If Ubuntu chose Debian as its base over all over Linux distros, what does that say about Debian?
That it's a damn good place to start from? Only (in answer to the grandparent question) not a good place to finish.
Basically it looks like they build from Debian as it's "nearly there". Only the problem is that time's moving on faster than Debian is and "there" is a moving goalpost, so they have to make more changes to stay current.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Dunno. But I keep trying to go to homestarrunder.com.
Cool. I'll be trying that next time I need to transcode some FLAC files to Ogg Vorbis. I did this recently but didn't know that oggenc could directly handle FLAC files (or maybe the binary I had wasn't compiled with the right flags or sommat), so I had to pipe it with the FLAC decoder and then manually re-tag the files.
Not a problem for one album but it is the reason I don't do more things via FLAC first, 'cos for several albums at a time that would be a bind.
I personally do not see why going together to a movie should even count as a date. Go to a nice non fast-food restaurant and actually talk to each other.
Ummmmm. There's probably a reason why, certainly here in the UK, a lot of cinemas are surrounded by non-fast-food restaurants.
Both for dates and non-dates it makes sense to combine going to a movie and sitting down to a proper meal. OK granted when you do it that way it's more or less written-off as being a cheap day out.
I really think Tridge needs... ...to make a better statement.
Actually that's about the first thing I thought after reading the article.
There are always two sides to any story and I don't fully take Larry's take at face-value. I don't fully think that Larry was in the right here but Tridge doesn't exactly give a good accounting of himself either. It also gives the unfortunate look of not defending himself.
To be honest all it does is make neither Larry nor Tridge come off in a good light.
Mark Shuttleworth has said that he doesn't wan't ubuntu to be a mainstream distro that everyone uses
It sounds very much like Ubuntu (and the situation with Debian) has been a victim of the success of Ubuntu itself.
It looks like it's gaining mainstream credibility as it's taking Debian (unstable?) and giving it some polish for the common desktop. This is, understandably, popular.
It has the stability of Debian yet it's more up to date than Stable (or even Testing). Only as it gets more popular it gives rise to the "packages built are no longer Debian-compatible enough" problem.
Personally I'm looking at switching to Ubuntu (from Fedora Core 1) later this year. FC1 has served me pretty well, but FC2 has issues with my hardware and subsequent Fedora releases have left me a little skeptical.
For me the idea of a distro based on Debian but with the "just works" polish is highly tempting.
As to Debian's position, I do think they let themselves down somewhat by infrequent releases. Debian has a good reputation and seems to have managed to stay around (and popular) for longer than some other distributions. However having releases that seem so far out of date and sometimes having a reputation of needing a lot of tweaking to get running means that people get put off despite Debian having the good reputation.
Ubuntu basically taking Debian and turning it into what users want is great from a (desktop) user perspective, but yes carries potential problems from a development one.
Ideally what Debian needs (or needed) to do is have a "Debian Desktop" (or "Debian Polished") release that may not be as stable as Stable but is more polished and recent than Testing. Ubuntu (and others) have stepped in to fill this spot yet, as other are groups doing the work, the potential for incompatibilities is increased.
How many times has the home user faced a property configuration wizard that tells them to contact their "system/network administrator" for more information.
What annoys me about that dialogue is that it's sometimes rather dumb. There have been a few, but still annoying, times when I've been logged in as Administrator in Windows 2000, to do admin tasks, and got that damn dialogue box telling me I've not got enough rights and to contact the system admin.
What also annoys me is that some tasks won't run unless you have admin rights. And although they make sense from one perspective, they're annoying from another. Like updating the definitions on some (but not all) antivirus software.
Plus, as has been mentioned elsewhere, after installing software you often have to do a first-run cycle with admin permissions to click on EULAs or finalise some post-install settings. Granted my problem wih this is probably due to the reverse of teh whole conditioning problem. If I'm setting up a machine that isn't habitually running with Admin privs I prefer not to run user software under the Admin account. So I forget to do so, and then have to go back and run it so I can change some admin-only settings.
Under Linux I like that I can run much more things under non-admin and then su/sudo as necessary to get other tasks done. Although I can see how that can be a little confusing for some users.
I have to say, as someone new to Mac OS X, I like the model they use there. If you want to do some admin-level task you have to enter your password. Not some admin password you have to remember in addition, but your own.
Easy enough to not be too much of an issue with forgetting passwords, but disruptive enough to probably stop people doing admin-level tasks unless they really need to.
