I say the more the merrier. Everybody keeps saying "oh why don't all the distros just come together and make a superdistro."
I hate to break it to some, but a lot of the people working on improving the distros (as a hobby or a job) wouldn't be doing so if there was only 1, 3, or even 7 ultra-distros.
Especially the hobbyists. They'd feel like their voice wouldn't be heard, that they are just another cog in the machinery, or the distro doesn't go in the direction they want (can 1 distro satisfy the goals of LPS or Gentoo or Ubuntu or DamnSmall and an Embedded linux all put together?) - and out they'd be out the door, working on something else that interests them.
If someone wants monolithic, go Windows or MacOSX. For me, complaining about the amount of distros is like shitting on someone elses work...
I agree. If I had to choose a degree though, for a young student - I would suggest Electrical Engineering rather than Comp Sci. Many people with EE degrees are good programmers, and generally have much more latitude in what they can do than CS majors - meaning EE people can do everything and more that CS majors can do (meaning moving from job to job in the job market because of qualification).
The nice thing is that you can cross over from hardware to software or the other way with an EE degree. The same can't be said with Comp Sci.
Libel is lying about someone, wherein the information you provide the public isn't even true.
But no outside 3rd parties are constricted by an NDA they didn't sign. It's as simple as that.
However, Apple is simply trying to get the ID of the leak from the rumor sites. The argument is here whether there is a priviledge here (like attorney/client, parent/child) where the sites don't have to reveal their sources...
Gimme a call when the Constitution mentions the government deciding if a particular piece of press has to benefit anyone before "freedom of the press" is "granted."
Would really put a damper on those Celebrity rags.
And wake me up when MS also natively supports Ext3, ReiserFS, etcetera on their own OSes too (do they?). Microsoft not interoperating with others, while everybody else tries to play nice with each other, could eventually lead to it's downturn as it is painting itself into a corner. Especially since they aren't the only game in town (practically) in a lot of areas like they used to be in the late 80's, and most of the 90's.
Perhaps it's just the current version not liking my machine. Along with the custom kernel, I even shut off half the services (daemons) that normally are automatic on startup.
It did become worse with Breezy Badger. The installation of Ubuntu before wasn't so bad, and I'm eagerly awaiting Dapper Drake - as the current version of samba (on BB) doesn't work with Macs (why they don't just fix it in synaptic is beyond me.)
Perhaps that will be a return to normal specs. Anyway, I don't hesitate recommending Ubuntu to people, I just know it's not anywhere as efficient as Gentoo, but then again, with enough horsepower, Ubuntu (and Mepis) is a good distro to get things done without f-ing with the machine too much.
I use Ubuntu daily and from my experience, it is quite bloated in several areas. With my P4 2.6Ghz with 512MB ram (2.5 years old), just browsing my files with the file manager and browsing 6-7 files wasing causing my machine stall constantly while swapping memory in and out of ram.
I still use Ubuntu (userfriendly) but upgraded to 2.5GB ram. It uses normally at 800MB without doing anything special.
The file manager seems to be a resource hog. Yes, I could swap that out via command line, but it defeats the purpose of the distro (ease of use). I already compiled my own kernel to take advantage of my processor, not sure if I want to mess around with the rest of it to just get work done.
It would be useful if, at install time, it could customize the distro by asking a few questions and tailoring stuff like the filemanager, kernel, etcetera to your machine and your preferences.
Wow, I'm just surprised that the discussion isn't centered on "Is this even f-ing patentable?!"
I mean, really, just a couple broadcast flags so their player does this, that, or the other thing? What are our patent standards coming to? This is basic programming 101. And yes, other products before this detected advertising too, IIRC, there was a VCR that could copy programs from TV SANS the advertising already in the 90s.
[quote]The whole concept of taxing income is flawed because income is abstract. It can be manipulated in multiple ways. It would be better to tax something tangible like property or sales - but that would lose politicians their power to play with the tax code to the benefit of their backers.[/quote]
Taxing property is equally flawed. Often, property tax assessment can be inflated by 10-20% than what one would get on the open market. I remember when Washington State used to chare (several years ago) a registration fee based on the value of your car. The BLUEBOOK value. They often assessed unreasonable values based on the best condition for that car, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. They tried to get my friend had to pay a $400+ yearly registration fee because they value his 10 y.o. Mercedes at $15,000+. It has 180K miles on it and he payed $2300 for it in another state before he moved.
