Umm...Linux is not based on code from any Unix...Its as related to SVR4 as it is to Windows. Remeber, Linux is not Unix. Its simply a kernel that works like a true-blue Unix kernel. But isn't.
In my limited international experience, Americans do work more than workers in other countries. For example, I was just in Germany, and everything opened late and closed early. The only things open past 7PM were bars and restaurants. I suppose thats the only thing that matters after 7PM, because it was nice leaving the hostels at 8PM to go drink a beer or three. Its also like that in Australia. Its hard to find something in America that isn't open from 8AM-8PM. Hell, even PHARMACIES are closed in Germany on weekends. Very shitty for those who are sick.
PS: Lowenbrau! (yes, I forgot umlauts. So sue me.)
Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Half-Life, Final Fantasy VI, Baldur's Gate I/II, and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask all are what I would consider the most affecting games I've ever played. Link to the Past was one of the first games I've ever played, and it was really good and I still play it today. Super Metroid really drew me in, and even with no dialogue, I could still feel the story progressing. When I met Ridley for the second time, I felt as if it was time to get revenge. Half-Life seemed, to me at least, to follow the general model of Super Metroid, and it scared the crap out of me. Final Fantasy VI made me think about all sorts of huge issues that, as an eight year old, I didn't understand, but as time has passed, I still remember the game vividly. Baldur's Gate made me feel as if I was truly affecting the world, and when Imoen and Irenicus were thrown in prison in BGII, I was angered. I had come to like all the characters in my BGI party, so I was glad to have Minsc and Jaheria in my party. Many people don't like Majora's Mask, though I don't know why. Its far darker than most of the series, and parts of that game are creepy and scary. The character interactions made the game great though. You get to understand Link and all the characters if you do all sorts of stuff, which is really interesting, since many of the characters will remind you of people you know in Real Life.
I've played many games, and these games are my favorites, because they are so affecting.
Just get a bunch of friends together, and go talk to the administration. Our school has a Cisco certification course, and while most of the members of the club come from that course, some, like myself, don't.
And, you won't become the societal rejects that everyone is yelling about here. I *personally* don't have a girlfriend right now, but a lot of the others do. It will have no impact on your social life, contrary to popular belief.
Another comment I've seen is that there is no need for a computer club, since everyone has one. In ours, everyone could be considered an enthusiast. We aren't the average AIM-junkie teens, even if we use AIM to communicate when we're on our computers. Many of us run Linux (myself included), program (ditto), and generally know a lot about computers.
We aren't social outcasts, we just have different interests than others. It may be different because we are living in a generally upper-class area, I don't know.
However, in starting this club, you'll meet many cool interesting people. LAN parties and dumpster diving is fun!
Amen to that. As you personally know, my gigantic noisy fan is the only thing keeping my Athlon 1.4GHz T-Bird from overheating. Its not overclocked either. And, as others have said, German economy? What does it have to do with this? AMD is an American company.
Bah! ACME Gnome Extermination has, in my experience, been a waste of money and time. I prefer calling in the...
KDE Extermination Service. Their superior technology and leadership has led them to victory against the GNOMEs time and time again. Their great Konqueror crushed the Gnome legions before, and can do it again. Even the mighty Gnome Republican Guard fall when faced with the awesome power of the Konqi Special Forces!
IBM doesn't produce a distribution of their own. They have no interest in eliminating other distributions, they just want to provide hardware, software, and services for Linux.
Re:"Young lady, in this house we obey the laws...
on
Energy From Vibrations
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Thermodynamics states that it is impossible. A quick summary: There is a constant amount of energy in the universe, and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Now, if we had this mythical cell phone, and it rings, the phone is using the battery to make the ringer ring. Energy is always lost in a reaction (well, not exactly lost, since energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it is unrecoverable by the phone), and the conversion of the vibration of the ring to energy storable by the battery also "costs" energy. The energy used in the reaction is lost (converted to heat), and only a small bit is returned to the battery. It may extend battery life, but not lead to infinite talk time.
If I'm wrong, feel free to correct/flame/mod down.
