have fun programming in their spare time, but to train as an electrician, plumber or mechanic, so they will actually have some job security, good working conditions and some actual spare time to have fun programming in. That or instead of stopping with a M.Sc. to get a Ph.D. and get into teaching instead (although the politics you had to play to get tenure were not a lot of fun to contemplate either...)
And people are surprised to see that there are less and less people wanting to get into CS...
you are right, I googled around and that is correct, funnily enough way back I had turrican on my atari st before my c64 friends got it, I guess they didn't know it existed before or something...
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I am not volunteering to be a mantainer: I don't have any interest in linux on the desktop nowadays since although I use it at work both as a server OS and as a development OS, at home I am running XPSP2 and have been for a couple of years after many years running linux exclusively (since the 1.1.98 days to give you an idea). I am talking from the perspective of somebody who has been semi on the sidelines of this, and hence I don't have any specific examples to contribute regarding my assertion, it was just a guess based on what LKML looks like.
In general am just saying that if somebody comes up and says 'let's fork!' the reaction shouldn't automatically be negative, let anybody do whatever forking they want, if it has merit it will survive, if not it will die: no need to panic.
In any case personally I think linux on the desktop as a primary OS is pointless for the general public, it's much better to just run XP/Vista (for all the win32-only apps you need, like games, cubase, photoshop, etc.) and use linux inside a VM whenever you need it (which is what I have been doing for the past couple of years, with absolutely no regrets, I so don't miss dual-booting).
if a nice was all that was needed to make X snappy and 3d gaming fast I would think it'd have already been done before and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Also, since you're not doing the mantaining, what would you care if a desktop branch was not 'clean'? Users want speed and responsiveness, they couldn't care less about 'clean code', if they did they wouldn't be running windows, cmon...
I didn't say he didn't care, but if something comes up that will increase the desktop performance by x% and kill server performance by y%, it won't go in as far as I can see. Linus wants the kernel to get better as a whole, of course, but this is a lot harder than having a separate branch where the focus will be shifted from 'making things better' to 'making things better FOR THE DESKTOP even if it means a significant lowering of server/big iron performance'.
what's the pain really? business will continue as usual on LKML etc., there will just be a separate tree handled by somebody interested in this which will accept 'desktop patches' and will also integrate most, if not all, of the mainline patches.
and why shouldn't desktop users get that extra fps? desktop users couldn't care less that getting an extra fps in quake will lower some Oracle benchmark by 50%. Also what if, by really messing things up for databases or network loads and by hardcoding specific scheduler behaviour for the X binary, you could make xorg 50% more responsive? No way this would go in a mainstream kernel, but I bet a lot of users would run this quite happily if they could.
I am sure there are people that feel the same way you do, maybe you could consider a fork yourself?
meaningful according to whom? and desktop users couldn't care less about 'hard coded nice levels' if it means their 3d games and/or X apps work better: yes, I know this is anathema to the linux developers where only super perfect code supposedly should go in, however if this supposedly super perfect code doesn't meet desktop users' needs as well as hacks, well, I'd all be for giving desktop users as many hacks as they want/need (as long as this could be changed via either a pluggable architecture or a difference in make config).
As much as Linus has done a great job into making linux a great server side OS, if he's not willing to make compromises to make the desktop faster (because either it's too 'hacky' or it will cause issues for big iron, which is what pays the devs' bills) maybe it IS time to fork under the stewardship of somebody with the desktop users' needs more at heart. If companies like, say, NVIDIA or Adobe paid a kernel developer to make linux better on the desktop this is what would probably happen IMHO.
I don't think a fork would be the end of the world, fork it and let the best survive: if a year from now we have a 'server linux' and a 'desktop linux' kernels, so be it, if instead the 'desktop linux' project flounders due to minimal speed improvements and so on, well, so be it as well. The vast majority of the patches/changes would apply to both the same way, so I don't see this causing issues and slowing development, if at all maybe people could spend less time flaming on LKML and more time writing code.
I fully believe that in fact, the game could've been A LOT better had it allowed you to perforate windows and flooding arbitrary sections to make your life easier/harder: with some additional things like rebreathers etc. it could've been made way more open. If you've played the game you've seen how towards the beginning there is indeed a scripted event where flooding happens, only of course nothing much comes out of it.
This is 2007, hello? having a large seamless world is not one of those unsolvable problems (oblivion anyone?). Having invisible wall and adamantium locked doors is just a sign of laziness on the designer's part, or technological limitations of the engine.
what major plot point? that you can't enter most doors? that you can't seem to jump over even fairly small obstacles? that you are strong enough to swing a crowbar with great force, have telekinesis, can set people on fire, but yet you can't grab an overhead ledge and pull yourself up? or what about the fact that u-invent basically means 'collect all the junk that you see so you can get some extra bullets'? or what about the 'you haven't harvested all little sisters in this level, you should do it otherwise the game becomes hard' dialog (talk about immersion!)? cmon, this game is a railroad fest hyped to high-heaven because the graphics are well done, the setting is cool, the production values are high and there is a hint of moral choice in the super-over-hyped little sisters aspect of the game.
