Laptops, which have been a nice fat cash cow to OEMs, are steadily becoming cheaper and cheaper. Nowadays, we have retailers selling laptops for about 500 euros with specs that a couple of year ago were selling for a lot more than 1500 euros. A while back the average laptop price tag was about 1200 euros and nowadays it went down to 800 euros. That's a heck of a revenue cut.
So the OEMs are forced to add another fancy selling point, like upgrading the specs once again, in order to keep making the big bucks. They don't give a damn if it brings any added value to the product or if it even functions properly. What matters is some fancy little side remark on the laptop's brochure that makes their fancy little product be picked by the vast hordes of consuming sheep. Who cares if it makes sense or if it's even usable. What's important is that them flock falls for that "OMG! IT'S N+1!!!" and promptly spend their cash, specially for the "it's bigger than my neighbour's" bragging rights.
This sort of thing isn't exactly new. In fact, it's the repeat of another similar marketing push, which was the "32-to-64bit" campaign. The fancy stickers advertising the new and improved 64bit 'puters for the "OMG IT'S TWICE THE BITS!!" effect were all over the place, which earned quite a few hardware sales. Yet, the fact is that the brand new 64-bit 'puter could only run on the 32-bit legacy mode, as they were shipped with a 32-bit operating system and the OEMs shipped hardware without ever thinking on releasing 64-bit drivers or even releasing the hardware specs.
So those OEMs will, once again, sell hardware that will not be usable by the user, at least as advertised. It doesn't matter to them. The only thing that matters is the sales revenue, specially in this day and age where we are starting to see sub-300 euro hardware. And screw the consumer.
Depends of your personal definition of "piracy". The term "piracy" was, right from the start, a new term intended to be as loaded as it could be to refer to the unauthorized commercialization of copyrighted works. In that time, no normal person could possibly consider that guy selling bootleg tapes/books to be a menace to society. After all, the only thing that that guy did was duplicate something and sell it cheaper than others. That couldn't possibly hurt society.
So, in order to fight that perceived source of lower profits, the companies that were in the business of selling authorized copies of those works decided to shut that down. As they weren't able to gather public support for that battle then they decided to start a public relations campaign against the unauthorized commercialization of copyrighted books (their competition). The first step was coining a negative image to the unauthorized sellers, which originated terms like "bootlegger" and "pirate", evil figures associated with violent, organized crime. It's easier to fight someone/something when they are evil. There was no surprise a while back when some american retarded record company spokesperson started associating "piracy" to terrorism.
Now those companies intend to include in that definition people who have absolutely nothing to do with the old definition of "piracy". Now the record companies, motivated by greed and the lust for control, want to label anyone who downloads anything remotely copyrighted as a "pirate". There is no commercialization of any copyrighted work. Now, instead of attempting to smear and fight the distributors, they are trying to attack the end consumer.
Does it make any sense to label as pirates people who bought unauthorized copies of copyrighted works? Obviously not. Yet, the record companies are trying to go the extra nonsense mile and pin that nasty, loaded label on people who access those works without ever exchanging any money.
So it isn't a question of "when is piracy not bad". As questionable as "piracy", the unauthorized commercialization of a copyrighted work, may be, the real question that must be placed here, and unfortunately you failed to understand, is why is non-"piracy" actions being labelled as "piracy" in the first place? If I download something for personal use after paying absolutely nothing for it then how exactly can you claim that I'm commercializing an unauthorized copy of some copyrighted work? Moreover, why should anyone be called a "pirate" if what that person is doing is perfectly included in their nation's fair use doctrine?
Skilled musicians DO know music, and there is a reason they prefer tube amps for Guitars, Bass, etc.
Yes, and that reason is marketing. Pure, simple, intensive marketing. Lots and lots of marketing being fed to them throughout their life. Fender and Gibson make the best guitars, Marshal makes the best amps and tubes are better than solid state amps. That's what is constantly being fed to them through implicit and explicit marketing campaigns. Yet, no one can rationally explain why are they better than the others, besides the huge price tag that comes attached to those products and the fact that "OMG my guitar hero uses one of those so it must be excellent.
On the other hand, Brian May made his career playing a guitar that was made from wood taken from a fireplace and some bike parts and it sounds better than any 2.5k euro guitars out there. Makes you think. Or at least it should.