I don't find it too odd, although I realise I seem to be in quite the minority about that.
This new series seems to currently be focussing on introducing the basic concepts, as well as hinting at the backgrounds, for a whole new generation of viewers. The audience, through Rose, is learning all of the essentions - the Doctor not being human, him being alive for a long time, him travelling through time and space in a machine with a "disguise" that makes it rather too conspicuous.
In a way it would follow that the other of the essentials that has to be covered is the issue of regeneration.
It wouldn't surprise me if (as has been speculated) the Christmas special deals with the Doctor having to regenerate. In a way (and after a bit of though and seeing the second and third episodes) it would seem odd if after Rose having to ome face to face with all of the thigns that make the Doctor not-Human she didn't have to deal with him regenerating.
The only real drawbacks I can see are firstly that there has been a hard limit set on regenerations. And this brings it all the closer to having to find some way of dealing with that, and rpeferably in a way thar doesn't really alienate long-time fans.
Secondly the BBC really should have left the announcement until the end of this season. They've basically triggered the kind of speculation that should (and usually does) occur between seasons to happen during the season - which seems to me to draw the topic away from the actual show itself.
Yeah, but my point is that you can't buy an non-DRM mp3 from a major artist legally online. It would be great if you could, but that's not reality. Instead of buying music online, you need the CD to rip from.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
OK, so the inability to buy non-DRm mp3 is a bad thing, but having to buy the CD isn't actually a bad thing. you get as near to lossless as you're going to get with the current technology, and (as long as it's not a DRM "CD" you're buying) you can then encode to anything you choose.
Heck, that way you can use iTune to rip an AAC that's best for that, Ogg Vorbis for XMMS, FLAC for your large hard-drive jukebox and mp3 for your old player that won't play anything else.
...because if you buy legally from Apple, you're locked into Apple if you want to keep the original quality.
Actually no. Any lossy format isn't "original quality". If you want the original quality you need either a lossless format or to buy the physical CD.
Heck, if you really want "orignal" quality you'll need to break into the studio that produced the master and encode to your format of choice directly from their original source material.
The thing is that Congress aren't dealing with the actual problem - DRM itself. They're making all the right noises: "interoperability: and "choice", but they're not actually saying anything good with them.
As I'm sure has been mentioned a lot already in this thread, Interoperability and DRM are mutually exclusive concepts.
I seriously couldn't care less if Apple cross-licensed Fairplay to other stores/manufacturers. DRM-laced file from Store A can play on DRM-based Player B? So what! Will the license be easily available for other software platforms? Free/Open Source players/systems? Some old player (hardware of software) that has no DRM control?
Unless this changes then I'm just going to avoid anything with DRM in it as long as I can. I buy CDs, and rip to format of choice that will play (or not) on my player of choice. And if my new Ogg Vorbis file won't play on my old Muvo or MP3-CD player then I re-rip from CD or transcode from FLAC. Job done.
But unless Congress (or any other government) are going to ban DRM altogether then they should back of and shut up. It doesn't matter if someone's DRM is available to other companies or not. What matters is whether it has any DRM or not. If it has DRM than it is inherantly a restricted format. Opening up the DRM to other companies might make it less restricted, but restricted it will remain. And making Fairplay and WMA work on each others platforms doesn't change that.
Or worse still, when people say that a computer isn't working but don't even try to pay attention to what it is.
They ignore the error messages and somehow expect me to able to instantly decipher "Word keeps crashing" - as if that alone can tell me what the actual problem is.
Part of the restof the problem is that beginner's computer classes (here in the UK, anyway) also shy away from the jargon. Surely, though, when learning how these computer-things work it'd be a good idea to be introduced to some of the terms that are likely to be encountered.
"Too much to take in"? Perhaps. But i'd rather the first time someone encountered various technical terms wasn't whilst trying to troubleshoot a computer problem.
Next year, as an April Fool's gag, they should simply not post any April Fool's stories at all. Or even take the whole site down, not even under any humorous pretense or anything, just have a single page that says something like, "Sorry, we've all taken the day off. Why don't you update your software or flip through a newspaper if you've got extra time to kill?"
Actually that'd be amusing in itself. Plus lessen the task of trying to sift through stories trying to find out which, if any, were valid.
It'd also probably take a little less effort than the usual approach. Although probably not totally trivial.
If you want computer news, and it is April 1st, please, for the love of Pete (or Patricia if you don't like guys) please stay away from/. on this day.
