It's not like MS has had the best font renderer forever either. I'm forced to run Windows 2000 on my work machine, and the fonts there don't look quite as nice next to those on my Linux boxes.
I will admit, XP's Cleartype really does look nice, though it goes a bit too far into blurry-land for my taste, depending on the output device. At least the subpixel hinting is tweakable on X11 with fontconfig/Xft.
I've always felt that the fact that there are two major free *nix desktops is a real detriment to normal people adopting free OSes.
Why does that have to be the goal? I'd much prefer a wide variety of choices over being friendly to the average-joe user. Am I being selfish? Not really. The average-joes can have Windows and Mac OS X. I'll stick with Linux.
Note that there's nothing stopping a company from taking a snapshot of GNOME or KDE (or whatever), and spending a year or two turning it into an average-joe-perfect distribution. IMHO, selling to the teeming masses is more the job of a commercial distro vendor than hackers working on a desktop environment. Let the hackers have their fun (I know I do), and let the businessmen make their money by appealing to the largest customer base.
and that's not to mention XFCE which is written in c++ but uses GTK libraries through it's own wrappers or something like that....
Bzzt! Xfce is written in straight C using GTK+ directly. We have a couple support libraries with utility functions and custom widgets, but there are no "wrappers or something like that".
There are currently C++ and Python bindings, but the desktop itself is all written in C.
Then buy an external monitor. You can either have portability or a nice large screen. With a laptop you get the former.
Laptop RAM capabilities are usually limited at 1GB or 2GB.
So? At present, that's more than enough for the majority of users. When need for more actually materialises, expect to see laptops with support for more RAM.
Laptop CPUs cannot generally be upgraded.
Yep, that's a problem. Then again, I've been using an Athlon 1.33GHz on my primary machine for four years now. An upgrade would be nice, but far from required. With new chipsets, CPU sockets, RAM types, etc., if you wait a few years for a CPU upgrade, you're likely to have to replace more than the CPU. For me, I'd need a new motherboard, new RAM, and even a new video card if I wanted a CPU upgrade. To buy significantly powerful parts that would justify the upgrade, I'd likely be spending $400 on it. I'm not saying that that's comparable to spending over $1k on a new laptop, but it's certainly not peanuts.
Sure, a laptop as a desktop replacement isn't suitable for everyone. But in many situations, the benefits of this arrangement far outweigh the downsides.
I really don't get why people bash Microsoft so hard and, in the same breath, talk about using an unlicensed copy of their OS. If you really think their product sucks that much, why not use another product? I can at least somewhat understand stealing something when it's good, but why would you want to steal something that sucks?
Unless you're running some very specialised custom software that's not cross-platform, there's really nothing that you can do with a Windows box that you can't do with an alternative OS.
It's a bunch of primadonna developers developing things the way developers want to. And developers tend to throw every reason at you for why you don't want what you're positive you want (of course, that's usually just bullshit; they just dont' want to put in the extra effort to do what people really want and would rather talk you into wanting what they want you to want).
Yep, and that's the way we likes it. Who are you to tell an unpaid developer, working on something for fun, in his own time, how to write his software? It's possible he doesn't want to "put in the extra effort" because it just doesn't interest him. If his goal is to have a wide user base, then sure, he should listen to his average user. But if he's just scratching an itch and doing what he wants because he enjoys it, all the complaining users can just bugger off.
The solution is tellign developers to start developing for the average end-user that they claim to so desperately want to reach.
I'm a developer. Primarily, I work on a desktop environment and a media player. I work on them because I enjoy working on them and using them. For the most part, I don't care about average end-users[0], and I suspect that many developers in the OSS world[1] don't either.
I hear so many people whining about "what Linux needs", but it really doesn't need anything beyond what its collective developer community needs or wants. I'm tired of people putting words in my mouth about how much I want Linux to take over the desktop. Sure, it would be nice, but I think getting it into a state where it's friendly and "just works" enough for the average end-user will take away a lot of what I find fun about it. Fortunately, I can bet that there'll always be distros that share my viewpoint.
[0] That's a bit of an oversimplification: I care about average end-users when caring about them means working on something I find interesting and fun, and only when implementing average-end-user-specific features doesn't mean dumbing down the software for people like me.
[1] Well, I suppose I'll have to include most (if not all) of the software developers working for companies that want to bring Linux to the "average end-user".