I've written my fair share of wikipedia articles but my main contribution to wikipedia is submitting articles for deletion. You claim that, somehow, "Assholes" are ruining wikipedia and driving away "the people who maide it great in the first place". Well, that is a very idiotic statement to make. If you happen to get a glimpse of the pile of trash that is started every minute and if you had the faintest notion of the nonsense which is being fed into wikipedia then you would never had said such nonsense.
Obviously there are trash-generating users who believe that their pet article on how their third-grade teacher is so good at ping-pong has every right to belong in an encyclopaedia-type medium, not to mention being linked from the article on the theory of relativity and being included in the famous footballers category. Nonetheless, the truth is that your pet project is nonsense, irrelevant and can't possibly justify being mentioned in an encyclopaedia-type medium. To put it simply, it's pure crap.
To give a few examples, there isn't a single day where tens of articles about the newest garage band started this week doesn't pop up. Some people even take it upon themselves to start autobiographical articles, explaining how they are the best in their village, complete with their charging rates. And then we have articles covering some videogame clan that was just started by a couple of school pals. Heck, a while back I stumbled on a user who had created hundreds of articles transcribing his entire family's genealogical tree to wikipedia, up to some great great grandfather who had a stint in the army and made a living as a small farmer.
Explain to me how does wikipedia suffer if that trash is submitted for deletion by "assholes". Explain to me how users like me are "ruining wikipedia" by voting for those articles to be deleted. Do you really believe that everything that is put into wikipedia smells of roses and has every right to be there?
I go as far as saying that if type of users, the ones that are only able to produce self-serving articles or generate utter nonsense, abandon wikipedia then wikipedia only ends up winning. Encyclopedia dramatica and uncyclopedia exist for a reason.
That's funny, as when you write some code using the Qt library things are so clear and concise that you even get the feeling you are using some higher level scripting language. That's not the case with java. Ever.
The C++ programming language may support nice toys like templates and meta programming, which tend to be a headache to deal with and a pain to read. As a consequence, at least to some extent, the same applies to the STL. Nonetheless, who is forced to use all features of a language? No one.
So please don't say silly things. You only end up looking silly.
How does sage compares with other mathematics FLOSS like maxima, axiom and yacas?
Another question is how come they opted to start a new project instead of contributing to other already established projects?
I don't know about power users but KDE's philosophy of letting everything be configurable to the extreme brings wonders to the end user. For example, I'm no power user, at least according to the colloquial definition but nonetheless, thanks to KDE, I was able to tweak the desktop environment so that it helps me be more productive. For example, in my laptop, which has a small screen, I configured KDE so that the panel is placed vertically along the left side of the screen, automatically popping up and hiding whenever I want. I also configured KDE to add a second horizontal panel in the bottom of the screen that only shows the application tabs. In my desktop, which has a 19'' 1440x900 screen, I tweaked KDE so that the KDE panel to automatically hide/show whenever I want. Then we have the window behaviour teaks. When I double-click the window's title bar the windows maximize and I tweaked KDE so that some windows, like my IM client's chat windows, stay always on top and are shown on all desktops. Last but not least, we have the windowing features like the "maximize only vertically" and "maximize only horizontally" that are invaluably useful, along with the "always on top" window flag. Simply great stuff.
If we look at those individual tweaks, the first thing we realize is that the KDE options which made them possible may sound whimsical. I mean, an option to define where and how a precise window of a certain application is shown when it is displayed? Yet, what we realize when we think about it for a moment is that no one in their right mind expects anyone to tweak all those options. On the other hand, what KDE's vast tweaking potential does offer is a way for each and every user to be able to adapt KDE to their particular use pattern instead of being forced to adapt to whatever default behaviour was configured by someone. It may take a single tweak for a user to feel perfectly confortable with KDE but what we must understand is that not everyone likes the same thing. So, in order for each and every KDE user to be able to perform their single tweak, KDE must support a whole universe of configuration options in order to support whatever feature every single user may wish.
On a side note, the users aren't the only people tweaking KDE. All distros perform their fair share of customization. The difference between KDE and some desktop environments like the windows shell or GNOME is that in order to customize them, the developers will have to break out their compilers and write their own features. With KDE it only takes a few strategically placed mouse clicks.
