> Ferrous Sulfate (the "active" ingredient in my iron supplement) has been shown to be able to treat iron-deficiency.
Actually Ferrous Sulfate has been shown to be not very effective at treating iron-deficiency, because it is often not absorbed. You have to take small quantities throughout the day, prevent any calcium intake and some other competing ions etc. Even the amount absorbed is a very small share of the taken amount of iron.
Heme iron (present in red meat) is a much more effective source of iron.
> On the subject of productivity in the past ten years, Rambus has produced the memory controller for the Cell processor, developed the first quad-data-rate memory, and other notable things.
And they were the first to design the memory bus as a proper terminated bus. DDR3 still does not do that - it relies on the connections between all the memory chips (even across modules) being very short. I think they really have something there. But their business attitude seems to be pretty evil, so nobody wants to touch it.
Rule number one in business: it is never a good idea to sue your customers, even if you are right.
> $49.99 for 400 minutes, $89.99 for 650 minutes and $175 for unlimited. If it's anything like their hardware rate structure.
Sounds plausible - although there would probably be an incentive of some kind over the big telcos. Maybe international calls are included, and premium calls up to 5 minutes.
It may be 7.1mm thin, but it is also 11.1mm thick. It depends on where you measure. And dimensions are usually given at the widest point - otherwise they are absolutely arbitrary.
So I would boycott it just for lying to the customer. And because I am perfectly happy with a budget android phone running CM7.1 (based on Android 2.3.7, not 2.3.5, ha!).
Exactly. I have no idea why people thing that ToS are the law, top the law, or even are remotely legal in most cases. They are just a long text of legalese written to scare the users. In most jurisdictions most of the ToS will not stand.
> Are you really willing to pay the record companies the money it costs you to market a record to you?
What a strange question. Of course customers pay for marketing costs, at least the ones susceptible to marketing, who else should? That's why it is cheaper to buy the non-brand product, even if the content may be the same.
What do you expect? Motorola has always delivered terrible software. Even a Motorola phone I had way back in the days (2 line gray dot character display) was troublesome to use because of all the software bugs.
Anybody who things that this one is different has not learned anything from the past.
> Mozilla have switched to a more agile approach in developing software.
The problem with agile is that it may be great for the developers, but it is a PITA for the end user unless it is managed very carefully. And it isn't (unlike Chrome).
> The largest group of people who want FTTC are people on long lines that are heavily speed restricted for that reason, for these people FTTC lifts them from the just-about-good-enough-these-days 2Mbit range.
Exactly, just like myself. 2MB vs 36MB is a very noticeable difference. It comes at twice the price, but it includes more internet traffic, and it is not a bad deal.
However, the whole system and packaging is not really there yet. FTTC uses a different technology (not DSL), so you have an ugly hot box from Huawei just to decode it (which no doubt will blow up in the not too distant future, because it contains Chinese caps). Then you get a NAT router, gigabit switch (if you want gigabit), and if you want VoIP you need another separate box. With DSL, you could get it all in one box, which uses much less electricity.
So actually I would recommend to wait until they sort this mess out.
> Trader Joe's completely avoids Chinese suppliers.
That may be true, but Trader Joe's also has close links with Aldi - a discount supermarket chain in Europe. While they are generally quite reasonable for a discounter, they certainly have their fair share of questionable practices and creative labelling.
> It took 8 major (and countless minor) releases for Mozilla to realize this? Sheesh!
It is not an obvious choice - in fact it is completely the wrong way to address the problem. If you don't trust applications, don't install them, and don't run them. If applications change Firefox settings behind your back, the application is to blame, and maybe the lack of separation between applications by the OS. Firefox cannot solve this problem, and trying to may lead to an arms race between applications that Firefox is in no position to win.
So while it seems like a good idea, in fact it is not.
That would be funny, if you had a choice. When 3.0 came out, 2.0 was still supported for a while. When 4.0 came out, 3.6 was still supported (and still is). But when 5.0 came out, support for 4.0 was dropped immediately. Which makes 3.6 much better than 4.0, incidentally.
> That all assumes that your Firefox is installed in a location you can write to
Which, by default, it is not. So you say Firefox only works as design if you fiddle with the installation details? That would seem like a pretty major flaw to me.