Property tax is also unfair because it doesn't assess what you can afford. Older couples may want to keep their big house but can't afford to pay the property tax on it because they don't have the jobs that bought in the money precisely because they are retired. California has (had?) the fairest system where property was taxed at 1% on the original buying price. If people decided to reap the profit on property going sky high, the government would also benefit from the NEW owners who knew what they were getting into, but people wouldn't be forced from their homes simply because suddenly the land became valuable.
Sales tax would be fairest. With rebates/allowments/coupons on clothing/food/necessities for the poor/lower income people. Yes, some loopholes but that is unavoidable in a society that doesn't want to present only faceless rules and have some humanity toward others.
Here is how you can get that job or better yet, get self-employed:
1. Write Sensational Articles In the Realm of Industry X (in this case, Technology) 2. Get a popular blog in that industry to post it for you. (Slashdot.) 3. ??? - (Watch the page hits roll in and have them click on advertising. Use Google Adsense?) 4. Profit! 5. Rinse and repeat
You could also combine 1 & 2 and write your sensational articles on your own blogs, but the more visited blogs tend to offer something substantial, attracting people in the first place....
Yeah. It just sounds like more ways to extract money from the customer under a moniker. I didn't read the article so I don't know if they are talking about the consumer market or the commercial marketplace in this specific instance.
But in the consumer market, ebay has been making it's auction software (blackthorne) a service for the longest time now, where it gets rented for 25 bucks a month (ever since they bought out the company who originally made it). Not too painful monthly, especially if your (small) business relies on it, but not many people would fork over $360 bucks a year, year in and year out, for what is essentially a mediocre (crappy and slow access database) program. It's hardly professional quality stuff, I may add.
The "TV sucks" comments come probably for three major reasons:
1. It's a generational thing. Older people always remember some media when they grew up was different (TV, music, movies) and the new stuff is different and "not how it should be", so it tends to "suck" or just not tend to appeal to them. This also works in reverse with the younger generations watching older stuff.
2. With the advent of videogames and the internet, the younger generations are used to more interactive media. TV is passive, even though they try to make it more superficially interactive (Game shows where you can go online to win a small prize, etcetera), so it is probably aging without anybody really acknowledging the fact.
Actually, to counter this, I've noticed niche programming really get better (and more numerous) the last 10 years as they are catering to smaller and smaller audiences. Of course, the big 3 networks don't do this.
3. It really does suck - the catchall:)
I'm probably a mix of 1 and 2. When I was still watching TV, the only shows I considered worth watching were on comedy central and the discovery/history channels. The big 3 especially seemed like a big waste of time, as everything has either become a reality show, a game show, a psychic-type show, or a CIS-type show. All the great Sit-coms seem to have died with the 90's/early 00's.
This hardly affects me as a consumer (open source, and my pay-for entertainment ALWAYS comes on a disc) but being in the software industry I'd like to know - didn't the federal government have a ban (at least temporary, for the next several years) on internet sales taxes?
Yeah, there can be a multitude of reasons but I think it boils down to: Someone in the chain of command didn't know when to call quits.
When to quit tweaking the game. When to quit adding shit. When to quit revising it. When to quit the project period.
This obviously isn't the game they had in mind years ago, hell, it's been majorly revised several times. The problem is, in that span, a normal team could have gotten several (say 2-4) of the better concepts for a DukeNukem game to market and have had at least one good, if not great game.
As it is, I don't see any strong direction for the game now, it looks like it's being designed to be a jack-of-all-trades. And through all the hype and time, the bar is set so high, that it better be nothing short of spectacular.
Personally, I'm betting it'll be thoroughly mediocre.
As for 'first amendment rights' being abused, I thought they were only rights that the government couldn't abuse, not that any limits on civil suits by corporations were imposed, but hell, I'm a bloody foreigner, so I'm probably wrong.
You are probably correct, but allowing courts to rule, even in civil cases, on speech issues is effectively a government endorsement of the restriction of freedom of speech, as it is a government entity (the courts) enforcing a decision upon the individual, etcetera.
Re:Putting quotes around "trade secrets"
on
Apple vs Bloggers
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I believe the constitution supercedes this act. Or at least it should. In America that is.
