2008.1 was indeed one of their best, most stable releases. The 2009 releases really have been waiting on KDE4 to catch up. 2009.1 is better than 2009.0, especially if you install everything from scratch, including fresh user directories to get rid of inappropriate KDE3.5 hangovers like old themes and konqueror instead of dolphin.
Im hoping the 2010 will have the KDE missing bits problem sorted out, and hopefully kuickshow makes a comeback, and dolphin becomes as nice a file manager as konqi is.
Is there a good alternative ISP available to the same customers.
The stampede started a couple of years ago. Demon used to be a pretty good techie ISP, their webpage was straight out of the '90s, but they were not too expensive and very reliable.
But then it seems the techies were replaced by accountants and marketing executives on high salaries. They started introducing weird billing systems, prices stayed high, net speeds remained low, free webspace stayed at 10Mb.
I eventually left for PlusNet, twice the speed at 1/2 the price. Theres a dozen other alternatives, all cheaper.
Typical Sky and Xbox customers probably dont care or dont understand the issues.
They will lap this up in droves till they realise they are now spending 100quid/month on the combined Sky/MS Live/Broadband services, and still have no more functionality than a freeview PVR.
May I respectfully disagree with most of your points.
Linux's ship has sailed.
Maybe, maybe not...
If you're not using it now, you probably never will.
Or are using it and dont know it, many home appliances use Linux or BSD, most web Applications are hosted on Linux, the next generation of smartphones and tablets (e.g. kindle) will probably use Linux or BSD derived OSes
As a long time (and current) Linux user, I have come across all these issues first-hand, as has every other Linux user, developer and advocate out there.
Most of these problems also apply to the Windows ecosystem, its not a stable API, the GUI is slow, a lot of hardware is not supported going forward, or only gets a half arsed official driver.
That they are still problems even though they've been known for years - sometimes decades shows that they will never be addressed, or fixed.
All software has these problems, you cant go back and fix everything, E.g. look at FAT and NTFS, loads of issues with these have not been addressed since forever.
Linux is a hobby systyem. The code is donated mostly by amateurs (or people working for rewards other than money - for example the recognition of their peers) and is therefore not within the normal disciplines of IT developemt. If you tell a Linux developer their code is crap - or the application they have written is junk, they'll just walk. As they will if you ask them to do things they don't want to: such as write a manual, fix bugs, add (or remove) features.
That is mostly untrue, as well as rather insulting to many professional OSS devs.
Basically guys, this is as good as it gets. Live with it or go elsewhere.
The things that hurt me the most is the lack of games, and the multitude of Distros, particularly Ubuntu and its distinctly odd setup.
You might be able to write a similar prog to thrash the hard drive till the heads fall off, or poke away at flash type devices till the bits get tired.
Ive stuck with MDK/MDV since MDV8.1, but I do understand GPs problem.
Every now and then Mandriva produce a bad release, 2005-LE was peculiarly odoriferous, 9.2 and one of the 2007 releases were also rather poor. 2008.0 and 2008.1 were good (apart from an ugly backport of Firefox when FF2 went out of service), but then they went to KDE4 far to early with MDV 2009.0, which hasn't worked too well.
FWIW, Im thinking 2009.1 is going to be one of the better releases.
The Mandriva website really was useless, I couldn't even re-find solutions to problems I'd previously had solved (e.g. an odd xorg.conf for my monitor). Its a lot better today, but there is still an odd gap between the main site and the place all the really useful information is kept.
What I really dont get is this love for Ubuntu. Its about as good as any other distro.
"Here are some places, peopled therein. The State of New York. To the south The City of New York, bounded by sea , whose influence comes ashore. To the North the land of Adirondacks, with Saratoga therin. Between, in the center, the Upstate of New York."
"Those of the Center motivate vehicles with precision unheard of in other parts."
"Wherin two roads, i90 and i87, meet in the land of Upstate. The dwellers there, bounded by parkland and plenty, consider their blessings."
"Not expensive wagons driven Southwards from Saratoga to labour for the Rulers, nor the dwellers of The City, proceeding away from home, consider those they find about."
