3. You are locked in to one hardware vendor. (This has not really been any more true for Apple motherboards than for Intel or AMD motherboards in a long time. ATI and nVidia need to flash their video cards slightly differently for Macs, but otherwise the Mac is made up almost entirely of industry-standard, interchangable hardware.)
Interesting point, but I am more concerned with hardware other than videocards as well. However, I was under the impression (I have never owned a mac) that it was difficult to obtain major parts (motherboard, bios replacement) of any quality for a PowerPC system without going through Apple.
Please, correct me if I am wrong; I would have built an Apple-like computer in a second if all the commodity hardware was available.
The true reason many x86-using mac fans have not made the switch is that they can't upgrade their entire machine without getting bent over by Apple.
Why would anyone buy through Apple if their hardware components were made available to the public at a competitive price? If my motherboard fries, I would find comfort in the fact that I can purchase a replacement or upgrade board in a competitive market.
" You can read the on-cd manual in another virtual terminal during the install if you want, or if Internet access is available, the on-line version."
I don't know if they still do this, but I bought a CD set for my machine from the gentoo store about a year ago. They sent printed instructions (10 or so pages) with the CDs in the mail.
I appreciated it, because I don't own a printer, and I have only one computer.
Support community - no matter who you are, sometimes you will have problems. Pretty much every problem I've ever had on Linux took a simple search on the Gentoo forums to find the solution in less than five minutes. (Even when my problems aren't on Gentoo Linux, I always search the Gentoo forums first, as they're usually more likely to contain a useful answer)
This is the biggest reason I use gentoo.
An example:
Built-in microphone and microphone input doesn't work on my thinkpad... hmmm...
Search the gentoo forum for 'thinkpad x31 no microphone'
Move from devfs to udev as described in forum.
Microphone works!
I have used slackware, redhat, and debian (and I loved them). The community support in gentoo far exceeds anything I had seen for the others. (granted, it could be that all the users were hiding in IRC or Usenet or something, and I just didn't know)
I don't think gentoo is the best thing since sliced-bread, but this is the reason I've used it for 3 years now.
When I see this, I will sure call my bank saying that this was an unauthorized transaction, and this transaction should be void, no? Besides, the thief reveal himself by specifying the destination account, no?
I was thinking the same thing, but came to the idea that if you had access to one account number, you could potentially have access to multiple account numbers.
The alleged could have split the money and bounced it around between accounts. Many small transactions between many accounts would make it difficult to determine that something illegal was going on. After all, banks make many many transactions every day.
One of the best features of using Yahoo Mail, IMO, is that gaim supports the IM notify messages yahoo sends out when I receive mail.
I don't know if I would switch to gmail unless I could do something similar. I realize that I can connect with a POP3 client, but if I am going to use gmail, doesn't POP3 defeat many of gmail's touted features?
Does anyone know if this sort of feature is available?
Skype is special only in that it works behind a firewall, in my opinion.
I would not have even started using it, but the alternatives (linphone, kphone, gnome-meeting, etc) either had to have ports opened on the firewalls of both parties involved in communication, or wouldn't work at all unless DMZ'ed (h323 wont work behind firewalls gnome-meeting/netmeeting).
This is a big deal to mostly due to the possibility of talking to non-geeks, you know, people who don't know what ports are, unless you count those things filled with water and ships.
Computer to computer VoIP used to stink for this reason: not many people to talk to, and the ones that are able are techies. Skype has changed this.
1. if you are good at anything you will not have any trouble finding something else to do.
2. if you are good at what you are doing at work - you will not be fired
3. If you are not good at anything then why do you expect some one to support you?
I admire your ability to have that point of view. It was my own a few years back. The idea that pops into my head when I hear someone say such things now is 'young' or 'sheltered'.
Now, please do not get offended. I know these are not attributes that people want to be known for, but in this case, it also means you are lucky.
I hope that you can live your life without ever having to change the viewpoint you have. This would mean that you never suffered a politically motivated coup at your job, or a stab in the back from a coworker that you never expected, or a layoff of a crew of great employees because management is concerned with how analysts will respond to week growth in the quarter.
These types of things happen, and none of them have anything to do with you as an individual. They are circumstances, things which are by definition not under your control.
"People are not file sharing to do their homework."
I don't think it is fair to say this, especially if the University has a graduate program. A maxed out network could be a perfect specimen for plenty of computer science related research projects.
IMHO, a university's role should be helping to research a technical solution to the phenomenon, not a 'legal' one. That is, unless the problem is interfering with the ability to do research.
I could be wrong, but if the University of Florida decides to keep this policy, it will be devoid of anyone tech saavy (who cares about being abused).
I personally do not trade MP3's, but I would find it highly ignorant of a University to assume that file trading programs can only be used for trading copyrighted material.
