The sore spots I've found are APM, ACAPI, accelerated 3d graphics, wireless networking, and external or multiple displays. These are likely to cause frustration. Lesser issues include modems, sound cards, video cards (sometimes), and pointing devices (occasionally).
I've always been able to hammer out something that "pretty much worked," but often with quirks. E.g. to suspend to RAM I must first exit X if OpenGL acceleration is enabled. And after resuming, I can't use PCMCIA, the infrared port, or sometimes USB (depending on kernel version).
In short, for me the only real issue with Linux is drivers, and unfortunately I do not see any resolution to the problem.
What real good does overclocking 2 to 2.8 really do?
Uh, it speeds up the FLOPS by exactly that amount. There is no "MHz myth" in this case - for a given processor, if you double the external clock and leave the multiplier the same, it will run twice as fast.
Music compatibility is a no-brainer, a free way to benefit consumers and expand the overall music market. If it were up to business alone you'd probably be forced to fill up on Genuine Ford Gasoline (TM) at twice the price.
There are many big, hard problems (like the ones you mention) that cannot be easily solved. This isn't one of them.
It does seem like it might be wise not to put anything brand new on the DVD. Perhaps use the most recent version of each article that lasted for 2 weeks or more?
These competitions seem to be very academic. Do they relate to programming in the real world?
No, the competition problems are much more interesting. They should restrict the competition to writing Visual Basic report generators for Access. Also they should change the assignment 30 minutes before it's due. Finally, the winners should be sent away without any award while the judges sell the software to pay for their new mansions.
What factors brought you to the Mac Mini? It seems to me like an odd choice since it's one of the few computers that cannot accomodate a beefy hard drive, nor a TV tuner card, and it's not in the format of a VCR/DVD/Stereo component. (Sure there are external add-ons, but those work with anything.) What are its advantages?
I'm sure they can (and will) be used to gather information about the end user but that's not what I'm concerned with here.
I don't understand that statement. A patent doesn't enable you to do something, it just stops everybody else from doing it also.
Since most of the patented "features" appear to be odious to customers, it would be ironic if buying these features lead TiVo to sell an inferior product.
It's not just tech companies though. Ever made a sandwich, spreading both slices of bread with butter (or peanut butter) to keep it from getting soggy? Turns out that's patented:
Smuckers actually has a patent on the peanut butter shield, to stop the jelly from soaking into the bread, unlike a sandwich with peanut butter on just one side, which gets soggy when the jelly gets through.
People enlist under the assumption that their lives won't be spent cheaply. If we take the attitude that soldiers are expendable because they chose to sign on, we're going to have a very hard time maintaining a volunteer military of sufficient strength to defend ourselves should the need arise.
Look at how enlistments swelled right after 911, but now, in the context of Iraq, have tanked.
Yeah! A cheaper, safer space craft would totally kill the excitement. The great thing about the Shuttle is it makes space exploration tough, and that means we're tough too! Bring it on, space, we're #1!!!
Killing people in war is OK because war is about killing people? Try again, that's not a reason.
Each of the 1500 Americans who died in Iraq had just as much right to live as the World Trade Center victims. The fact that we expect people to die in war simply makes it all the more absurd that we should choose to start one.
Who said the Shuttles' problem was wear and tear? Heck, they're rebuilt before every flight.
I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know what's really wrong with the Shuttle design, but the thing is horribly expensive and its safety record could be a lot better.
But this misinterpretation is the only reason anybody cares about the "law" in the first place. There's no reason to care about increasing transistor counts unless there's a payoff.
The problem with bigger & bigger cache is that it has diminishing returns. This is why Intel's "Extreme" chips are a waste of money.
The inability to do anything useful with all those transistors is why we're seeing the advent of multi-core chips, which are neat but fail to preserve the conventional single-threaded programming model. This places the burden of creating explicit parallelism on the programmer, and leads to more complicated code, which means it costs more to write and also contains more bugs.
Yes, if only they weren't regulated at all, I'm sure the telephone company would be falling all over itself to offer its competitors access to the copper network.
Oh, please, let's not pretend actual costs and telecom have anything to do with each other. These are the guys who charged us thousands of dollars over the years for a simple telephone, because they wouldn't let you buy one at the store and plug it into their precious network.
I would say all recorded knowlege must be encoded, but encryptiond is encoding with the intent that not just anybody can read it. It's a question of intent. Granted that's not a very technically meaningful distinction, but through the DMCA it is a distinction enshrined in law (hopefully not permanantly but I'm not holding my breath).
A lot of freedoms aren't expressly protected by the Constitution, because the original idea of our govt. was that people could do whatever wasn't forbidden, and it was govt. that was limited to a specific list of behaviors.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always been able to hammer out something that "pretty much worked," but often with quirks. E.g. to suspend to RAM I must first exit X if OpenGL acceleration is enabled. And after resuming, I can't use PCMCIA, the infrared port, or sometimes USB (depending on kernel version).
In short, for me the only real issue with Linux is drivers, and unfortunately I do not see any resolution to the problem.
There are many big, hard problems (like the ones you mention) that cannot be easily solved. This isn't one of them.
It does seem like it might be wise not to put anything brand new on the DVD. Perhaps use the most recent version of each article that lasted for 2 weeks or more?
That's like saying auto races should have lots of stop lights, traffic, and cops.
What factors brought you to the Mac Mini? It seems to me like an odd choice since it's one of the few computers that cannot accomodate a beefy hard drive, nor a TV tuner card, and it's not in the format of a VCR/DVD/Stereo component. (Sure there are external add-ons, but those work with anything.) What are its advantages?
Since most of the patented "features" appear to be odious to customers, it would be ironic if buying these features lead TiVo to sell an inferior product.
Look at how enlistments swelled right after 911, but now, in the context of Iraq, have tanked.
Yeah! A cheaper, safer space craft would totally kill the excitement. The great thing about the Shuttle is it makes space exploration tough, and that means we're tough too! Bring it on, space, we're #1!!!
Each of the 1500 Americans who died in Iraq had just as much right to live as the World Trade Center victims. The fact that we expect people to die in war simply makes it all the more absurd that we should choose to start one.
I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know what's really wrong with the Shuttle design, but the thing is horribly expensive and its safety record could be a lot better.
How about distilled water?
It's because the commonly held interpretation of Moore's law, the one people are actually interested in, is about performance.
The problem with bigger & bigger cache is that it has diminishing returns. This is why Intel's "Extreme" chips are a waste of money.
The inability to do anything useful with all those transistors is why we're seeing the advent of multi-core chips, which are neat but fail to preserve the conventional single-threaded programming model. This places the burden of creating explicit parallelism on the programmer, and leads to more complicated code, which means it costs more to write and also contains more bugs.
Well, don't get too excited, your average hair drier pulls 1800 W.
Is the city liable when drug dealers do business in a park?
Yes, if only they weren't regulated at all, I'm sure the telephone company would be falling all over itself to offer its competitors access to the copper network.
Oh, please, let's not pretend actual costs and telecom have anything to do with each other. These are the guys who charged us thousands of dollars over the years for a simple telephone, because they wouldn't let you buy one at the store and plug it into their precious network.
I would say all recorded knowlege must be encoded, but encryptiond is encoding with the intent that not just anybody can read it. It's a question of intent. Granted that's not a very technically meaningful distinction, but through the DMCA it is a distinction enshrined in law (hopefully not permanantly but I'm not holding my breath).
Your post attests that this idea is dying out.