I agree with you. I usually like Paul Graham, but he is way off on this.
It sounds like he wants to prentend that patents won't play a big role and be "secondary" and without them, we're all screwed in the "alternative" he mentions.
But if patents are so great, and the alternative so bad, explain the advancement in first years of the computer industry up to the 90s.
It's also ironic that he puts says either you are for patents or you are against patents, if you are against software patents - because software patents are so far from what patents were initially supposed to be.
TFA was void of details relating to the headline, it went on to discuss other aspects of $100 laptop per child program.
Linux is bloated? How? The kernel, or the overall lump-sum of components in most distros? I had the impression the linux kernel itself was pretty small - lending it to embedded apps in the first place. And that a project like this one should have the expertise to build all the necessary components on top.
Ah well, I really don't care what it gets as long as it isn't Windows. Since these things are to be all mesh networked together, something like Plan 9 could prove to be advantageous.
This depends what country in Europe you live in. They all do not have uniformly good public transport.
I lived in Germany, which is head and shoulders above most countries - and even in suburban areas, I could get to a train station on bike within 0-15 minutes. Only the most rural areas had problems (which may contain quite a bit of area but the minority of population).
If you choose where you live correctly, even in a relatively rural area to get cheaper rent, you should have no problem getting around without a car - just train and bike (or walking even).
The other factor that helps is that you can do most of your shopping in close proximity/walking/biking distance to you. Everything tends to be clustered closer together - the grocery store, bank, postal office, and apothecary within 500 feet of each other is not uncommon. Plus, because of zoning - they are close to residential areas.
In America, zoning laws tend to have commercial property (stores) completely separate/away from residential areas. Residential areas will be lonely seas without a store in sight. This type of design creates a car culture.
I live in south-eastern PA, pretty well populated, but still, to go grocery shopping and all that other stuff, I have to drive from one end of town to another, sometimes taking a good 1 1/2 hours IN A CAR just to get everywhere on DAILY errands, nothing special.
Europe has it good compared to how we set it up for ourselves.
Slashdot Mirror
I say the more the merrier. Everybody keeps saying "oh why don't all the distros just come together and make a superdistro."
I hate to break it to some, but a lot of the people working on improving the distros (as a hobby or a job) wouldn't be doing so if there was only 1, 3, or even 7 ultra-distros.
Especially the hobbyists. They'd feel like their voice wouldn't be heard, that they are just another cog in the machinery, or the distro doesn't go in the direction they want (can 1 distro satisfy the goals of LPS or Gentoo or Ubuntu or DamnSmall and an Embedded linux all put together?) - and out they'd be out the door, working on something else that interests them.
If someone wants monolithic, go Windows or MacOSX. For me, complaining about the amount of distros is like shitting on someone elses work...
Though I can sympathize sometimes:)
Can I have her number?
in both America and Europe with the proper SIM card?
I don't know, they might have switched to BD/SM products;)
I agree. If I had to choose a degree though, for a young student - I would suggest Electrical Engineering rather than Comp Sci. Many people with EE degrees are good programmers, and generally have much more latitude in what they can do than CS majors - meaning EE people can do everything and more that CS majors can do (meaning moving from job to job in the job market because of qualification).
The nice thing is that you can cross over from hardware to software or the other way with an EE degree. The same can't be said with Comp Sci.
Libel is lying about someone, wherein the information you provide the public isn't even true.
But no outside 3rd parties are constricted by an NDA they didn't sign. It's as simple as that.
However, Apple is simply trying to get the ID of the leak from the rumor sites. The argument is here whether there is a priviledge here (like attorney/client, parent/child) where the sites don't have to reveal their sources...
Gimme a call when the Constitution mentions the government deciding if a particular piece of press has to benefit anyone before "freedom of the press" is "granted."
Would really put a damper on those Celebrity rags.
And wake me up when MS also natively supports Ext3, ReiserFS, etcetera on their own OSes too (do they?). Microsoft not interoperating with others, while everybody else tries to play nice with each other, could eventually lead to it's downturn as it is painting itself into a corner. Especially since they aren't the only game in town (practically) in a lot of areas like they used to be in the late 80's, and most of the 90's.
Perhaps it's just the current version not liking my machine. Along with the custom kernel, I even shut off half the services (daemons) that normally are automatic on startup.