I equate this type of action with a Christian university banning students from using the network if they had web browsers, since they could be viewing pr0n!
"Examples are given for both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cellular interference with optically stored data. Differences in cellular parameters such as organelle density, refractivity, and gross morphology (branching versus aggregation) are shown to impact on error correction using the Cross Interleaved Reed-Solomon Code."
Holy crap. You could have just said, "Hey, when I grow shit on my CD's it sounds funny."
using serial there is no having to worry about whether all the bits arrive at the same time (as there obviously is with parallel), and so the speed of transmission can be dramatically increased past the point at which it becomes faster than the "equivalent" parallel technology... bits arrive in the order they were sent - guaranteed.
I'm afraid this might add to the confusion about serial interfaces being 'faster' than parallel. While it is true that you don't have to worry about data/clock skew when using serial interfaces, enabling you to clock them faster, a parallel interface running at the same clock speed as a serial interface will always be faster in terms of data throughput. The reason for this is simple: serial == 1 bit per clock, parallel = > 1 bit per clock.
So, saying that serial is faster than the "equivalent" parallel interface is confusing, and incorrect, because one could be referring to equivalent clock rates being used for each interface, in which case parallel will provide at least twice the data throughput. On the other hand, "equivalent" could be referring to identical throughput rates, in which case the serial and parallel interfaces would provide, by definition, identical data rates.
The real advantage that PCI Express has over PCI/PCI-X is that it is a point-to-point, rather than a multi-drop, bus. This setup requires less time between pin transitions, meaning that it can be clock faster. Also, like Ethernet, a serial protocol can imbed the clock into the data stream so clock/data skew is no problem whatsoever.
Serial is not better than parallel anymore than digital is better than analog, there are just physical reasons why implementing point-to-point serial at significantly higher clock rates is easier than multi-drop parallel.
1: The money for this program was privately generated and tagged specically for this program.
2: No general fund tax dollars are involved in this project...that is, no money that would otherwise go to other educational goals was diverted fund this.
If you could show concrete proof of these 'facts' instead of simply stating it, I could agree with your reasoning.
Please, post back with links to reputable sources backing these statements up and you will have me convinced.
Otherwise, you are trying to mislead people. The origin of ALL the government's money originates from tax dollars in one way or another.
As for you sentiments about stealing from some to give to others I agree with you wholeheartedly. Governor Angus King really outdid himself in this case, because 2 months after the laptop program was started, he announced that the State of Maine was in a 'budget crisis'.
The state congress and former governor Angus King held up the old Maine tradition of being totally irresponsible with the state budget. Governor John Baldacci will not be much better I am afraid.
Oh, and BTW, found a list of the U.S. states with the heaviest tax burdens. Maine is the top.
Having so much effort wasted on many different distributions is stupid. Can you imagine what type of improvements could have been made to Linux in general with the programming time invested in maintaining many different distributions?
You mean you would already have a free clone of YOUR favorite OS NOW if everyone would just team up and agree that your favorite GUI and OS's philosophy is the best?
The problem is, there are people who actually work on projects, and those who criticize other's projects. The reason that there are so many projects is that people disagree on what the 'correct' way of doing things is. If you want a windows clone, use windows. Otherwise, choose the distribution that fits your computing style the best.
Oh, and by the way, ctl-alt-+ and ctl-alt-- changes your resolutions in X on-the-fly, if you compile your quality sound driver and insert it into the kernel, you'll have reliable sound, and xfreee86 +xinerama works great for MULTI-monitor setups, not just dual-monitor setups.
Furthermore, the developers that work on making different distributions have totally different skill sets than driver developers and applications developers. In other words, you can't assume that if these people weren't developing their distribution they would be fixing problems with sound, video, etc.. In fact, if they weren't developing their distribution, they would probably be posting nonsense on slashdot, and complaining about how all the current distributions are crap.
Sorry if I come off as harsh, but I hate this type of thinking. Some people are so lazy, but expect the world of others. Parasites.
Yippie! There are some signs of intelligence down here:)
In this case, whether the author of the story knows it or not, 'forever' is an approximation. He might be an engineer, but certainly not a mathematician.
Slashdot Mirror
3. You are locked in to one hardware vendor. (This has not really been any more true for Apple motherboards than for Intel or AMD motherboards in a long time. ATI and nVidia need to flash their video cards slightly differently for Macs, but otherwise the Mac is made up almost entirely of industry-standard, interchangable hardware.)
Interesting point, but I am more concerned with hardware other than videocards as well. However, I was under the impression (I have never owned a mac) that it was difficult to obtain major parts (motherboard, bios replacement) of any quality for a PowerPC system without going through Apple.
