That would just tilt the patent system even more in the favor of large companies, patent trolls, and hordes of lawyers. Determining if there is prior art - even well publicized prior art - for a patent can be damn hard. Even an expert in a reasonably specific field (say "Web Programming" here) won't know about all of the potential prior art.
Consider how the law you suggest would effect a big company, a patent troll, and a small entrepreneur. The big company would file the same patents they always did - they'd have their giant legal team go over each patent and every patent would be at least good enough that any marginal application would seem to fall in the "honest mistake" category. The patent troll *only* has lawyers on payroll, and so they can do the same. As for the small business, they can *never* attempt to apply for / enforce even a reasonably legit looking patent against anyone with good lawyers - because if they fail they might go to jail.
That's not always true. For example, the nice pirates you mentioned who ripped the disk and shared it with everyone will probably manage to avoid getting punished for their good deed. Probably because they thought about the issue beforehand.
And, if you're any kind of decent driver, you should probably know about how fast you're going anyway.
Maybe if you're driving a car with a low powered engine / bad muffler and a manual transmission. Maybe you can count heartbeats per mile marker or something, but the humans generally aren't precise enough instruments to measure the difference between, say 60mph and 75mph visually.
You're right. There is a confusion of terms going on here. But... I'm pretty sure that you're the one who's confused.
GNU produced a set of applications.
You're right. GNU has produced some applications. The GIMP is an application. GNU Chess is an application. Some would argue that even GCC is an application rather than a system component.
But, the fact that the GNU project has produced some applications to run on the GNU System doesn't change the fact that the GNU System is an operating system. An general purpose modern operating system consists of more than a kernel. Consider the standard system libraries - the code that implements "fprintf(3)" is definitely not part of the kernel, and it's definitely not part of an application - it's part of the operating system. On a GNU/Linux system, that part of the operating system is the GNU C Library.
The "standard libraries" component of an operating system even goes beyond implementing the ANSI C and C++ standards. For example, the various libraries that make up Gnome are part of the standard libraries.
Then there are programs that are not applications. Things like "cupsd" provide operating system services, allowing a GNU/Linux system to print. "acpid" provides power management support. Printing and power management are definitely operating system functions - even if they're not in the kernel.
Then there's an area that confuses the issue on Unix-like systems: Libraries aren't the only kind of standard system interface. In Unix, a significant amount of functionality is provided by standard tools. On something like Windows you might have some sort of "winarchive.dll" that provided a programmatic interface to making archive files. On Unix we don't - we have "tar". It's a standard component of a Unix-like system - application developers will expect it to be there and they'll expect it to provide the standard Unix tape archive interface. It's even part of the POSIX standard. It'd damn hard to argue that any of the standard Unix tools *aren't* part of the operating system. You're definitely not going to tell me that "sort" is an "application" the way Photoshop is.
The correct action here is to prescribe something utterly irrelevant. My doctor always used popsicles when I was a kid (on the basis that some sugar water can't hurt) because he has the force of personality for people to trust him when he says drugs won't help, but if the person demands drugs there are a ton of over-the-counter mild symptom suppressants that the doctor can recommend.
Another really excellent option for people with a cold or flu is Vitamin C. It won't help, but it won't hurt either, and you can say "take this with rest and a lot of liquids and the cold will be gone in a week" with a straight face.
Caldera (and praised for having the best desktop Linux)
I was there, and I'm pretty sure that never happened.
You're right that the "is the GPL enforcible" question did come up occasionally before the SCO trial started, and the counterargument you give is exactly what many people responded with. I stand by my claim that the question only really showed up with any frequency after it was popularized by SCO.
More importantly, I stand by my comments on the relevance of the question. Very simple, no-one wants the GPL to be invalid because it's the only thing giving them a right to modify and redistribute GPL-covered programs. The question isn't "is the GPL enforceable", the question is "if you're unwilling to comply with the GPL, what gives you the right distribute that copyrighted software?"