If that thing is broken then don't use it. Moreover, exactly how frequent does anyone use one of those tinyurls or any equivalent service? Personally I do not even know when it was the last time I clicked on one of those.
The only reason these types of advancements are seen "as a harbringer of doom" is due to the fact that some societies simply refuse to adopt and implement social programs.
When we have a developed state where the state takes care of every citizen's basic human needs like healthcare and education and eliminates the social unrest caused by unemployment by offering satisfying unemployment benefits then any small-scale "industrial revolution" event like this one, which end up completely eliminating jobs, will not generate any social unrest. The simple fact is that in desperate situations everyone (and I do mean everyone) is compelled to adopt desperate measures to simply get by. As soon as someone sees himself in the desperate situation of not having a job, not being capable of getting one, having to support himself and others at his care... That is a situation which is as desperate as it gets.
Touché. In fact, I've upgraded a while ago and I bought a nice little asus M2NPV-MX motherboard. I've chosen that particular motherboard for three simple reasons: it was a socket AM2 motherboard, it's price was very reasonable (about 60 euros) and it had an NVIDIA integrated video card (NVIDIA GeForce 6150). I don't play demanding games (mainly openttd), the integrated audio is excellent and from time to time I tinker with opengl. In the end that particular hardware combination made it possible for me to buy a new computer with a dual core processor for less than 200 euros.
So exactly what's wrong with integrated audio/video? Absolutely nothing. At least that's what my wallet's opinion.
Since it is a full fledge PC and runs any text editor that you may think of along with software like TeX and LaTeX without a single problem, not to mention WYSIWYG office suits like OpenOffice and KOffice, I'd say that that the Eee PC deprecates that little toy in every single category possibly imaginable.
Oh come on, Linux's thermal management isn't that bad, is it?
Actually, it is that bad. Ubuntu suffers from a nasty overheating bug since the 5.04 days which tends to bar a lot of people from doing regular, every day tasks just because they push the system a bit. I've been a loyal kubuntu user since day one (their KDE release cycle is second to none) but I've already saw a laptop go up in smoke thanks to that nasty problem.
So the comparisson with a toaster isn't all that out of order, specially if we are dealing with laptops.
That's funny, as my experience is the exact opposite. I've developed a very small GPL library and posted the project in sourceforge. Although I'm the only developer and I regularly submit packages of the code, the section which is mostly visited is the project's subversion repository. Moreover, I do get patches from random people who browse the code.
Unless the committers transfer copyrights to a central body
Not so fast. In some countries it is not possible for an artist/author to transfer or give away his copyright ownership. That may be allowed in some countries but it is not an universal thing. Free software, on the other hand, is and therefore every project must take in consideration the laws which each developer is bounded to.
See, what this is ultimately is, is fear mongering. There's not a spit of difference between guys selling the Union or the guys selling USA PATRIOT ACT. Both depend on this idea that we are completely powerless, so we need to get some goons to protect us, and furthermore, we should just give these jerks, in the form of dues or taxes, protection money. You know what a union is? It's a steward who just got a nice deck for his house, a president's kid's baseball team that got new uniforms, and any manner of theft.
You speak on and on about fear mongering but all you do not give a single rational argument against unions. All you do is try to associate a simple, healthy, life improving initiative that aims to protect worker's rights with evil, oppressive initiatives like the US's patriot act. If that wasn't enough to satisfy your trolling needs, you go on associating unions with organized crime and corruption.
The thing is, whenever a group of people join themselves to fight for their rights, their lives improve and society improves. History is packed with landmark victories accomplished by people associating themselves and fighting for their rights. You absolutely cannot state that a bunch of IT workers organizing themselves to fight to get their a fair pay earned by their honest work is some sort of evil, oppressive, criminal, abusive act.
You may have been brainwashed against the evils of communism and you may have lost the ability to understand the concept of worker's rights but that doesn't mean that it is wrong or evil.
The simple matter of the truth is, unions don't work. Unions don't work because, every time you give them what they claim to get, they either drive the parent company bankrupt, like GM and a cast of thousands, or the work goes overseas. The promise is a lie, and all a union really does is just place a tax based on a fear.
