I just built a shiny new Athlon64 box with an nVidia chipset and nVidia graphics. WinXP installs fine. Then, I just load some drivers and everything works.
I just built a shiny new Athlon XP (didn't have like $1,000 for a FX-53 and motherboard, plus it wasn't in stock at fry's) with an nVidia chipset and nVidia graphics. Windows XP stopped working and resets 4 minutes after it loads. I would install it again but I need SATA drivers for my SATA hard drive, I don't have a floppy drive. Windows XP won't let me load the drivers off a CD or off the hard drive. So I installed windows XP on my friend's computer since he has a floppy drive (stuck my SATA drive in his computer.) Put the drive back in my computer when windows finished installing, didn't get past the boot screen.
Now, if I wanted to install Linux, first I have to be paranoid about hosing my XP partition (oops).
Now, if I wanted to install Windows XP, first I'd have to put in my IDE drive and be paranoid about hosing my boot sector (which it will do no matter how carefull I am.) Which means I have to boot into my debian installer and run rescue mode, then run lilo again. Then I have to put my Serial ATA drives into the computer and run the installer from inside windows, THEN I need to remove the install of windows from my IDE drives, it would just take too much time.
To get linux installed on the SATA drive, I can put the drivers on a CD and load them thru the debian installer. Isn't windows supposed to be easier to install than linux? Why is it that ease of use usually means, easy for the average setup, impossible for everything else.
I don't think many people on Slashdot saw Super Troopers, on a related note my friend's wife created Johnny Chimpo and had to draw the Afghanistanimation cartoon (she hated it too, she hates drawing cartoons.)
Really? Did you ever use Windows XP? And when Windows 2000 was out did you try running any games on it? There are a lot of compatibility issues. Anyway, someone else posted a reply, you can just follow his link to a forum that describes how to get Doom 3 working in Windows 2003 (it's just that the installer checks to see if you have Windows XP or 2000, if you have neither it fails, they show how to disable the check.)
Don't pull that "I always buy games after I download them, so piracy doesn't really matter" bullshit.
Why? A lot of times it's the truth. Right now I'm in a house with 4 other people, every single one of us had a pirated copy of Doom 3 Monday Morning. Tuesday morning (like way early in the morning) I handed my friend some money, he went with his brother, and they brought back 3 copies of Doom 3, the 4th person in the house is getting a free copy from a friend who's getting 5 (for free, he writes reviews for all kinds of hardware and software so he gets free copies of a lot of things.)
I've never done it before, I don't know anyone who does it
Well I do, and all of my friends do, so now you know people who have done it before.
and it makes no rational sense to do so anyway.
I dunno, the first time I bought a computer game because I got a warez copy was Half-Life, that was the first time I played a 3D FPS (well I played like Doom, Wolf 3D, and Duke Nukem but I mean like first Quake style FPS.) I played it, I loved it, I bought it (actually I pre-ordered a copy, and it came out 2 weeks later.) Plus I got a CD key (which I didn't really need at the time since I only played single player, but then when mods came out I had a lot of fun playing online, like TFC or the first versions of CS.) Doom 3 doesn't have much of a multiplayer mode (yet) but I love ID Software and they deffinitely deserve the money I paid for this game.
Going back to the bike analogy... Imagine having an engine that powers you up and down hills regardless. Oh, wait, I have one... I call it my car. Yet I've never had a fraction of the fun driving down a hill that I used to get after working to get my bike to the top of a hill and feeling the exhilaration on the way down the far side. Sure, I see more hills now, in less time - which suits my busier adult lifestyle - but each hill means a fraction of what they used to. That's why grown men take time out to go mountain biking and why others find the time to play games without cheating.
I dunno I'd rather drive down a twisty hill in a car than on a bike, a twisty hill on a bike is fun, but it will never be as fun as flying down a twisty hill carving the apex thru each turn, and then there's the uphill aspect too, well it's a lot of fun going up short hills, if you've ever driven thru California's twisty hills you'll know what I'm talking about heh. Anyway, I see your point about cheating, except people make a sport out of driving, I don't think anyone makes a sport out of cheating.
Dude you're comparing 2 different (only it's a very slight difference) drives, and one's OEM while the other is retail, there will be a price difference. LG gives you a warranty for the retail product while the OEM isn't covered at all (by LG, dunno NCIX's policy.) The Future Shop product also has everything needed to install (cables, screws, jumpers) plus software, plus manuals. That's pretty much what you're paying for in the difference. Although at that price I would have bought neither drive (you can buy CD-RW/DVD combo drives for way cheaper than $80, and for $120 you can buy a retail DVD burner, my friend just got one, doesn't use it but it was only like $120 at Fry's.)
The key here, as usual, is the word "generally". I have to TRY to find hardware that is incomatable with win2k these days.
Generally as in there's more than a 50/50 chance I find hardware with linux support. There's a 1 in 3 chance the hardware has linux drivers on the install discs (unless it's a network device, the chance goes way up then.)
You have GOT to be joking...if you are comparing the feeble OpenGL performance on Linux to windows. please. everquest? planetside? anarchy-online? the sims? star wars galaxies? city of hero's? world of warcraft? Don't make me laugh.
What do you mean the feable OpenGL performance? OpenGL performs better in linux for most things than it does in windows (heck when I was playing half-life in linux it ran better than it did in windows, same stuff for Quake 2, 3, RTCW, and I imagine Doom 3 when it's finally out.)
One popular game finally releases an on-disk linux installer, and now "everything" is compatable?
