Whoopee. So one giant corporation points out how a higher quality product can only obtain legitimacy by tying itself to yet another giant (or wannabe giant) corporation.
I got (re)involved with linux specifically to work on the gstreamer project. Sure I'm biased, but I got involved with gstreamer specifically because real sucked from the start and we don't need linux to evolve attached to yet another corporatized "media framework."
Not afraid of the RIAA. One does not "fear" those one considers an ethical enemy. It's simply a matter of not supporting those who lobby against the things one considers right.
And again I'll point out that BB King and JL Hooker and EC are far from the only blues musicians in this country. And it's interesting you mention this because I live right smack in the middle of Mississippi; I am less than an hour from Clarksville - you need not tell me about the origin of the blues.
In fact, BB King has played the High School Gymnasium in the town not six miles from my home - a rather impoverished small town of about 1000 people. What's he doing here? As always, Google has the answer.
There is a giant Blues festival here every single year. No, wait - that's a lie. There are lots of blues festivals here every year. When they were still with us both Lightnin' Hopkins and Gatemouth Brown used to play "clubs" (plywood paneled barbeque shacks) around here. You want to learn the blues? This is how you learn. Trying to learn the blues from studio records is like trying to learn handwriting from those second grade books: it's all hyper-perfect, computer generated sterile crap that can never be achieved in real life (nor should be). And "the vast majority" of their music was not, and has never been released on ANY label. If you want to hear Mississippi Blues, you gotta get outta the house and hear it cut live through the luminipherous ether.
And by the way: ever heard of Jimmie Rodgers? Robert Johnson? Johnson died penniless and his only recorded works were basically stolen from him during his own lifetime. He's regarded as the king of the blues and his records are, strictly speaking, public domain. Jimmie Rodgers (a white boy who yodeled) was also considered (and still is) one of the early blues pioneers as well. And again, his recordings are pretty much "free" at this point, at least literally if not legally. I dare say, neither of these gents are going to miss the money if you should prefer FLACs over CDs. And their works was not released on RIAA labels, since the RIAA did not even exist then. The recordings have simply been purchased, long after their respective deaths, by these corporations.
And arguing "I have no choice" is utterly stupid. Besides easily being proven patently untrue, this statements reeks of those other "enablers" - not pirates, but alcoholics and drug users. "I just need a little to get my head straight and then you come in here and wreck it and I have to buy more - see what you made me do?"
There are LOTS of choices... and lots of alternatives from which to choose them. So long as you give these parasites your money, you are supporting them - no two ways about it. You can hate them all you like, you can cuss and spit on every cent you hand over... but in the end, you're supporting them with every penny.
Maybe it should be more like "Obfiscator Naivete."
You buy a CD. The artist ges almost nothing from it, the store only slightly more. The rest of it goes to the record company, who in turn helps fund the RIAA. The RIAA then, in turn, spends Millions of dollars in washington making sure crackpots like Hollings invent nonsensical bullshit like the NET act (and this most recent pinnacle of buffonery, that "enable" act.)
These laws not only cost us our freedoms, in the end they cost us both jobs and the ability to compete in the international marketplace. This is not YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK but rather YOUR CD PURCHASES AT WORK. That "it doesn't bother me cuz I don't do it" attitude is, and always has been, "idiocy in the defense of freedom."
What are you supposed to do? Well, you could try realizing the international scene is not "Universally owned" and there's a LOT of good stuff out there not on US labels, not on US airwaves, and not subsidizing anticompetetive legislation in your own country. It's not just music you are buying - it's culture. What culture would you rather subsidize? One that embraces artists AND the audience, or one that treats the audience as so many criminals?
So... Jello Biafra is "functional" because he (sorta) looks "normal" and Rob Zombie is "dysfuncitonal" because he looks like a zombie biker?
And you think the music industry has problems?
The only thing wrong with "hiphop culture" is that so many still seem to see Hollywood as some sort of prize, rather than realizing it's just the new massa.
Or, to put it another way: there's too damn many hang-around-the-fort indians...
Step 1: remove one wheel from the old fashion 4 wheel model...
Step 2: try to invent some really expensive technology that looks cool and creates market buzz, then tell everyone it will reclaim the stability that was lost in the removal of that "extra" wheel.