Exactly. Hell, yesterday was the one days when I wasn't too fussed that the internet's broke at work.
Usually I kill time between fixing stuff at Slashdot and other sites. But on April 1st? Hell no. You can't trust a single thing you see anywhere until it's confirmed or denied the next day.
Re:No, I call dumb thinking by someone at the BBC.
on
Dr. Who Series Star Quits
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
No, what's really dumb is that the BBC didn't sign him up for the first series with a contract that optioned him for other series if they wanted to carry on the run.
It does look like the BBC have dropped the ball here on more than one level. Firstly yeah, when casting a part like The Doctor the contract should include multiple series if it proves popular[*].
Secondly, was it really necessary to confirm that the new series is in the planning before the second episode of this one has even aired?
Letting people know there's a new series before the current one finishes is a good thing, but confirming it this early seems a little bit overkill to me.
Finally they really dropped the ball by having it known that the lead actor isn't in the next series before we're even really into this one.
Surely something like this kind of announcement you leave until as late in the series as you can. All announcing it this early does is make it harder to want to get used to the current actor as you know there's be a new one next year. Not a great move, I think.
[*] Although it might simply have not occurred to them. In an interview I heard, it seems that neither Eccleston nor Watson had thought past this current series. If true, then this was possibly shortsighted on the planning front.
I guess the real problem here was that if no-one was sure that a second series was going to happen - or when it would happen - it'd be harder to get someone to commit to multiple series.
Because they want a two-button mouse with an APPLE logo on it. That's the part I don't get.
As someone looking to get a Mac, I'd have to say that the Apple logo isn't the main reason I'd want an "official" two (or more) button Apple mouse. Macs are all designed well, everything is made to coordinate with everything else. So far I've only seen one third-party mouse for the Mac, and that still didn't quite look the part.
Yes, any USB mouse being supported by OS X is a good thing. However it would (and will) still be nice to have the option of an official multibutton mouse available.
Plus apparently the Microsoft mice are really pretty good pieces of kit. But the idea of having an MS-branded mouse attached to a Mac just seems odd. Not actually wrong, but still odd.
According to Gates the hardware will soon be free and the money spent on a computer will all go to software.
This is worrying. This is opposite to how I work, but I get the feeling that if we're not careful it'll go that way.
I'm sure I'm not the only techie-type who thinks it's backwards. You pay for hardware - it has physical cost, but prefer my software to be free or at least extremely cheap. Software's not a physical object, and it's often a moving platform. Hardware is a physical item that cannot be trivially replicated.
The only problem is that I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of non-techies thought more the other way. Get your hardware for free, but pay for the software/service to make it work.
I do hope it doesn't go that way - or at least all that way. I'd prefer to at least have the choice.
Re: Commercial organisations buying Linux.
You know what this tells us? The OSS community is not going far enough. We're producing a lot of good raw materials but not enough good solutions. As a result, companies must turn to expensive commercial support options (usually bundled with proprietary administrative interfaces that make our raw materials useful in the real world).
Don't forget that part of what they pay for is the support contract. Companies still want to pay someone else to make sure everything works - even when they have the technical know-how in-house to do it.
Plus, to me, it seems like a good trend (within reason) to have. People are willing to pay for a product that is free (both definitions) if they also get the added value of support or something like that.
Underneath the polish and extra support an enterprise-level distribution (or software package) will have the same core as the Free version. Businesses are happy that they can profit, and individuals (or small businesses) are happy as they don't have to pay to maintain compatibility.
Plus usually a big part of paying for something is the convenience. You can spend a lot of time in-house optimising a stock distribution to be your ideal server, or you can pay someone else for one that's ideal out of the box.
Having said all of that, it's still useful if there are distributions with the same level of stability and security as their enterprise-level cousins. There are some that do this, though.
Being able to set the download priorities has other advantages, though.
Personally I've never used it to completely ignore files in a batch torrent, but it does mean that if I'm downloading a batch of ordered files then I can set the first file to a higher priority and the last file to be grabbed last.
In any case, TV licenses are one tax that Brits generally don't mind paying - what you get for your money is usually worth it. American TV shows what you get if you don't - 50 channels of dreck. There are certainly some good shows on American TV, but they tend to follow the Hollywood film formula rather than the TV series formula. And US TV uses advertising to a degree that Brits (and Europeans generally) wouldn't consider acceptable.