Any popular game including an installer for linux AND windows in the same box is a very good start. Most other games have installers you can download, or linux versions you can buy. Also, I never said "everything" was compatible, but a lot of new popular games will follow the habbit and release linux binaries, it's a huge step towards a game friendly linux desktop.
everquest? planetside? anarchy-online? the sims? star wars galaxies? city of hero's? world of warcraft? Don't make me laugh.
The Sims works flawlessly in linux (they even sell a linux version), Everquest has a 4, Star Wars Galaxies has a 4 City of Heroes has a 4, Planetside, Anarchy-Online, and World of Warcraft don't work, but more than half the games you mentioned work in linux, they do require the transgaming version of wine (winex or something, might have changed since the last time I checked) which is not free, but the games still work.
Excellent. I personally do not know the Icon for gaim, but I am glad that it is easily recognizable to first time users. For your next test, have your mother and father sit down and pop out a word document, Or possibly your grandmother. Because that is what most of the workforce in office jobs are. 40 to 70 year olds that needed a good deal of training to use windows 95 when it came out, and would cost money and time to do it again for linux. What about when the system crashes and cannot autofsck? Holy hell, what would grandma do then? Or perhaps grandma wants to share pictures of the family, and turns on an anonymous FTPD on the machine without first checking for patches? Hello remote root compromise, my name is timmy. Let's play!
How about my friends mother? Somehow you mentioned all the people in my family who have no idea how to use a computer (although it'd be just as easy to train them in linux as windows since both would be a fresh start.) My friend's mother uses Office at work and when my friend and I installed linux on his second computer (the one she uses when he's playing games) she had no difficulty using Open Office. What about when the system crashes and cannot auto fsck? She calls the company sysadmin, he tells her what to type, she types it, problem solved. Obviously she knows how to follow directions and type, she learned how to use the computer, the rest is just applying skills she already knows. If it happens a lot (and it most likely won't) she'll learn the stuff. I taught my aunt how to change her desktop color depth, which is actually quite hard because there are no on screen instructions to follow, just a lot of memorizing the clicks. With the fsck, the instructions are on your screen already. And what if grandma want's to share pictures and turns on anonymous ftpd? Grandma doesn't know what the hell a ftpd is so why would she turn it on? There is no "WHOOPS! I slipped and accidentall
Umm he has a very good point, have you ever driven across the country? Most of the US is not "basically desert" or "high mountainous regions." Jeez just look at a topographical map of the US, there's a huge flat spot between the east coast and the mountains to the west, that's not all desert (actually I don't think any of it is, except like parts of texas and new mexico. The winters aren't unbearable in these areas, Alaska gets pretty cold but people still live there. And currently I'm in Phoenix, I'm pretty sure this entire area was nothing but desert although you'd never be able to tell just living here. I've had more drought warnings in NY than I've had here. It might be terrible taking up the entire US (there's a lot of nice land to see when you drive cross country, hate to see it all become a city) but it's deffinitely possible and I can't forsee this happening within the next 200 years or even in 500 years (we focus more on building up, not building across, I can see having huge apartment buildings towering over NYC, but can't see all the land in the US being taken up.)
The desktop market is what...at least 75% dominated by microsoft? linux has taken what...8 years to cut into it 10%? This translate into a few pennies less per day the company makes..on just one of it's fronts. I am sure people would love to dream of the day *nix is on equal ground in the desktop market as windows, it is simply not going to happen in the next 10 years minimum.
Except that now more and more hardware/software is supporting linux. When I started using linux I had to have such specific hardware, nothing seemed to work and it was really annoying to do anything in. Now I just go to Fry's and figure, hey that probably works in linux, generally it does (unless it's like a winmodem or something.)
Why you ask? driver support for new, exotic hardware. Gaming support(DX9 ring a bell?). propritory drivers and software to power those drivers. software users have been using for years and years. All of these are things linux could "do" per se..or any other *nix. just not now. The turnaround rate to get new drivers, software, and ports made is simply too long to be useful. and that is a simple, painful fact when it comes to desktops.
What do you mean by exotic hardware? I just bought a NVidia 6800 GT, the linux driver was right on nvidia's website. When I checked for the windows driver, it didn't support the card yet (does now though.) My friend has a 64 bit athlon, linux support has been out for a loooooooooong time, is there even a 64 bit windows version out yet? Or do you mean exotic as in worked in windows 95 and older, well that stuff usually doesn't work in windows xp, much better chance that someone bought the hardware a long time ago and wrote a driver for linux support. Gaming support(OpenGL ring a bell?) UT2K3 and 2K4 are both written for DirectX and were both ported to OpenGL, Doom 3 and every other game from ID Software will be OpenGL and will have linux support, half-life 2 probably won't have linux support as I see valve moving farther and father from linux (not that they were moving closer, just that half-life no longer works in linux thanks to all the new features they added to it that were totally useless and unecessary.) Most other new games will probably follow in Epic's and ID Software's footsteps and have linux support, if not there's always wine (ps, UT has come with the linux installer right on the disk, and a lot of my new hardware has too, most of the drivers are available the day I buy the hardware so what wait till drivers or software are you talking about?)
As for corperate resources using linux in a widescale deployment..There are just too few companies that are willing to try that. Why? It takes time for hundreds or thousands of people to "relearn" how to use thier computer. remember that most of the work force in the world had "windows for dummies" to get them employed years ago? Companies do not want to take the time, or the money training the entire staff..for such a change. it would end up costing the same, if not more, then windows products. Not to mention the time lost in the process..That in itself could cost far, far more then the liecences. This is just another simple fact that people tend to turn a blind eye to.