The reason Corbin dropped this - and the reason it is doomed no matter how many fools decide to ride this wagon - is because any company selling a three wheeled car is going to last only as long as it takes the first person to be killed or mamed in a rollover at 60MPH. Corbin is a nice guy and it's good to see he'll not be the one sued out of existence when the first family member rolls into court in his shiny new wheelchair.
They can spin physics with all the sales pitches they want, a three wheeled vehicle is an insanely stupid idea.
Not paying attention, are you? In fact, one of the things the record industry has been bitching about lately is the fact they, too, are now slaves of the large broadcast quasi-monopolies. Payola was outlawed long ago but all that did was cut out the middleman - now instead of paying off a few djs and pds they have to pay megabucks to corporations in the form of "promotional expenses" just to get their tracks placed in rotation.
Artists generally get very little of the money from their cd sales, but they get even less (as in nothing at all) from those cheap CDs? Once a title has been cutout (these used to be marked, but often that's not even done anymore so you can't tell at all) or is offered at that "discount" price it is counted by the record company as a "promotional item" and, therefore, not counted at all in the artist's royalties check.
I think that's a fair price for music...
You think subsidizing the lobbying of ever greater restrictions on your own intellectual freedom is a fair price?
got it wrong. I did not make an "ethical" argument on this. Although I have before, that was not mentioned in my post. It was purely a matter of law, as that is what leads this discussion. I doubt very much Apple or A&M give a shit less about ethics - they do what they do to make profit, and it is law - not ethics - that steer their course.
If you WANT to discuss ethics, fine - then how do you justify "paying more for less" when it comes to the music industry? You really think it's noble to pay $20 a CD (or a buck a track) to an organization that is constantly lobbying for more ways to make sure you and eveyone else are forced to pay them even more money in the future? What kind of fucked up values system is that?
Hilarious that this "off topic" post generated so many comments. Ah, the wonders of "group think!"
The facts are: US law does not universally apply, and Copyright is not some sort of divine right. If you will look around a bit you will see some of the countries with the least restrictive copyright laws have very outstanding artistic histories.
Once again you lot confuse commerce with art. Artists have traditionally sought benefactors and relied on individual sales and performance contracts to generate income. The people who benefit from US copyright law.. blah blah blah blah... we've heard it before
So I'll say it again: look around. Russia has a very loose copyright system and yet they are far from being devoid of artists - nor of plastic pop has-beens. And, in fact, some of the brightest artistic moments from that part of the world came when artistsweremostpersecuted - nor have their very liberal policies cost them their share of post-moderninnovation.
I'm not saying we should abuse artists (well, except mimes) but the simple fact is these russian (and Ukrainian - another FSU state that is slated to join the EU) websites are simply exploiting the weakness of the oppression existent in our own economy - no different than when we exploit the labors of those kids who work for a buck a day rolling beedies, assembling hundred dollar sneakers, or putting overpriced plastic dolls in boxes.
So... how does it feel to be exploited by the foibles of your own beliefs?
Given the remarkably thorough slashdotting suffered by allofmp3.com some weeks back after its mention both here and in that australian paper I have to think they must have shifted some healthy level of product this year.
But then again, I guess they don't count since they're not based in the US, feeding the RIAA corporate welfare lobbying machine. Or maybe they don't count here because they're not technically in euroupe, but rather in Russia which is, as we all know, actually part of Asia. Even 'tho theyre supposed to be part of the EU... or something.
Meh. More hype for the system. You can wrap it in as many colors as you like, Steven, I'm not helping you feed this monster any more.
I can't believe how most in this thread seem to see it only about money. It's NOT just about money. Consider how you'd feel if France or even Egypt overran your country and was occupying it - would you not feel anger toward your "captors?" Would you not do everything you could to cause them to run away?
Whether you think the "state" argument applies here or not, realize it ain't just about the money. For $100k a year are you willing to become part of an occupying force? To the natives that's what you will represent, and all your income will be tainted with the blood both of the natives who died in the occupation and of the "allied" soldiers who died not for the money, but because they thought it their duty to be there when their country asked.