The problems start when there are people, like me, who don't fit into the "generally" category.
Not quite as fussed by mainstream programming. And the mainstream shows that I do like are either on ITV/C5/Five (commercial terrestrial) or on BBC somewhat after Satellite/Cable (which I already subscribe to).
It gets annoying when you're funding the BBC on top of paying for the channels that provide the stuff that the BBC doesn't.
I'd gladly pay for a BBC subscription. At least I'd feel I was getting the choice (which is important to me), and i could also drop the BBC channels if I stopped using them entirely.
Yes there's a load of drek on American TV. Guess what, there's a lot on UK TV, too. But at least with subscrition you have an element of choice into which channels you get. And some people like those 50 channels or drek, and it's their coice to watch it and my choice to not subscribe for it. I just wish I had the choice on the BBC channels.
My current BBC usage is a bit of Radio 1, the occasional comedy show and the upcoming Doctor Who. Not quite worth £100+ yearly, methinks. But it's not really the price that annoys me, it's the lack of choice. if you want a TV for anything (even to watch purely non-BBC output) you must pay for the BBC via the license.
And as for the advertising, sadly we're catching up with our American cousins. Also many non-BBC programs (both home-grown and imported) tend to get sponsored now - with an annoying clip of something I couldn't care less about bookending every show and ad-break. Currently we don't seem to have quite the level of product-placement yet, but when you're a fan of imported shows you kind of lose that advantage. (But, again, that's a choice. And, to me, having that choice is what matters.)
The problem with this is it would be sticking extra tax on computers on top of the VAT which, unless I'm very much mistaken, I'm not alone in wishing was reduced.
I always find the ex-VAT price to be pretty much what I want to pay. Granted lessening tax would probably not see an equivalent drop in prices but at least the money would be staying somewhere within the computer/sales industry. (It's the going outside that ticks me off)
I do think that retail prices would still stay kinda low to stop people feeling overcharged - but, to me, an increasing discrepancy between the pre-tax and post-tax prices makes me feel like I'm being ripped off.
...and that none of them are due to take effect before 2017.
Good. Another 12 years before I risk trying to evade certain taxes.
I'm sorry, but on this one they can go jump. VAT already means that over a hundred quid of a decent computer goes towards absolutely nothing to do with the manufacture or sale fo the actual equipment. That's more than the cost of some of the components, and almost as much as a retail copy of Windows.
Yes, I know that governments have to get their money somewhere. It just seems wrong to me that, for example, if going for a 12" iBook with a 60GB drive, 512MB RAM and Bluetooth module the cost of the upgrades is 3GBP less than the cost of the tax incurred.
(And that's with upgrades that some people class as being overpriced compared to third-party alternatives)
I think that would definitely make a great improvement to most games. One thing that I wonder about, though, is would it be possible (and worthwhile) to have the game (or other application) running on one core whilst the rest of the OS (or environment) is running on the other?
Having a game (or music/media player, or security application, etc) running on a seperate core (if available) sounds like it would bring some sort of improvement. Would it?
Since switching to Linux at home I have OOo on my work PC so I can view/edit home-produced native documents at work. (I don't like format-switching unless I can't avoid it)
That and every so often a corrupt file will bomb out Word but open fine under OOo. Being able to at least try and rescue corrupt files is kinda useful.
Plus there's one main reason that a Windows port of Evolution is desperately needed. The Outlook Connector. I can't stand using OWA, but that's what work uses for e-mail - complicated by being off the main site stuck behind a slow ISDN connection. I'd love to be able to use a client-side application to access/store my work email at work - rather than being stuck behind a slow connection and losing access to my older messages is the server or connection fails. Unless work granted external access to SMTP/POP/IMAP ports a Windows port of Evolution would make my work life so much easier.
Listening to his album, most of the songs are good. When is the last time you bought a major album with more than one or two good songs? I thought so.
Funny you should mention that...
Of the 4 CDs I've bought in the past six month, two of them (Keane's "Hopes and Fears" and Snow Patrol's "Final Straw") would definitely count as being "major" albums.
Sure each has some tracks I listen to more than others, but each have a much higher ratio of Hits to Misses than you'd expect from a major release.
Granted that's why I've bought those albums rather than the latest "Now That's What I Call Marketing" compilations.
The other two albums (The Go! Team's "Thunder, Lightning, Strike" and Lemon Jelly's "'64 - '95") don't get anywhere near the coverage they deserve. But, again, they have more hits than filler, and even the filler is high-quality listening material.