There is no requirement for them to distribute a binary. Unless they distribute a binary, there is no requirement to distribute source. Even if they are required to distribute source, they are not required to distribute it at zero cost.
If they really did distribute binaries by sending technicians around with USB keys, they are obligated to provide source to those binaries at their cost of distribution. If they decide that they are going to distribute the source on Dual Layer DVD+Rs they got a bad deal on ($10) and they want to charge $5 shipping and $5 handling, that $20 is a reasonably legitimate distribution charge for source code under the GPL.
In any case, there's on way that GPL version 2 requires them to provide a person anything aside from the source code to any binaries they distributed to that person, or (probably in this case) to anyone that person redistributed binaries to.
If that's true, then some contributor should threaten a copyright infringement case. But, in that case, why does the summary include the following text?
USDTV customers are being charged $30 for a service and/or files that should be freely available to anyone who has a DB2010 in their possession.
I mean, the GPL has no requirement for binary distribution...
Your question: "The GPL has never been tested in court, is it really legal?" is way over-hyped. It originated as FUD from the SCO case. Legally, the GPL is on really solid ground - even moreso than EULAs for commercial software. It's a copyright license. Either the user agrees to it and gets to take actions not normally allowed by copyright law in exchange for whatever terms are in the license, or they don't and are restricted by copyright law.
But... even if the GPL needed a test case, this wouldn't be it. This case would be about whether $30 was a "reasonable" fee to distribute source code, and given that USB keys are like $15 the judge would probably rule that it's close enough to the cost of media to be OK. Even if the judge ruled that $30 was too much, the penalty would probably only consist of a requirement to charge $25 in the future and refund $5 to anyone who payed $30 and asks for the refund.
This isn't accurate. I'm not a lawyer, but I have actually read the GPL and payed attention to legal discussions related to the GPL.
First, only the copyright holder can sue for copyright infringement. Unless that's you, you have no standing for a copyright infringement claim. There are some other marginal ins you might have, but they don't really apply to this case.
Second, they aren't obviously violating the GPL. The GPL says they need to offer source code to anyone with binaries for the cost of distribution. A USB key + shipping + handling is $30. You could argue about what a reasonable "handling" charge is, but they're not obviously in the wrong.
In the end, this isn't an argument over software freedom or the GPL. It's an argument over $20. And, frankly, $20 doesn't matter that much.
Absolutely false. The GPL source code obligation can be met by providing an offer to deliver source code on physical media, and the distributor is allowed to charge reasonable distribution costs.
If you're charging for the source code you have to provide, it has to be somewhere close to distribution costs.
Sure. A USB key costs $15 and shipping costs $6. If you challenge them, they'll claim that a USB key costs "over $20". In the end, the point's really not worth arguing - they're gouging a bit, but not in a way that seriously restricts any user's freedoms under the GPL. Hell, it wouldn't be completely unreasonable to argue a $9 handling cost.
This might, technically, be a GPL violation because the price for the redistribution of source code is a little high - but it's definitely not a serious violation.
This was once true, but is actually not true any more.
You're right. Rather than using the GNU System on top of Linux you could take the userspace component of another Free unix-like system and run that on top of Linux. You could build a Solaris/Linux system or a NetBSD/Linux system. In addition, for embedded systems that don't need to be fully functional Unix-like systems, you can put a simpler userspace on top of the Linux kernel - this is commonly seen in embedded systems.
But... you can't claim that Linux is a Unix-like operating system and also claim that the GNU component of GNU/Linux systems is trivial. Without GNU, Linux is not a general purpose operating system - you'd have to drop in an entire other Unix-like system in order to get Unix-like functionality without GNU. Without Linux, the GNU System will run fine on any of the BSD kernels, on the Solaris kernel, or even on the (still not ready for production use) GNU HURD kernel.
To be very simple and clear: The GNU System has produced a Unix-like operating system that most commonly runs on the Linux kernel. The only replacements for GNU are other full Unix-like operating systems.
