Fact : VB is a bad language. I can see some merits to this argument.
Conclusion: All VB programmers should be shot, drawn and quartered, burned, and sent to bed without supper. Here is the part that I disagree with. This sounds almost like a religous fervor that I would expect out of Gnome vs. KDE, Ford vs. Chevy, vi vs. emacs, or Busweiser vs. Guiness. VB teaches bad habits. So what? If a guy is writing some hobby code, that is his business. I can agree with VB not being in a production environment. But for a guy who fixes cars during the day and likes to write some code and night? What is the big deal.
I have no idea who you are, but I bet that I could still find some women who could look at your wardrobe and declare that you are a jerk based entirely on the way that you dress, and how no guy would ever wear THAT shirt (I am assuming that you are a guy). Would they have a point? Possible. Do they have any reason to stick their nose in your business? Nope.
So, in your post, you prove my point about the elitist attitude.
For one simple reason -- die size. Cache eats up a lot of real estate. A 1MB (B as in byte) is 8 million bits. If the cache uses DRAM-style cells, that is at least 8 million transistors. If the cache is more like SRAM, then you can count on a lot more This increases the size of the die, which decreases both the number of chips per wafer, and also increases the percentage of defective dies.
So, the bottom line is that cache is the most expensive type of memory in a computer. Some methods have been made to get around this -- like the Intel "Slot-1" architecture where the L2 cache was on a separate chip. But this idea faded into the museum of bad ideas.
The mear thought of having VB!!! (scream) anywhere near linux just gives me that horrid feeling in the pit of my stomach, its bad enough it exists and is used in windows in the 1st place!
This is why so many noobs run away screaming from Linux -- elitist attitudes.
I do admit that VB may not be the best thing around, but it is fairly easy to learn, and it can get some simple jobs done. And I would venture that VB meets the minimum set of requirements of a programming language as defined by Turing himself.
So, VB is not for you. Thank you for deciding what is best for the whole world. For your next trick, please tell us what the solution is for world hunger or poverty.
Next, I suppose that you will be saying that VI is the only real editor, and anybody who uses anything else is dumb.
I apologive for appearing trollish, but this sort of attitude is quite annoying.
With Slashdot reporting this 10 times a day I doubt it will get lost:)
This story on/. is preaching to the choir. We all know about this. What IS newsworthy is that this is starting to hit mainstream press (well, at least getting closer to mainstream). If this makes it to Newsweek, it will give Sony a big black eye.
Believe I addressed that, when I said that if large-scale adoption was to take off, decent preinstallation would be required...
This would be problematic. For Windows, it is easy. In a corporate environment desktop, you want XP-Pro. Period. Update to the latest patches. You can even get Office pre-installed (probably what you want).
Linux: Will that be Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, Gentoo, Knoppix, Ubuntu, Slackware, Suse, or... And then, you have the distro nailed down, are they using the latest version, or is the standard corporate desktop a slightly older version? And if it is a laptop, will putting Windows wireless drivers in a wrapper cause them any legal problems? Probably not, but we had better check with Legal just to be sure... As you can see, there are a lot of variables which make pre-installing Linux far from a "no-brainer."
OK so 98% of my userbase uses Windows. 2 % use Linux.
I can write Windows drivers for my device and keep 98% of my userbase happy.
I can write Linux drivers for my device, and keep 2% of my userbase happy.
If the cost of writing that Linux driver is more than I would make back in profits, why would I ever do it?
Business decisions......
Well, you asked...
Let's assume that you make hardware. You have a lot of competition, and you have 10% of the market. Nobody offers Linux drivers. All of a sudden, you decide to offer the drivers, and your market share goes up to 12%. All of a sudden, Linux has added 20% to your business.
If you are a monopoly, then you have little to gain. If you are a fringe player, then Linux support can differentiate you from the pack.
Let's talk another benefit. If a person runs Linux, then there is a 95% probability that they are pretty good at technology. If you offer Linux drivers, all of a sudden you have made a friend.. a friend who may be in a very high position as his company. Or, at the very least, a friend who recommends to his friends/family what type of stuff to buy. This is the type of stuff which may not show up on raw statistics, but can make a real difference.