> If they blend the best of Maemo, Meego, Tizen, Symbian and WebOS, all laced with Qt
The question is: why would you want to blend together all the approaches that failed in the mobile space? Maemo clearly had potential, but it failed to attract any customers.
> Considering how much more advanced multitasking is in WebOS than Android,
I have read that a few times, but what does it mean? Android multitasks just fine, since a very early version.
The task switcher of WebOS looks better, that's true. You can stop programs (Android does that "automatically"). But apart from that it is not necessarily more functional.
> In some cases, I've moved to LXDE because it's more stable.
LXDE is a great option for a more traditional desktop. It is fast, light, and works very well. It may not be as pretty as Gnome 3, and it may lack some of the "social integration" of KDE 4, but it gets the job done. I use it on a number of light systems and in all my VMs.
Good point. When it said "it works without video acceleration", I was hoping to read that they had optimised the desktop, so it would run fine without a beefy 3D card. But I think your interpretation is closer to the truth.
And since this turns into Gnome bashing, I would like to add that it does not seem easy to find the right design of a graphical toolkit and desktop. Qt has its own pre-compiler, mind you, so you have to programme in Qt-C++, which is nearly, but not quite like C++.
Closures help, which is why both Tk and Smalltalk have a really neat programming interface. Not that it has helped them - they are very marginally relevant nowadays.
> Some, but who in their right mind wants to run Word on a tablet?
I would - it is one of the main uses for a netbook. Speed isn't important, but compatibility is. Throw in a keyboard, and the tablet can do the work, with much less weight.
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> Ferrous Sulfate (the "active" ingredient in my iron supplement) has been shown to be able to treat iron-deficiency.
Actually Ferrous Sulfate has been shown to be not very effective at treating iron-deficiency, because it is often not absorbed. You have to take small quantities throughout the day, prevent any calcium intake and some other competing ions etc. Even the amount absorbed is a very small share of the taken amount of iron.
Heme iron (present in red meat) is a much more effective source of iron.
> On the subject of productivity in the past ten years, Rambus has produced the memory controller for the Cell processor, developed the first quad-data-rate memory, and other notable things.
And they were the first to design the memory bus as a proper terminated bus. DDR3 still does not do that - it relies on the connections between all the memory chips (even across modules) being very short. I think they really have something there. But their business attitude seems to be pretty evil, so nobody wants to touch it.
Rule number one in business: it is never a good idea to sue your customers, even if you are right.
> $49.99 for 400 minutes, $89.99 for 650 minutes and $175 for unlimited. If it's anything like their hardware rate structure.
Sounds plausible - although there would probably be an incentive of some kind over the big telcos. Maybe international calls are included, and premium calls up to 5 minutes.
> There is nothing more dangerous than smart people without a moral compass.
That's funny, because it seems that is exactly the combination you need to be successful nowadays...
It may be 7.1mm thin, but it is also 11.1mm thick. It depends on where you measure. And dimensions are usually given at the widest point - otherwise they are absolutely arbitrary.
So I would boycott it just for lying to the customer. And because I am perfectly happy with a budget android phone running CM7.1 (based on Android 2.3.7, not 2.3.5, ha!).
> The Judge order overrules Facebook ToS.
Exactly. I have no idea why people thing that ToS are the law, top the law, or even are remotely legal in most cases. They are just a long text of legalese written to scare the users. In most jurisdictions most of the ToS will not stand.
> Are you really willing to pay the record companies the money it costs you to market a record to you?
What a strange question. Of course customers pay for marketing costs, at least the ones susceptible to marketing, who else should? That's why it is cheaper to buy the non-brand product, even if the content may be the same.
What do you expect? Motorola has always delivered terrible software. Even a Motorola phone I had way back in the days (2 line gray dot character display) was troublesome to use because of all the software bugs.
Anybody who things that this one is different has not learned anything from the past.
Does it run PowerPoint? :-)
> Mozilla have switched to a more agile approach in developing software.
The problem with agile is that it may be great for the developers, but it is a PITA for the end user unless it is managed very carefully. And it isn't (unlike Chrome).
> So, is it accurate to say that Firefox 9 is really something around 4.2.x or 4.3.x under standard numbering?