I dunno I wouldn't call my sister or her boyfriend linux zealots, they're like your everyday AOL users, but she sat down at my desk constantly, always able to find her way around (afterstep, which actually amazed me, but I have icons on Wharf). She knew the two icons she wanted (mozilla and gaim) and she used them just like she'd use IE or AIM in windows. I don't think it'd be that hard to tell people "Uhhh just click this icon to go into open office, it's just like microsoft office."
And before the zealots start, I am a unix sys admin..have been for 8 years now. Please do not start with the whole "blah blah blah LINUX R00LZ blah" rant, Because it serves no point. Direct that energy to making drivers and supporting hardware and ports.
SCSI interfaces on IDE drives? That's like taking a K6-2 and putting an adapter for a socket 953 (Athlon 64 FX-53, the 64 bit processor, 2.4 GHz, very fast heh.) It's not going to run any faster, same hardware just a different connection. Besides you can get Serial ATA, not perfect, but better than standard IDE (only slightly, but then again you can get 10K RPM I think that's very close to a "cheap" SCSI drive.) And think of the issues? Every motherboard comes with an IDE controller (and now SATA), how many come with SCSI? How easy is it to install your favorite OS on SCSI hardware? It's annoying since you need a driver. Anyway, SATA is faster than standard IDE and it costs just about the same (maybe a few dollars more) so just get that heh.
Actually no it's not ridiculous, I worked at a Taco Bell and my main job was as a cashier. One day one of the cashiers charged a person $74 or so (I swear it wasn't me! I usually check the price way too many times to be sure it's correct, I'm slightly neurotic.) The person accepted the charges and just put in their pin not realizing the charges were like $60 more then they should have paid. Not a lot of people really check the price when they put in their pin, they just do it like some automated thing. We noticed the charge later in the day (the receipts for debit sales were waaaaaaaaay over), don't know if that person ever found out what they did. I can see this happening a lot.
I dunno maybe they were in a recording studio in Nice putting together the finishing touches on the album, when during a photo shoot it was stolen. The photo shoot could have been miles away, it just says it was stolen during the photo shoot, so while they were at a photo shoot, the disk was stolen from the recording studio, the photo shoot could have been in the recording studio but it doesn't say.
Umm I speak as someone who had just purchased two GeForce 6800 GTs (well I only got one, but my friend got one too, and I installed and played on both systems.) He has an AMD 64 FX-53 and I have a 3200+. The loudest part of my computer is the fan on my chip, second to that, my hard drive (my old 40 gig samsung, my new serial ata WD is pretty quiet, so is my older WD drive.) The video card takes up one slot, I only have a 450 watt PSU (was like $40, and I didn't buy it cause of the video card, I bought it because a while ago my 260 watt PSU died, and I figured why not get a 400 watt PSU in case I ever wanted to do water cooling and stuff like that.) My friend has a 500 watt PSU he bought, I figured he should get it just in case the card doesn't like his 300 watt PSU, it was only $50 (he could have gotten one for $30 that would supply more than enough power, but the 500 watt one looked really nice so we got it, and when you're buying a $400 video card a $200 motherboard and an $800 CPU a $50 PSU is so increadibly cheap.)
I don't really know what you're talking about, ATI is winning? They charge $100 more for a video card that performs worse in what will be the hottest new game this year, and they're winning? NVidia is going to have support for 2 video cards (2 insanely fast video cards) with PCI express, and ATI is winning? Maybe you were just upset with the NVidia FX series (I was upset too, it really killed me, I love NVidia mainly for their linux support and opengl performance, but the FX was just total CRAP, and when I saw the 6800 was gonna be a monster I was a little upset and even feared it was the end for NVidia but I was VERY surprised when I saw the final product, especially the benchmarks.) With the 6800, I see them as being back on top. You just sound like someone who has read one article a long time ago when NVidia first showed off the 6800, I think you should really check out the 6000 series, you'd be surprised at how well NVidia did this new series.
"We don't support linux." I've heard that so many times from Road Runner. When I moved to AZ though the DSL guy saw my desktop (Afterstep) looked around a bit for the start menu, then I realized I should probably reset (the modem he gave me to start off with only worked in windows so I had to reset to install it) so I killed X and he saw the prompt "Wow linux, what distro is it?" I told him (debian) and he said "Wow, debian? We're converting all our servers over from Win 2000 to Debian real soon."
I've also had good experiences with tech support, especially on other peoples computers cause I'd be calling for warrenty work. I'd call up say "Hey this computer has a problem starting up, so I swapped out a few things like the PSU, RAM, CPU, and motherboard, the motherboard is probably fried since when I tried a different one it worked, so where could I get a new motherboard since the PC is still under warrenty?" The guy went from ultra depressed (thinking "Oh no, not another problem that will probably require 2 hours to finally get to the conclusion that someone has to look at the computer") to really happy and excited like "Wow thanks for testing out all that stuff, so it's deffinitely the motherboard? Just bring it to such and such store and they'll install a new one for you."
PC tech support seems so much easier to deal with since they seem to know more about how the computer works. I guess it's easier for them since the problem is always on the users end and they have to deal with a lot of different situations. With internet tech support all they know how to deal with is configuring e-mail and setting auto detect IP address in Windows 98 and above. They rarely have to deal with a customer calling up telling them there is a problem on their end and even if the customer described exactly what was wrong, they wouldn't be able to do anything.