Oh I see. That must be why there is absolutely no european company. They simply cannot survive under that harsh climate. Damn those european unions, with their minimum wage, their 35 hour work weeks, their paid overtime, their 30 day paid vacations, their Christmas bonus and paid leaves, their national health services and their unemployment benefits. They simply destroyed their lives and reverted back to the stoneage! No small company can possibly survive that, let alone a multinational. Poor bastards.
Really, all of these "workers" advocates are just in the business of helping themselves. A bunch of crooks, trying to frighten people into giving them money for promises that they can't keep, and have no intention of keeping. It's just like the "people's lawyer", the guy that sues some company for a billion dollars - he gets millions, while his plaintiffs get coupons. Workers rights is a slogan for an industry based on extortion, and fear.
Yes, you seem to be the smart one here. You completely avoid all unions or worker's association and nonetheless you still got that 35 hour work week and paid overtime. Oh you don't have that? Tough. Keep on bitching about how unions are evil, then.
That's funny. You are actually complaining about other people defending their rights and best interests while you and your class does not have the slightest intention to mobilize and stand up for yourselves. Do you actually believe that the problem lies in the fact that others fought and, as a consequence, are earning more and having a better life than you? Didn't it ever crossed your brilliant mind that the real problem lied with you and your class never fighting for your own best interests and therefore being forced to earn less and having a crappy life?
Uh, no, I support the death penalty because it permanently removes a demonstrable threat to society.
The thing is, it appears that there are a lot of people defending that a state should murder those that are considered to have failed society in some way. As you described it, some perceived it as "removing a demonstrable threat to society". But the thing is, no one ever takes the time to try to understand what, in fact, are the causes to those problems. They perceive that the cause of the problem is in fact the crime and punishing the criminals is how that problem is fought.
That idea is idiotic, to say the least. The problem is not the crime but the conditions which lead to the crime. You do not solve the crime problem by punishing the criminals. That bay be seen as justice but it absolutely will not solve any crime problem. It won't because crime is a very profound social problem, which social causes and social consequences. It's a deeply intertwined system which flourishes when the negative social factors are ignored. You don't treat an infection by cutting off the deeply infected part and still preserving both the infection and the causes of that infection.
So killing someone in order to "permanently remove a demonstrable threat to society" will not diminish that threat to society. It does not nor will it ever solve anything. It just cuts off a tiny bit of a scab of a deeply infected wound, leaving the whole infection untouched. The only thing that an execution brings is a false sense of accomplishment and, naturally, revenge. Revenge never solved any problem.
It's nice to see at least some journalists out there in this day and age are willing to publicly admit when they are wrong.
On the other hand the SCO jig is up and he had absolutely nothing to gain by sticking by it's side. He pushed for a version of the story which is crumbling down on more than one front and attacked the credibility of those defending SCO's absolute lack of any merit whatsoever. So in the end he had two choices: risking being labelled as an impartial tool (or even a paid chill) or trying to save a bit of credibility by distancing him from SCO's side.
It's a simple question, really. Distance himself from this lost cause which is the SCO thing or risking being out of a career.
You seem to be a bit confused as you missed the point entirely. The point is that if there is a monoculture then a single virus can infect and disrupt the entire market. On the other hand, if there isn't a monoculture, even if a virus spreads violently and wreaks havoc through one OS it will only affect that one OS's market share, leaving all the others unaffected. That would mean, in the 4 OS scenario, that a violent outbreak of some malware would only affect 25% of the entire computing universe.
The point is not that 25% is not a big enough number. The point is that having 25% of something being affected is a whole lot better than 100%.
But hey, don't let your anti-linux blind hatred stop you. Go ahead and rant as much as you wish.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it that in order for a file format to be accepted as an ISO standard there has to be at least a couple of independent working implementations? If Microsoft's OOXML is amended but the only piece of software which implements OOXML doesn't even follow the standard presented to ISO, where does that leave the OOXML's standardization?
I know its not easy getting info on wireless chips, but time would be better spent working on something like that.
Apples and oranges. The expertise and information needed to write a process scheduler has absolutely nothing in common with the expertise and information needed to write a device driver, specially if the problem pertaining to the lack of device drivers for that particular class of hardware is, as you know, the complete absence of information on the hardware itself or even how the hardware was done in the first place.