It did become worse with Breezy Badger. The installation of Ubuntu before wasn't so bad, and I'm eagerly awaiting Dapper Drake - as the current version of samba (on BB) doesn't work with Macs (why they don't just fix it in synaptic is beyond me.)
Perhaps that will be a return to normal specs. Anyway, I don't hesitate recommending Ubuntu to people, I just know it's not anywhere as efficient as Gentoo, but then again, with enough horsepower, Ubuntu (and Mepis) is a good distro to get things done without f-ing with the machine too much.
I use Ubuntu daily and from my experience, it is quite bloated in several areas. With my P4 2.6Ghz with 512MB ram (2.5 years old), just browsing my files with the file manager and browsing 6-7 files wasing causing my machine stall constantly while swapping memory in and out of ram.
I still use Ubuntu (userfriendly) but upgraded to 2.5GB ram. It uses normally at 800MB without doing anything special.
The file manager seems to be a resource hog. Yes, I could swap that out via command line, but it defeats the purpose of the distro (ease of use). I already compiled my own kernel to take advantage of my processor, not sure if I want to mess around with the rest of it to just get work done.
It would be useful if, at install time, it could customize the distro by asking a few questions and tailoring stuff like the filemanager, kernel, etcetera to your machine and your preferences.
Wow, I'm just surprised that the discussion isn't centered on "Is this even f-ing patentable?!"
I mean, really, just a couple broadcast flags so their player does this, that, or the other thing? What are our patent standards coming to? This is basic programming 101. And yes, other products before this detected advertising too, IIRC, there was a VCR that could copy programs from TV SANS the advertising already in the 90s.
[quote]The whole concept of taxing income is flawed because income is abstract. It can be manipulated in multiple ways. It would be better to tax something tangible like property or sales - but that would lose politicians their power to play with the tax code to the benefit of their backers.[/quote]
Taxing property is equally flawed. Often, property tax assessment can be inflated by 10-20% than what one would get on the open market. I remember when Washington State used to chare (several years ago) a registration fee based on the value of your car. The BLUEBOOK value. They often assessed unreasonable values based on the best condition for that car, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. They tried to get my friend had to pay a $400+ yearly registration fee because they value his 10 y.o. Mercedes at $15,000+. It has 180K miles on it and he payed $2300 for it in another state before he moved.
Property tax is also unfair because it doesn't assess what you can afford. Older couples may want to keep their big house but can't afford to pay the property tax on it because they don't have the jobs that bought in the money precisely because they are retired. California has (had?) the fairest system where property was taxed at 1% on the original buying price. If people decided to reap the profit on property going sky high, the government would also benefit from the NEW owners who knew what they were getting into, but people wouldn't be forced from their homes simply because suddenly the land became valuable.
Sales tax would be fairest. With rebates/allowments/coupons on clothing/food/necessities for the poor/lower income people. Yes, some loopholes but that is unavoidable in a society that doesn't want to present only faceless rules and have some humanity toward others.
Here is how you can get that job or better yet, get self-employed:
1. Write Sensational Articles In the Realm of Industry X (in this case, Technology)
2. Get a popular blog in that industry to post it for you. (Slashdot.)
3. ??? - (Watch the page hits roll in and have them click on advertising. Use Google Adsense?)
4. Profit!
5. Rinse and repeat
You could also combine 1 & 2 and write your sensational articles on your own blogs, but the more visited blogs tend to offer something substantial, attracting people in the first place....
Yeah. It just sounds like more ways to extract money from the customer under a moniker. I didn't read the article so I don't know if they are talking about the consumer market or the commercial marketplace in this specific instance.
But in the consumer market, ebay has been making it's auction software (blackthorne) a service for the longest time now, where it gets rented for 25 bucks a month (ever since they bought out the company who originally made it). Not too painful monthly, especially if your (small) business relies on it, but not many people would fork over $360 bucks a year, year in and year out, for what is essentially a mediocre (crappy and slow access database) program. It's hardly professional quality stuff, I may add.
Algorithms shouldn't be patentable either, that's math. Notice I said [b]shouldn't[/b], the real world may say different.