Now consider some of the secondary factors. People buying a PC with Linux are going to be less likely to buy additional software. They arguably don't need things like Spyware or Virus products, and much of what they want is OSS and available for free anyway. So the chances for upsell are greatly reduced, and follow on sales are going to be less.
Wow. I had never even considered this. I wish that I had mod points to give you.
But, on to other topics. I am surprised that more companies do not provice Linux drivers for hardware. When I went to build a new system for myself a year ago, I wend nVidia all the way simply for their Linux support. I did not even consider ATI becuase they are way behind in the Linux driver department. So, ATI lost a sale that day, and nVidia scored a GPU and chipset sale. I am only one person, but I wonder how many sales nVidia has actually won by default by providing some decent drivers?
It can without any problem. In fact, you can intall Ubunto and then just apt-get the Kubuntu desktop (check the wiki). I have had a couple of minor problems after doing this (GnuCash fonts hosed, but fixable), but it works.
My suggestion, let Gnome still handle the log-in screen. Life will be much happier that way.
Just as a follow-up, even Microsoft made one as part of their XP "Power Toys." The GUI is nice, but it still just doesn't work well. If even M$ themselves can't get it right, then is it possible that the design of windows itself precludes a fully-functioning desktop manager?
And note that, from what I know, the "Power Toys" were made by geeks and for geeks. No marketing guys at all.
One thing to note is that a wate filter would NOT help in New Orleans. Those filters are only good at filtering out disease-causing organisms. This is great for drinking from a mountain stream, or even a fresh-water lake.
Firstly, NO suffered from flooding from the SALT WATER lake. In order to drink salt water, you need a desalinator. Those cost around $500 or so.
Secondly, the other main problems is that the water is contaminated with chemicals. The flood covered the underground gas tanks in gas stations, entire vehicles (full of oil and gas), everybody's garages (where they store the insect killers, old lead-acic batteries, etc.). There is no practical way for the average person to be able to drink this stuff. Even if you try distilling the water out, you would likely also distill some chemical contaminants.
I agree completely with the parent post about amateur radio -- except the eBay part. Used ham gear on ePray makes me nervous. You can get brand new 2M mobiles for less than $180 and HTs for less than $130. I see no reason not to go with new equipment. Try www.aesham.com and www.gigaparts.com.
Now, if you can touch the gear and test it out before you buy, that is another story. Hamfests are good for that.
And just for the record: How do you "buyout" a community that makes Open Source software to ensure that they can't continue working? Hire them into your fold... for ANYTHING, and then tell them that they can't work on FOSS as a matter of company policy.
So, the best way to get a MS job is to write FOSS. Interesting. I bet that would start a curious attitude shift in the bottom levels of MS if they did that to any appreciable degree.
I live in Florida, land of Hurricanes. Cell towers have back-up batteries, but no battery system can run for a week or two without power. And it is also possible (probable) for a hurricane to damage antennas.
I admit that not every area has hurricanes. California has earthquakes and riots. Kansas has tornados. New York has a big target painted on it.
When TSHTF, you will be happy to have hams in your neighborhood.
We provide critical communication after a disaster. When four hurricanes hit my area a year ago, guess who handled communications between red cross shelters? Power was out... The phone lines were down... The cell towers were down... The wind was too fierce to send smoke signals. Amateur radio operators were just about the only method of communication.
And if BPL comes to town, there goes amateur radio. If the airwaves are blanketed with noise, nobody will invest in the expensive equipment, and of course they will not get any practice using it. And even IF the disaster wiped out the BPL noise in that area, a ham would have nobody to talk to, becuase the neighboring states would still have the noise.
So, let's assume that BPL does notch out amateur radio frequencies. Then, only some military channels, some shortwave channels, and some ship-to-shore radio frequencies are knocked out. No big deal, unless you happen to be on a ship or trying to listen to shortwave radio.