I really don't see anything elitist about using proper spelling and grammar, or suggesting ways that others can improve their skills. Written communication is naturally a bad place for this, since it's hard to sense the tone in which a criticism was given. Was it a gentle correction? Was it a holier-than-thou admonition?
Regardless, I see a post like yours, and I think two things: 1) you take a position with which I don't agree, and 2) you didn't take the time to use proper spelling and grammar. I accept the fact that not everyone is going to agree with my point of view, but at the point that you're disagreeing with me, you're fighting an uphill battle. If your purpose in posting is just to let off steam, then I suppose that doesn't matter, but if you're hoping to change your readers' opinions, you need to use every bit of ammunition at your disposal: a well-reasoned argument, presented clearly, with the best mechanics and writing style you can muster. You failed on all counts.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where what we *mean* is what matters, irrespective of what we say. But that's not the case. I don't have a personal reference for just about all of the people that post to Slashdot. The only thing I have to judge whether or not I think someone has something useful to add to a discussion is their writing.
Others have covered what my reply would be pretty well, but just one more thing to think about: perhaps some publisher (or whatever they had back then) in 1771 decided to try to make copyright infringement sound like a terrible atrocity by calling it "piracy". Back in the 1700s, when a lot of long-distance transportation was done by sea, piracy (that is, the plunder and raping on the high seas) was a very real and common threat that I'd imagine many more people than today thought about. Calling copyright infringement "piracy" back then was sure to shock people into thinking that it really was a bad thing.
Just because a word has been perverted by special interests for a little over 200 years, it doesn't make it right. Copyright infringement is not piracy, plain and simple.
I'm not going to look it up, because I'm both tired and lazy, but I would find the *legal* definition of "piracy" more relevant to the discussion than what OED says.
Sorry, I'm not seeing the relation here. Having a lack of confidence and being insecure in real life gives people the right to deface something that's intended to be a public resource? If you truly believe that, you really need to grow up.
I'm sorry you have social problems, I really am. Growing up, I've had to fight with shyness, insecurity, not being "cool", and being ostrasized. The solution isn't to find an outlet that's hurtful to other people: you're essentially becoming what you hate in the people that shun you.
We have this thing called the "social norm". This isn't always a good thing, but in its purest form, the social norm guides behavior away from things that other people find offensive or hurtful. Does everything always work out as it's supposed to? Of course not. Does it sometimes err too far on the side of being too PC? Sure it does. But, as a whole, it helps keep things sane and civil in the majority of situations.
If you need to vent about the injustices of real life, don't do it in a place where it will cause harm to others. Start a blog or something. Don't embarass yourself by acting like an immature idiot in a well-traveled public place.
To address your final complaint: social constraints aren't opressing you. Your own insecurity is opressing you. Learn to stand up for yourself, and you'll be amazed at how many doors that opens. Sure, that's easier said than done, but there's a very correct saying about how nothing worth doing is ever easy. It's a fact of life; get used to it.
And please. Posting graffiti and trash is not expressing yourself. It's acting like an immature idiot.
Agreed. However, I don't think things are as black and white as far as Nvidia is concerned. What you may not be aware of is that Nvidia uses technology from other companies. Those companies have chosen to keep their technology closed source. Some of it is patented, some copyrighted. In either case, as long as Nvidia wishes to use that technology, they are legally and morally bound to honor their wishes.
Legally, sure. Morally? That's a bit subjective.
The copyright issues are pretty trivial to work around, and I gather from what I've read in various places that Nvidia has worked to minimize the impact of that material. The patented technology, however, presents them with a much larger headache. There really is no safe way to code around known patent issues. You can try, and face the probability of a $20M lawsuit, or fork over some licensing fee and move on. Nvidia chose the latter solution.
Actually, you have it backwards. If the closed-source driver contains code copyrighted by a third party, nvidia cannot release that code without the third party's consent. Patents in this case are irrelevant. In fact, the *point* of a patent is that it's public. A patent -- a temporary monopoly on an invention -- is granted in return for the materials in that patent being made public knowledge. Now, if nvidia's patent license with a third party states that nvidia cannot implement the patented tech in open source code, that's a problem. It's just as easy (or hard) to "work around" that situation as it is a copyright problem.
Anyway, you're still missing the original poster's point. The point is, the core value of Linux is that it's open source. Having closed-source drivers for it defeats that core value. Would it be better if we didn't have a closed-source driver for nvidia? Perhaps not immediately, but the lack of that driver (perhaps because Linux's license disallows binary-only drivers), coupled with consumer demand, might eventually pressure nvidia to create a comparable open source driver.