The GNU/Linux operating system was created as a result of the GNU project. The only two components that could be considered "core" to the GNU/Linux system that aren't the work of the GNU project are Linux and X.org - and we can discount X.org unless you want to tell me that Sun doesn't get to take credit for Solaris. Hell, Solaris with Gnome and X.org has less of a claim to getting to name their operating system than the FSF does with the GNU system.
So it's GNU/MIT/Sun/GNOME Foundation/KDE foundation/Gaim project/Linux.
X is standard on all Unix-like systems. OpenOffice and Gaim are applications, not OS components (you can tell because they are available as Windows apps). GNOME is a part of the GNU system. That leaves - in order of importance - GNU/Linux/tetex. Go ahead and call it that. If you want to shorten it, try GNU/Linux. If you want to shorten that, it shortens to GNU.
The last time I checked, Asus doesn't sell directly. One of the vendors I mentioned (http://www.powernotebooks.com/) is one of their resellers, my current notebook is an Asus that I got from them. They don't have as good a selection of Asus laptops as Asus-Specific vendors like ProPortable (http://www.proportable.com/), but they offer more machines from other manufacturers like Sager and Compal. If those companies don't sound familiar to you, you probably want to read this: http://www.powernotebooks.com/articles/index.php?a ction=fullnews&id=17
It is hard to build a laptop at Newegg, but that doesn't mean that you're out of options and must resort to buying from HP or Dell.
It's possible to buy a whitebox laptop and drop in all the technician-serviceable parts yourself. It's annoying, so I personally try to avoid it.
There are also a number of independent vendors who are happy to sell high quality laptops to Linux users. Some, like http://www.system76.com/ actually sell laptops with Linux installed. Others, like http://www.powernotebooks.com/ sell OS-less laptops and are happy to service machines with Linux installed.
Most people immediately respond "but Dell laptops are cheaper". Three points:
- First, the price difference isn't that large. Start at System76 or PowerNotebooks and pick the system that you want. Then recreate the exact same hardware configuration on the HP/Dell/Lenovo site and compare the prices. Going the other way is harder because the independent vendors have a smaller selection, but it's extremely unlikely that PowerNotebooks doesn't stock a machine that fits your needs.
- Second, if you buy from System76, you *know* your hardware works with Ubuntu (since it comes pre-installed). No janky wireless drivers, no too-new sound card that won't be supported until the next kernel revision. If you buy from PowerNotebooks, it's not quite as good - but they have a Linux support forum where you can discuss your issues with other users (and the owner of the company who watches the forums closely).
- You get what you pay for. Dell brand wireless is $10 cheaper than Intel wireless for a reason. Other components, like power supplies / battery packs / LCD screens are harder to compare because they aren't independently branded. The independent vendors compete on the quality of those components whereas the large vendors will cut every corner they can get away with. I mean - HP won't even post a battery life estimate for its laptops.
I was in no way implying that foreign aid was a good thing. Foreign aid keeps people starving and poor, while funding the army of whoever is currently in charge - preventing any sort of revolution that might make things better.
Like I said: A good charity is probably not as bad. A bad charity may be worse.
I donate no money to charities intended to help the extremely poor on other continents - I'm too far removed from them to really understand what's going on, and I'm unwilling to give people (charities) money on the blind assumption that they'll "do the right thing".
Have you donated any money? If so, do you have any evidence that your donation actually goes to feeding starving children rather than - say - just going to whoever happens to be the most corrupt politician in the area?
A reputable private charity is probably better than foreign aid is, but...
Now might be a good time to divest since it is hard to know how pervasive the cover up mentality is in the industry. Surely for institutional investors, nuclear power seems like it could be bit risky. Enron's skirting the law cost people a lot of money.
That's an excellent example of overgeneralizing to create FUD. Especially the big where you compare the entire international nuclear power industry to Enron. I could compare photovoltaics to AI (research in both started around the same time and we haven't seen any advances in either, investing there is a waste of your time), but that would also be stupid.