Please, correct me if I am wrong; I would have built an Apple-like computer in a second if all the commodity hardware was available.
The true reason many x86-using mac fans have not made the switch is that they can't upgrade their entire machine without getting bent over by Apple.
Why would anyone buy through Apple if their hardware components were made available to the public at a competitive price? If my motherboard fries, I would find comfort in the fact that I can purchase a replacement or upgrade board in a competitive market.
GnomeMeeting would work...
However, last I knew one had to DMZ their machine in order to use any h323 protocol. Hardly seems a worthwhile trade-off.
" You can read the on-cd manual in another virtual terminal during the install if you want, or if Internet access is available, the on-line version."
I don't know if they still do this, but I bought a CD set for my machine from the gentoo store about a year ago. They sent printed instructions (10 or so pages) with the CDs in the mail.
I appreciated it, because I don't own a printer, and I have only one computer.
This is the biggest reason I use gentoo.
An example:
- Built-in microphone and microphone input doesn't work on my thinkpad... hmmm...
- Search the gentoo forum for 'thinkpad x31 no microphone'
- Move from devfs to udev as described in forum.
- Microphone works!
I have used slackware, redhat, and debian (and I loved them). The community support in gentoo far exceeds anything I had seen for the others. (granted, it could be that all the users were hiding in IRC or Usenet or something, and I just didn't know) I don't think gentoo is the best thing since sliced-bread, but this is the reason I've used it for 3 years now.When I see this, I will sure call my bank saying that this was an unauthorized transaction, and this transaction should be void, no? Besides, the thief reveal himself by specifying the destination account, no?
I was thinking the same thing, but came to the idea that if you had access to one account number, you could potentially have access to multiple account numbers.
The alleged could have split the money and bounced it around between accounts. Many small transactions between many accounts would make it difficult to determine that something illegal was going on. After all, banks make many many transactions every day.
One of the best features of using Yahoo Mail, IMO, is that gaim supports the IM notify messages yahoo sends out when I receive mail.
I don't know if I would switch to gmail unless I could do something similar.
I realize that I can connect with a POP3 client, but if I am going to use gmail, doesn't POP3 defeat many of gmail's touted features?
Does anyone know if this sort of feature is available?
C'mon, this is funny!
:)
It's friday people, lighten up
bookmark
Skype is special only in that it works behind a firewall, in my opinion.
I would not have even started using it, but the alternatives (linphone, kphone, gnome-meeting, etc) either had to have ports opened on the firewalls of both parties involved in communication, or wouldn't work at all unless DMZ'ed (h323 wont work behind firewalls gnome-meeting/netmeeting).
This is a big deal to mostly due to the possibility of talking to non-geeks, you know, people who don't know what ports are, unless you count those things filled with water and ships.
Computer to computer VoIP used to stink for this reason: not many people to talk to, and the ones that are able are techies. Skype has changed this.
1. if you are good at anything you will not have any trouble finding something else to do.
2. if you are good at what you are doing at work - you will not be fired
3. If you are not good at anything then why do you expect some one to support you?
I admire your ability to have that point of view. It was my own a few years back. The idea that pops into my head when I hear someone say such things now is 'young' or 'sheltered'.
Now, please do not get offended. I know these are not attributes that people want to be known for, but in this case, it also means you are lucky.
I hope that you can live your life without ever having to change the viewpoint you have.
This would mean that you never suffered a politically motivated coup at your job, or a stab in the back from a coworker that you never expected, or a layoff of a crew of great employees because management is concerned with how analysts will respond to week growth in the quarter.
These types of things happen, and none of them have anything to do with you as an individual. They are circumstances, things which are by definition not under your control.
"People are not file sharing to do their homework."
I don't think it is fair to say this, especially if the University has a graduate program. A maxed out network could be a perfect specimen for plenty of computer science related research projects.
IMHO, a university's role should be helping to research a technical solution to the phenomenon, not a 'legal' one. That is, unless the problem is interfering with the ability to do research.
I could be wrong, but if the University of Florida decides to keep this policy, it will be devoid of anyone tech saavy (who cares about being abused).
I personally do not trade MP3's, but I would find it highly ignorant of a University to assume that file trading programs can only be used for trading copyrighted material.
I equate this type of action with a Christian university banning students from using the network if they had web browsers, since they could be viewing pr0n!
Pretty ridiculous if you ask me.
You couldn't pay me enough money to wear that thing. It looks like the interior designer for TGIFridays made it.
On second thought, I guess it would stop all those sex-hungry girls from chasing me around.
"Examples are given for both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cellular interference with optically stored data. Differences in cellular parameters such as organelle density, refractivity, and gross morphology (branching versus aggregation) are shown to impact on error correction using the Cross Interleaved Reed-Solomon Code."