So, notching is not the answer. If you notch out ALL frequencies, then you can't transmit anything. And the more you notch out, the less bandwidth you have for sending data. And no matter WHERE your energies go, you will step on somebody's toes.
The frequencies below 30MHz (and sometimes all frequencies below 50MHz) have the wonderful quality of being able to travel entirely around the world. It is not uncommon for an amateur radio operator to talk to people thousands of miles away on at little at 5 watts. So, it is not hard to see that if BPL is introduced in every community in the USA, this will make the HF spectrum mostly unusable for THE ENTIRE WORLD. Actually, I am surprised that there is not some sort of treaty that would prevent this BPL nonsense.
Actually, I would love for the power companies to provide broadband. But they should have to do it over shielded cables, just like everybody else.
Personally I wish Sony would embrace homebrew. They could do it in a way that shuts the door to piracy. For example, if they roped off certain functionality that games need such as high end 3D performance for unsigned apps, it would allow the vast majority of homebrew to run, but prevent pirates from taking advantage of the situation.
Allow me to point out the flaws in this argument...
1) It is good for consumers. 2) Implementing this would still mean reducing the rapant paranoia over piracy, even if just a little. 3) It would mean that Sony could not control every little aspect of their game system. 4) It makes sense.
As you can see, your plan would NEVER work, and therfore, Sony would never do it.
In other news, the RIAA has concluded that people are the biggest threat to the recording industry. They are proposing legistlation that will allow all people to be shot.
be thankful that we have money-grabbing corporations or else we'd all be living in mud huts.
why is it that people bitch up and down about "evil M$"
Competition is good. Capitalism is good. Companies that have a monopoly and can therefore afford to treat their customers like crap is bad.
Look at WPA. If there was an OS that was comparable to windows (including ease-of-use, hardware support, software selection,and "polish") when XP came out, Microsoft would possibly not have had the balls to release XP with WPA. But why do we have WPA right now? Because M$ has most people by the short-and-curlies. Oh, and how about their attempted lock on office file formats? I do not dislike M$ for seeking profit. I dislike them for treating my like a source of money to be squeezed, instead of as a valued customer. If I give a company money, I expect a certain amount of respect in return. I expect to be appreciated as a customer. M$, on the other hand, seems rather disdainful of their customers.
Another analogy. Ms. Linux is fairly pretty, and very nice. She does not even mind being the "other woman." You have to know how to talk to her properly, but she is usually very amiable.
Ms. Windows, on the other hand, is rather rigid. It is easy to work and play with her, but on HER terms. She is drop-dead beutiful, but she has a mean streak. She once thought that you might have been cheating with Ms. Linux, and she tried to stab Ms. Linux with a buther knife. She has physically threatened you if you ever try to leave her.
Linux is definatley getting better. Ubuntu, when paired with the "Unofficial add-on CD" is the first distro that I feel like I could actually use on a daily basis.
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Can somebody please give me a useful application for this?
Generally, in computer chips, the hard part is speeding them up. Slowing things down is easy. What does this new tech buy us?
So, let me get this straight...
Fact : VB is a bad language. I can see some merits to this argument.
Conclusion: All VB programmers should be shot, drawn and quartered, burned, and sent to bed without supper. Here is the part that I disagree with. This sounds almost like a religous fervor that I would expect out of Gnome vs. KDE, Ford vs. Chevy, vi vs. emacs, or Busweiser vs. Guiness. VB teaches bad habits. So what? If a guy is writing some hobby code, that is his business. I can agree with VB not being in a production environment. But for a guy who fixes cars during the day and likes to write some code and night? What is the big deal.
I have no idea who you are, but I bet that I could still find some women who could look at your wardrobe and declare that you are a jerk based entirely on the way that you dress, and how no guy would ever wear THAT shirt (I am assuming that you are a guy). Would they have a point? Possible. Do they have any reason to stick their nose in your business? Nope.
So, in your post, you prove my point about the elitist attitude.