One time the guy tried to explain to me that I would need about $50+ more hardware than necessary to fix what I suspected to be a buggy RAM problem.
That doesn't sound too stupid, maybe he was thinking of what might have caused the problem that you only suspected to be a buggy ram problem. Now if he tried to sell you a printer cause your computer wouldn't boot, that'd be stupid, but if you have RAM issues it could be related to something else like the motherboard, maybe PSU (might not supply enough power for everything causing all kinds of issues), CPU, all kinds of stuff.
On another occasion, I was with a friend, checking out a couple hot-swap IDE cages for a development server I was building and a CompUSA dorkus walks buy and says "They're really overrated, and you probably don't need them, unless you're building a server (guy leaves)"
haha that guy's a moron, I mean he told you the hot-swap IDE cage is overrated and you probably don't need one unless you were building a server! hahaha! That moron didn't even know that you could use them for stuff like building a server like the one you were going to make! Oh wait, didn't he say "probably don't need them, unless you're building a server" which would imply that he knows why you might need them? Oh well he's still an idiot!
I dunno, fry's out here has server cases and they're right near the desktop cases. The prices are real good too, they have some 1U, 2U and 4U cases. Maybe you didn't look hard enough, did you even look at all?
Wow that's a wonderfull in-depth review of gnome. He talks about nautilus behaving like "My Computer" in Windows 95 and quoted a gnome developer on the stupidity of users (They might accidentally change the background color to the text color so they'd be unreadable.) I really enjoyed the screenshots, and how he described the new layout and functionality of gnome. Wait nevermind he didn't do that, he pretty much just commented on two things that bothered him, why the hell is this "review" two pages? Yeah I guess flamebait would be a good moderation for the review.
Because diesel engines didn't run as clean as they do today. They had the good gas mileage but they were big polluters and pretty loud so they weren't very popular. Now that they run way clean, quieter, and the gas prices are so high, people might start turning to diesel. I think something like 40% of all the cars in europe are diesel when it's only like 1% in the US. Oh and it doesn't help that you can't get diesel fuel in every gas station, maybe when it becomes more of a standard and you just see diesel cars in show rooms, more people will start buying them.
I dunno maybe I just drove thru the wrong parts of New Mexico (kind of thru the center starting from east from texas to west into AZ) but I wouldn't consider it the most beutiful state in the U.S. I would deffinitely consider it one of the poorest (maybe even the poorest state I've been thru.) Texas is quite beutiful, so is Utah (Utah's REALLY nice) wyoming is nice, California is gorgeous (not even from cali but I've driven from lake tahoe to around death valley and from what I've seen it's a very beutiful state.) Maybe my opinion would change if I hiked the state parks rather than just drive thru their highways, but from what I've seen that's my opinion. And I'm sure Alaska is 100x more beutiful than New Mexico and all the other states in the US (I wouldn't know though since I haven't driven thru their) and I'm pretty sure it'd be even more poor. Oh and I don't think this will boost the economy much, I think they're picking new mexico because it'd be cheaper to launch (get permits and stuff like that) and it's a lot of desert so it makes a good launch site.
The current crop of "smart phones" are too big, however a few more years of minituarisation and we'll see cheap phones with good battery life and the regular PDA features such as calendar, internet access, decent addressbook, mp3 player, java VM, email client etc. in a form factor around that of today's regular phones.
Except for mp3 player (well technically it can play MP3 type files, but the storage space is limited to the sim card) and address book, my phone does all that. And it also has a built in camera. It's a Samsung E715. It's great on battery life (last about 3 days with 2 hours of talk time, or if I use the camera a lot or have a lot of calls it lasts around 2 days.) It has an organic LCD screen so I can see the screen in the dark without wasting the battery powering a back light. And if you really want an MP3 player why not just buy a MP3 player? They're really tiny, much smaller than a PDA or even a cell phone. The address book, well this phone could probably do it if it has support for CF cards. They will probably add that to their next top of the line phone anyway (store more pictures, maybe they might include a better camera too for higher res pics, although currently the built in camera has pretty impressive image quality.) That could also add MP3 support right there. The phone I have now is way small and it has a built in antanae (called an intenna or something heh) I'm sure if they made it external, they'd have room inside the phone for a CF card reader (or maybe not, this phone doesn't seem that much larger than my old samsung phone with external antanae and no camera.)
Because digital cameras have features like automatic focus, they have made it easy for anyone to take technically good photos.
WOW! Auto focus! That's so awesome! I wish film cameras had auto focus! Wait... *walks over to Canon Rebel 2000, uncaps lens, switches to Portrait mode, half holds shutter* HEY! My film camera has autofocus! That's so sweet! When did this happen?
That line really bothered me, "features like automatic focus"... digital cameras have features like white balance correction (not 100% sure but I think the only way to change white balance in film photography is with different lens filters), black and white mode (without having to switch film hehe), special effects (like sepia to make pictures look more aged) stuff like that, that lets you be more creative without buying expensive filters. But COME ON! Auto focus has been around for a long time now, any decent point and shoot camera has auto focus, I think any EF lens has auto focus (and manual focus, and then there's the full time manual focus which doesn't require switching between manual and auto to use both.) Anyway, yeah that line really bothered me.
lol I was joking about the web server (sites slashdotted, running the device as a webserver... get it?) But I really am looking for a PDA and I really did want to read the review:-/
Slashdot Mirror
I just built a shiny new Athlon64 box with an nVidia chipset and nVidia graphics. WinXP installs fine. Then, I just load some drivers and everything works.