It is my philosophy that everyone should learn to program. Not only does programming gain you a greater understanding of computers, but you also get a deeper understanding of mathematics, and the American school system is horrible at teaching both of those.
Go to the Python web site, find some good tutorials, and give them that. Once they learn Python, give them PyGame, and let them code play around.
1. Performance. XFree is pretty fast for me, and while it could be faster, its still very usable. And I don't think network transparency really affects speed if you aren't using it, either. Locally, you're just using Unix sockets. It may add to the binary, and sit there and collect dust. I say that they add an option to disable network transparency, which is probably what you are talking about.
2. Standardization. This is not the point of X. Its a windowing system, not a toolkit or window manager/desktop. Everyone should use Qt, however:)
3. Easier Configuration. Most autoconfig tools like DrakXConf (or whatever it is) configures most hardware in a snap. And while the config files can be simplified, remember, its massive, complex and not some small project with two or three options. Its a freaking windowing system. Besides, how many times do you have to configure X, anyway? I just copy my XF86Config and replace it when I install a new distro.
I've had two KDS monitors. The first one died about two weeks after purchase, so I returned it, and then the second one just died (the same day as my hard drive went in the crapper, too...)
I will never purchase a KDS monitor again, and I advise everyone to avoid them.
Mandrake 9.1 does all of this automatically. And RPMs/Debs are vastly superior to Windows installers, since they are consistent (if built for the distro) and almost always work. All I have to do is click on an RPM, type in the root password, and it installs the RPM and all its dependencies quickly and easily. In Windows, you wade through license agreements, and stuff like that.
Mandrake's config tools work fine, and I could change the refresh rate with it if I wanted to. However, I prefer editing XF86Config by hand.
Don't get me started on the brain damages of Windows, either...
The EULA is an "agreement" between you and the company that you won't do anything they prohibit with your license. A license is simply a document saying that this software is legally yours, and generally has a serial number on it. The EULA usually states you can't copy licenses software for non-licensed users, so there you go.
I first programmed with Microsoft QBASIC. I thought it was awesome, but I was a young kid at the time. Hell, I made some pretty cool things. Things have changed since then. When I was trying to learn C++, BASIC came back to haunt me. I did not understand even how to use functions and loops properly, so that was bad, and I gave up. Python, however, was so clear and simple I actually learned more about C++ using Python than C++!
I recommend Python, since you can write some very good programs quickly and its just plain fun. I'd also recommend Scheme, simply because of the functional nature and the enlightenment they will gain from using it.
Also try using PyGame after you get the basics down to give the kids something interesting and fun to do.
RTFA...The sound is meant to be used as a weapon, and the writer got to see how it worked. The writer was nauseated and in pain at one percent of what it would be on the battlefield.
This is some scary stuff. I can't begin to imagine how horrible this could make life.
Some industrious Linux elves have built a data extraction tool. You can find it here
I'm guessing someone could probably make a package of the difference between the data on the CDs and the 1.29 required by the client, but you could probably extract the data from the patch files.
There will be in the not so distant future. That language will be called English. It may not be the English you and I speak, but it will be a form of it. Why? English is common, and is a simple language. Don't let others tell you it isn't. It doesn't have multiple cases, declination (or declension), etc. There are many exceptions in English, but the same as many languages.
However, there is a good reason to keep other languages around, beyond academic interest. Take German, for example. The language is fairly complicated, but as I learned German, my understanding of English increased. I speak and write better English than before I learned German. Now, while you and I wouldn't learn or study dead languages, a researcher could see something useful, use it in their writing, others pick up on it, and it spreads, until you and I use it daily. I think its a great idea to preserve languages. Granted, I like language, so I may be biased.