As I said, containment structures can lead to greater dispersion when breached, which is why the scale of disaster could be larger.
But... this requires an accident more severe than the one at Chernobyl. For reasons I've already stated, that seems unlikely.
Again, you are assuming that the primary coolant is present.
In regard to the the safety of PWR reactors in the US, yes - the safety model does assume that any loss in primary coolant will be noticed and responded to either by automated computer systems or by an operator hitting the SCRAM button. I agree that this isn't an entirely foolproof safety system, but it would take some pretty unlikely coincidences for it to not prevent a major meltdown.
Twitchy folks make mistakes even more often than calm folks. Perhaps the twitchyness has something to do with the recent close calls?
I am unaware of a single incident recently where a major nuclear accident was narrowly avoided, a "close call". If you have any specific references, please post links. For clarity, before 1980 isn't "recent", and "major" implies that someone (other than the plant operators) could have died.
In a reactor, it is all about geometry, and violent explosions tend to rearrange geometry.
It takes a reasonably specific geometry to allow a nuclear reaction to occur. An arbitrary rearrangement in geometry is likely to serve to stop any ongoing reaction. Additionally, in a reactor like the IFR the passive safety property is not dependent solely on geometry - it is caused by the material properties of the fuel mixture. The fuel mixture is explicitly chosen to expand as it heats up beyond standard operating temperature, thus damping the reaction.
So, the scale of disasters may be larger than past experience suggests.
Based on... what? Irrational fear? For the accident at Chernobyl to occur, it took a string of really bad engineering and operation decisions. They turned the safety systems off with no competent engineer who understood the plant design present! Even that wouldn't have caused the accident if the plant had had reasonable safety properties, but the design had a tendency to melt down if you didn't follow proper procedure.
I see no reason to expect a large scale nuclear disaster in the foreseeable future. People are way too twitchy to let that happen, even in the plants that don't have passive safety properties.
With the industry covering up accidents, one is urged to increase efforts to shut it down sooner.
What, like that sodium coolant fire in Japan? The one that took one of the safest and most advanced nuclear plants in the world off line for 10 years over an accident that was expensive to fix but posed no nuclear-related threat? Knowing how anti-nuclear protesters will react to even the slightest sign of weakness, there's a good argument that a cover up attempt was the correct business decision.
Check Epson brand scanners. They seem to change their interface more slowly than the other manufacturers and therefore release a lot of scanners that are immediately supported with no extra work by the Sane developers.
I use Linux in the sense that everybody except Richard M Stallman uses--I mean the entire OS, in a generic sense that does not specify a particular distribution, rather than just the kernel.
Using Linux in that sense is not as useful as you'd think. Saying "Linux-based system" is clearer. But... usually what you really want is "Free Unix System" - there's rarely a case where you really want to include Blue Cat Linux and not include stuff like Nexenta OS or even OpenBSD.
This "reinstall / switch distros at the first sign of trouble" tactic seems odd at best.
Most Linux distributions are not targetted at people who are new to Linux. I'm pretty sure there aren't 10 good user-oriented distros.
For anyone else new to Linux, I have a couple of strong suggestions for you:
- Stick to Ubuntu - you can go exploring in the wilds of random distros later.
- Use the instructions on the Ubuntu site to accomplish basic install tasks: http://help.ubuntu.com/community/ - Try to fix your problems, even ask in the IRC channel or on the forums, before reinstalling. Unlike Windows, a reboot or a re-install won't (usually) magically make your problems go away - if the install process or boot process was going to fix it, it would have done so the first time you installed / booted.
Plug and play for "arbitrary devices" is still pretty weak in GNU/linux at this point. It's not surprising: the gadgets have been built with the intention that they work right out of the box with Windows.