I just built a shiny new Athlon XP (didn't have like $1,000 for a FX-53 and motherboard, plus it wasn't in stock at fry's) with an nVidia chipset and nVidia graphics. Windows XP stopped working and resets 4 minutes after it loads. I would install it again but I need SATA drivers for my SATA hard drive, I don't have a floppy drive. Windows XP won't let me load the drivers off a CD or off the hard drive. So I installed windows XP on my friend's computer since he has a floppy drive (stuck my SATA drive in his computer.) Put the drive back in my computer when windows finished installing, didn't get past the boot screen.
Now, if I wanted to install Linux, first I have to be paranoid about hosing my XP partition (oops).
Now, if I wanted to install Windows XP, first I'd have to put in my IDE drive and be paranoid about hosing my boot sector (which it will do no matter how carefull I am.) Which means I have to boot into my debian installer and run rescue mode, then run lilo again. Then I have to put my Serial ATA drives into the computer and run the installer from inside windows, THEN I need to remove the install of windows from my IDE drives, it would just take too much time.
To get linux installed on the SATA drive, I can put the drivers on a CD and load them thru the debian installer. Isn't windows supposed to be easier to install than linux? Why is it that ease of use usually means, easy for the average setup, impossible for everything else.
I don't think many people on Slashdot saw Super Troopers, on a related note my friend's wife created Johnny Chimpo and had to draw the Afghanistanimation cartoon (she hated it too, she hates drawing cartoons.)
Really? Did you ever use Windows XP? And when Windows 2000 was out did you try running any games on it? There are a lot of compatibility issues. Anyway, someone else posted a reply, you can just follow his link to a forum that describes how to get Doom 3 working in Windows 2003 (it's just that the installer checks to see if you have Windows XP or 2000, if you have neither it fails, they show how to disable the check.)
You could have read the system requirements on the box...
Don't pull that "I always buy games after I download them, so piracy doesn't really matter" bullshit.
Why? A lot of times it's the truth. Right now I'm in a house with 4 other people, every single one of us had a pirated copy of Doom 3 Monday Morning. Tuesday morning (like way early in the morning) I handed my friend some money, he went with his brother, and they brought back 3 copies of Doom 3, the 4th person in the house is getting a free copy from a friend who's getting 5 (for free, he writes reviews for all kinds of hardware and software so he gets free copies of a lot of things.)
I've never done it before, I don't know anyone who does it
Well I do, and all of my friends do, so now you know people who have done it before.
and it makes no rational sense to do so anyway.
I dunno, the first time I bought a computer game because I got a warez copy was Half-Life, that was the first time I played a 3D FPS (well I played like Doom, Wolf 3D, and Duke Nukem but I mean like first Quake style FPS.) I played it, I loved it, I bought it (actually I pre-ordered a copy, and it came out 2 weeks later.) Plus I got a CD key (which I didn't really need at the time since I only played single player, but then when mods came out I had a lot of fun playing online, like TFC or the first versions of CS.) Doom 3 doesn't have much of a multiplayer mode (yet) but I love ID Software and they deffinitely deserve the money I paid for this game.
Going back to the bike analogy... Imagine having an engine that powers you up and down hills regardless. Oh, wait, I have one... I call it my car. Yet I've never had a fraction of the fun driving down a hill that I used to get after working to get my bike to the top of a hill and feeling the exhilaration on the way down the far side. Sure, I see more hills now, in less time - which suits my busier adult lifestyle - but each hill means a fraction of what they used to. That's why grown men take time out to go mountain biking and why others find the time to play games without cheating.
I dunno I'd rather drive down a twisty hill in a car than on a bike, a twisty hill on a bike is fun, but it will never be as fun as flying down a twisty hill carving the apex thru each turn, and then there's the uphill aspect too, well it's a lot of fun going up short hills, if you've ever driven thru California's twisty hills you'll know what I'm talking about heh. Anyway, I see your point about cheating, except people make a sport out of driving, I don't think anyone makes a sport out of cheating.
Dude you're comparing 2 different (only it's a very slight difference) drives, and one's OEM while the other is retail, there will be a price difference. LG gives you a warranty for the retail product while the OEM isn't covered at all (by LG, dunno NCIX's policy.) The Future Shop product also has everything needed to install (cables, screws, jumpers) plus software, plus manuals. That's pretty much what you're paying for in the difference. Although at that price I would have bought neither drive (you can buy CD-RW /DVD combo drives for way cheaper than $80, and for $120 you can buy a retail DVD burner, my friend just got one, doesn't use it but it was only like $120 at Fry's.)
The key here, as usual, is the word "generally". I have to TRY to find hardware that is incomatable with win2k these days.
Generally as in there's more than a 50/50 chance I find hardware with linux support. There's a 1 in 3 chance the hardware has linux drivers on the install discs (unless it's a network device, the chance goes way up then.)
You have GOT to be joking...if you are comparing the feeble OpenGL performance on Linux to windows. please. everquest? planetside? anarchy-online? the sims? star wars galaxies? city of hero's? world of warcraft? Don't make me laugh.
What do you mean the feable OpenGL performance? OpenGL performs better in linux for most things than it does in windows (heck when I was playing half-life in linux it ran better than it did in windows, same stuff for Quake 2, 3, RTCW, and I imagine Doom 3 when it's finally out.)
One popular game finally releases an on-disk linux installer, and now "everything" is compatable?