I remember my elementary school and middle school days. Its been this way for years, since I started going to school 11 years ago. In 4th grade, I remember the class also had some 5th graders in it. The teacher had both halves working on different assignments, and I could do the math delegated to the fifth grade segment of the class faster then they could after they had been learning it for a while. It was pitiful. In 7th and 8th grade, I still breezed through math. Sadly, the school didn't think I could, though, and placed me in a standard math class. They offered high school credit algebra, and they know I should have taken algebra. Now, I am still good at math (I'm taking algebra II now), and I still belong in a higher level class. I do my work, I know how to do most of the things we are shown, and the damn school doesn't allow you to take classes elsewhere to get up to the appropriate level to take the most advanced math class they offer, AP Calculus AB, so now I have to find the appropriate loophole in Arizona law to bypass the need to take the prerequisite class my senior year. The American education system is a joke. It is so reliant on the assumption that all students are dumb and ignorant idiots that the exceptional students are forced to be at the same level as the ones that really are dumb and ignorant.
Even the teachers believe that the American education system is terrible!
The American education system does have some measures to make sure the brighter students are learning and challenged, but these are open to only a select few who meet the prerequisite requirements. And these prerequisite requirements require the schools to have recognised your ability years beforehand. My AP American History class is incredible, and it is one of the few classes I enjoy, mainly because it is interesting and not dumbed down. If you aren't familiar with the AP program, it provides for university level classes in high school. I don't know how well the classes do in that regard, but AP Am. Hist. is a great class, and everyone in it is intelligent and understands what is going on. Because we are expected to.
And science in middle school is a joke. It was 6 years ago. It was 4 years ago. It still is. Its not science. Its just a filler class. We built mousetrap cars. Why? Not a clue. The teacher never explained the physics, and we were just supposed to build the cars.
Textbooks are terrible for most subjects in school, anyway, so it doesn't matter.
Oh, and we spent three days covering World War II. You have a problem with that?
"FDR, sitting in his car, smoking a cigar, driving over tar, he's gone to far, he's gone to far." If you get this, all I have to say is "Wie heisst du?"
Someone finally agrees with me! Microsoft's OSes are confusing as hell, with My Computer trying to hide away the drive letters, and then forcing you to go through it to reach the drive of choice. It is the most frustrating part of Windows. Luckily, using \ will take you to the root of the C:\ drive, which makes life easier, though still frustrating when you need to access another device. And that control panel...Why is it so hard to access the Device Manager in XP? Its the only part of the control panel I use regularly.
And the criticism of KDE and GNOME was horribly misplaced. Konqueror is as stable as a rock, and I use it for daily browsing! KDE applications are far more consistent than Windows and Mac applications, and also far more usable. And the complaints about X not being integrated in the kernel...X is not bad, and while its not the best, its much better than the Windows NT GUI server. I don't think it reaches the niceness of OpenGL accelerated Aqua, but its getting there. As for screen size, XP is unusable at low resolutions, and so is Mac OS.
And the programming paradigm section was wrong. I don't care how much you hate C, review the toolkit, not the language. I personally don't like GTK for programming, bowever, saying that GTKmm is a hack is wrong. It works, albeit not as nicely as Qt, which is God's gift to C++ progammers. MFC is the exact opposite. It always bugs me, though, that people complain that an API doesn't work the way they want it to. If you're using MFC, you should use it the way it was meant to be used, and so forth and so on.
Oh, and I've never touched BeOS, so I don't know how it is.
It won't be as cheap as other x86 chips, but remember, it is NOT an x86. Opterons will be expensive, but their desktop/workstation counterparts, the Athlon64, probably will be competitive with the fastest Intel chips in price and performance. If AMD isn't fudging its numbers, and a 2000 MHz Opteron is competitive with a 3600 MHz Pentium 4, I think that the future is bright for AMD and their chips. I do want one, and I will buy an Athlon64 machine to run Linux and Windows. If AMD can keep the prices on the Athlon64s comparable to the Pentium 4 or Barton, people will buy them. Hammer is not just for high end workstations and servers, AMD is aiming it at desktops too. This will replace their current line of Athlons, so I should hope its priced well.
I agree, I don't have an XBox, but Live is a great plan. Its not that expensive for the end users, and the developers have all the tools needed to play online, so they can focus on the game. However, EA probably has a point. They probably want their PS2 and XBox products to work together, so it doesn't matter which you own. With Microsoft running Live, its not a possibility.