So its going to look great on paper, and will be fine for the first hour, but sooner or later the thing will lock solid because Via have cut some corners in the drivers or not fully implemented a standard.
Previous owner of a kt133 (usb lockups), current owner of a CN400 (video lockups).
Have you ever wondered what
""pumpkin positive" means in your medical records.
Engineers are always easter egging their stuff. Most of the time the clients are in on it. Theres the guy who sent someones ashes into space, the Damien Hurst art on the space probe, the NatWest building, roads that play tunes when you drive over them, and infinite supply of weird acronyms.
The best eatser eggs are those that go straight over the heads of the humourless, which is probably why you dont spot them.
My personal eggs are, a binary message hidden in an icon, messages in haiku format, some messages in the comments (compiled code only), andmodule names insulting other developers.
I think its safe to say our common Ancestor was also a
Great Ape too.
Also, Its pretty common for evolution to stop for some species, crocodiles and sharks being cases where very little has changed for millions of years. Dawkins covers this in The Blind Watchmaker, explaining why populations have to be separated and in different environments for one species to evolve from another.
In a recent radio interview, Steve Jones also made it clear that our evolution may restart when conditions change.
The meteorite is the source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee
Slashdot Mirror
That top 1000 would include:
All of whom would see an immediate drop in revenues if google stopped indexing them, and some of which are actually google owned.
2008.1 was indeed one of their best, most stable releases. The 2009 releases really have been waiting on KDE4 to catch up. 2009.1 is better than 2009.0, especially if you install everything from scratch, including fresh user directories to get rid of inappropriate KDE3.5 hangovers like old themes and konqueror instead of dolphin.
Im hoping the 2010 will have the KDE missing bits problem sorted out, and hopefully kuickshow makes a comeback, and dolphin becomes as nice a file manager as konqi is.
Or looking at it another way, Microsoft appears to be unable to convert its existing userbase to new customers, even for its free offerings.
While not the free promised, the terms hefty and $17 haven't been used together since the 1930s.
Excellent, I have a volunteer.
I shall be at your door shortly with a sock and $17 in loose change.
Is there a good alternative ISP available to the same customers.
The stampede started a couple of years ago. Demon used to be a pretty good techie ISP, their webpage was straight out of the '90s, but they were not too expensive and very reliable.
But then it seems the techies were replaced by accountants and marketing executives on high salaries. They started introducing weird billing systems, prices stayed high, net speeds remained low, free webspace stayed at 10Mb.
I eventually left for PlusNet, twice the speed at 1/2 the price. Theres a dozen other alternatives, all cheaper.
That could be it. If you type "bash c" into bing, it suggests the only practical programming a windows fan is likely to understand.
Typical Sky and Xbox customers probably dont care or dont understand the issues.
They will lap this up in droves till they realise they are now spending 100quid/month on the combined Sky/MS Live/Broadband services, and still have no more functionality than a freeview PVR.
Linux's ship has sailed.
Maybe, maybe not...
If you're not using it now, you probably never will.
Or are using it and dont know it, many home appliances use Linux or BSD, most web Applications are hosted on Linux, the next generation of smartphones and tablets (e.g. kindle) will probably use Linux or BSD derived OSes
As a long time (and current) Linux user, I have come across all these issues first-hand, as has every other Linux user, developer and advocate out there.
Most of these problems also apply to the Windows ecosystem, its not a stable API, the GUI is slow, a lot of hardware is not supported going forward, or only gets a half arsed official driver.
That they are still problems even though they've been known for years - sometimes decades shows that they will never be addressed, or fixed.
All software has these problems, you cant go back and fix everything, E.g. look at FAT and NTFS, loads of issues with these have not been addressed since forever.
Linux is a hobby systyem. The code is donated mostly by amateurs (or people working for rewards other than money - for example the recognition of their peers) and is therefore not within the normal disciplines of IT developemt. If you tell a Linux developer their code is crap - or the application they have written is junk, they'll just walk. As they will if you ask them to do things they don't want to: such as write a manual, fix bugs, add (or remove) features.