Holy crap. You could have just said, "Hey, when I grow shit on my CD's it sounds funny."
I hope someone hacks my passwords at work and deletes this stinking code I'm debugging.
...
Oh, and the backups too. Just point your password crackers to
Go home and exercise?
using serial there is no having to worry about whether all the bits arrive at the same time (as there obviously is with parallel), and so the speed of transmission can be dramatically increased past the point at which it becomes faster than the "equivalent" parallel technology... bits arrive in the order they were sent - guaranteed.
:-l
I'm afraid this might add to the confusion about serial interfaces being 'faster' than parallel. While it is true that you don't have to worry about data/clock skew when using serial interfaces, enabling you to clock them faster, a parallel interface running at the same clock speed as a serial interface will always be faster in terms of data throughput. The reason for this is simple: serial == 1 bit per clock, parallel = > 1 bit per clock.
So, saying that serial is faster than the "equivalent" parallel interface is confusing, and incorrect, because one could be referring to equivalent clock rates being used for each interface, in which case parallel will provide at least twice the data throughput. On the other hand, "equivalent" could be referring to identical throughput rates, in which case the serial and parallel interfaces would provide, by definition, identical data rates.
The real advantage that PCI Express has over PCI/PCI-X is that it is a point-to-point, rather than a multi-drop, bus. This setup requires less time between pin transitions, meaning that it can be clock faster. Also, like Ethernet, a serial protocol can imbed the clock into the data stream so clock/data skew is no problem whatsoever.
Serial is not better than parallel anymore than digital is better than analog, there are just physical reasons why implementing point-to-point serial at significantly higher clock rates is easier than multi-drop parallel.
Anyone still awake?
Didn't think so
Don't forget to black out the account number printed on the bottom of the check.
I wouldn't put it past the money grubbing record labels from trying to wire money from your account.
1: The money for this program was privately generated and tagged specically for this program.
2: No general fund tax dollars are involved in this project...that is, no money that would otherwise go to other educational goals was diverted fund this.
If you could show concrete proof of these 'facts' instead of simply stating it, I could agree with your reasoning.
Please, post back with links to reputable sources backing these statements up and you will have me convinced.
Otherwise, you are trying to mislead people. The origin of ALL the government's money originates from tax dollars in one way or another.
Email:
governor@maine.gov
Mailing Address:
Office of the Governor
#1 State House Station
Augusta, ME 04333-0001
Phone:
207-287-3531
207-287-6548 (TTY) Fax 207-287-1034
Actually, free gifts with MAINE tax dollars!!
I am a Maine taxpayer, I know the difference.
As for you sentiments about stealing from some to give to others I agree with you wholeheartedly. Governor Angus King really outdid himself in this case, because 2 months after the laptop program was started, he announced that the State of Maine was in a 'budget crisis'.
The state congress and former governor Angus King held up the old Maine tradition of being totally irresponsible with the state budget. Governor John Baldacci will not be much better I am afraid.
Oh, and BTW, found a list of the U.S. states with the heaviest tax burdens. Maine is the top.
I should really move.
Having so much effort wasted on many different distributions is stupid. Can you imagine what type of improvements could have been made to Linux in general with the programming time invested in maintaining many different distributions?
You mean you would already have a free clone of YOUR favorite OS NOW if everyone would just team up and agree that your favorite GUI and OS's philosophy is the best?
The problem is, there are people who actually work on projects, and those who criticize other's projects. The reason that there are so many projects is that people disagree on what the 'correct' way of doing things is. If you want a windows clone, use windows. Otherwise, choose the distribution that fits your computing style the best.
Oh, and by the way, ctl-alt-+ and ctl-alt-- changes your resolutions in X on-the-fly, if you compile your quality sound driver and insert it into the kernel, you'll have reliable sound, and xfreee86 +xinerama works great for MULTI-monitor setups, not just dual-monitor setups.
Furthermore, the developers that work on making different distributions have totally different skill sets than driver developers and applications developers. In other words, you can't assume that if these people weren't developing their distribution they would be fixing problems with sound, video, etc.. In fact, if they weren't developing their distribution, they would probably be posting nonsense on slashdot, and complaining about how all the current distributions are crap.
Sorry if I come off as harsh, but I hate this type of thinking. Some people are so lazy, but expect the world of others. Parasites.
When my CLIE' can take on Kasparov and win.
What fun is it to see brute force prevail over mental finesse?
It will be a sad day, when my Clie' can take on Kasparov and win.
What fun is it to see brute force prevail over thinking finesse?
Yippie! There are some signs of intelligence down here :)
In this case, whether the author of the story knows it or not, 'forever' is an approximation.
He might be an engineer, but certainly not a mathematician.