A young person who isn't a liberal has no heart. An old person who is has no brain.
You are doing it wrong. It went something as "a young person who isn't a leftist has no heart. An old person who as no brains isn't a conservative". A liberal isn't a leftist and, obviously, that comment about the "brain-less" relation to liberals (or some other group which you dislike) is complete nonsense.
Now that I think of it, the saying is more in the lines of "those who are young and foolish think like you. Those who have matured and wise think like me". Obviously it says a lot more about those who state that nonsense as it is some sort of absolute rule than about the purposed intrinsic philosophical value it is thought to have, which is zero.
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Laptops, which have been a nice fat cash cow to OEMs, are steadily becoming cheaper and cheaper. Nowadays, we have retailers selling laptops for about 500 euros with specs that a couple of year ago were selling for a lot more than 1500 euros. A while back the average laptop price tag was about 1200 euros and nowadays it went down to 800 euros. That's a heck of a revenue cut.
So the OEMs are forced to add another fancy selling point, like upgrading the specs once again, in order to keep making the big bucks. They don't give a damn if it brings any added value to the product or if it even functions properly. What matters is some fancy little side remark on the laptop's brochure that makes their fancy little product be picked by the vast hordes of consuming sheep. Who cares if it makes sense or if it's even usable. What's important is that them flock falls for that "OMG! IT'S N+1!!!" and promptly spend their cash, specially for the "it's bigger than my neighbour's" bragging rights.
This sort of thing isn't exactly new. In fact, it's the repeat of another similar marketing push, which was the "32-to-64bit" campaign. The fancy stickers advertising the new and improved 64bit 'puters for the "OMG IT'S TWICE THE BITS!!" effect were all over the place, which earned quite a few hardware sales. Yet, the fact is that the brand new 64-bit 'puter could only run on the 32-bit legacy mode, as they were shipped with a 32-bit operating system and the OEMs shipped hardware without ever thinking on releasing 64-bit drivers or even releasing the hardware specs.
So those OEMs will, once again, sell hardware that will not be usable by the user, at least as advertised. It doesn't matter to them. The only thing that matters is the sales revenue, specially in this day and age where we are starting to see sub-300 euro hardware. And screw the consumer.
Depends of your personal definition of "piracy". The term "piracy" was, right from the start, a new term intended to be as loaded as it could be to refer to the unauthorized commercialization of copyrighted works. In that time, no normal person could possibly consider that guy selling bootleg tapes/books to be a menace to society. After all, the only thing that that guy did was duplicate something and sell it cheaper than others. That couldn't possibly hurt society.
So, in order to fight that perceived source of lower profits, the companies that were in the business of selling authorized copies of those works decided to shut that down. As they weren't able to gather public support for that battle then they decided to start a public relations campaign against the unauthorized commercialization of copyrighted books (their competition). The first step was coining a negative image to the unauthorized sellers, which originated terms like "bootlegger" and "pirate", evil figures associated with violent, organized crime. It's easier to fight someone/something when they are evil. There was no surprise a while back when some american retarded record company spokesperson started associating "piracy" to terrorism.
Now those companies intend to include in that definition people who have absolutely nothing to do with the old definition of "piracy". Now the record companies, motivated by greed and the lust for control, want to label anyone who downloads anything remotely copyrighted as a "pirate". There is no commercialization of any copyrighted work. Now, instead of attempting to smear and fight the distributors, they are trying to attack the end consumer.
Does it make any sense to label as pirates people who bought unauthorized copies of copyrighted works? Obviously not. Yet, the record companies are trying to go the extra nonsense mile and pin that nasty, loaded label on people who access those works without ever exchanging any money.
So it isn't a question of "when is piracy not bad". As questionable as "piracy", the unauthorized commercialization of a copyrighted work, may be, the real question that must be placed here, and unfortunately you failed to understand, is why is non-"piracy" actions being labelled as "piracy" in the first place? If I download something for personal use after paying absolutely nothing for it then how exactly can you claim that I'm commercializing an unauthorized copy of some copyrighted work? Moreover, why should anyone be called a "pirate" if what that person is doing is perfectly included in their nation's fair use doctrine?