Any popular game including an installer for linux AND windows in the same box is a very good start. Most other games have installers you can download, or linux versions you can buy. Also, I never said "everything" was compatible, but a lot of new popular games will follow the habbit and release linux binaries, it's a huge step towards a game friendly linux desktop.
everquest? planetside? anarchy-online? the sims? star wars galaxies? city of hero's? world of warcraft? Don't make me laugh.
The Sims works flawlessly in linux (they even sell a linux version), Everquest has a 4, Star Wars Galaxies has a 4 City of Heroes has a 4, Planetside, Anarchy-Online, and World of Warcraft don't work, but more than half the games you mentioned work in linux, they do require the transgaming version of wine (winex or something, might have changed since the last time I checked) which is not free, but the games still work.
Excellent. I personally do not know the Icon for gaim, but I am glad that it is easily recognizable to first time users. For your next test, have your mother and father sit down and pop out a word document, Or possibly your grandmother. Because that is what most of the workforce in office jobs are. 40 to 70 year olds that needed a good deal of training to use windows 95 when it came out, and would cost money and time to do it again for linux. What about when the system crashes and cannot autofsck? Holy hell, what would grandma do then? Or perhaps grandma wants to share pictures of the family, and turns on an anonymous FTPD on the machine without first checking for patches? Hello remote root compromise, my name is timmy. Let's play!
How about my friends mother? Somehow you mentioned all the people in my family who have no idea how to use a computer (although it'd be just as easy to train them in linux as windows since both would be a fresh start.) My friend's mother uses Office at work and when my friend and I installed linux on his second computer (the one she uses when he's playing games) she had no difficulty using Open Office. What about when the system crashes and cannot auto fsck? She calls the company sysadmin, he tells her what to type, she types it, problem solved. Obviously she knows how to follow directions and type, she learned how to use the computer, the rest is just applying skills she already knows. If it happens a lot (and it most likely won't) she'll learn the stuff. I taught my aunt how to change her desktop color depth, which is actually quite hard because there are no on screen instructions to follow, just a lot of memorizing the clicks. With the fsck, the instructions are on your screen already. And what if grandma want's to share pictures and turns on anonymous ftpd? Grandma doesn't know what the hell a ftpd is so why would she turn it on? There is no "WHOOPS! I slipped and accidentall
Umm he has a very good point, have you ever driven across the country? Most of the US is not "basically desert" or "high mountainous regions." Jeez just look at a topographical map of the US, there's a huge flat spot between the east coast and the mountains to the west, that's not all desert (actually I don't think any of it is, except like parts of texas and new mexico. The winters aren't unbearable in these areas, Alaska gets pretty cold but people still live there. And currently I'm in Phoenix, I'm pretty sure this entire area was nothing but desert although you'd never be able to tell just living here. I've had more drought warnings in NY than I've had here. It might be terrible taking up the entire US (there's a lot of nice land to see when you drive cross country, hate to see it all become a city) but it's deffinitely possible and I can't forsee this happening within the next 200 years or even in 500 years (we focus more on building up, not building across, I can see having huge apartment buildings towering over NYC, but can't see all the land in the US being taken up.)
Actually that's -
Plus, Al wants to make sure that he gets his songwriter credit (as writer of new lyrics) as well as his rightful share of the royalties.
The desktop market is what...at least 75% dominated by microsoft? linux has taken what...8 years to cut into it 10%? This translate into a few pennies less per day the company makes..on just one of it's fronts. I am sure people would love to dream of the day *nix is on equal ground in the desktop market as windows, it is simply not going to happen in the next 10 years minimum.
Except that now more and more hardware/software is supporting linux. When I started using linux I had to have such specific hardware, nothing seemed to work and it was really annoying to do anything in. Now I just go to Fry's and figure, hey that probably works in linux, generally it does (unless it's like a winmodem or something.)
Why you ask? driver support for new, exotic hardware. Gaming support(DX9 ring a bell?). propritory drivers and software to power those drivers. software users have been using for years and years. All of these are things linux could "do" per se..or any other *nix. just not now. The turnaround rate to get new drivers, software, and ports made is simply too long to be useful. and that is a simple, painful fact when it comes to desktops.
What do you mean by exotic hardware? I just bought a NVidia 6800 GT, the linux driver was right on nvidia's website. When I checked for the windows driver, it didn't support the card yet (does now though.) My friend has a 64 bit athlon, linux support has been out for a loooooooooong time, is there even a 64 bit windows version out yet? Or do you mean exotic as in worked in windows 95 and older, well that stuff usually doesn't work in windows xp, much better chance that someone bought the hardware a long time ago and wrote a driver for linux support. Gaming support(OpenGL ring a bell?) UT2K3 and 2K4 are both written for DirectX and were both ported to OpenGL, Doom 3 and every other game from ID Software will be OpenGL and will have linux support, half-life 2 probably won't have linux support as I see valve moving farther and father from linux (not that they were moving closer, just that half-life no longer works in linux thanks to all the new features they added to it that were totally useless and unecessary.) Most other new games will probably follow in Epic's and ID Software's footsteps and have linux support, if not there's always wine (ps, UT has come with the linux installer right on the disk, and a lot of my new hardware has too, most of the drivers are available the day I buy the hardware so what wait till drivers or software are you talking about?)
As for corperate resources using linux in a widescale deployment..There are just too few companies that are willing to try that. Why? It takes time for hundreds or thousands of people to "relearn" how to use thier computer. remember that most of the work force in the world had "windows for dummies" to get them employed years ago? Companies do not want to take the time, or the money training the entire staff..for such a change. it would end up costing the same, if not more, then windows products. Not to mention the time lost in the process..That in itself could cost far, far more then the liecences. This is just another simple fact that people tend to turn a blind eye to.