To quote Rick Blaine: I don't mind a parasite; I object to a cut-rate one.
I once thought that might be the problem as well. So I disabled proxomitron when I was on slashdot, and still found it happening. And I don't have ANY of the browser disabling features, uh, enabled (!) because the tooltray proxy does such an aggressive job at filtering.
I also noticed this problem becamse worse with 1.6. I used 1.4 for a very loing time and it happened every now and then, with 1.6 it seems to happen much more frequently (at least once a day).
that's already here. Been here quite a while in fact. It's sort of a laptop inb the sense it'll sit in your lap, but it has no internal battery. Of course you can buy an external pack that will fit nicely right under it and plug into the power jack and that's only an extra $120 or so and, because it can use gel cells if you want it won't wear out in six months like those overstressed lithiums all the new units are shipping with.
Anyway, the $499 "laptop" that fits your description has been on the market for quite a few months now. You can still find them if you look around - the base unit has 128MB RAM, a 1.1ghz celeron, four usb2 ports, ser, par, video and tv ports, and a 10gb hdd. All units come with a 14" LCD of, I believe, 1280x1024 resolution. I've seen them on special once or twice with windows at that price, but more often than not XP is another $80 upgrade away, so technically you might consider it a $579 new laptop... but still, that's awfully cheap for a unit with so many expansion possibilities.
So... how many people do you know who have one? When was the last time you read about one? If there were a hot market for something like this then you'd think it would be all over... but it ain't.
On the flipside of that, a stinkpad is built like a tank even if it only has a puny little 13.3" display of 1024x768. And I don't believe you can get a cpu of 1.1ghz (at least not for the 600 model) - but then again since you can get a "real" PIII cpu for less than the price of a new battery pack 750mhz is probably just fine in comparison. I can handle wireless with a usb dongle or a buscard and I could even stick a 5gb hard drive in the other slot if I were so inclined which would reduce power consumption and give me an empty hard drive bay to store a tiny four port usb hub. And when I drop my thinkpad and the display cracks or I lose a few keys off the keyboard it'll cost like $40 to fix - as opposed to just trashing the $499 "new" model when something breaks because none of them even survived long enough to make it to the surplus market and the anonymous chinese manufacturer isn't around anymore to support it.
That's the competition. That's why there's no one jumping at the chance to deliver a $500 uber-laptop: because a perfectly good laptop of similar performance can be had anywhere now, today - and with new models from brands like gateway and dell and ibm going for less than $1000 today, that no-name "good enough" $500 laptop is going to have an even harder time competing next year.
You don't count because you are not the type of person who buys a new computer... pretty much ever. You are still using a pp200? I have boxes of those things here I give to people who are too poor and/or uneducated to realize the value of a home pc. It's too slow for gaming and too limited to be really useful for someone's porn addiction, so it's a machine that will either do the home some good or nothing at all.
You could hop over to one of the surplus dealers and replace that raggedy pp200 with a box at least five time faster - I see 500-600mhz PIII machines go out the door all the time for $99.00. If an upgrade to five times the performance you are getting now isn't even worth a hundred bucks, then you simply don't count. You may have found it "refreshing" to read about a ceo who isn't hyping clock speed above all, but in the end you don't matter to him or the industry because your money never makes it up the food chain. You're not "the type" he's trying to reach because you obviously don't consider even a $300 laptop or $99 desktop a worthy upgrade - so when would you ever appear on his radar? Five years after, when the machines are so antiquated they're not even worth freight charges?
I'm not saying this to dis you: I'm also into being a green geek and recycling everything I can get my hands on (thus my collection of old "giveaway" desktops and cheap refurbished laptops). But those Via boards are not designed for sub-$100 desktops. At best they'd make a sub-$300 desktop, and you can buy machines right now that would trounce such a low end machine for much less than $200 on the surplus market. And you wouldn't be generating any new pollutants (except the packing materials and the fuel for shipments) with the surplus system.
So, are you really sure you're "the person he was thinking of?"