Don't get me wrong. On the whole I agree with your points. I just wanted to point out that there are some decent albums out there, even major ones, that are actually worth it.
Really... Is there any reason to use XP over win2K? Besides the Fisher-Price interface?
Not entirely sure. The main thing keeping me from buying XP for my machine (before I ditched Win2K and went for linux) was the activation.
I use XP here at work, and it's the OS on my parents' laptop, and from a usage point of view I actually prefer it over Windows 2000.
For all I tend to slag off Microsoft, I actually think XP was probably the best version of Windows and were it not for the activation would have bought a copy to replace XP on my main PC. The idea of having reinstalls and hardware changes hampered by the activation was too much to stomach, however. (That and I have serious anxiety issues when making non-personal phone calls, meaning anything that might require a phonecall simply to use the damn system is an instant no-go for me. Support calls I can handle, activating something I've already paid for is too much)
It's a shame, really, as some of the improvements made between 2000 and XP were really good.
Slashdot Mirror
That it's a damn good place to start from? Only (in answer to the grandparent question) not a good place to finish.
Basically it looks like they build from Debian as it's "nearly there". Only the problem is that time's moving on faster than Debian is and "there" is a moving goalpost, so they have to make more changes to stay current.
Dunno. But I keep trying to go to homestarrunder.com.
Cool. I'll be trying that next time I need to transcode some FLAC files to Ogg Vorbis. I did this recently but didn't know that oggenc could directly handle FLAC files (or maybe the binary I had wasn't compiled with the right flags or sommat), so I had to pipe it with the FLAC decoder and then manually re-tag the files.
Not a problem for one album but it is the reason I don't do more things via FLAC first, 'cos for several albums at a time that would be a bind.
Ummmmm. There's probably a reason why, certainly here in the UK, a lot of cinemas are surrounded by non-fast-food restaurants.
Both for dates and non-dates it makes sense to combine going to a movie and sitting down to a proper meal. OK granted when you do it that way it's more or less written-off as being a cheap day out.
Actually that's about the first thing I thought after reading the article.
There are always two sides to any story and I don't fully take Larry's take at face-value. I don't fully think that Larry was in the right here but Tridge doesn't exactly give a good accounting of himself either. It also gives the unfortunate look of not defending himself.
To be honest all it does is make neither Larry nor Tridge come off in a good light.
It sounds very much like Ubuntu (and the situation with Debian) has been a victim of the success of Ubuntu itself.
It looks like it's gaining mainstream credibility as it's taking Debian (unstable?) and giving it some polish for the common desktop. This is, understandably, popular.
It has the stability of Debian yet it's more up to date than Stable (or even Testing). Only as it gets more popular it gives rise to the "packages built are no longer Debian-compatible enough" problem.
Personally I'm looking at switching to Ubuntu (from Fedora Core 1) later this year. FC1 has served me pretty well, but FC2 has issues with my hardware and subsequent Fedora releases have left me a little skeptical.
For me the idea of a distro based on Debian but with the "just works" polish is highly tempting.
As to Debian's position, I do think they let themselves down somewhat by infrequent releases. Debian has a good reputation and seems to have managed to stay around (and popular) for longer than some other distributions. However having releases that seem so far out of date and sometimes having a reputation of needing a lot of tweaking to get running means that people get put off despite Debian having the good reputation.
Ubuntu basically taking Debian and turning it into what users want is great from a (desktop) user perspective, but yes carries potential problems from a development one.
Ideally what Debian needs (or needed) to do is have a "Debian Desktop" (or "Debian Polished") release that may not be as stable as Stable but is more polished and recent than Testing. Ubuntu (and others) have stepped in to fill this spot yet, as other are groups doing the work, the potential for incompatibilities is increased.
What annoys me about that dialogue is that it's sometimes rather dumb. There have been a few, but still annoying, times when I've been logged in as Administrator in Windows 2000, to do admin tasks, and got that damn dialogue box telling me I've not got enough rights and to contact the system admin.
What also annoys me is that some tasks won't run unless you have admin rights. And although they make sense from one perspective, they're annoying from another. Like updating the definitions on some (but not all) antivirus software.
Plus, as has been mentioned elsewhere, after installing software you often have to do a first-run cycle with admin permissions to click on EULAs or finalise some post-install settings. Granted my problem wih this is probably due to the reverse of teh whole conditioning problem. If I'm setting up a machine that isn't habitually running with Admin privs I prefer not to run user software under the Admin account. So I forget to do so, and then have to go back and run it so I can change some admin-only settings.