I've yet to meet a USB Scanner, External Disk, Digital Camera, or Name-brand Printer that didn't Just Work with Ubuntu. Maybe you've got some obscure edge case device that doesn't work, but they mostly just do.
I can't plug in ethernet after having turned the computer on, rather I have to boot with it plugged in.
I plug and unplug network cables all the time. This is probably a feature of Network-Manager - I'm pretty sure it was enabled by default in Edgy. Dunno, but it's definitely enabled by default in Feisty Beta and it's running great on my Edgy laptop and I don't remember any effort installing it.
1st person shooters are totally out of the question
Wait... which first person shooters run on Linux that you'd expect to work on an embedded 4 generation old Radeon card? Quake III should run fine with the "radeon" drivers.
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That would just tilt the patent system even more in the favor of large companies, patent trolls, and hordes of lawyers. Determining if there is prior art - even well publicized prior art - for a patent can be damn hard. Even an expert in a reasonably specific field (say "Web Programming" here) won't know about all of the potential prior art.
Consider how the law you suggest would effect a big company, a patent troll, and a small entrepreneur. The big company would file the same patents they always did - they'd have their giant legal team go over each patent and every patent would be at least good enough that any marginal application would seem to fall in the "honest mistake" category. The patent troll *only* has lawyers on payroll, and so they can do the same. As for the small business, they can *never* attempt to apply for / enforce even a reasonably legit looking patent against anyone with good lawyers - because if they fail they might go to jail.
That's not always true. For example, the nice pirates you mentioned who ripped the disk and shared it with everyone will probably manage to avoid getting punished for their good deed. Probably because they thought about the issue beforehand.
Maybe if you're driving a car with a low powered engine / bad muffler and a manual transmission. Maybe you can count heartbeats per mile marker or something, but the humans generally aren't precise enough instruments to measure the difference between, say 60mph and 75mph visually.
You're right. There is a confusion of terms going on here. But... I'm pretty sure that you're the one who's confused.
You're right. GNU has produced some applications. The GIMP is an application. GNU Chess is an application. Some would argue that even GCC is an application rather than a system component.
But, the fact that the GNU project has produced some applications to run on the GNU System doesn't change the fact that the GNU System is an operating system. An general purpose modern operating system consists of more than a kernel. Consider the standard system libraries - the code that implements "fprintf(3)" is definitely not part of the kernel, and it's definitely not part of an application - it's part of the operating system. On a GNU/Linux system, that part of the operating system is the GNU C Library.
The "standard libraries" component of an operating system even goes beyond implementing the ANSI C and C++ standards. For example, the various libraries that make up Gnome are part of the standard libraries.
Then there are programs that are not applications. Things like "cupsd" provide operating system services, allowing a GNU/Linux system to print. "acpid" provides power management support. Printing and power management are definitely operating system functions - even if they're not in the kernel.
Then there's an area that confuses the issue on Unix-like systems: Libraries aren't the only kind of standard system interface. In Unix, a significant amount of functionality is provided by standard tools. On something like Windows you might have some sort of "winarchive.dll" that provided a programmatic interface to making archive files. On Unix we don't - we have "tar". It's a standard component of a Unix-like system - application developers will expect it to be there and they'll expect it to provide the standard Unix tape archive interface. It's even part of the POSIX standard. It'd damn hard to argue that any of the standard Unix tools *aren't* part of the operating system. You're definitely not going to tell me that "sort" is an "application" the way Photoshop is.
The correct action here is to prescribe something utterly irrelevant. My doctor always used popsicles when I was a kid (on the basis that some sugar water can't hurt) because he has the force of personality for people to trust him when he says drugs won't help, but if the person demands drugs there are a ton of over-the-counter mild symptom suppressants that the doctor can recommend.
Another really excellent option for people with a cold or flu is Vitamin C. It won't help, but it won't hurt either, and you can say "take this with rest and a lot of liquids and the cold will be gone in a week" with a straight face.
I was there, and I'm pretty sure that never happened.