Having said all that, I have two nvidia boards in two PCs. They both run Linux, and I have the binary driver running on both. When I think about it though, I don't need it. I don't do anything that requires 3D acceleration, and what 2D acceleration that is present in the open source driver should be enough for my needs. And if not... well, it's not all that big a deal. It's just a video card; I can live without the fancy features.
I'm rather wondering what the company's founder is doing maintaining its servers. If his company is small enough that he's his own IT guy, then fine, but otherwise he's butting in where he doesn't belong. Let the IT staff do their jobs (maintaining computers and making technology decisions) and Lok should do his job (running an innovative company).
I don't really think CS PhD's make good sysadmins by definition. Most of the CS PhD's I know are either professors, work for research labs, or work with designing complex & critical software systems. They don't maintain computer systems. CS != IT, and computer scientists don't necessarily make the best programmers. Some people really need to get that through their heads. Forbes either doesn't know any better, or just wanted to feed de Raadt's troll. Probably a combination of the two.
Then you get penalised for owing too much. I know if you're self-employed you're required to pay taxes quarterly, based on your estimated full-year take. I imagine you could probably do that as a normal salaried employee as well, if you so desired.
I know this may break your heart or blow your mind, but some people have trouble saving money. Getting a tax refund is a nice way of forcing yourself to do so if you have problems doing it voluntarily.
That's a pretty good example of a "nanny state" enforcing morality and running our personal lives.
If you don't *want* a refund in April, just fill out your W-4 form properly so less money is taken out of each paycheck. Do it right, and you can end up very close to breaking even come tax time. I believe there are even calculators to help you do this.
That hardly qualifies as "enforcing morality" or "running our personal lives".
It failed? Campusfood.com has been going for several years now, and seems to still be going strong. Though perhaps their college focus is what keeps them in business: I'd imagine college students order takeout much more than your average person.
I'm not sure what the point is that you're trying to make. But yes, I do end up passing 11-1 on the way to the weather (annoyingly, my TV doesn't let me tune specific subchannels, I have to use channel up/down to navigate to them).
I'm not a really big TV watcher. I have a few shows that I watch, and, before I got the HD antenna, I usually downloaded them (HD captures) to get better-than-SD quality as well as widescreen. Now that I have the antenna, and can actually watch them in HD as they air, I tend to watch them as they're broadcast more often. Generally my decisions on what TV shows to watch are based on recommendation, not just flipping through channels to see what's on.
Regardless, it's nice of NBC to air 24/7 weather that's actually relevant to my region, unlike the weather channel.
Agreed. Where I live (SF bay area), one of the local NBC afilliates runs 24-hour weather on channel 11-2. It's quite useful.
I suspect that Fox (to use your example) doesn't want to give up the revenue they get from the cable companies for their cable-only channels. I don't recall, but I assume these channels already have advertising on them? If so, there's nothing to gain in their case by dropping off the cable networks. Well, unless the advertisers will pay more to get more eyeballs. Ugh. Too many factors ^_~.
When everything switched over from black and white to color, nobody expected color TVs to be as cheap as black and white TV.
Except that there was no "switch". The color capabilities were added to the TV standard rather cleverly, so that black-and-white TV sets could receive color signals and still display them in black and white. If consumers didn't want to upgrade to a shiny new color TV, they didn't have to, and didn't lose any of their existing service or functionality.
Get to the basics. Digital IS analog. No matter how you try to look at it, that pulse of energy at every diode, wire, processor, anything, is an analog wave. Even "digital" information transferred across a network wire, it's still analog pulses of electricity. Fiber optic? Analog light wave. Digital is a pure and simple bullshit term.
I wouldn't call it "bullshit"; I would call it misunderstood. Of course all transmissions are inherently analog. While the teeming masses may not know any better ("It's teh digital! Digital is teh better!"), the real distinction between analog and digital is the way the data is encoded.
The real win with digital encoding (well, any well-designed digital encoding, anyway) is that it allows you to build in error correction, which gives you really great noise tolerance. Analog is simply that: analog. You get what you get. Sure, there are noise-reduction algorithms you can use, but those are reactive: you have a crap signal and you try to make it better. Digital is the opposite: you build in noise-resistant and -correcting features from the start, and use them if necessary. You sound well-informed about this sort of stuff, so I'm sure I don't need to tell you that a rather weak and noisy digial signal can often be almost perfectly reconstructed. With analog you just get nasty snow and visual artifacts.
