Aren't most of those present in most eBook readers? Certainly points 2-6 are covered by a Palm+Plucker combo. The only problem is the screen - resolution and size. I've still read a load of pluckerbooks on my Tungsten E, though, and am perfectly happy with it.
Because the ability to lend and swap paper books and sell used copies has completely crippled the publishing industry, of course. I agree that piracy is a problem, but ebooks will never succeed if the publishers limit the user's freedoms too much.
But nobody in their right mind would enable HTML rendering in their email program message display window, right? So you can see the link you're clicking on, because it's there in plain text in front of you before you click on it. If it's www.spammers.com, you probably wouldn't click it.
In Konqueror, at least, you can disable Javascript from modifying the status bar text, so that you can trust the link before you click on it. As the address will be displayed in the address bar anyway, it's not really a problem though.
Best way to get what you want from Dell tech support - be a journalist. My favourite example:
A journalist for major UK broadsheet's IT section orders a Dell laptop and it dies within a month. The replacement dies too, and he has all sorts of trouble with tech support fobbing him off, missed delivery/pickup dates. He points out to tech support who he works for and that he plans to write up his experiences in an article, and suddenly they can't do enough to help him - a new laptop will be with him tomorrow morning, a Dell technician will make sure it works etc.
The delivery time comes and a senior member of Dell UK management phones up to make sure the delivery has arrived, just as the Dell delivery guy turns up. The journalist asks the technician to hang on a second while he finishes talking and the technician replies "I'm not f***ing waiting for you, come and pick your f***ing computer up now."
Unknown to the technician, all of that is clearly audible to the Dell manager on the phone, whose immediate response is "Go to the Dell website and order any laptop you want - we'll send it to you for free". So the journalist gets a full refund, free (and far superior to the original) laptop and a 'complementary' MP3 player. I doubt the technician worked for Dell much longer...
IMPE (In My Personal Experience), this statement is rarely the first thing out of the developers' mouths.
Exactly - I think he has confused the people who start flamewars in places like Slashdot with actual OSS developers. Polite suggestions/feature requests to developers are almost invariably met with a polite response, even if it is saying "I have a list of ten features to add already - I don't have time for any more".
The many feature requests I've received for my project have invariably been extremely polite, and I've replied in kind.
Yes, developers deserve to get paid. But if they can't develop a better piece of software than a bunch of part time volunteers, why do they deserve my money? In a sensible market, OSS would set the minimum benchmark for commercial software.
The problem is that development doesn't scale linearly with number of developers. Given the communication difficulties in distributed development, and the number of conflicting personalities you'd get in a larger group, at some point adding developers to the group would decrease productivity.
At least with two projects, the people in each will be vaguely similar and more likely to get along - those who think the 'KDE way' code for KDE and you avoid wasting time arguing over features with developers who think the 'GNOME way'.
Just joking with you - it's just that the uptime of any even slightly reliable server tends to get measured in months and years, rather than days, but for a desktop that's pretty good.
Took me (a chemical engineer/C++ coder with no design ability at all) no time at all to knock up a (IMHO) good looking site. It's not exactly complex, but it was easier than using tables. Surely you're not saying the world's highly trained web designers are less capable than a glorified plumber?
But couldn't someone with write access to the registry do much nastier things than turn off the firewall? That would require (I imagine) administrator privileges, and if untrusted code is running as an admin, you're screwed anyway.
19 days! All bow before this machine of such incredible reliability! MS work to lower people's expectation of computer reliability seems to be working.
About the XP numbers - you're forgetting the mindless upgrade drive of your average MS user/admin. At my uni, every single computer has been 'upgraded' from Win2K to WinXP. There's no real reason to do it, they just go round imaging all the computers because it's policy. I imagine a lot of sites with site licences do the same.
Personally, being forced to use the XP machine on my desk makes me miss the Sparcstation 5 with Ratpoison that it replaced. And I *really* hated the Sparc.
Of course more linux users is good. Apart from the indirect benefit of better behaviour from MS faced with real competition, there is also the fact that a larger user community for FOSS means more support for FOSS, through increased testing, donations, patches etc. A larger, more varied user pool would be an extremely good thing for linux distros in general. Imagine what SuSE (for example) could do if they sold ten times as many boxed sets as they do at present.
Baldurs Gate 2 took me something like 150-200 hours to complete, I think. That's without going out of my way to do side quests. If my CD2 wasn't scratched, I'd probably do it again too.
Exactly - I can use my fingers on my Tungsten's screen. If I did, the screen would quickly become unreadable and smeary behind a layer of fingerprints, and I doubt this is any different. Unless they have some sort of screen wiping system? The interface does look quite well thought out, though.
Depends on your usage. For a production server, I doubt you would want 2.6. The current versions of 2.6 (I've used my own vanilla versions, SuSe's and Mandrake's) seem to have stabilised sufficiently now for most purposes, however. I've used 2.6.x (x>=3) on my main desktop about 12 hours a day for months now with no trouble.
I've not played the game, but it seems to me that if it is possible for macros to perform the tasks that are required in game, they can't be that complex to do. So you're left with a virtual chat room with some additional clicking to do while you think of something to say.
Slashdot Mirror
Aren't most of those present in most eBook readers? Certainly points 2-6 are covered by a Palm+Plucker combo.
The only problem is the screen - resolution and size. I've still read a load of pluckerbooks on my Tungsten E, though, and am perfectly happy with it.