What I say about 'claustrophobia' is not the 'good claustrophobia' that you get from a very well executed game, where choices abound, this is the 'bad claustrophobia' you have in games where you have a rocket launcher and yet you can't open a flimsy wooden door without getting the key from half a level away.
...but after one playthrough I shelved it and I really doubt I'll every try it again.
As much as there are a few neat gimmicks (plasmids etc.) and one interesting plot twist, the experience was in my opinion ruined by a complete sense of claustrophobia in terms of player choices: I haven't played in so long a game where you are so railroaded in doing a, then b, then c with absolutely NO flexibility whatsoever (invisible walls and locked doors abound). That and the crappy AI of your opponents (honestly, the mobs were as intelligent as the ones in doom in my experience) makes for a very, very, very boring experience.
I started playing on normal difficulty, but about 1/3rd of the way through I switched to easy so I could just get over with it, since it was boring me to tears to have yet another errand to do (listen to this, do that, go there, etc.) before being allowed to go to the next level. I really wish I could have my $49 back.
Technically the game has run great for me (without upgrading the nvidia drivers, I have a 7900gto), no crashes, no bugs, just perfect, but it was not even 10% as good as the original system shock, which in my opinion was a masterpiece, and much more so than the blah-ish system shock 2 and, even worse, bioshock: the 95%+ review scores are way out of line, this game is maybe an 80%, heck, I had more fun playing Prey than bioshock, and pray had way worse reviews.
...are that much better right? The mastering that makes everything sound flat and un-dynamic just so that things sound 'loud'? I could maybe agree with this if we compare some classical/jazz music records to their mp3s, where even if I encode with the 'extreme' setting in lame I can surely hear a big difference on my (nice) stereo (on my ipod they sound the same of course), but for today's top-40 etc. mp3s at over 192 are plenty.
Personally nowadays I think nobody ought to buy any top-40 anywhere but on itunes, since it will sound the same (aka, crappy) and it will be cheaper (since you can just get the one decent song and not buy the filler), but for classical/jazz there is no way I would buy anything but physical CDs (or, even better, DVDs).
actually scratch the upscaling comment, supposedly this was fixed in firmware 1.8
...however I sure would like to have more information about things like:
- can the controller be used wirelessly to control the playing?
- does the ps3 have an IR receiver so I can program my existing remote to control it like a stand-alone blue-ray player?
- does the ps3 support blue-ray profile 1.1 (with dual decoding)?
- how is the quality compared to a stand-alone player?
- does the ps3 have a digital out to feed to my receiver? (coax? optical?)
these are questions that right now have prevented me from purchasing one in favour of waiting for a combo blueray/hddvd player (if not I'd just get a ps3+x360 since they'd cost me the same in total and I'd have two consoles to boot). I have also found things like the following by perusing sites, things that should be made clear somewhere on sony's site
- the ps3 does play dvd movies
- the ps3 does NOT upscale dvd movies to 1080i/p
- the ps3 supports 1080p/24 starting from firmware 1.9
I think sony is trying hard to not position the ps3 as a blueray player with gaming capabilities, and holding back information like this is part of the game.
this is going OT, but I suggest you research 'visceral fat' and how it can affect health, the fact that all your extra fat is in your waist area unfortunately likely means you also have plenty of visceral fat, and both of them can cause significant health problems (increased risk for heart disease and type-2 diabetes notably). I know us guys tend to be more apple-shaped than women, and this puts us at a disadvantage if we don't keep our body composition in check.
When I said 'healthy' above, I didn't mean healthy in the sense of being able to be fit (I know plenty of people that weight a lot more than I do and that yet run a lot faster than me) etc., I meant it from the perspective of being at a health level conducive to you being able to lead a long and active life (which is what would lower the insurer's risks). From an insurance perspective, raising rates for people like you, that are at an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes (both very costly to treat), makes perfect business sense.
All said I would suggest you research things a bit more and possibly consider losing some weight, even if you consider yourself fairly fit: coming from a family where my father and grandfather both have had heart issues has kind of sensitized me to the whole heart risks situation.
are you kidding? I could see this happening if this was, say, BMI 25, but at BMI 30 a 6'4" individual would need to be over 246lb to be hit by the penalties, and I don't know many people that are 250lb and I would classify at a 'healthy' weight even at 6'4". Heck, I am 6'0" and I'd need to be over 220lb to be hit by that, and once again, I don't think there's that many healthy six footers that weigh over 220lb, and for those there is the doctor's note route to be exempt.
Body fat % would be a much better indicator than BMI, but of course it's a bit harder to calculate so it's always BMI-this and BMI-that, I really don't see that changing in the near future (although the new impedence body fat % measuring scales that have you stand on two electrodes and hold another two in your hands are a step in the right direction, albeit still one susceptible to dehydration inaccuracies for example)
... that google abhors private offices and loves open-space plans, was the moment any temptation to go work for them evaporated for me. Now if only there was a company like MS (work-environment wise) that worked in the unix-linux-lamp-python-etc space...
so basically this means allowing a black box to hijack completely my IP stack, a black box which phones home every 5 minute and arbitrarily downloads software updates... just think if this company's server was compromised even for an hour, given that all of the devices update every 5 minutes you could compromise pretty much all of them at the same time.