So sure, it's all analog in the end, but digital encoding is the way to go when you can't control the environment.
Joel Spolsky wrote a pretty informative article about the dangers of software rewrites. He makes some excellent points (and uses Netscape/Mozilla as his example), though I do disagree that rewrites are *always* a bad thing. It's probably true that there's a strong tendency to pronounce old code dead prematurely in the OSS world, however.
I'm not really talking about this specific instance, with a sample size of 1 and a random error of 100%, but about something much larger, and much more important.
Then why are you using it for comparison? Sure, police brutality (or even just "over-hostileness") is a problem in some places, and needs to be dealt with. But if you'll even admit that you aren't even talking about this specific instance, you're offtopic and misleading, and obviously don't know the first thing about making a point.
How hard would it have been for the cops to let that woman vent for ten minutes and finally calm down enough to behave?
Because that's the image of law enforcement we want people to have: if you don't want to be arrested, just act like a bitch and take your time, and the officers (IMO very reasonable and professional, in this case) will just dick around and wait for you. Right.
A black woman pulled over by two white cops has many valid and legitimate reasons to fear for her safety. The cops did nothing to allay those fears; instead they chose to reinforce their authority with physical pain.
Ridiculous: don't try to play the race card. The officers acted very professionally, did not make idle threats, and were forceful in their tone of voice without being belligerent. What are they supposed to say? "Yes miss, we know you're black and we're white, but we promise we're not racist and aren't going to hurt you if you cooperate." The woman, on the other hand, showed absolutely no respect for his position. He only escalated his level of force when the previous level was not getting results. 1) Ask her to get out of the car (several times). 2) Attempt to use physical force to remove her from the car. 3) Threaten use of the taser (several times). 4) Actually use the taser. So what, are they suppose to threaten use of a weapon, and then back down when she doesn't comply?
When law enforcement brings a combative response to a hostile situation, well, that's exactly what happened at Waco. Do you condone burning children to death in an attempt to serve a warrant?
Straw man. This has nothing to do with the case at hand. Gradually escalating levels of force were tried until one worked. It's the woman's own damned fault that she was tasered, and IMO she got what she deserved. Hell, she even gave them a hard time after the tasering, while they were trying to get her into the car, after clearly overreacting to the taser shock (note that one of the officers stated that he had been tasered before, and knew she was overreacting).
I'm all for giving people reasonable chances to behave properly and take responsibility for their actions, but this woman clearly crossed the line. Driving with a suspended license is a felony, as is resisting arrest, and was treated appropriately in this situation.
On a side note, it's nice to have the actual footage of the incident. There are two other accounts linked to that article about alleged misuses of the taser, and they're just articles: a journalist's impression of what happened. At face value, I'd be sympathetic to those that were tasered, and I might be in this case as well if it was just an article without a video. After seeing exactly what happened with this traffic stop, I'm less inclined to trust that the police were overzealous in the other two incidents.
DVI on my friend's Powerbook can do 1920x1080, so I'd guess yes. Not sure about 1600x1200 though, but I imagine so. It seems like it would be pretty shortsighted to design it so it can't get that high.
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It's not like MS has had the best font renderer forever either. I'm forced to run Windows 2000 on my work machine, and the fonts there don't look quite as nice next to those on my Linux boxes.
I will admit, XP's Cleartype really does look nice, though it goes a bit too far into blurry-land for my taste, depending on the output device. At least the subpixel hinting is tweakable on X11 with fontconfig/Xft.
Note that there's nothing stopping a company from taking a snapshot of GNOME or KDE (or whatever), and spending a year or two turning it into an average-joe-perfect distribution. IMHO, selling to the teeming masses is more the job of a commercial distro vendor than hackers working on a desktop environment. Let the hackers have their fun (I know I do), and let the businessmen make their money by appealing to the largest customer base.
There are currently C++ and Python bindings, but the desktop itself is all written in C.
Actually, I know quite a few Chinese/Taiwanese people (Mandarin speakers, mainly) who have a little trouble with the English 'R' sound.
Sure, a laptop as a desktop replacement isn't suitable for everyone. But in many situations, the benefits of this arrangement far outweigh the downsides.