You're right that the "is the GPL enforcible" question did come up occasionally before the SCO trial started, and the counterargument you give is exactly what many people responded with. I stand by my claim that the question only really showed up with any frequency after it was popularized by SCO.
More importantly, I stand by my comments on the relevance of the question. Very simple, no-one wants the GPL to be invalid because it's the only thing giving them a right to modify and redistribute GPL-covered programs. The question isn't "is the GPL enforceable", the question is "if you're unwilling to comply with the GPL, what gives you the right distribute that copyrighted software?"
There is no requirement for them to distribute a binary. Unless they distribute a binary, there is no requirement to distribute source. Even if they are required to distribute source, they are not required to distribute it at zero cost.
If they really did distribute binaries by sending technicians around with USB keys, they are obligated to provide source to those binaries at their cost of distribution. If they decide that they are going to distribute the source on Dual Layer DVD+Rs they got a bad deal on ($10) and they want to charge $5 shipping and $5 handling, that $20 is a reasonably legitimate distribution charge for source code under the GPL.
In any case, there's on way that GPL version 2 requires them to provide a person anything aside from the source code to any binaries they distributed to that person, or (probably in this case) to anyone that person redistributed binaries to.
If that's true, then some contributor should threaten a copyright infringement case. But, in that case, why does the summary include the following text?
I mean, the GPL has no requirement for binary distribution...
Your question: "The GPL has never been tested in court, is it really legal?" is way over-hyped. It originated as FUD from the SCO case. Legally, the GPL is on really solid ground - even moreso than EULAs for commercial software. It's a copyright license. Either the user agrees to it and gets to take actions not normally allowed by copyright law in exchange for whatever terms are in the license, or they don't and are restricted by copyright law.
But... even if the GPL needed a test case, this wouldn't be it. This case would be about whether $30 was a "reasonable" fee to distribute source code, and given that USB keys are like $15 the judge would probably rule that it's close enough to the cost of media to be OK. Even if the judge ruled that $30 was too much, the penalty would probably only consist of a requirement to charge $25 in the future and refund $5 to anyone who payed $30 and asks for the refund.
This isn't accurate. I'm not a lawyer, but I have actually read the GPL and payed attention to legal discussions related to the GPL.
First, only the copyright holder can sue for copyright infringement. Unless that's you, you have no standing for a copyright infringement claim. There are some other marginal ins you might have, but they don't really apply to this case.
Second, they aren't obviously violating the GPL. The GPL says they need to offer source code to anyone with binaries for the cost of distribution. A USB key + shipping + handling is $30. You could argue about what a reasonable "handling" charge is, but they're not obviously in the wrong.
In the end, this isn't an argument over software freedom or the GPL. It's an argument over $20. And, frankly, $20 doesn't matter that much.
Absolutely false. The GPL source code obligation can be met by providing an offer to deliver source code on physical media, and the distributor is allowed to charge reasonable distribution costs.
Sure. A USB key costs $15 and shipping costs $6. If you challenge them, they'll claim that a USB key costs "over $20". In the end, the point's really not worth arguing - they're gouging a bit, but not in a way that seriously restricts any user's freedoms under the GPL. Hell, it wouldn't be completely unreasonable to argue a $9 handling cost.
This might, technically, be a GPL violation because the price for the redistribution of source code is a little high - but it's definitely not a serious violation.
You're right. Rather than using the GNU System on top of Linux you could take the userspace component of another Free unix-like system and run that on top of Linux. You could build a Solaris/Linux system or a NetBSD/Linux system. In addition, for embedded systems that don't need to be fully functional Unix-like systems, you can put a simpler userspace on top of the Linux kernel - this is commonly seen in embedded systems.
But... you can't claim that Linux is a Unix-like operating system and also claim that the GNU component of GNU/Linux systems is trivial. Without GNU, Linux is not a general purpose operating system - you'd have to drop in an entire other Unix-like system in order to get Unix-like functionality without GNU. Without Linux, the GNU System will run fine on any of the BSD kernels, on the Solaris kernel, or even on the (still not ready for production use) GNU HURD kernel.