Oh, don't get in such a tizzy over my own bad joke:P
(+ 1 Parent) ;;Funny ;;Ugly/Non-evaluating/Non-existent Pseudo Lisp:)
(- 1 Parent)
The "TV sucks" comments come probably for three major reasons:
1. It's a generational thing. Older people always remember some media when they grew up was different (TV, music, movies) and the new stuff is different and "not how it should be", so it tends to "suck" or just not tend to appeal to them. This also works in reverse with the younger generations watching older stuff.
2. With the advent of videogames and the internet, the younger generations are used to more interactive media. TV is passive, even though they try to make it more superficially interactive (Game shows where you can go online to win a small prize, etcetera), so it is probably aging without anybody really acknowledging the fact.
Actually, to counter this, I've noticed niche programming really get better (and more numerous) the last 10 years as they are catering to smaller and smaller audiences. Of course, the big 3 networks don't do this.
3. It really does suck - the catchall:)
I'm probably a mix of 1 and 2. When I was still watching TV, the only shows I considered worth watching were on comedy central and the discovery/history channels. The big 3 especially seemed like a big waste of time, as everything has either become a reality show, a game show, a psychic-type show, or a CIS-type show. All the great Sit-coms seem to have died with the 90's/early 00's.
No taxes to pay on free stuff.
This hardly affects me as a consumer (open source, and my pay-for entertainment ALWAYS comes on a disc) but being in the software industry I'd like to know - didn't the federal government have a ban (at least temporary, for the next several years) on internet sales taxes?
How would it get around this?
What went wrong?
Yeah, there can be a multitude of reasons but I think it boils down to: Someone in the chain of command didn't know when to call quits.
When to quit tweaking the game. When to quit adding shit. When to quit revising it. When to quit the project period.
This obviously isn't the game they had in mind years ago, hell, it's been majorly revised several times. The problem is, in that span, a normal team could have gotten several (say 2-4) of the better concepts for a DukeNukem game to market and have had at least one good, if not great game.
As it is, I don't see any strong direction for the game now, it looks like it's being designed to be a jack-of-all-trades. And through all the hype and time, the bar is set so high, that it better be nothing short of spectacular.
Personally, I'm betting it'll be thoroughly mediocre.
You are probably correct, but allowing courts to rule, even in civil cases, on speech issues is effectively a government endorsement of the restriction of freedom of speech, as it is a government entity (the courts) enforcing a decision upon the individual, etcetera.
I believe the constitution supercedes this act. Or at least it should. In America that is.
I agree with you. I usually like Paul Graham, but he is way off on this.
It sounds like he wants to prentend that patents won't play a big role and be "secondary" and without them, we're all screwed in the "alternative" he mentions.
But if patents are so great, and the alternative so bad, explain the advancement in first years of the computer industry up to the 90s.
It's also ironic that he puts says either you are for patents or you are against patents, if you are against software patents - because software patents are so far from what patents were initially supposed to be.
TFA was void of details relating to the headline, it went on to discuss other aspects of $100 laptop per child program.
Linux is bloated? How? The kernel, or the overall lump-sum of components in most distros? I had the impression the linux kernel itself was pretty small - lending it to embedded apps in the first place. And that a project like this one should have the expertise to build all the necessary components on top.
Ah well, I really don't care what it gets as long as it isn't Windows. Since these things are to be all mesh networked together, something like Plan 9 could prove to be advantageous.
This depends what country in Europe you live in. They all do not have uniformly good public transport.
I lived in Germany, which is head and shoulders above most countries - and even in suburban areas, I could get to a train station on bike within 0-15 minutes. Only the most rural areas had problems (which may contain quite a bit of area but the minority of population).
If you choose where you live correctly, even in a relatively rural area to get cheaper rent, you should have no problem getting around without a car - just train and bike (or walking even).
The other factor that helps is that you can do most of your shopping in close proximity/walking/biking distance to you. Everything tends to be clustered closer together - the grocery store, bank, postal office, and apothecary within 500 feet of each other is not uncommon. Plus, because of zoning - they are close to residential areas.
In America, zoning laws tend to have commercial property (stores) completely separate/away from residential areas. Residential areas will be lonely seas without a store in sight. This type of design creates a car culture.
I live in south-eastern PA, pretty well populated, but still, to go grocery shopping and all that other stuff, I have to drive from one end of town to another, sometimes taking a good 1 1/2 hours IN A CAR just to get everywhere on DAILY errands, nothing special.
Europe has it good compared to how we set it up for ourselves.