I dunno I wouldn't call my sister or her boyfriend linux zealots, they're like your everyday AOL users, but she sat down at my desk constantly, always able to find her way around (afterstep, which actually amazed me, but I have icons on Wharf). She knew the two icons she wanted (mozilla and gaim) and she used them just like she'd use IE or AIM in windows. I don't think it'd be that hard to tell people "Uhhh just click this icon to go into open office, it's just like microsoft office."
And before the zealots start, I am a unix sys admin..have been for 8 years now. Please do not start with the whole "blah blah blah LINUX R00LZ blah" rant, Because it serves no point. Direct that energy to making drivers and supporting hardware and ports.
And before the bashers start,
SCSI interfaces on IDE drives? That's like taking a K6-2 and putting an adapter for a socket 953 (Athlon 64 FX-53, the 64 bit processor, 2.4 GHz, very fast heh.) It's not going to run any faster, same hardware just a different connection. Besides you can get Serial ATA, not perfect, but better than standard IDE (only slightly, but then again you can get 10K RPM I think that's very close to a "cheap" SCSI drive.) And think of the issues? Every motherboard comes with an IDE controller (and now SATA), how many come with SCSI? How easy is it to install your favorite OS on SCSI hardware? It's annoying since you need a driver. Anyway, SATA is faster than standard IDE and it costs just about the same (maybe a few dollars more) so just get that heh.
Actually no it's not ridiculous, I worked at a Taco Bell and my main job was as a cashier. One day one of the cashiers charged a person $74 or so (I swear it wasn't me! I usually check the price way too many times to be sure it's correct, I'm slightly neurotic.) The person accepted the charges and just put in their pin not realizing the charges were like $60 more then they should have paid. Not a lot of people really check the price when they put in their pin, they just do it like some automated thing. We noticed the charge later in the day (the receipts for debit sales were waaaaaaaaay over), don't know if that person ever found out what they did. I can see this happening a lot.
I dunno maybe they were in a recording studio in Nice putting together the finishing touches on the album, when during a photo shoot it was stolen. The photo shoot could have been miles away, it just says it was stolen during the photo shoot, so while they were at a photo shoot, the disk was stolen from the recording studio, the photo shoot could have been in the recording studio but it doesn't say.
Umm I speak as someone who had just purchased two GeForce 6800 GTs (well I only got one, but my friend got one too, and I installed and played on both systems.) He has an AMD 64 FX-53 and I have a 3200+. The loudest part of my computer is the fan on my chip, second to that, my hard drive (my old 40 gig samsung, my new serial ata WD is pretty quiet, so is my older WD drive.) The video card takes up one slot, I only have a 450 watt PSU (was like $40, and I didn't buy it cause of the video card, I bought it because a while ago my 260 watt PSU died, and I figured why not get a 400 watt PSU in case I ever wanted to do water cooling and stuff like that.) My friend has a 500 watt PSU he bought, I figured he should get it just in case the card doesn't like his 300 watt PSU, it was only $50 (he could have gotten one for $30 that would supply more than enough power, but the 500 watt one looked really nice so we got it, and when you're buying a $400 video card a $200 motherboard and an $800 CPU a $50 PSU is so increadibly cheap.)
I don't really know what you're talking about, ATI is winning? They charge $100 more for a video card that performs worse in what will be the hottest new game this year, and they're winning? NVidia is going to have support for 2 video cards (2 insanely fast video cards) with PCI express, and ATI is winning? Maybe you were just upset with the NVidia FX series (I was upset too, it really killed me, I love NVidia mainly for their linux support and opengl performance, but the FX was just total CRAP, and when I saw the 6800 was gonna be a monster I was a little upset and even feared it was the end for NVidia but I was VERY surprised when I saw the final product, especially the benchmarks.) With the 6800, I see them as being back on top. You just sound like someone who has read one article a long time ago when NVidia first showed off the 6800, I think you should really check out the 6000 series, you'd be surprised at how well NVidia did this new series.
"We don't support linux." I've heard that so many times from Road Runner. When I moved to AZ though the DSL guy saw my desktop (Afterstep) looked around a bit for the start menu, then I realized I should probably reset (the modem he gave me to start off with only worked in windows so I had to reset to install it) so I killed X and he saw the prompt "Wow linux, what distro is it?" I told him (debian) and he said "Wow, debian? We're converting all our servers over from Win 2000 to Debian real soon."
I've also had good experiences with tech support, especially on other peoples computers cause I'd be calling for warrenty work. I'd call up say "Hey this computer has a problem starting up, so I swapped out a few things like the PSU, RAM, CPU, and motherboard, the motherboard is probably fried since when I tried a different one it worked, so where could I get a new motherboard since the PC is still under warrenty?" The guy went from ultra depressed (thinking "Oh no, not another problem that will probably require 2 hours to finally get to the conclusion that someone has to look at the computer") to really happy and excited like "Wow thanks for testing out all that stuff, so it's deffinitely the motherboard? Just bring it to such and such store and they'll install a new one for you."
PC tech support seems so much easier to deal with since they seem to know more about how the computer works. I guess it's easier for them since the problem is always on the users end and they have to deal with a lot of different situations. With internet tech support all they know how to deal with is configuring e-mail and setting auto detect IP address in Windows 98 and above. They rarely have to deal with a customer calling up telling them there is a problem on their end and even if the customer described exactly what was wrong, they wouldn't be able to do anything.