To be very simple and clear: The GNU System has produced a Unix-like operating system that most commonly runs on the Linux kernel. The only replacements for GNU are other full Unix-like operating systems.
The GNU/Linux operating system was created as a result of the GNU project. The only two components that could be considered "core" to the GNU/Linux system that aren't the work of the GNU project are Linux and X.org - and we can discount X.org unless you want to tell me that Sun doesn't get to take credit for Solaris. Hell, Solaris with Gnome and X.org has less of a claim to getting to name their operating system than the FSF does with the GNU system.
X is standard on all Unix-like systems. OpenOffice and Gaim are applications, not OS components (you can tell because they are available as Windows apps). GNOME is a part of the GNU system. That leaves - in order of importance - GNU/Linux/tetex. Go ahead and call it that. If you want to shorten it, try GNU/Linux. If you want to shorten that, it shortens to GNU.
The last time I checked, Asus doesn't sell directly. One of the vendors I mentioned (http://www.powernotebooks.com/) is one of their resellers, my current notebook is an Asus that I got from them. They don't have as good a selection of Asus laptops as Asus-Specific vendors like ProPortable (http://www.proportable.com/), but they offer more machines from other manufacturers like Sager and Compal. If those companies don't sound familiar to you, you probably want to read this: http://www.powernotebooks.com/articles/index.php?a ction=fullnews&id=17
It is hard to build a laptop at Newegg, but that doesn't mean that you're out of options and must resort to buying from HP or Dell.
It's possible to buy a whitebox laptop and drop in all the technician-serviceable parts yourself. It's annoying, so I personally try to avoid it.
There are also a number of independent vendors who are happy to sell high quality laptops to Linux users. Some, like http://www.system76.com/ actually sell laptops with Linux installed. Others, like http://www.powernotebooks.com/ sell OS-less laptops and are happy to service machines with Linux installed.
Most people immediately respond "but Dell laptops are cheaper". Three points:
- First, the price difference isn't that large. Start at System76 or PowerNotebooks and pick the system that you want. Then recreate the exact same hardware configuration on the HP/Dell/Lenovo site and compare the prices. Going the other way is harder because the independent vendors have a smaller selection, but it's extremely unlikely that PowerNotebooks doesn't stock a machine that fits your needs.
- Second, if you buy from System76, you *know* your hardware works with Ubuntu (since it comes pre-installed). No janky wireless drivers, no too-new sound card that won't be supported until the next kernel revision. If you buy from PowerNotebooks, it's not quite as good - but they have a Linux support forum where you can discuss your issues with other users (and the owner of the company who watches the forums closely).
- You get what you pay for. Dell brand wireless is $10 cheaper than Intel wireless for a reason. Other components, like power supplies / battery packs / LCD screens are harder to compare because they aren't independently branded. The independent vendors compete on the quality of those components whereas the large vendors will cut every corner they can get away with. I mean - HP won't even post a battery life estimate for its laptops.
"apt-get install uqm" worked for me. I'm running the Feisty Beta.
I was in no way implying that foreign aid was a good thing. Foreign aid keeps people starving and poor, while funding the army of whoever is currently in charge - preventing any sort of revolution that might make things better.
Like I said: A good charity is probably not as bad. A bad charity may be worse.
I donate no money to charities intended to help the extremely poor on other continents - I'm too far removed from them to really understand what's going on, and I'm unwilling to give people (charities) money on the blind assumption that they'll "do the right thing".
Have you donated any money? If so, do you have any evidence that your donation actually goes to feeding starving children rather than - say - just going to whoever happens to be the most corrupt politician in the area?
A reputable private charity is probably better than foreign aid is, but...
