My point being that Ubuntu 13.04 is a Lunatic Fringe distribution for the hard-of-thinking (designed with a "slick" graphical installer and heavy eye-candy) on ancient hardware that 99.9% of users would have binned over half a decade ago.
I dare say if I'd put Slackware on, it would have been much quicker and wouldn't have required any hackery of the installation scripts. It had to be something trendy and simple, because I was installing it for my dad who has spent the last 20 years trapped in Windows-land, where he develops commercial software, and if he hasn't got a picture to point at with the mouse, he won't do it.
I managed to coax Ubuntu 13.04 (32-bit) into life on a Sony Vaio laptop, Athlon 1000, 512MB RAM (from c.2001) with Windows XP a couple of weeks ago.
I had to hack the install scripts to make it run with the VESA graphics drivers (the ancient ati ones were broken) but it ran quite nicely (without the composting desktop environment) with LXDE. Firefox was very responsive on it while compiling a bunch of code at the same time, running MySQL and a commercial Windows app under Wine.
It's kind of hilarious to read people singing the praises of XP, which most geeks regarded as a bloated "Fisher Price" version of 2000.
Absolutely. Each new version of Windows is bigger, slower and more cumbersome than the last. People whinge and complain for a few months, and instead of switching to an alternative, they train themselves to get used to it. Then they buy a bigger computer to mitigate the lack of speed. That doesn't fix the constant dumbing-down of the UI, though.
Then the cycle repeats. I'm sure psychologists have a name for it.
It's a bit like that Monty Python thing where the knight keeps getting limbs chopped off but still fights on.
Yes, at great expense and with a shrinking market share. ARM has the smartphone market cornered. So the PowerVR are losing GPU market share and they've got no chance of competing against ARM in the embedded CPU market in phones...
Maybe they have other plans?
Then one day OpenRISC will come along and ARM will start to lose out. It's already started in some very small, currently not very significant niches.
Yes, they lie through their teeth, and no, you shouldn't have to move house just to get internet access. It shows how far we still have to go.
I had an argument with the Virgin Media Salesslug who knocked on my door one evening about "no caps." He was a lying scumbag. And he couldn't understand why I had separate broadband, land-line and TV providers.
Quite. Just ask the Germans. Their eco-hippies persuaded their government about 10 years ago to begin the phase-out of nuclear power because it's "dirty, dangerous and expensive." The solution was more efficient turbines in conventional gas stations and lots of wind turbines.
I believe the French nuclear generator has done very well out of this arrangement...
It's far more dangerous to go a couple of miles per hour over 30mph in a built-up and busy area where 30mph is the speed limit (pedestrians, cyclists, dogs, cats, vehicles stopping, turning using junctions etc.) than going 5 or 10 mph over a 70mph speed limit (on a dual carriageway or motorway).
I'm not trying to justify speeding, I'm just very cross at the number of ill-considered populist laws that are being proposed these days in the name of safety, whether it's safety from terrorists, safety from perverts or safety from anything else.
When all the traffic is traveling at the same speed in the same direction, the risk of collisions is negligible. That's why motorways can be so safe... but nowadays we have different speed limits for different vehicles on the motorway so lorries jockey for position at ~50mph, old grannies do 45 in any lane they please and the PHBs and salesmen do 100+ in their Mercs and BMWs (also in any lane they feel like, changing without warning, without looking and without signalling).
My driving is the best in the world. Everyone else is rubbish.
One day I will rule the world!!!! Be afraid all ye who read this warning.... Muhahhaha!!!!!!
What usually happens is that the company does reasonably well inspite of it management, and that fact that it's making a profit is a "signal" to the geniuses at the VP level and above that they obviously have too many staff, so they make cutbacks, forcing the remaining staff to work harder and longer hours unpaid (evenings and weekends and such like) to get things done.
Meanwhile, the remaining staff get their CVs out and leave. Then things start to go wrong, deadlines are missed, quality plummets and customers get angry, demand money back, freebies and even start to sue.
Next, that part of the company gets closed down with the loss of all jobs but the "intellectual property" goes elsewhere.
Meantime, since the cost base has been further reduced, the VPs get a bonus and the share price goes up.
I'm religious because St. Paul gave a good evidence based argument for belief in life after death in Corinthians and why people's faith should be based on such evidence and how he wouldn't advocate such a radical thing as life after death upon just blind faith.
Interesting. That's not what I've heard. I heard that St Paul believed "because it's absurd." Can you explain?
Slashdot Mirror
I thought I would understand it when I went to read the tweet linked in the summary.
Tweets contain information?
Does it have to be an organic, vegetarian, hemp-powered, recycled eco-plane?
I find C++ much more fun, because it does exactly what I tell it to.
I have a deterministic computer too, but I prefer to program it in something I can understand what I thought I told it to do, like C.
Too convenient. Must be a trap...
Bombs?ÂBuns, surely?
"There's always the army!" As any right-thinking, upstanding, hard-working, striving citizen will tell you...
Oh, now, cynicism!
It's just the Great Invisible Hand changing the lightbulb.
The Great Invisible Hand has probably already advanced the careers and earnings potentials of all of the staff that were let go as a result.