I really don't get why people bash Microsoft so hard and, in the same breath, talk about using an unlicensed copy of their OS. If you really think their product sucks that much, why not use another product? I can at least somewhat understand stealing something when it's good, but why would you want to steal something that sucks?
Unless you're running some very specialised custom software that's not cross-platform, there's really nothing that you can do with a Windows box that you can't do with an alternative OS.
I hear so many people whining about "what Linux needs", but it really doesn't need anything beyond what its collective developer community needs or wants. I'm tired of people putting words in my mouth about how much I want Linux to take over the desktop. Sure, it would be nice, but I think getting it into a state where it's friendly and "just works" enough for the average end-user will take away a lot of what I find fun about it. Fortunately, I can bet that there'll always be distros that share my viewpoint.
[0] That's a bit of an oversimplification: I care about average end-users when caring about them means working on something I find interesting and fun, and only when implementing average-end-user-specific features doesn't mean dumbing down the software for people like me.
[1] Well, I suppose I'll have to include most (if not all) of the software developers working for companies that want to bring Linux to the "average end-user".
I really don't see anything elitist about using proper spelling and grammar, or suggesting ways that others can improve their skills. Written communication is naturally a bad place for this, since it's hard to sense the tone in which a criticism was given. Was it a gentle correction? Was it a holier-than-thou admonition?
Regardless, I see a post like yours, and I think two things: 1) you take a position with which I don't agree, and 2) you didn't take the time to use proper spelling and grammar. I accept the fact that not everyone is going to agree with my point of view, but at the point that you're disagreeing with me, you're fighting an uphill battle. If your purpose in posting is just to let off steam, then I suppose that doesn't matter, but if you're hoping to change your readers' opinions, you need to use every bit of ammunition at your disposal: a well-reasoned argument, presented clearly, with the best mechanics and writing style you can muster. You failed on all counts.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where what we *mean* is what matters, irrespective of what we say. But that's not the case. I don't have a personal reference for just about all of the people that post to Slashdot. The only thing I have to judge whether or not I think someone has something useful to add to a discussion is their writing.
Others have covered what my reply would be pretty well, but just one more thing to think about: perhaps some publisher (or whatever they had back then) in 1771 decided to try to make copyright infringement sound like a terrible atrocity by calling it "piracy". Back in the 1700s, when a lot of long-distance transportation was done by sea, piracy (that is, the plunder and raping on the high seas) was a very real and common threat that I'd imagine many more people than today thought about. Calling copyright infringement "piracy" back then was sure to shock people into thinking that it really was a bad thing.
Just because a word has been perverted by special interests for a little over 200 years, it doesn't make it right. Copyright infringement is not piracy, plain and simple.
I'm not going to look it up, because I'm both tired and lazy, but I would find the *legal* definition of "piracy" more relevant to the discussion than what OED says.
Sorry, I'm not seeing the relation here. Having a lack of confidence and being insecure in real life gives people the right to deface something that's intended to be a public resource? If you truly believe that, you really need to grow up.
I'm sorry you have social problems, I really am. Growing up, I've had to fight with shyness, insecurity, not being "cool", and being ostrasized. The solution isn't to find an outlet that's hurtful to other people: you're essentially becoming what you hate in the people that shun you.
We have this thing called the "social norm". This isn't always a good thing, but in its purest form, the social norm guides behavior away from things that other people find offensive or hurtful. Does everything always work out as it's supposed to? Of course not. Does it sometimes err too far on the side of being too PC? Sure it does. But, as a whole, it helps keep things sane and civil in the majority of situations.
If you need to vent about the injustices of real life, don't do it in a place where it will cause harm to others. Start a blog or something. Don't embarass yourself by acting like an immature idiot in a well-traveled public place.
To address your final complaint: social constraints aren't opressing you. Your own insecurity is opressing you. Learn to stand up for yourself, and you'll be amazed at how many doors that opens. Sure, that's easier said than done, but there's a very correct saying about how nothing worth doing is ever easy. It's a fact of life; get used to it.
And please. Posting graffiti and trash is not expressing yourself. It's acting like an immature idiot.
Anyway, you're still missing the original poster's point. The point is, the core value of Linux is that it's open source. Having closed-source drivers for it defeats that core value. Would it be better if we didn't have a closed-source driver for nvidia? Perhaps not immediately, but the lack of that driver (perhaps because Linux's license disallows binary-only drivers), coupled with consumer demand, might eventually pressure nvidia to create a comparable open source driver.