Yes, and that reason is marketing. Pure, simple, intensive marketing. Lots and lots of marketing being fed to them throughout their life. Fender and Gibson make the best guitars, Marshal makes the best amps and tubes are better than solid state amps. That's what is constantly being fed to them through implicit and explicit marketing campaigns. Yet, no one can rationally explain why are they better than the others, besides the huge price tag that comes attached to those products and the fact that "OMG my guitar hero uses one of those so it must be excellent.
On the other hand, Brian May made his career playing a guitar that was made from wood taken from a fireplace and some bike parts and it sounds better than any 2.5k euro guitars out there. Makes you think. Or at least it should.
I've written my fair share of wikipedia articles but my main contribution to wikipedia is submitting articles for deletion. You claim that, somehow, "Assholes" are ruining wikipedia and driving away "the people who maide it great in the first place". Well, that is a very idiotic statement to make. If you happen to get a glimpse of the pile of trash that is started every minute and if you had the faintest notion of the nonsense which is being fed into wikipedia then you would never had said such nonsense.
Obviously there are trash-generating users who believe that their pet article on how their third-grade teacher is so good at ping-pong has every right to belong in an encyclopaedia-type medium, not to mention being linked from the article on the theory of relativity and being included in the famous footballers category. Nonetheless, the truth is that your pet project is nonsense, irrelevant and can't possibly justify being mentioned in an encyclopaedia-type medium. To put it simply, it's pure crap.
To give a few examples, there isn't a single day where tens of articles about the newest garage band started this week doesn't pop up. Some people even take it upon themselves to start autobiographical articles, explaining how they are the best in their village, complete with their charging rates. And then we have articles covering some videogame clan that was just started by a couple of school pals. Heck, a while back I stumbled on a user who had created hundreds of articles transcribing his entire family's genealogical tree to wikipedia, up to some great great grandfather who had a stint in the army and made a living as a small farmer.
Explain to me how does wikipedia suffer if that trash is submitted for deletion by "assholes". Explain to me how users like me are "ruining wikipedia" by voting for those articles to be deleted. Do you really believe that everything that is put into wikipedia smells of roses and has every right to be there?
I go as far as saying that if type of users, the ones that are only able to produce self-serving articles or generate utter nonsense, abandon wikipedia then wikipedia only ends up winning. Encyclopedia dramatica and uncyclopedia exist for a reason.
That's funny, as when you write some code using the Qt library things are so clear and concise that you even get the feeling you are using some higher level scripting language. That's not the case with java. Ever.
The C++ programming language may support nice toys like templates and meta programming, which tend to be a headache to deal with and a pain to read. As a consequence, at least to some extent, the same applies to the STL. Nonetheless, who is forced to use all features of a language? No one.
So please don't say silly things. You only end up looking silly.
How does sage compares with other mathematics FLOSS like maxima, axiom and yacas? Another question is how come they opted to start a new project instead of contributing to other already established projects?
I don't know about power users but KDE's philosophy of letting everything be configurable to the extreme brings wonders to the end user. For example, I'm no power user, at least according to the colloquial definition but nonetheless, thanks to KDE, I was able to tweak the desktop environment so that it helps me be more productive. For example, in my laptop, which has a small screen, I configured KDE so that the panel is placed vertically along the left side of the screen, automatically popping up and hiding whenever I want. I also configured KDE to add a second horizontal panel in the bottom of the screen that only shows the application tabs. In my desktop, which has a 19'' 1440x900 screen, I tweaked KDE so that the KDE panel to automatically hide/show whenever I want. Then we have the window behaviour teaks. When I double-click the window's title bar the windows maximize and I tweaked KDE so that some windows, like my IM client's chat windows, stay always on top and are shown on all desktops. Last but not least, we have the windowing features like the "maximize only vertically" and "maximize only horizontally" that are invaluably useful, along with the "always on top" window flag. Simply great stuff.
If we look at those individual tweaks, the first thing we realize is that the KDE options which made them possible may sound whimsical. I mean, an option to define where and how a precise window of a certain application is shown when it is displayed? Yet, what we realize when we think about it for a moment is that no one in their right mind expects anyone to tweak all those options. On the other hand, what KDE's vast tweaking potential does offer is a way for each and every user to be able to adapt KDE to their particular use pattern instead of being forced to adapt to whatever default behaviour was configured by someone. It may take a single tweak for a user to feel perfectly confortable with KDE but what we must understand is that not everyone likes the same thing. So, in order for each and every KDE user to be able to perform their single tweak, KDE must support a whole universe of configuration options in order to support whatever feature every single user may wish.