Under Linux I like that I can run much more things under non-admin and then su/sudo as necessary to get other tasks done. Although I can see how that can be a little confusing for some users.
I have to say, as someone new to Mac OS X, I like the model they use there. If you want to do some admin-level task you have to enter your password. Not some admin password you have to remember in addition, but your own.
Easy enough to not be too much of an issue with forgetting passwords, but disruptive enough to probably stop people doing admin-level tasks unless they really need to.
I don't find it too odd, although I realise I seem to be in quite the minority about that.
This new series seems to currently be focussing on introducing the basic concepts, as well as hinting at the backgrounds, for a whole new generation of viewers. The audience, through Rose, is learning all of the essentions - the Doctor not being human, him being alive for a long time, him travelling through time and space in a machine with a "disguise" that makes it rather too conspicuous.
In a way it would follow that the other of the essentials that has to be covered is the issue of regeneration.
It wouldn't surprise me if (as has been speculated) the Christmas special deals with the Doctor having to regenerate. In a way (and after a bit of though and seeing the second and third episodes) it would seem odd if after Rose having to ome face to face with all of the thigns that make the Doctor not-Human she didn't have to deal with him regenerating.
The only real drawbacks I can see are firstly that there has been a hard limit set on regenerations. And this brings it all the closer to having to find some way of dealing with that, and rpeferably in a way thar doesn't really alienate long-time fans.
Secondly the BBC really should have left the announcement until the end of this season. They've basically triggered the kind of speculation that should (and usually does) occur between seasons to happen during the season - which seems to me to draw the topic away from the actual show itself.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
OK, so the inability to buy non-DRm mp3 is a bad thing, but having to buy the CD isn't actually a bad thing. you get as near to lossless as you're going to get with the current technology, and (as long as it's not a DRM "CD" you're buying) you can then encode to anything you choose.
Heck, that way you can use iTune to rip an AAC that's best for that, Ogg Vorbis for XMMS, FLAC for your large hard-drive jukebox and mp3 for your old player that won't play anything else.
Actually no. Any lossy format isn't "original quality". If you want the original quality you need either a lossless format or to buy the physical CD.
Heck, if you really want "orignal" quality you'll need to break into the studio that produced the master and encode to your format of choice directly from their original source material.
The thing is that Congress aren't dealing with the actual problem - DRM itself. They're making all the right noises: "interoperability: and "choice", but they're not actually saying anything good with them.
As I'm sure has been mentioned a lot already in this thread, Interoperability and DRM are mutually exclusive concepts.
I seriously couldn't care less if Apple cross-licensed Fairplay to other stores/manufacturers. DRM-laced file from Store A can play on DRM-based Player B? So what! Will the license be easily available for other software platforms? Free/Open Source players/systems? Some old player (hardware of software) that has no DRM control?
Unless this changes then I'm just going to avoid anything with DRM in it as long as I can. I buy CDs, and rip to format of choice that will play (or not) on my player of choice. And if my new Ogg Vorbis file won't play on my old Muvo or MP3-CD player then I re-rip from CD or transcode from FLAC. Job done.
But unless Congress (or any other government) are going to ban DRM altogether then they should back of and shut up. It doesn't matter if someone's DRM is available to other companies or not. What matters is whether it has any DRM or not. If it has DRM than it is inherantly a restricted format. Opening up the DRM to other companies might make it less restricted, but restricted it will remain. And making Fairplay and WMA work on each others platforms doesn't change that.
Or worse still, when people say that a computer isn't working but don't even try to pay attention to what it is.
They ignore the error messages and somehow expect me to able to instantly decipher "Word keeps crashing" - as if that alone can tell me what the actual problem is.
Part of the restof the problem is that beginner's computer classes (here in the UK, anyway) also shy away from the jargon. Surely, though, when learning how these computer-things work it'd be a good idea to be introduced to some of the terms that are likely to be encountered.
"Too much to take in"? Perhaps. But i'd rather the first time someone encountered various technical terms wasn't whilst trying to troubleshoot a computer problem.
Yeah, but it's complicated. Especially with a site based in a country that spans several timezones and read by people internationally.
Even if the last gag was posted at the stroke of midday on the west coast of the US, that still means it's about 8pm over here in the UK.