Because the ability to lend and swap paper books and sell used copies has completely crippled the publishing industry, of course.
I agree that piracy is a problem, but ebooks will never succeed if the publishers limit the user's freedoms too much.
But nobody in their right mind would enable HTML rendering in their email program message display window, right? So you can see the link you're clicking on, because it's there in plain text in front of you before you click on it. If it's www.spammers.com, you probably wouldn't click it.
In Konqueror, at least, you can disable Javascript from modifying the status bar text, so that you can trust the link before you click on it.
As the address will be displayed in the address bar anyway, it's not really a problem though.
Except that when you click on the link, the address bar would say "http://www.fraudsite.com", which might be a bit of a giveaway.
How much does an infinite tape weigh these days?
Best way to get what you want from Dell tech support - be a journalist. My favourite example:
A journalist for major UK broadsheet's IT section orders a Dell laptop and it dies within a month. The replacement dies too, and he has all sorts of trouble with tech support fobbing him off, missed delivery/pickup dates. He points out to tech support who he works for and that he plans to write up his experiences in an article, and suddenly they can't do enough to help him - a new laptop will be with him tomorrow morning, a Dell technician will make sure it works etc.
The delivery time comes and a senior member of Dell UK management phones up to make sure the delivery has arrived, just as the Dell delivery guy turns up. The journalist asks the technician to hang on a second while he finishes talking and the technician replies "I'm not f***ing waiting for you, come and pick your f***ing computer up now."
Unknown to the technician, all of that is clearly audible to the Dell manager on the phone, whose immediate response is "Go to the Dell website and order any laptop you want - we'll send it to you for free". So the journalist gets a full refund, free (and far superior to the original) laptop and a 'complementary' MP3 player. I doubt the technician worked for Dell much longer...
IMPE (In My Personal Experience), this statement is rarely the first thing out of the developers' mouths.
Exactly - I think he has confused the people who start flamewars in places like Slashdot with actual OSS developers. Polite suggestions/feature requests to developers are almost invariably met with a polite response, even if it is saying "I have a list of ten features to add already - I don't have time for any more".
The many feature requests I've received for my project have invariably been extremely polite, and I've replied in kind.
Yes, developers deserve to get paid. But if they can't develop a better piece of software than a bunch of part time volunteers, why do they deserve my money? In a sensible market, OSS would set the minimum benchmark for commercial software.
The problem is that development doesn't scale linearly with number of developers. Given the communication difficulties in distributed development, and the number of conflicting personalities you'd get in a larger group, at some point adding developers to the group would decrease productivity.
At least with two projects, the people in each will be vaguely similar and more likely to get along - those who think the 'KDE way' code for KDE and you avoid wasting time arguing over features with developers who think the 'GNOME way'.
The kind of freedom RMS is referring to can't be taken away or used to discriminate between users - free as in zero price can be.
Sith Ewoks: not just kicking you in the shins any more.
Just joking with you - it's just that the uptime of any even slightly reliable server tends to get measured in months and years, rather than days, but for a desktop that's pretty good.
Took me (a chemical engineer/C++ coder with no design ability at all) no time at all to knock up a (IMHO) good looking site. It's not exactly complex, but it was easier than using tables. Surely you're not saying the world's highly trained web designers are less capable than a glorified plumber?
But couldn't someone with write access to the registry do much nastier things than turn off the firewall? That would require (I imagine) administrator privileges, and if untrusted code is running as an admin, you're screwed anyway.
It's not common, but I've had it happen to me several times on perfectly good machines.
19 days! All bow before this machine of such incredible reliability!
MS work to lower people's expectation of computer reliability seems to be working.
About the XP numbers - you're forgetting the mindless upgrade drive of your average MS user/admin. At my uni, every single computer has been 'upgraded' from Win2K to WinXP. There's no real reason to do it, they just go round imaging all the computers because it's policy. I imagine a lot of sites with site licences do the same.
Personally, being forced to use the XP machine on my desk makes me miss the Sparcstation 5 with Ratpoison that it replaced. And I *really* hated the Sparc.
Of course more linux users is good. Apart from the indirect benefit of better behaviour from MS faced with real competition, there is also the fact that a larger user community for FOSS means more support for FOSS, through increased testing, donations, patches etc. A larger, more varied user pool would be an extremely good thing for linux distros in general.
Imagine what SuSE (for example) could do if they sold ten times as many boxed sets as they do at present.
Baldurs Gate 2 took me something like 150-200 hours to complete, I think. That's without going out of my way to do side quests. If my CD2 wasn't scratched, I'd probably do it again too.
Exactly - I can use my fingers on my Tungsten's screen. If I did, the screen would quickly become unreadable and smeary behind a layer of fingerprints, and I doubt this is any different. Unless they have some sort of screen wiping system?
The interface does look quite well thought out, though.
Depends on your usage. For a production server, I doubt you would want 2.6. The current versions of 2.6 (I've used my own vanilla versions, SuSe's and Mandrake's) seem to have stabilised sufficiently now for most purposes, however. I've used 2.6.x (x>=3) on my main desktop about 12 hours a day for months now with no trouble.
Just my 2p:
I've not played the game, but it seems to me that if it is possible for macros to perform the tasks that are required in game, they can't be that complex to do. So you're left with a virtual chat room with some additional clicking to do while you think of something to say.
Also, if you plan on using Linux, don't buy ATI. The drivers are terrible.
Why not just wait until they lose the IBM case? It'll be more like 71 cents then.