Not to mention that if this device can insert a 'low level driver' that hijacks the IP stack, I'm sure a virus will come up sooner or later that will re-hijack this and compromise it. The only really 'safe' hardware firewall is, guess what, a completely separate hardware firewall (like my custom LEAF install on my old p3-500), this sounds like those 'one time pad, guaranteed!' crypto products we often lambast here on
you mean not just for interior designers that have no clue about what constitutes a good viewing experience? The same interior designers that are in umpteen tv shows, avidly followed by your significant others, that think that the top of the fireplace is the best place for an HDTV? That also seem to think that it's perfectly fine to connect that 52" LCDTV with an RCA coax cable displaying SDTV because they have no clue about how to actually run a proper set of interconnects (or what a media server is, or the difference between 720p/1080i and 1080p)?
Next time you're talking with any of your married friends that are going to buy an HDTV, after a month or two ask them where they ended up putting it: if in the perfect place for best viewing, together with a good 5.1/7.1 system (good = costs at least as much as the HDTV, and must not be a bose), or if stuck 7 feet off the ground in their living room on top of the fireplace, so that you end up watching TV on the sofa at 90deg angle and craning your neck upwards to see something, and listening through the built-in 10W speakers.
that works for me, when I need to drive from point a to point b I don't want my car to factor in the equation: I don't think about my fridge day after day, polishing it, cleaning the freezer section, lubing the door handles, having to take it in for service multiple times a year because its compressor has yet again broken down. Yeah, it can freeze my leftovers to -120C in 20 seconds, but when am I ever going to be able to use all that cooling power given that most things I eat can do just fine at -10/-15C?
My fridge serves my needs, keeping my food fresh, just like my car serves my needs, going from point a to point b as safely and as worry-free as possible, hence why I drive a toyota: because outside of taking it in for maintenance every 5,000 miles it's just like another appliance, reliable, efficient, and that does what I need with a minimum of fuss.
... and I really, really, really don't belive it's ready for non-technical users at all unless they have a fairly basic PC configuration: I have two (older) video cards in my linux box, and there was absolutely no way to get ubuntu to actually initialize/configure them both in dualscreen/xinerama without serious editing of xorg.conf (basically creating the device entries for the non-detected card from scratch and configuring xinerama etc.).
Having been using linux since the 1.2pre days I do know how to gets my hands dirty, but if I had been a non technical user there'd have been no way I could've managed. On the other hand the networking and general system configuration was quite painless, automatix and synaptic have been a pleasure to use and the install was very straightforward, even to the point of putting my 2k partition in the grub boot menu (and it actually working, which is definitely a new experience).
With a slightly more robust x configuration (quite a few folks nowadays run dual screen, most developers for sure) it would be nearly perfect.
that's one thing you can do to save gas: NOT use the cruise control, it's counter-intuitive but usually c/cs are a lot more aggressive than you'd be in mantaining the speed on rolling terrain and using more gas. I was thinking about getting a c/c myself and decided not to after reading up on it...
they re-released GH1 with GH2's engine... would be nice to have HO/PO working in GH1 the same way...
what kind of financial institution couldn't afford to spend 50 grand to register a domain name? or even 50 grand a year to keep it? If it was me I'd make it 500 grand a year: this way only reputable institutions would sign up for this (institutions that realize that this is peanuts compared to the damage phishing can cause, not to mention that half a million these days seems to be pocket change compared to some banks' advertising budgets)
you're kidding right? I was trying to compile something recent on FC3 the other day and ended up in rpm dependency hell (this needs that, which needs that, which needs that, which needs that,
the 4.0 student also probably will never work over 40 hours a week, is in no danger of outsourcing, and can set up shop anywhere in the US (hence having the choice of living in places where real estate is not insanely priced). You on the other hand will be squeezed as much as possible by your employer in terms of hours, paid less than your mechanic friend (when you factor the amount of hours worked) and will be forced to live in a major (and expensive) metropolitan area in order to have a chance to get another job once you'll be outsourced from your current position.
If I could go back in time when I was starting university I for sure would tell my 18 year old self to have fun programming in their spare time, but to train as an electrician, plumber or mechanic, so they will actually have some job security, good working conditions and some actual spare time to have fun programming in. That or instead of stopping with a M.Sc. to get a Ph.D. and get into teaching instead (although the politics you had to play to get tenure were not a lot of fun to contemplate either...)
And people are surprised to see that there are less and less people wanting to get into CS...
you are right, I googled around and that is correct, funnily enough way back I had turrican on my atari st before my c64 friends got it, I guess they didn't know it existed before or something...
although there was a turrican c64 port (quite amazing in its own right) turrican was an amiga/atari st game.