For one simple reason -- die size. Cache eats up a lot of real estate. A 1MB (B as in byte) is 8 million bits. If the cache uses DRAM-style cells, that is at least 8 million transistors. If the cache is more like SRAM, then you can count on a lot more This increases the size of the die, which decreases both the number of chips per wafer, and also increases the percentage of defective dies.
So, the bottom line is that cache is the most expensive type of memory in a computer. Some methods have been made to get around this -- like the Intel "Slot-1" architecture where the L2 cache was on a separate chip. But this idea faded into the museum of bad ideas.
I do admit that VB may not be the best thing around, but it is fairly easy to learn, and it can get some simple jobs done. And I would venture that VB meets the minimum set of requirements of a programming language as defined by Turing himself.
So, VB is not for you. Thank you for deciding what is best for the whole world. For your next trick, please tell us what the solution is for world hunger or poverty.
Next, I suppose that you will be saying that VI is the only real editor, and anybody who uses anything else is dumb.
I apologive for appearing trollish, but this sort of attitude is quite annoying.
Linux: Will that be Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, Gentoo, Knoppix, Ubuntu, Slackware, Suse, or
Let's assume that you make hardware. You have a lot of competition, and you have 10% of the market. Nobody offers Linux drivers. All of a sudden, you decide to offer the drivers, and your market share goes up to 12%. All of a sudden, Linux has added 20% to your business.
If you are a monopoly, then you have little to gain. If you are a fringe player, then Linux support can differentiate you from the pack.
Let's talk another benefit. If a person runs Linux, then there is a 95% probability that they are pretty good at technology. If you offer Linux drivers, all of a sudden you have made a friend
But, on to other topics. I am surprised that more companies do not provice Linux drivers for hardware. When I went to build a new system for myself a year ago, I wend nVidia all the way simply for their Linux support. I did not even consider ATI becuase they are way behind in the Linux driver department. So, ATI lost a sale that day, and nVidia scored a GPU and chipset sale. I am only one person, but I wonder how many sales nVidia has actually won by default by providing some decent drivers?
It can without any problem. In fact, you can intall Ubunto and then just apt-get the Kubuntu desktop (check the wiki). I have had a couple of minor problems after doing this (GnuCash fonts hosed, but fixable), but it works.
My suggestion, let Gnome still handle the log-in screen. Life will be much happier that way.
Well, I would also like to complain about lack of support for MP3, DVD, etc.
I know that they have good legal reasons, but they should just make the "Unofficial Add-On CD" an official extention that is considered optional.
It would be nice to get the add-on CD from the same servers that host the distro itself.
And just who are you that you can comment on the "larger penis" comment? Inquiring minds want to know...
Translation: I don't like NTFS encryption because it does what it is supposed to do...
Encryption is SUPPOSED to make files difficult to recover if you don't have the key. Need I mention the word "backup?"
Just as a follow-up, even Microsoft made one as part of their XP "Power Toys." The GUI is nice, but it still just doesn't work well. If even M$ themselves can't get it right, then is it possible that the design of windows itself precludes a fully-functioning desktop manager?
And note that, from what I know, the "Power Toys" were made by geeks and for geeks. No marketing guys at all.
One thing to note is that a wate filter would NOT help in New Orleans. Those filters are only good at filtering out disease-causing organisms. This is great for drinking from a mountain stream, or even a fresh-water lake.
Firstly, NO suffered from flooding from the SALT WATER lake. In order to drink salt water, you need a desalinator. Those cost around $500 or so.
Secondly, the other main problems is that the water is contaminated with chemicals. The flood covered the underground gas tanks in gas stations, entire vehicles (full of oil and gas), everybody's garages (where they store the insect killers, old lead-acic batteries, etc.). There is no practical way for the average person to be able to drink this stuff. Even if you try distilling the water out, you would likely also distill some chemical contaminants.
In NO, the ONLY solution is bottled water.
Safe -- Only outside.
Anybody using propane-powered devices inside may quailfy for a darwin award. If you do DO use them inside, at least open all of the windows.