You can buy 500mhz laptops for under $300 if you're patient with your bidding and expect to do a bit of parts swapping. And yes, if you buy the right systems you'll find a machine that is very well upgradeable just by swapping a few parts. My own portable pet is a 500MHz PIII frankensteined from no less than three previously dead machines (only one of which is now still dead). I do this all the time and my only concession to new is to buy a new hdd (if needed) since brand new (warranteed) 20gb drives are only about twice as expensive as worn out 4gb drives.
You can do exactly what you're wishing, but you can't do it with new boxed parts and a three year warranty. If you want new then you got to get out the cleaning materials and spray paint and create!
Your construction
smells of corruption
I manipulate
to recreate
in this air
to ground saga
gotta launder my karma...
Just hit ebay and replace thw whole damn thing. At this time there are at least three working units there with a few days left on the auction and all of them are less than 20 bucks.
If what you want is a working 380 laptop there ya go. Why anyone would want such a dead end machine, though, is beyond me. At least the relatively power hungry 600 can be upgraded to nearly 1GHz and a good bit of ram using standard parts... those old 3 series are just... portable i-openers: underpowered, but "too good to throw away" only because they have a reasonably high quality, portable display.
We can put a mach5 missile down the chimney of a house using GPS; I'm sure commercial aircraft would be able to navigate just fine even if there were zero magnetic field.
I think it might be this post you are referring to?
For the rest: This technology isn't even on the market yet. The manufacturers themselves say "we're still developing it" - duh, yeah it sucks BECAUSE IT'S NOT DONE. When the oled display you bought down at the Office Depot starts "losing color" after four months use THEN you know-it-alls might have something to discuss - until then you're just a whisper in the wind.
apparently you didn't see my commnts just above on mdk10.
No, it ain't just kernel 2.6. mdk10 feels nothing close to as well behaved as suse9.1. Also, unlike mdk10, suse has no problem creating and mounting encypted home partition. I don't know what's wrong with mdk10 but this is getting a bit beside the topic now. Anyway, there's definitely more to this than just swapping generic kernels.
On my windows2000 box (which is also my SuSE box) I use mozilla because I can move my single profile easily between systems. And in windows, when I've had mozilla minimized for a long time while doing something else it takes damn FOREVER to reopen. I don't hear a lot of disk activity, it just takes a really long time for windows to switch back to the task (I don't use the tooltray "always on" feature because this makes my desktop more likely to crash).
In linux, one of the things that makes it seems really lethargic is the lack of operator feedback. With even recent MDK and RH installs I notice the mouse cursor is frequently just sitting there doing nothing at all while the machine thrashes away at a task. Last week I was mutzing around with DiskDrake - I told it to create a 160GB encrypted partition and mount it. After several seconds the cursor stopped animating and the window became completely non responsive. I knew it hadn't crashed it was just busy waiting for the process to end and if I let it go it would eventually come back. About five minutes later it returned, filled in the empty white box and reported the task complete.
This kind of behavior in windows means "the task is dead, ctrl-alt-del and see if you can end the task." In linux it may not mean that at all - it may just mean "wait a minute I'm not done." But in either case it lessens the user experience and, in some cases, is downright confusing. And in most every case it's extremely frustrating.
This is the sort of thing I was talking about with suse. I'm not sure what switches were set where, but I've never seen the busy cursor lose its animation nor have I seen a busy window just quit responding. Even when the task takes a few minutes it remains well behaved on the desktop. This is the sort of polish that makes a computer feel "professional" and even "fast" - it doesn't have to get done this very second, but "at least act rational while you're doing it."
I know what you mean. In fact, I wrote a "call for help" a very loing time ago about just this, as I had purchased (at very low price) a bunch of old vectras for use as "giveaway desktops" and I was looking to make the most of their 200mhz pentium mmx cpus. I tried several different linux distros with minimal windows managers (like blackbox) and none of them felt as snappy as the same machine running windows 2000.
So, I know what you mean. And I've even noticed the same thing when trying ootb installs of mandrake 7,8,9,10, redhat 6,7 etc. on my 1600 athlon xp.
Until I tried SuSE 9.1. I'm not a fan of kde but this distro looks really nice and it feels snappy in a way I've never known from linux in the half dozen or so commercial distros I've tried over the years. Between the snappy desktop, the eye candy and yast, it sets a REALLY high bar for every other desktop. You might give it a try and see if you don't agree.