Basically, on the Internet the entire day is a dead loss if you want to try to avoid any gags.
Actually that'd be amusing in itself. Plus lessen the task of trying to sift through stories trying to find out which, if any, were valid.
It'd also probably take a little less effort than the usual approach. Although probably not totally trivial.
Exactly. Hell, yesterday was the one days when I wasn't too fussed that the internet's broke at work.
Usually I kill time between fixing stuff at Slashdot and other sites. But on April 1st? Hell no. You can't trust a single thing you see anywhere until it's confirmed or denied the next day.
It does look like the BBC have dropped the ball here on more than one level. Firstly yeah, when casting a part like The Doctor the contract should include multiple series if it proves popular[*].
Secondly, was it really necessary to confirm that the new series is in the planning before the second episode of this one has even aired?
Letting people know there's a new series before the current one finishes is a good thing, but confirming it this early seems a little bit overkill to me.
Finally they really dropped the ball by having it known that the lead actor isn't in the next series before we're even really into this one.
Surely something like this kind of announcement you leave until as late in the series as you can. All announcing it this early does is make it harder to want to get used to the current actor as you know there's be a new one next year. Not a great move, I think.
[*] Although it might simply have not occurred to them. In an interview I heard, it seems that neither Eccleston nor Watson had thought past this current series. If true, then this was possibly shortsighted on the planning front.
I guess the real problem here was that if no-one was sure that a second series was going to happen - or when it would happen - it'd be harder to get someone to commit to multiple series.
As someone looking to get a Mac, I'd have to say that the Apple logo isn't the main reason I'd want an "official" two (or more) button Apple mouse. Macs are all designed well, everything is made to coordinate with everything else. So far I've only seen one third-party mouse for the Mac, and that still didn't quite look the part.
Yes, any USB mouse being supported by OS X is a good thing. However it would (and will) still be nice to have the option of an official multibutton mouse available.
Plus apparently the Microsoft mice are really pretty good pieces of kit. But the idea of having an MS-branded mouse attached to a Mac just seems odd. Not actually wrong, but still odd.
This is worrying. This is opposite to how I work, but I get the feeling that if we're not careful it'll go that way.
I'm sure I'm not the only techie-type who thinks it's backwards. You pay for hardware - it has physical cost, but prefer my software to be free or at least extremely cheap. Software's not a physical object, and it's often a moving platform. Hardware is a physical item that cannot be trivially replicated.
The only problem is that I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of non-techies thought more the other way. Get your hardware for free, but pay for the software/service to make it work.
I do hope it doesn't go that way - or at least all that way. I'd prefer to at least have the choice.
Don't forget that part of what they pay for is the support contract. Companies still want to pay someone else to make sure everything works - even when they have the technical know-how in-house to do it.
Plus, to me, it seems like a good trend (within reason) to have. People are willing to pay for a product that is free (both definitions) if they also get the added value of support or something like that.
Underneath the polish and extra support an enterprise-level distribution (or software package) will have the same core as the Free version. Businesses are happy that they can profit, and individuals (or small businesses) are happy as they don't have to pay to maintain compatibility.
Plus usually a big part of paying for something is the convenience. You can spend a lot of time in-house optimising a stock distribution to be your ideal server, or you can pay someone else for one that's ideal out of the box.
Having said all of that, it's still useful if there are distributions with the same level of stability and security as their enterprise-level cousins. There are some that do this, though.
Being able to set the download priorities has other advantages, though.
Personally I've never used it to completely ignore files in a batch torrent, but it does mean that if I'm downloading a batch of ordered files then I can set the first file to a higher priority and the last file to be grabbed last.
The problems start when there are people, like me, who don't fit into the "generally" category.
Not quite as fussed by mainstream programming. And the mainstream shows that I do like are either on ITV/C5/Five (commercial terrestrial) or on BBC somewhat after Satellite/Cable (which I already subscribe to).
It gets annoying when you're funding the BBC on top of paying for the channels that provide the stuff that the BBC doesn't.
I'd gladly pay for a BBC subscription. At least I'd feel I was getting the choice (which is important to me), and i could also drop the BBC channels if I stopped using them entirely.
Yes there's a load of drek on American TV. Guess what, there's a lot on UK TV, too. But at least with subscrition you have an element of choice into which channels you get. And some people like those 50 channels or drek, and it's their coice to watch it and my choice to not subscribe for it. I just wish I had the choice on the BBC channels.