Yes, pretty much. Which actually a big part of the complaint: Firefox uses version numbers very differently from the way they are commonly understood.
> The largest group of people who want FTTC are people on long lines that are heavily speed restricted for that reason, for these people FTTC lifts them from the just-about-good-enough-these-days 2Mbit range.
Exactly, just like myself. 2MB vs 36MB is a very noticeable difference. It comes at twice the price, but it includes more internet traffic, and it is not a bad deal.
However, the whole system and packaging is not really there yet. FTTC uses a different technology (not DSL), so you have an ugly hot box from Huawei just to decode it (which no doubt will blow up in the not too distant future, because it contains Chinese caps). Then you get a NAT router, gigabit switch (if you want gigabit), and if you want VoIP you need another separate box. With DSL, you could get it all in one box, which uses much less electricity.
So actually I would recommend to wait until they sort this mess out.
> Trader Joe's completely avoids Chinese suppliers.
That may be true, but Trader Joe's also has close links with Aldi - a discount supermarket chain in Europe. While they are generally quite reasonable for a discounter, they certainly have their fair share of questionable practices and creative labelling.
> It took 8 major (and countless minor) releases for Mozilla to realize this? Sheesh!
It is not an obvious choice - in fact it is completely the wrong way to address the problem. If you don't trust applications, don't install them, and don't run them. If applications change Firefox settings behind your back, the application is to blame, and maybe the lack of separation between applications by the OS. Firefox cannot solve this problem, and trying to may lead to an arms race between applications that Firefox is in no position to win.
So while it seems like a good idea, in fact it is not.
> The even numbered firefoxes are the best!
That would be funny, if you had a choice. When 3.0 came out, 2.0 was still supported for a while. When 4.0 came out, 3.6 was still supported (and still is). But when 5.0 came out, support for 4.0 was dropped immediately. Which makes 3.6 much better than 4.0, incidentally.
> That all assumes that your Firefox is installed in a location you can write to
Which, by default, it is not. So you say Firefox only works as design if you fiddle with the installation details? That would seem like a pretty major flaw to me.
I find that "buy low, sell high" works much better for me.
> The HP board are not visionaries, technologist, or engineers.
Well, HP had an engineer as a CEO. And although he made far fewer mistakes than the CEO before him, he didn't really do all that well either.
Yes, but Android 2.3 has a much better solution for that. (Android 2.2 sucked in pretty similar ways.)
Cursor keys would have been another option, but I find that this works pretty nicely for me.
> If they blend the best of Maemo, Meego, Tizen, Symbian and WebOS, all laced with Qt
The question is: why would you want to blend together all the approaches that failed in the mobile space? Maemo clearly had potential, but it failed to attract any customers.
> Considering how much more advanced multitasking is in WebOS than Android,
I have read that a few times, but what does it mean? Android multitasks just fine, since a very early version.
The task switcher of WebOS looks better, that's true. You can stop programs (Android does that "automatically"). But apart from that it is not necessarily more functional.
> In some cases, I've moved to LXDE because it's more stable.
LXDE is a great option for a more traditional desktop. It is fast, light, and works very well. It may not be as pretty as Gnome 3, and it may lack some of the "social integration" of KDE 4, but it gets the job done. I use it on a number of light systems and in all my VMs.
Yes, but XFCE is getting pretty fat, too. It is no fun in a VM or on a netbook. In fact it is using compositing now, too.
I have moved on to LXDE as lightweight system - it still uses a rather traditional window manager instead of an integrated desktop.
> I'm tempted to call it "video deceleration".
Good point. When it said "it works without video acceleration", I was hoping to read that they had optimised the desktop, so it would run fine without a beefy 3D card. But I think your interpretation is closer to the truth.
And since this turns into Gnome bashing, I would like to add that it does not seem easy to find the right design of a graphical toolkit and desktop. Qt has its own pre-compiler, mind you, so you have to programme in Qt-C++, which is nearly, but not quite like C++.
Closures help, which is why both Tk and Smalltalk have a really neat programming interface. Not that it has helped them - they are very marginally relevant nowadays.
> Some, but who in their right mind wants to run Word on a tablet?
I would - it is one of the main uses for a netbook. Speed isn't important, but compatibility is. Throw in a keyboard, and the tablet can do the work, with much less weight.