Microsoft seems to be adapting to the fact that nobody trusts them quite well. It will be interesting to see what sort of things come out of Redmond in the coming years.
Him: Hast du ein Handy? (Do you have a cellphone?) Me: Was heisst Handy? (What does 'handy' mean?) Him: Ein Handy! Guck, das Maedchen. Sie hat ein Handy! (A cellphone! Look, that girl, she has a cellphone.) Me: A cellphone? How does HANDY mean CELLPHONE?
Anyway, I think moneyless transactions are the future. For obvious reasons, it should be run by private corporations, all adhereing to a single standard. I don't want my government managing my money, since they will make mistakes. I'm guessing this is a perfect startup, since many people get frustrated with cash and classic magnetic cards, and this seems like a perfect solution. However, would it be secure? I don't want somebody intercepting the wireless signals and being able to decrypt them. Sadly, if this gets off the ground, some company will use that excuse to develop proprietary systems and create a monopoly.
Actually, I had many problems with Red Hat/Mandrake RPMs. They are named differently, and that can make a big difference. If you have GTK installed via a SuSE RPM (say gtk-lib-2.2.i386.rpm) and then you install the Red Hat GNOME 2.2 RPMs, Red Hat may package their GNOME RPMs to require the package gtk-2.2, while SuSE provides gtk-lib-2.2. Its a pretty nasty system. Note that this is probably not the exact way the packages are identified, but small inconsistencies like this are what cause problems.
I no longer use SuSE, so its not a problem for me.
UnitedLinux is only in SuSE's highend server offerings. UnitedLinux is based on SuSE Enterprise Server. I don't think that many other Linux vendors other than Red Hat have the influence, money, and talent that SuSE does, and their distro is pretty nice. The availability of SuSE packages, however, is pretty limited. I gave up with it because I couldn't find any packages for anything I wanted, and I couldn't find any SuSE docs that described how to make an RPM, and I like my packages to fit in with standards of the distro. RPMFind was pretty useless for finding SuSE packages...
Slashdot Mirror
Umm...Linux is not based on code from any Unix...Its as related to SVR4 as it is to Windows. Remeber, Linux is not Unix. Its simply a kernel that works like a true-blue Unix kernel. But isn't.
In my limited international experience, Americans do work more than workers in other countries. For example, I was just in Germany, and everything opened late and closed early. The only things open past 7PM were bars and restaurants. I suppose thats the only thing that matters after 7PM, because it was nice leaving the hostels at 8PM to go drink a beer or three. Its also like that in Australia. Its hard to find something in America that isn't open from 8AM-8PM. Hell, even PHARMACIES are closed in Germany on weekends. Very shitty for those who are sick.
PS: Lowenbrau! (yes, I forgot umlauts. So sue me.)
Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Half-Life, Final Fantasy VI, Baldur's Gate I/II, and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask all are what I would consider the most affecting games I've ever played. Link to the Past was one of the first games I've ever played, and it was really good and I still play it today. Super Metroid really drew me in, and even with no dialogue, I could still feel the story progressing. When I met Ridley for the second time, I felt as if it was time to get revenge. Half-Life seemed, to me at least, to follow the general model of Super Metroid, and it scared the crap out of me. Final Fantasy VI made me think about all sorts of huge issues that, as an eight year old, I didn't understand, but as time has passed, I still remember the game vividly. Baldur's Gate made me feel as if I was truly affecting the world, and when Imoen and Irenicus were thrown in prison in BGII, I was angered. I had come to like all the characters in my BGI party, so I was glad to have Minsc and Jaheria in my party. Many people don't like Majora's Mask, though I don't know why. Its far darker than most of the series, and parts of that game are creepy and scary. The character interactions made the game great though. You get to understand Link and all the characters if you do all sorts of stuff, which is really interesting, since many of the characters will remind you of people you know in Real Life.
I've played many games, and these games are my favorites, because they are so affecting.
Just get a bunch of friends together, and go talk to the administration. Our school has a Cisco certification course, and while most of the members of the club come from that course, some, like myself, don't.