Slashdot Mirror
I got (re)involved with linux specifically to work on the gstreamer project. Sure I'm biased, but I got involved with gstreamer specifically because real sucked from the start and we don't need linux to evolve attached to yet another corporatized "media framework."
And again I'll point out that BB King and JL Hooker and EC are far from the only blues musicians in this country. And it's interesting you mention this because I live right smack in the middle of Mississippi; I am less than an hour from Clarksville - you need not tell me about the origin of the blues.
In fact, BB King has played the High School Gymnasium in the town not six miles from my home - a rather impoverished small town of about 1000 people. What's he doing here? As always, Google has the answer.
There is a giant Blues festival here every single year. No, wait - that's a lie. There are lots of blues festivals here every year. When they were still with us both Lightnin' Hopkins and Gatemouth Brown used to play "clubs" (plywood paneled barbeque shacks) around here. You want to learn the blues? This is how you learn. Trying to learn the blues from studio records is like trying to learn handwriting from those second grade books: it's all hyper-perfect, computer generated sterile crap that can never be achieved in real life (nor should be). And "the vast majority" of their music was not, and has never been released on ANY label. If you want to hear Mississippi Blues, you gotta get outta the house and hear it cut live through the luminipherous ether.
And by the way: ever heard of Jimmie Rodgers? Robert Johnson? Johnson died penniless and his only recorded works were basically stolen from him during his own lifetime. He's regarded as the king of the blues and his records are, strictly speaking, public domain. Jimmie Rodgers (a white boy who yodeled) was also considered (and still is) one of the early blues pioneers as well. And again, his recordings are pretty much "free" at this point, at least literally if not legally. I dare say, neither of these gents are going to miss the money if you should prefer FLACs over CDs. And their works was not released on RIAA labels, since the RIAA did not even exist then. The recordings have simply been purchased, long after their respective deaths, by these corporations.
And arguing "I have no choice" is utterly stupid. Besides easily being proven patently untrue, this statements reeks of those other "enablers" - not pirates, but alcoholics and drug users. "I just need a little to get my head straight and then you come in here and wreck it and I have to buy more - see what you made me do?"
There are LOTS of choices... and lots of alternatives from which to choose them. So long as you give these parasites your money, you are supporting them - no two ways about it. You can hate them all you like, you can cuss and spit on every cent you hand over... but in the end, you're supporting them with every penny.
You buy a CD. The artist ges almost nothing from it, the store only slightly more. The rest of it goes to the record company, who in turn helps fund the RIAA. The RIAA then, in turn, spends Millions of dollars in washington making sure crackpots like Hollings invent nonsensical bullshit like the NET act (and this most recent pinnacle of buffonery, that "enable" act.)
These laws not only cost us our freedoms, in the end they cost us both jobs and the ability to compete in the international marketplace. This is not YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK but rather YOUR CD PURCHASES AT WORK. That "it doesn't bother me cuz I don't do it" attitude is, and always has been, "idiocy in the defense of freedom."
What are you supposed to do? Well, you could try realizing the international scene is not "Universally owned" and there's a LOT of good stuff out there not on US labels, not on US airwaves, and not subsidizing anticompetetive legislation in your own country. It's not just music you are buying - it's culture. What culture would you rather subsidize? One that embraces artists AND the audience, or one that treats the audience as so many criminals?
And you think the music industry has problems?
The only thing wrong with "hiphop culture" is that so many still seem to see Hollywood as some sort of prize, rather than realizing it's just the new massa.
Or, to put it another way: there's too damn many hang-around-the-fort indians...
Never took a physics class, didja? Cars are not end tables.
Step 1: remove one wheel from the old fashion 4 wheel model...
Step 2: try to invent some really expensive technology that looks cool and creates market buzz, then tell everyone it will reclaim the stability that was lost in the removal of that "extra" wheel.
Step 3: stock up on liability insurance
Step 4: profit!
They can spin physics with all the sales pitches they want, a three wheeled vehicle is an insanely stupid idea.
And that is still one of my favorite movies.
Spice Girls rule!