Stop thinking like a pinko-commie.
not the typical fast moving well-spaced sedans.
I thought they were goats?
My point being that Ubuntu 13.04 is a Lunatic Fringe distribution for the hard-of-thinking (designed with a "slick" graphical installer and heavy eye-candy) on ancient hardware that 99.9% of users would have binned over half a decade ago.
I dare say if I'd put Slackware on, it would have been much quicker and wouldn't have required any hackery of the installation scripts. It had to be something trendy and simple, because I was installing it for my dad who has spent the last 20 years trapped in Windows-land, where he develops commercial software, and if he hasn't got a picture to point at with the mouse, he won't do it.
I managed to coax Ubuntu 13.04 (32-bit) into life on a Sony Vaio laptop, Athlon 1000, 512MB RAM (from c.2001) with Windows XP a couple of weeks ago.
I had to hack the install scripts to make it run with the VESA graphics drivers (the ancient ati ones were broken) but it ran quite nicely (without the composting desktop environment) with LXDE. Firefox was very responsive on it while compiling a bunch of code at the same time, running MySQL and a commercial Windows app under Wine.
Windows XP will not be missed.
It's kind of hilarious to read people singing the praises of XP, which most geeks regarded as a bloated "Fisher Price" version of 2000.
Absolutely. Each new version of Windows is bigger, slower and more cumbersome than the last. People whinge and complain for a few months, and instead of switching to an alternative, they train themselves to get used to it. Then they buy a bigger computer to mitigate the lack of speed. That doesn't fix the constant dumbing-down of the UI, though.
Then the cycle repeats. I'm sure psychologists have a name for it.
It's a bit like that Monty Python thing where the knight keeps getting limbs chopped off but still fights on.
Thanks.
Yes, at great expense and with a shrinking market share. ARM has the smartphone market cornered. So the PowerVR are losing GPU market share and they've got no chance of competing against ARM in the embedded CPU market in phones...
Maybe they have other plans?
Then one day OpenRISC will come along and ARM will start to lose out. It's already started in some very small, currently not very significant niches.
They're making a nice living doing GPU cores for ARMs,
But for how long? The ARM folks are designing their own GPUs now.
How are things with you guys now that Steve has announced his retirement?
Yes, they lie through their teeth, and no, you shouldn't have to move house just to get internet access. It shows how far we still have to go.
I had an argument with the Virgin Media Salesslug who knocked on my door one evening about "no caps." He was a lying scumbag. And he couldn't understand why I had separate broadband, land-line and TV providers.
You agree to pay for it, and they agree to provide it. If they don't. go elsewhere. Simples.
And you forgot to add, buying electricity because they were unable to produce it themselves.
I thought that was obvious :-)
Quite. Just ask the Germans. Their eco-hippies persuaded their government about 10 years ago to begin the phase-out of nuclear power because it's "dirty, dangerous and expensive." The solution was more efficient turbines in conventional gas stations and lots of wind turbines.
I believe the French nuclear generator has done very well out of this arrangement...
Just go the whole hog and do -1^0.5.
I don't understand this obsession with "70mph."
It's far more dangerous to go a couple of miles per hour over 30mph in a built-up and busy area where 30mph is the speed limit (pedestrians, cyclists, dogs, cats, vehicles stopping, turning using junctions etc.) than going 5 or 10 mph over a 70mph speed limit (on a dual carriageway or motorway).
I'm not trying to justify speeding, I'm just very cross at the number of ill-considered populist laws that are being proposed these days in the name of safety, whether it's safety from terrorists, safety from perverts or safety from anything else.
When all the traffic is traveling at the same speed in the same direction, the risk of collisions is negligible. That's why motorways can be so safe... but nowadays we have different speed limits for different vehicles on the motorway so lorries jockey for position at ~50mph, old grannies do 45 in any lane they please and the PHBs and salesmen do 100+ in their Mercs and BMWs (also in any lane they feel like, changing without warning, without looking and without signalling).
My driving is the best in the world. Everyone else is rubbish.
One day I will rule the world!!!! Be afraid all ye who read this warning.... Muhahhaha!!!!!!
What usually happens is that the company does reasonably well inspite of it management, and that fact that it's making a profit is a "signal" to the geniuses at the VP level and above that they obviously have too many staff, so they make cutbacks, forcing the remaining staff to work harder and longer hours unpaid (evenings and weekends and such like) to get things done.
Meanwhile, the remaining staff get their CVs out and leave. Then things start to go wrong, deadlines are missed, quality plummets and customers get angry, demand money back, freebies and even start to sue.
Next, that part of the company gets closed down with the loss of all jobs but the "intellectual property" goes elsewhere.
Meantime, since the cost base has been further reduced, the VPs get a bonus and the share price goes up.
I'm religious because St. Paul gave a good evidence based argument for belief in life after death in Corinthians and why people's faith should be based on such evidence and how he wouldn't advocate such a radical thing as life after death upon just blind faith.
Interesting. That's not what I've heard. I heard that St Paul believed "because it's absurd." Can you explain?
Brannagh had a huge Hamlet.
Er, um, the mail (snail), the phone, the internet, email, the smartphone...None of these is still as effective as co-location.