That's an excellent example of overgeneralizing to create FUD. Especially the big where you compare the entire international nuclear power industry to Enron. I could compare photovoltaics to AI (research in both started around the same time and we haven't seen any advances in either, investing there is a waste of your time), but that would also be stupid.
But... this requires an accident more severe than the one at Chernobyl. For reasons I've already stated, that seems unlikely.
In regard to the the safety of PWR reactors in the US, yes - the safety model does assume that any loss in primary coolant will be noticed and responded to either by automated computer systems or by an operator hitting the SCRAM button. I agree that this isn't an entirely foolproof safety system, but it would take some pretty unlikely coincidences for it to not prevent a major meltdown.
I am unaware of a single incident recently where a major nuclear accident was narrowly avoided, a "close call". If you have any specific references, please post links. For clarity, before 1980 isn't "recent", and "major" implies that someone (other than the plant operators) could have died.
With a Radeon 9000? Maybe the first Counterstrike, and Quake 3, and the original Unreal, and Doom II.
Actually, ROTC: Enemy Territory might work pretty well on a Radeon 9000. That game's pretty fun, even if it is archaic at this point.
It takes a reasonably specific geometry to allow a nuclear reaction to occur. An arbitrary rearrangement in geometry is likely to serve to stop any ongoing reaction. Additionally, in a reactor like the IFR the passive safety property is not dependent solely on geometry - it is caused by the material properties of the fuel mixture. The fuel mixture is explicitly chosen to expand as it heats up beyond standard operating temperature, thus damping the reaction.
Based on... what? Irrational fear? For the accident at Chernobyl to occur, it took a string of really bad engineering and operation decisions. They turned the safety systems off with no competent engineer who understood the plant design present! Even that wouldn't have caused the accident if the plant had had reasonable safety properties, but the design had a tendency to melt down if you didn't follow proper procedure.
I see no reason to expect a large scale nuclear disaster in the foreseeable future. People are way too twitchy to let that happen, even in the plants that don't have passive safety properties.
What, like that sodium coolant fire in Japan? The one that took one of the safest and most advanced nuclear plants in the world off line for 10 years over an accident that was expensive to fix but posed no nuclear-related threat? Knowing how anti-nuclear protesters will react to even the slightest sign of weakness, there's a good argument that a cover up attempt was the correct business decision.
Check Epson brand scanners. They seem to change their interface more slowly than the other manufacturers and therefore release a lot of scanners that are immediately supported with no extra work by the Sane developers.
Using Linux in that sense is not as useful as you'd think. Saying "Linux-based system" is clearer. But... usually what you really want is "Free Unix System" - there's rarely a case where you really want to include Blue Cat Linux and not include stuff like Nexenta OS or even OpenBSD.
This "reinstall / switch distros at the first sign of trouble" tactic seems odd at best.
Most Linux distributions are not targetted at people who are new to Linux. I'm pretty sure there aren't 10 good user-oriented distros.
For anyone else new to Linux, I have a couple of strong suggestions for you:
- Stick to Ubuntu - you can go exploring in the wilds of random distros later.
- Use the instructions on the Ubuntu site to accomplish basic install tasks: http://help.ubuntu.com/community/
- Try to fix your problems, even ask in the IRC channel or on the forums, before reinstalling. Unlike Windows, a reboot or a re-install won't (usually) magically make your problems go away - if the install process or boot process was going to fix it, it would have done so the first time you installed / booted.
I've yet to meet a USB Scanner, External Disk, Digital Camera, or Name-brand Printer that didn't Just Work with Ubuntu. Maybe you've got some obscure edge case device that doesn't work, but they mostly just do.
I plug and unplug network cables all the time. This is probably a feature of Network-Manager - I'm pretty sure it was enabled by default in Edgy. Dunno, but it's definitely enabled by default in Feisty Beta and it's running great on my Edgy laptop and I don't remember any effort installing it.
Wait... which first person shooters run on Linux that you'd expect to work on an embedded 4 generation old Radeon card? Quake III should run fine with the "radeon" drivers.