Not paying attention, are you? In fact, one of the things the record industry has been bitching about lately is the fact they, too, are now slaves of the large broadcast quasi-monopolies. Payola was outlawed long ago but all that did was cut out the middleman - now instead of paying off a few djs and pds they have to pay megabucks to corporations in the form of "promotional expenses" just to get their tracks placed in rotation.
I think that's a fair price for music...
You think subsidizing the lobbying of ever greater restrictions on your own intellectual freedom is a fair price?
How very... um.... interesting.
If you WANT to discuss ethics, fine - then how do you justify "paying more for less" when it comes to the music industry? You really think it's noble to pay $20 a CD (or a buck a track) to an organization that is constantly lobbying for more ways to make sure you and eveyone else are forced to pay them even more money in the future? What kind of fucked up values system is that?
The facts are: US law does not universally apply, and Copyright is not some sort of divine right. If you will look around a bit you will see some of the countries with the least restrictive copyright laws have very outstanding artistic histories.
Once again you lot confuse commerce with art. Artists have traditionally sought benefactors and relied on individual sales and performance contracts to generate income. The people who benefit from US copyright law.. blah blah blah blah... we've heard it before
So I'll say it again: look around. Russia has a very loose copyright system and yet they are far from being devoid of artists - nor of plastic pop has-beens. And, in fact, some of the brightest artistic moments from that part of the world came when artists were most persecuted - nor have their very liberal policies cost them their share of post-modern innovation.
I'm not saying we should abuse artists (well, except mimes) but the simple fact is these russian (and Ukrainian - another FSU state that is slated to join the EU) websites are simply exploiting the weakness of the oppression existent in our own economy - no different than when we exploit the labors of those kids who work for a buck a day rolling beedies, assembling hundred dollar sneakers, or putting overpriced plastic dolls in boxes.
So... how does it feel to be exploited by the foibles of your own beliefs?
But then again, I guess they don't count since they're not based in the US, feeding the RIAA corporate welfare lobbying machine. Or maybe they don't count here because they're not technically in euroupe, but rather in Russia which is, as we all know, actually part of Asia. Even 'tho theyre supposed to be part of the EU... or something.
Meh. More hype for the system. You can wrap it in as many colors as you like, Steven, I'm not helping you feed this monster any more.
It keeps my guts in like a sausage But can a sausage think? Feel the things I feel With my skin? I think not Therefore, I am a sausage
Whether you think the "state" argument applies here or not, realize it ain't just about the money. For $100k a year are you willing to become part of an occupying force? To the natives that's what you will represent, and all your income will be tainted with the blood both of the natives who died in the occupation and of the "allied" soldiers who died not for the money, but because they thought it their duty to be there when their country asked.
To quote Rick Blaine: I don't mind a parasite; I object to a cut-rate one.
I also noticed this problem becamse worse with 1.6. I used 1.4 for a very loing time and it happened every now and then, with 1.6 it seems to happen much more frequently (at least once a day).
Anyway, the $499 "laptop" that fits your description has been on the market for quite a few months now. You can still find them if you look around - the base unit has 128MB RAM, a 1.1ghz celeron, four usb2 ports, ser, par, video and tv ports, and a 10gb hdd. All units come with a 14" LCD of, I believe, 1280x1024 resolution. I've seen them on special once or twice with windows at that price, but more often than not XP is another $80 upgrade away, so technically you might consider it a $579 new laptop... but still, that's awfully cheap for a unit with so many expansion possibilities.
So... how many people do you know who have one? When was the last time you read about one? If there were a hot market for something like this then you'd think it would be all over... but it ain't.
On the flipside of that, a stinkpad is built like a tank even if it only has a puny little 13.3" display of 1024x768. And I don't believe you can get a cpu of 1.1ghz (at least not for the 600 model) - but then again since you can get a "real" PIII cpu for less than the price of a new battery pack 750mhz is probably just fine in comparison. I can handle wireless with a usb dongle or a buscard and I could even stick a 5gb hard drive in the other slot if I were so inclined which would reduce power consumption and give me an empty hard drive bay to store a tiny four port usb hub. And when I drop my thinkpad and the display cracks or I lose a few keys off the keyboard it'll cost like $40 to fix - as opposed to just trashing the $499 "new" model when something breaks because none of them even survived long enough to make it to the surplus market and the anonymous chinese manufacturer isn't around anymore to support it.