On a side note, the users aren't the only people tweaking KDE. All distros perform their fair share of customization. The difference between KDE and some desktop environments like the windows shell or GNOME is that in order to customize them, the developers will have to break out their compilers and write their own features. With KDE it only takes a few strategically placed mouse clicks.
If that thing is broken then don't use it. Moreover, exactly how frequent does anyone use one of those tinyurls or any equivalent service? Personally I do not even know when it was the last time I clicked on one of those.
The only reason these types of advancements are seen "as a harbringer of doom" is due to the fact that some societies simply refuse to adopt and implement social programs.
When we have a developed state where the state takes care of every citizen's basic human needs like healthcare and education and eliminates the social unrest caused by unemployment by offering satisfying unemployment benefits then any small-scale "industrial revolution" event like this one, which end up completely eliminating jobs, will not generate any social unrest. The simple fact is that in desperate situations everyone (and I do mean everyone) is compelled to adopt desperate measures to simply get by. As soon as someone sees himself in the desperate situation of not having a job, not being capable of getting one, having to support himself and others at his care... That is a situation which is as desperate as it gets.
Touché. In fact, I've upgraded a while ago and I bought a nice little asus M2NPV-MX motherboard. I've chosen that particular motherboard for three simple reasons: it was a socket AM2 motherboard, it's price was very reasonable (about 60 euros) and it had an NVIDIA integrated video card (NVIDIA GeForce 6150). I don't play demanding games (mainly openttd), the integrated audio is excellent and from time to time I tinker with opengl. In the end that particular hardware combination made it possible for me to buy a new computer with a dual core processor for less than 200 euros.
So exactly what's wrong with integrated audio/video? Absolutely nothing. At least that's what my wallet's opinion.
Wow. Wotta guy. Claiming that stay-at-home moms are "blood mares". You, sir, are an idiot.
Since it is a full fledge PC and runs any text editor that you may think of along with software like TeX and LaTeX without a single problem, not to mention WYSIWYG office suits like OpenOffice and KOffice, I'd say that that the Eee PC deprecates that little toy in every single category possibly imaginable.
Actually, it is that bad. Ubuntu suffers from a nasty overheating bug since the 5.04 days which tends to bar a lot of people from doing regular, every day tasks just because they push the system a bit. I've been a loyal kubuntu user since day one (their KDE release cycle is second to none) but I've already saw a laptop go up in smoke thanks to that nasty problem.
So the comparisson with a toaster isn't all that out of order, specially if we are dealing with laptops.
That's funny, as my experience is the exact opposite. I've developed a very small GPL library and posted the project in sourceforge. Although I'm the only developer and I regularly submit packages of the code, the section which is mostly visited is the project's subversion repository. Moreover, I do get patches from random people who browse the code.
A normalized set of procedures to perform measurements does not a science make. If it was so then phrenology would be almost a pure science.
Not so fast. In some countries it is not possible for an artist/author to transfer or give away his copyright ownership. That may be allowed in some countries but it is not an universal thing. Free software, on the other hand, is and therefore every project must take in consideration the laws which each developer is bounded to.
You speak on and on about fear mongering but all you do not give a single rational argument against unions. All you do is try to associate a simple, healthy, life improving initiative that aims to protect worker's rights with evil, oppressive initiatives like the US's patriot act. If that wasn't enough to satisfy your trolling needs, you go on associating unions with organized crime and corruption.
The thing is, whenever a group of people join themselves to fight for their rights, their lives improve and society improves. History is packed with landmark victories accomplished by people associating themselves and fighting for their rights. You absolutely cannot state that a bunch of IT workers organizing themselves to fight to get their a fair pay earned by their honest work is some sort of evil, oppressive, criminal, abusive act.
You may have been brainwashed against the evils of communism and you may have lost the ability to understand the concept of worker's rights but that doesn't mean that it is wrong or evil.