That is mostly untrue, as well as rather insulting to many professional OSS devs.
Basically guys, this is as good as it gets. Live with it or go elsewhere.
The things that hurt me the most is the lack of games, and the multitude of Distros, particularly Ubuntu and its distinctly odd setup.
You might be able to write a similar prog to thrash the hard drive till the heads fall off, or poke away at flash type devices till the bits get tired.
Ive stuck with MDK/MDV since MDV8.1, but I do understand GPs problem.
Every now and then Mandriva produce a bad release, 2005-LE was peculiarly odoriferous, 9.2 and one of the 2007 releases were also rather poor. 2008.0 and 2008.1 were good (apart from an ugly backport of Firefox when FF2 went out of service), but then they went to KDE4 far to early with MDV 2009.0, which hasn't worked too well.
FWIW, Im thinking 2009.1 is going to be one of the better releases.
The Mandriva website really was useless, I couldn't even re-find solutions to problems I'd previously had solved (e.g. an odd xorg.conf for my monitor). Its a lot better today, but there is still an odd gap between the main site and the place all the really useful information is kept.
What I really dont get is this love for Ubuntu. Its about as good as any other distro.
But they are still gosh darned tootingly popular.
"Here are some places, peopled therein. The State of New York. To the south The City of New York, bounded by sea , whose influence comes ashore. To the North the land of Adirondacks, with Saratoga therin. Between, in the center, the Upstate of New York."
"Those of the Center motivate vehicles with precision unheard of in other parts."
"Wherin two roads, i90 and i87, meet in the land of Upstate. The dwellers there, bounded by parkland and plenty, consider their blessings."
"Not expensive wagons driven Southwards from Saratoga to labour for the Rulers, nor the dwellers of The City, proceeding away from home, consider those they find about."
With favours, there is an implied social contract. There are even laws covering it, see promisory estoppel.
Have you considered paying for a commercial product?
I thought it still sort of worked for photons, cos they are their own anti-particle.
My party piece is to bore anyone who will listen with an argument that the universe only needs one photon travelling backwards and forwards in time.
But the WTFs are usually reserved for the followup where I set fire to my head.
I thought there was only one magnetic monopole, and one photon, in this universe.
try playing a video with xvmc acceleration. I think thats where VIA have been screwing up recently.
E.g.
xine -V xxmc dvd://
So its going to look great on paper, and will be fine for the first hour, but sooner or later the thing will lock solid because Via have cut some corners in the drivers or not fully implemented a standard.
Previous owner of a kt133 (usb lockups), current owner of a CN400 (video lockups).
We block them. We inform our peer institutions and the authorities. We inform the owning ISP.
Sounds like the perfect setup for a DDOS. Fake a few IP addresses, get a few legitimate hosts blacklisted. Ask for protection money. profit.
Have you ever wondered what ""pumpkin positive" means in your medical records.
Engineers are always easter egging their stuff. Most of the time the clients are in on it. Theres the guy who sent someones ashes into space, the Damien Hurst art on the space probe, the NatWest building, roads that play tunes when you drive over them, and infinite supply of weird acronyms.
The best eatser eggs are those that go straight over the heads of the humourless, which is probably why you dont spot them.
My personal eggs are, a binary message hidden in an icon, messages in haiku format, some messages in the comments (compiled code only), andmodule names insulting other developers.
A baby will pull back from a painful stimulus and show agitation. They also grab at hair, and cry when hungry.
I think if you drop one, their arms automatically go out, as if to catch on branches and break a fall.
Also, sneezing and closing of eyes.
The current favourite is, I believe, Paterson Joseph.
That's NumberWang!
Um, Humans are 'Great Apes', family Hominidae.
I think its safe to say our common Ancestor was also a Great Ape too.
Also, Its pretty common for evolution to stop for some species, crocodiles and sharks being cases where very little has changed for millions of years. Dawkins covers this in The Blind Watchmaker, explaining why populations have to be separated and in different environments for one species to evolve from another.
In a recent radio interview, Steve Jones also made it clear that our evolution may restart when conditions change.
The meteorite is the source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee
On a plane?