And, you won't become the societal rejects that everyone is yelling about here. I *personally* don't have a girlfriend right now, but a lot of the others do. It will have no impact on your social life, contrary to popular belief.
Another comment I've seen is that there is no need for a computer club, since everyone has one. In ours, everyone could be considered an enthusiast. We aren't the average AIM-junkie teens, even if we use AIM to communicate when we're on our computers. Many of us run Linux (myself included), program (ditto), and generally know a lot about computers.
We aren't social outcasts, we just have different interests than others. It may be different because we are living in a generally upper-class area, I don't know.
However, in starting this club, you'll meet many cool interesting people. LAN parties and dumpster diving is fun!
Amen to that. As you personally know, my gigantic noisy fan is the only thing keeping my Athlon 1.4GHz T-Bird from overheating. Its not overclocked either. And, as others have said, German economy? What does it have to do with this? AMD is an American company.
Bah! ACME Gnome Extermination has, in my experience, been a waste of money and time. I prefer calling in the...
KDE Extermination Service. Their superior technology and leadership has led them to victory against the GNOMEs time and time again. Their great Konqueror crushed the Gnome legions before, and can do it again. Even the mighty Gnome Republican Guard fall when faced with the awesome power of the Konqi Special Forces!
Fear the Gear!
Now, I await the Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf joke.
Linux distribution, I should have been more specific.
IBM doesn't produce a distribution of their own. They have no interest in eliminating other distributions, they just want to provide hardware, software, and services for Linux.
Thermodynamics states that it is impossible. A quick summary: There is a constant amount of energy in the universe, and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Now, if we had this mythical cell phone, and it rings, the phone is using the battery to make the ringer ring. Energy is always lost in a reaction (well, not exactly lost, since energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it is unrecoverable by the phone), and the conversion of the vibration of the ring to energy storable by the battery also "costs" energy. The energy used in the reaction is lost (converted to heat), and only a small bit is returned to the battery. It may extend battery life, but not lead to infinite talk time.
If I'm wrong, feel free to correct/flame/mod down.
It is my philosophy that everyone should learn to program. Not only does programming gain you a greater understanding of computers, but you also get a deeper understanding of mathematics, and the American school system is horrible at teaching both of those.
Go to the Python web site, find some good tutorials, and give them that. Once they learn Python, give them PyGame, and let them code play around.
And here are some rebuttals to your points.
:)
1. Performance. XFree is pretty fast for me, and while it could be faster, its still very usable. And I don't think network transparency really affects speed if you aren't using it, either. Locally, you're just using Unix sockets. It may add to the binary, and sit there and collect dust. I say that they add an option to disable network transparency, which is probably what you are talking about.
2. Standardization. This is not the point of X. Its a windowing system, not a toolkit or window manager/desktop. Everyone should use Qt, however
3. Easier Configuration. Most autoconfig tools like DrakXConf (or whatever it is) configures most hardware in a snap. And while the config files can be simplified, remember, its massive, complex and not some small project with two or three options. Its a freaking windowing system. Besides, how many times do you have to configure X, anyway? I just copy my XF86Config and replace it when I install a new distro.
I've had two KDS monitors. The first one died about two weeks after purchase, so I returned it, and then the second one just died (the same day as my hard drive went in the crapper, too...)
I will never purchase a KDS monitor again, and I advise everyone to avoid them.
A pox upon thee, KDS!
Mandrake 9.1 does all of this automatically. And RPMs/Debs are vastly superior to Windows installers, since they are consistent (if built for the distro) and almost always work. All I have to do is click on an RPM, type in the root password, and it installs the RPM and all its dependencies quickly and easily. In Windows, you wade through license agreements, and stuff like that. Mandrake's config tools work fine, and I could change the refresh rate with it if I wanted to. However, I prefer editing XF86Config by hand. Don't get me started on the brain damages of Windows, either...
The EULA is an "agreement" between you and the company that you won't do anything they prohibit with your license. A license is simply a document saying that this software is legally yours, and generally has a serial number on it. The EULA usually states you can't copy licenses software for non-licensed users, so there you go.