One time the guy tried to explain to me that I would need about $50+ more hardware than necessary to fix what I suspected to be a buggy RAM problem.
That doesn't sound too stupid, maybe he was thinking of what might have caused the problem that you only suspected to be a buggy ram problem. Now if he tried to sell you a printer cause your computer wouldn't boot, that'd be stupid, but if you have RAM issues it could be related to something else like the motherboard, maybe PSU (might not supply enough power for everything causing all kinds of issues), CPU, all kinds of stuff.
On another occasion, I was with a friend, checking out a couple hot-swap IDE cages for a development server I was building and a CompUSA dorkus walks buy and says "They're really overrated, and you probably don't need them, unless you're building a server (guy leaves)"
haha that guy's a moron, I mean he told you the hot-swap IDE cage is overrated and you probably don't need one unless you were building a server! hahaha! That moron didn't even know that you could use them for stuff like building a server like the one you were going to make! Oh wait, didn't he say "probably don't need them, unless you're building a server" which would imply that he knows why you might need them? Oh well he's still an idiot!
I dunno, fry's out here has server cases and they're right near the desktop cases. The prices are real good too, they have some 1U, 2U and 4U cases. Maybe you didn't look hard enough, did you even look at all?
Wow that's a wonderfull in-depth review of gnome. He talks about nautilus behaving like "My Computer" in Windows 95 and quoted a gnome developer on the stupidity of users (They might accidentally change the background color to the text color so they'd be unreadable.) I really enjoyed the screenshots, and how he described the new layout and functionality of gnome. Wait nevermind he didn't do that, he pretty much just commented on two things that bothered him, why the hell is this "review" two pages? Yeah I guess flamebait would be a good moderation for the review.
Because diesel engines didn't run as clean as they do today. They had the good gas mileage but they were big polluters and pretty loud so they weren't very popular. Now that they run way clean, quieter, and the gas prices are so high, people might start turning to diesel. I think something like 40% of all the cars in europe are diesel when it's only like 1% in the US. Oh and it doesn't help that you can't get diesel fuel in every gas station, maybe when it becomes more of a standard and you just see diesel cars in show rooms, more people will start buying them.
I dunno maybe I just drove thru the wrong parts of New Mexico (kind of thru the center starting from east from texas to west into AZ) but I wouldn't consider it the most beutiful state in the U.S. I would deffinitely consider it one of the poorest (maybe even the poorest state I've been thru.) Texas is quite beutiful, so is Utah (Utah's REALLY nice) wyoming is nice, California is gorgeous (not even from cali but I've driven from lake tahoe to around death valley and from what I've seen it's a very beutiful state.) Maybe my opinion would change if I hiked the state parks rather than just drive thru their highways, but from what I've seen that's my opinion. And I'm sure Alaska is 100x more beutiful than New Mexico and all the other states in the US (I wouldn't know though since I haven't driven thru their) and I'm pretty sure it'd be even more poor. Oh and I don't think this will boost the economy much, I think they're picking new mexico because it'd be cheaper to launch (get permits and stuff like that) and it's a lot of desert so it makes a good launch site.
YOU BASTARD! Do you have any idea how long I've been downloading the small movie trailer! And I have to get to work soon, man I'm gonna get fired :-/
The current crop of "smart phones" are too big, however a few more years of minituarisation and we'll see cheap phones with good battery life and the regular PDA features such as calendar, internet access, decent addressbook, mp3 player, java VM, email client etc. in a form factor around that of today's regular phones.
Except for mp3 player (well technically it can play MP3 type files, but the storage space is limited to the sim card) and address book, my phone does all that. And it also has a built in camera. It's a Samsung E715. It's great on battery life (last about 3 days with 2 hours of talk time, or if I use the camera a lot or have a lot of calls it lasts around 2 days.) It has an organic LCD screen so I can see the screen in the dark without wasting the battery powering a back light. And if you really want an MP3 player why not just buy a MP3 player? They're really tiny, much smaller than a PDA or even a cell phone. The address book, well this phone could probably do it if it has support for CF cards. They will probably add that to their next top of the line phone anyway (store more pictures, maybe they might include a better camera too for higher res pics, although currently the built in camera has pretty impressive image quality.) That could also add MP3 support right there. The phone I have now is way small and it has a built in antanae (called an intenna or something heh) I'm sure if they made it external, they'd have room inside the phone for a CF card reader (or maybe not, this phone doesn't seem that much larger than my old samsung phone with external antanae and no camera.)
Because digital cameras have features like automatic focus, they have made it easy for anyone to take technically good photos.
WOW! Auto focus! That's so awesome! I wish film cameras had auto focus! Wait... *walks over to Canon Rebel 2000, uncaps lens, switches to Portrait mode, half holds shutter* HEY! My film camera has autofocus! That's so sweet! When did this happen?
That line really bothered me, "features like automatic focus"... digital cameras have features like white balance correction (not 100% sure but I think the only way to change white balance in film photography is with different lens filters), black and white mode (without having to switch film hehe), special effects (like sepia to make pictures look more aged) stuff like that, that lets you be more creative without buying expensive filters. But COME ON! Auto focus has been around for a long time now, any decent point and shoot camera has auto focus, I think any EF lens has auto focus (and manual focus, and then there's the full time manual focus which doesn't require switching between manual and auto to use both.) Anyway, yeah that line really bothered me.
lol I was joking about the web server (sites slashdotted, running the device as a webserver... get it?) But I really am looking for a PDA and I really did want to read the review :-/