My current BBC usage is a bit of Radio 1, the occasional comedy show and the upcoming Doctor Who. Not quite worth £100+ yearly, methinks. But it's not really the price that annoys me, it's the lack of choice. if you want a TV for anything (even to watch purely non-BBC output) you must pay for the BBC via the license.
And as for the advertising, sadly we're catching up with our American cousins. Also many non-BBC programs (both home-grown and imported) tend to get sponsored now - with an annoying clip of something I couldn't care less about bookending every show and ad-break. Currently we don't seem to have quite the level of product-placement yet, but when you're a fan of imported shows you kind of lose that advantage. (But, again, that's a choice. And, to me, having that choice is what matters.)
The problem with this is it would be sticking extra tax on computers on top of the VAT which, unless I'm very much mistaken, I'm not alone in wishing was reduced.
I always find the ex-VAT price to be pretty much what I want to pay. Granted lessening tax would probably not see an equivalent drop in prices but at least the money would be staying somewhere within the computer/sales industry. (It's the going outside that ticks me off)
I do think that retail prices would still stay kinda low to stop people feeling overcharged - but, to me, an increasing discrepancy between the pre-tax and post-tax prices makes me feel like I'm being ripped off.
Good. Another 12 years before I risk trying to evade certain taxes.
I'm sorry, but on this one they can go jump. VAT already means that over a hundred quid of a decent computer goes towards absolutely nothing to do with the manufacture or sale fo the actual equipment. That's more than the cost of some of the components, and almost as much as a retail copy of Windows.
Yes, I know that governments have to get their money somewhere. It just seems wrong to me that, for example, if going for a 12" iBook with a 60GB drive, 512MB RAM and Bluetooth module the cost of the upgrades is 3GBP less than the cost of the tax incurred.
(And that's with upgrades that some people class as being overpriced compared to third-party alternatives)
I think that would definitely make a great improvement to most games. One thing that I wonder about, though, is would it be possible (and worthwhile) to have the game (or other application) running on one core whilst the rest of the OS (or environment) is running on the other?
Having a game (or music/media player, or security application, etc) running on a seperate core (if available) sounds like it would bring some sort of improvement. Would it?
Not always an option at work.
Since switching to Linux at home I have OOo on my work PC so I can view/edit home-produced native documents at work. (I don't like format-switching unless I can't avoid it)
That and every so often a corrupt file will bomb out Word but open fine under OOo. Being able to at least try and rescue corrupt files is kinda useful.
Plus there's one main reason that a Windows port of Evolution is desperately needed. The Outlook Connector. I can't stand using OWA, but that's what work uses for e-mail - complicated by being off the main site stuck behind a slow ISDN connection. I'd love to be able to use a client-side application to access/store my work email at work - rather than being stuck behind a slow connection and losing access to my older messages is the server or connection fails. Unless work granted external access to SMTP/POP/IMAP ports a Windows port of Evolution would make my work life so much easier.
Funny you should mention that...
Of the 4 CDs I've bought in the past six month, two of them (Keane's "Hopes and Fears" and Snow Patrol's "Final Straw") would definitely count as being "major" albums.
Sure each has some tracks I listen to more than others, but each have a much higher ratio of Hits to Misses than you'd expect from a major release.
Granted that's why I've bought those albums rather than the latest "Now That's What I Call Marketing" compilations.
The other two albums (The Go! Team's "Thunder, Lightning, Strike" and Lemon Jelly's "'64 - '95") don't get anywhere near the coverage they deserve. But, again, they have more hits than filler, and even the filler is high-quality listening material.
Don't get me wrong. On the whole I agree with your points. I just wanted to point out that there are some decent albums out there, even major ones, that are actually worth it.
Not entirely sure. The main thing keeping me from buying XP for my machine (before I ditched Win2K and went for linux) was the activation.
I use XP here at work, and it's the OS on my parents' laptop, and from a usage point of view I actually prefer it over Windows 2000.
For all I tend to slag off Microsoft, I actually think XP was probably the best version of Windows and were it not for the activation would have bought a copy to replace XP on my main PC. The idea of having reinstalls and hardware changes hampered by the activation was too much to stomach, however. (That and I have serious anxiety issues when making non-personal phone calls, meaning anything that might require a phonecall simply to use the damn system is an instant no-go for me. Support calls I can handle, activating something I've already paid for is too much)
It's a shame, really, as some of the improvements made between 2000 and XP were really good.