I first programmed with Microsoft QBASIC. I thought it was awesome, but I was a young kid at the time. Hell, I made some pretty cool things. Things have changed since then. When I was trying to learn C++, BASIC came back to haunt me. I did not understand even how to use functions and loops properly, so that was bad, and I gave up. Python, however, was so clear and simple I actually learned more about C++ using Python than C++!
I recommend Python, since you can write some very good programs quickly and its just plain fun. I'd also recommend Scheme, simply because of the functional nature and the enlightenment they will gain from using it.
Also try using PyGame after you get the basics down to give the kids something interesting and fun to do.
RTFA...The sound is meant to be used as a weapon, and the writer got to see how it worked. The writer was nauseated and in pain at one percent of what it would be on the battlefield.
This is some scary stuff. I can't begin to imagine how horrible this could make life.
Some industrious Linux elves have built a data extraction tool. You can find it here
I'm guessing someone could probably make a package of the difference between the data on the CDs and the 1.29 required by the client, but you could probably extract the data from the patch files.
There will be in the not so distant future. That language will be called English. It may not be the English you and I speak, but it will be a form of it. Why? English is common, and is a simple language. Don't let others tell you it isn't. It doesn't have multiple cases, declination (or declension), etc. There are many exceptions in English, but the same as many languages.
However, there is a good reason to keep other languages around, beyond academic interest. Take German, for example. The language is fairly complicated, but as I learned German, my understanding of English increased. I speak and write better English than before I learned German. Now, while you and I wouldn't learn or study dead languages, a researcher could see something useful, use it in their writing, others pick up on it, and it spreads, until you and I use it daily. I think its a great idea to preserve languages. Granted, I like language, so I may be biased.
I remember my elementary school and middle school days. Its been this way for years, since I started going to school 11 years ago. In 4th grade, I remember the class also had some 5th graders in it. The teacher had both halves working on different assignments, and I could do the math delegated to the fifth grade segment of the class faster then they could after they had been learning it for a while. It was pitiful. In 7th and 8th grade, I still breezed through math. Sadly, the school didn't think I could, though, and placed me in a standard math class. They offered high school credit algebra, and they know I should have taken algebra. Now, I am still good at math (I'm taking algebra II now), and I still belong in a higher level class. I do my work, I know how to do most of the things we are shown, and the damn school doesn't allow you to take classes elsewhere to get up to the appropriate level to take the most advanced math class they offer, AP Calculus AB, so now I have to find the appropriate loophole in Arizona law to bypass the need to take the prerequisite class my senior year. The American education system is a joke. It is so reliant on the assumption that all students are dumb and ignorant idiots that the exceptional students are forced to be at the same level as the ones that really are dumb and ignorant.
Even the teachers believe that the American education system is terrible!
The American education system does have some measures to make sure the brighter students are learning and challenged, but these are open to only a select few who meet the prerequisite requirements. And these prerequisite requirements require the schools to have recognised your ability years beforehand. My AP American History class is incredible, and it is one of the few classes I enjoy, mainly because it is interesting and not dumbed down. If you aren't familiar with the AP program, it provides for university level classes in high school. I don't know how well the classes do in that regard, but AP Am. Hist. is a great class, and everyone in it is intelligent and understands what is going on. Because we are expected to.
And science in middle school is a joke. It was 6 years ago. It was 4 years ago. It still is. Its not science. Its just a filler class. We built mousetrap cars. Why? Not a clue. The teacher never explained the physics, and we were just supposed to build the cars.
Textbooks are terrible for most subjects in school, anyway, so it doesn't matter.
Oh, and we spent three days covering World War II. You have a problem with that?
"FDR, sitting in his car, smoking a cigar, driving over tar, he's gone to far, he's gone to far." If you get this, all I have to say is "Wie heisst du?"
Someone finally agrees with me! Microsoft's OSes are confusing as hell, with My Computer trying to hide away the drive letters, and then forcing you to go through it to reach the drive of choice. It is the most frustrating part of Windows. Luckily, using \ will take you to the root of the C:\ drive, which makes life easier, though still frustrating when you need to access another device. And that control panel...Why is it so hard to access the Device Manager in XP? Its the only part of the control panel I use regularly.