Having said all that, I have two nvidia boards in two PCs. They both run Linux, and I have the binary driver running on both. When I think about it though, I don't need it. I don't do anything that requires 3D acceleration, and what 2D acceleration that is present in the open source driver should be enough for my needs. And if not... well, it's not all that big a deal. It's just a video card; I can live without the fancy features.
I'm rather wondering what the company's founder is doing maintaining its servers. If his company is small enough that he's his own IT guy, then fine, but otherwise he's butting in where he doesn't belong. Let the IT staff do their jobs (maintaining computers and making technology decisions) and Lok should do his job (running an innovative company).
I don't really think CS PhD's make good sysadmins by definition. Most of the CS PhD's I know are either professors, work for research labs, or work with designing complex & critical software systems. They don't maintain computer systems. CS != IT, and computer scientists don't necessarily make the best programmers. Some people really need to get that through their heads. Forbes either doesn't know any better, or just wanted to feed de Raadt's troll. Probably a combination of the two.
Then you get penalised for owing too much. I know if you're self-employed you're required to pay taxes quarterly, based on your estimated full-year take. I imagine you could probably do that as a normal salaried employee as well, if you so desired.
That hardly qualifies as "enforcing morality" or "running our personal lives".
It failed? Campusfood.com has been going for several years now, and seems to still be going strong. Though perhaps their college focus is what keeps them in business: I'd imagine college students order takeout much more than your average person.
I'm not sure what the point is that you're trying to make. But yes, I do end up passing 11-1 on the way to the weather (annoyingly, my TV doesn't let me tune specific subchannels, I have to use channel up/down to navigate to them).
I'm not a really big TV watcher. I have a few shows that I watch, and, before I got the HD antenna, I usually downloaded them (HD captures) to get better-than-SD quality as well as widescreen. Now that I have the antenna, and can actually watch them in HD as they air, I tend to watch them as they're broadcast more often. Generally my decisions on what TV shows to watch are based on recommendation, not just flipping through channels to see what's on.
Regardless, it's nice of NBC to air 24/7 weather that's actually relevant to my region, unlike the weather channel.
Agreed. Where I live (SF bay area), one of the local NBC afilliates runs 24-hour weather on channel 11-2. It's quite useful.
I suspect that Fox (to use your example) doesn't want to give up the revenue they get from the cable companies for their cable-only channels. I don't recall, but I assume these channels already have advertising on them? If so, there's nothing to gain in their case by dropping off the cable networks. Well, unless the advertisers will pay more to get more eyeballs. Ugh. Too many factors ^_~.
The real win with digital encoding (well, any well-designed digital encoding, anyway) is that it allows you to build in error correction, which gives you really great noise tolerance. Analog is simply that: analog. You get what you get. Sure, there are noise-reduction algorithms you can use, but those are reactive: you have a crap signal and you try to make it better. Digital is the opposite: you build in noise-resistant and -correcting features from the start, and use them if necessary. You sound well-informed about this sort of stuff, so I'm sure I don't need to tell you that a rather weak and noisy digial signal can often be almost perfectly reconstructed. With analog you just get nasty snow and visual artifacts.
So sure, it's all analog in the end, but digital encoding is the way to go when you can't control the environment.
Joel Spolsky wrote a pretty informative article about the dangers of software rewrites. He makes some excellent points (and uses Netscape/Mozilla as his example), though I do disagree that rewrites are *always* a bad thing. It's probably true that there's a strong tendency to pronounce old code dead prematurely in the OSS world, however.
Fine, but don't use a healthy birch to describe the patch of dead and rotting redwoods.
I'm all for giving people reasonable chances to behave properly and take responsibility for their actions, but this woman clearly crossed the line. Driving with a suspended license is a felony, as is resisting arrest, and was treated appropriately in this situation.
On a side note, it's nice to have the actual footage of the incident. There are two other accounts linked to that article about alleged misuses of the taser, and they're just articles: a journalist's impression of what happened. At face value, I'd be sympathetic to those that were tasered, and I might be in this case as well if it was just an article without a video. After seeing exactly what happened with this traffic stop, I'm less inclined to trust that the police were overzealous in the other two incidents.
DVI on my friend's Powerbook can do 1920x1080, so I'd guess yes. Not sure about 1600x1200 though, but I imagine so. It seems like it would be pretty shortsighted to design it so it can't get that high.