Oh I see. That must be why there is absolutely no european company. They simply cannot survive under that harsh climate. Damn those european unions, with their minimum wage, their 35 hour work weeks, their paid overtime, their 30 day paid vacations, their Christmas bonus and paid leaves, their national health services and their unemployment benefits. They simply destroyed their lives and reverted back to the stoneage! No small company can possibly survive that, let alone a multinational. Poor bastards.
Yes, you seem to be the smart one here. You completely avoid all unions or worker's association and nonetheless you still got that 35 hour work week and paid overtime. Oh you don't have that? Tough. Keep on bitching about how unions are evil, then.
That's funny. You are actually complaining about other people defending their rights and best interests while you and your class does not have the slightest intention to mobilize and stand up for yourselves. Do you actually believe that the problem lies in the fact that others fought and, as a consequence, are earning more and having a better life than you? Didn't it ever crossed your brilliant mind that the real problem lied with you and your class never fighting for your own best interests and therefore being forced to earn less and having a crappy life?
The thing is, it appears that there are a lot of people defending that a state should murder those that are considered to have failed society in some way. As you described it, some perceived it as "removing a demonstrable threat to society". But the thing is, no one ever takes the time to try to understand what, in fact, are the causes to those problems. They perceive that the cause of the problem is in fact the crime and punishing the criminals is how that problem is fought.
That idea is idiotic, to say the least. The problem is not the crime but the conditions which lead to the crime. You do not solve the crime problem by punishing the criminals. That bay be seen as justice but it absolutely will not solve any crime problem. It won't because crime is a very profound social problem, which social causes and social consequences. It's a deeply intertwined system which flourishes when the negative social factors are ignored. You don't treat an infection by cutting off the deeply infected part and still preserving both the infection and the causes of that infection.
So killing someone in order to "permanently remove a demonstrable threat to society" will not diminish that threat to society. It does not nor will it ever solve anything. It just cuts off a tiny bit of a scab of a deeply infected wound, leaving the whole infection untouched. The only thing that an execution brings is a false sense of accomplishment and, naturally, revenge. Revenge never solved any problem.
On the other hand the SCO jig is up and he had absolutely nothing to gain by sticking by it's side. He pushed for a version of the story which is crumbling down on more than one front and attacked the credibility of those defending SCO's absolute lack of any merit whatsoever. So in the end he had two choices: risking being labelled as an impartial tool (or even a paid chill) or trying to save a bit of credibility by distancing him from SCO's side.
It's a simple question, really. Distance himself from this lost cause which is the SCO thing or risking being out of a career.
You seem to be a bit confused as you missed the point entirely. The point is that if there is a monoculture then a single virus can infect and disrupt the entire market. On the other hand, if there isn't a monoculture, even if a virus spreads violently and wreaks havoc through one OS it will only affect that one OS's market share, leaving all the others unaffected. That would mean, in the 4 OS scenario, that a violent outbreak of some malware would only affect 25% of the entire computing universe.
The point is not that 25% is not a big enough number. The point is that having 25% of something being affected is a whole lot better than 100%.
But hey, don't let your anti-linux blind hatred stop you. Go ahead and rant as much as you wish.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it that in order for a file format to be accepted as an ISO standard there has to be at least a couple of independent working implementations? If Microsoft's OOXML is amended but the only piece of software which implements OOXML doesn't even follow the standard presented to ISO, where does that leave the OOXML's standardization?
Apples and oranges. The expertise and information needed to write a process scheduler has absolutely nothing in common with the expertise and information needed to write a device driver, specially if the problem pertaining to the lack of device drivers for that particular class of hardware is, as you know, the complete absence of information on the hardware itself or even how the hardware was done in the first place.
You are doing it wrong. It went something as "a young person who isn't a leftist has no heart. An old person who as no brains isn't a conservative". A liberal isn't a leftist and, obviously, that comment about the "brain-less" relation to liberals (or some other group which you dislike) is complete nonsense.
Now that I think of it, the saying is more in the lines of "those who are young and foolish think like you. Those who have matured and wise think like me". Obviously it says a lot more about those who state that nonsense as it is some sort of absolute rule than about the purposed intrinsic philosophical value it is thought to have, which is zero.
Pfff.... That's for pussies. Real Men write their web servers right into the operating system kernel.