And the criticism of KDE and GNOME was horribly misplaced. Konqueror is as stable as a rock, and I use it for daily browsing! KDE applications are far more consistent than Windows and Mac applications, and also far more usable. And the complaints about X not being integrated in the kernel...X is not bad, and while its not the best, its much better than the Windows NT GUI server. I don't think it reaches the niceness of OpenGL accelerated Aqua, but its getting there. As for screen size, XP is unusable at low resolutions, and so is Mac OS.
And the programming paradigm section was wrong. I don't care how much you hate C, review the toolkit, not the language. I personally don't like GTK for programming, bowever, saying that GTKmm is a hack is wrong. It works, albeit not as nicely as Qt, which is God's gift to C++ progammers. MFC is the exact opposite. It always bugs me, though, that people complain that an API doesn't work the way they want it to. If you're using MFC, you should use it the way it was meant to be used, and so forth and so on.
Oh, and I've never touched BeOS, so I don't know how it is.
It won't be as cheap as other x86 chips, but remember, it is NOT an x86. Opterons will be expensive, but their desktop/workstation counterparts, the Athlon64, probably will be competitive with the fastest Intel chips in price and performance. If AMD isn't fudging its numbers, and a 2000 MHz Opteron is competitive with a 3600 MHz Pentium 4, I think that the future is bright for AMD and their chips. I do want one, and I will buy an Athlon64 machine to run Linux and Windows. If AMD can keep the prices on the Athlon64s comparable to the Pentium 4 or Barton, people will buy them. Hammer is not just for high end workstations and servers, AMD is aiming it at desktops too. This will replace their current line of Athlons, so I should hope its priced well.
I agree, I don't have an XBox, but Live is a great plan. Its not that expensive for the end users, and the developers have all the tools needed to play online, so they can focus on the game. However, EA probably has a point. They probably want their PS2 and XBox products to work together, so it doesn't matter which you own. With Microsoft running Live, its not a possibility.
Microsoft seems to be adapting to the fact that nobody trusts them quite well. It will be interesting to see what sort of things come out of Redmond in the coming years.
From a real conversation.
Him: Hast du ein Handy? (Do you have a cellphone?)
Me: Was heisst Handy? (What does 'handy' mean?)
Him: Ein Handy! Guck, das Maedchen. Sie hat ein Handy! (A cellphone! Look, that girl, she has a cellphone.)
Me: A cellphone? How does HANDY mean CELLPHONE?
Anyway, I think moneyless transactions are the future. For obvious reasons, it should be run by private corporations, all adhereing to a single standard. I don't want my government managing my money, since they will make mistakes. I'm guessing this is a perfect startup, since many people get frustrated with cash and classic magnetic cards, and this seems like a perfect solution. However, would it be secure? I don't want somebody intercepting the wireless signals and being able to decrypt them. Sadly, if this gets off the ground, some company will use that excuse to develop proprietary systems and create a monopoly.
Actually, I had many problems with Red Hat/Mandrake RPMs. They are named differently, and that can make a big difference. If you have GTK installed via a SuSE RPM (say gtk-lib-2.2.i386.rpm) and then you install the Red Hat GNOME 2.2 RPMs, Red Hat may package their GNOME RPMs to require the package gtk-2.2, while SuSE provides gtk-lib-2.2. Its a pretty nasty system. Note that this is probably not the exact way the packages are identified, but small inconsistencies like this are what cause problems.
I no longer use SuSE, so its not a problem for me.
UnitedLinux is only in SuSE's highend server offerings. UnitedLinux is based on SuSE Enterprise Server. I don't think that many other Linux vendors other than Red Hat have the influence, money, and talent that SuSE does, and their distro is pretty nice. The availability of SuSE packages, however, is pretty limited. I gave up with it because I couldn't find any packages for anything I wanted, and I couldn't find any SuSE docs that described how to make an RPM, and I like my packages to fit in with standards of the distro. RPMFind was pretty useless for finding SuSE packages...