I agree completely with the parent post about amateur radio -- except the eBay part. Used ham gear on ePray makes me nervous. You can get brand new 2M mobiles for less than $180 and HTs for less than $130. I see no reason not to go with new equipment. Try www.aesham.com and www.gigaparts.com.
Now, if you can touch the gear and test it out before you buy, that is another story. Hamfests are good for that.
I bet that would start a curious attitude shift in the bottom levels of MS if they did that to any appreciable degree.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of... never mind...
I live in Florida, land of Hurricanes. Cell towers have back-up batteries, but no battery system can run for a week or two without power. And it is also possible (probable) for a hurricane to damage antennas.
I admit that not every area has hurricanes. California has earthquakes and riots. Kansas has tornados. New York has a big target painted on it.
When TSHTF, you will be happy to have hams in your neighborhood.
You should support amateur radio.
We provide critical communication after a disaster. When four hurricanes hit my area a year ago, guess who handled communications between red cross shelters? Power was out... The phone lines were down... The cell towers were down... The wind was too fierce to send smoke signals. Amateur radio operators were just about the only method of communication.
And if BPL comes to town, there goes amateur radio. If the airwaves are blanketed with noise, nobody will invest in the expensive equipment, and of course they will not get any practice using it. And even IF the disaster wiped out the BPL noise in that area, a ham would have nobody to talk to, becuase the neighboring states would still have the noise.
So, let's assume that BPL does notch out amateur radio frequencies. Then, only some military channels, some shortwave channels, and some ship-to-shore radio frequencies are knocked out. No big deal, unless you happen to be on a ship or trying to listen to shortwave radio.
So, notching is not the answer. If you notch out ALL frequencies, then you can't transmit anything. And the more you notch out, the less bandwidth you have for sending data. And no matter WHERE your energies go, you will step on somebody's toes.
The frequencies below 30MHz (and sometimes all frequencies below 50MHz) have the wonderful quality of being able to travel entirely around the world. It is not uncommon for an amateur radio operator to talk to people thousands of miles away on at little at 5 watts. So, it is not hard to see that if BPL is introduced in every community in the USA, this will make the HF spectrum mostly unusable for THE ENTIRE WORLD. Actually, I am surprised that there is not some sort of treaty that would prevent this BPL nonsense.
Actually, I would love for the power companies to provide broadband. But they should have to do it over shielded cables, just like everybody else.
This sounds like Clinton's argument that it was not really sex. The end result is that you have something that does not belong to you.
1) It is good for consumers.
2) Implementing this would still mean reducing the rapant paranoia over piracy, even if just a little.
3) It would mean that Sony could not control every little aspect of their game system.
4) It makes sense.
As you can see, your plan would NEVER work, and therfore, Sony would never do it.
In other news, the RIAA has concluded that people are the biggest threat to the recording industry. They are proposing legistlation that will allow all people to be shot.
Competition is good. Capitalism is good. Companies that have a monopoly and can therefore afford to treat their customers like crap is bad.
Look at WPA. If there was an OS that was comparable to windows (including ease-of-use, hardware support, software selection,and "polish") when XP came out, Microsoft would possibly not have had the balls to release XP with WPA. But why do we have WPA right now? Because M$ has most people by the short-and-curlies. Oh, and how about their attempted lock on office file formats? I do not dislike M$ for seeking profit. I dislike them for treating my like a source of money to be squeezed, instead of as a valued customer. If I give a company money, I expect a certain amount of respect in return. I expect to be appreciated as a customer. M$, on the other hand, seems rather disdainful of their customers.
Another analogy. Ms. Linux is fairly pretty, and very nice. She does not even mind being the "other woman." You have to know how to talk to her properly, but she is usually very amiable.
Ms. Windows, on the other hand, is rather rigid. It is easy to work and play with her, but on HER terms. She is drop-dead beutiful, but she has a mean streak. She once thought that you might have been cheating with Ms. Linux, and she tried to stab Ms. Linux with a buther knife. She has physically threatened you if you ever try to leave her.
Linux is definatley getting better. Ubuntu, when paired with the "Unofficial add-on CD" is the first distro that I feel like I could actually use on a daily basis.