That's the competition. That's why there's no one jumping at the chance to deliver a $500 uber-laptop: because a perfectly good laptop of similar performance can be had anywhere now, today - and with new models from brands like gateway and dell and ibm going for less than $1000 today, that no-name "good enough" $500 laptop is going to have an even harder time competing next year.
You could hop over to one of the surplus dealers and replace that raggedy pp200 with a box at least five time faster - I see 500-600mhz PIII machines go out the door all the time for $99.00. If an upgrade to five times the performance you are getting now isn't even worth a hundred bucks, then you simply don't count. You may have found it "refreshing" to read about a ceo who isn't hyping clock speed above all, but in the end you don't matter to him or the industry because your money never makes it up the food chain. You're not "the type" he's trying to reach because you obviously don't consider even a $300 laptop or $99 desktop a worthy upgrade - so when would you ever appear on his radar? Five years after, when the machines are so antiquated they're not even worth freight charges?
I'm not saying this to dis you: I'm also into being a green geek and recycling everything I can get my hands on (thus my collection of old "giveaway" desktops and cheap refurbished laptops). But those Via boards are not designed for sub-$100 desktops. At best they'd make a sub-$300 desktop, and you can buy machines right now that would trounce such a low end machine for much less than $200 on the surplus market. And you wouldn't be generating any new pollutants (except the packing materials and the fuel for shipments) with the surplus system.
So, are you really sure you're "the person he was thinking of?"
You can buy 500mhz laptops for under $300 if you're patient with your bidding and expect to do a bit of parts swapping. And yes, if you buy the right systems you'll find a machine that is very well upgradeable just by swapping a few parts. My own portable pet is a 500MHz PIII frankensteined from no less than three previously dead machines (only one of which is now still dead). I do this all the time and my only concession to new is to buy a new hdd (if needed) since brand new (warranteed) 20gb drives are only about twice as expensive as worn out 4gb drives.
You can do exactly what you're wishing, but you can't do it with new boxed parts and a three year warranty. If you want new then you got to get out the cleaning materials and spray paint and create!
Your construction
smells of corruption
I manipulate
to recreate
in this air
to ground saga
gotta launder my karma...
If what you want is a working 380 laptop there ya go. Why anyone would want such a dead end machine, though, is beyond me. At least the relatively power hungry 600 can be upgraded to nearly 1GHz and a good bit of ram using standard parts... those old 3 series are just... portable i-openers: underpowered, but "too good to throw away" only because they have a reasonably high quality, portable display.
We can put a mach5 missile down the chimney of a house using GPS; I'm sure commercial aircraft would be able to navigate just fine even if there were zero magnetic field.
For the rest: This technology isn't even on the market yet. The manufacturers themselves say "we're still developing it" - duh, yeah it sucks BECAUSE IT'S NOT DONE. When the oled display you bought down at the Office Depot starts "losing color" after four months use THEN you know-it-alls might have something to discuss - until then you're just a whisper in the wind.
No, it ain't just kernel 2.6. mdk10 feels nothing close to as well behaved as suse9.1. Also, unlike mdk10, suse has no problem creating and mounting encypted home partition. I don't know what's wrong with mdk10 but this is getting a bit beside the topic now. Anyway, there's definitely more to this than just swapping generic kernels.
In linux, one of the things that makes it seems really lethargic is the lack of operator feedback. With even recent MDK and RH installs I notice the mouse cursor is frequently just sitting there doing nothing at all while the machine thrashes away at a task. Last week I was mutzing around with DiskDrake - I told it to create a 160GB encrypted partition and mount it. After several seconds the cursor stopped animating and the window became completely non responsive. I knew it hadn't crashed it was just busy waiting for the process to end and if I let it go it would eventually come back. About five minutes later it returned, filled in the empty white box and reported the task complete.
This kind of behavior in windows means "the task is dead, ctrl-alt-del and see if you can end the task." In linux it may not mean that at all - it may just mean "wait a minute I'm not done." But in either case it lessens the user experience and, in some cases, is downright confusing. And in most every case it's extremely frustrating.
This is the sort of thing I was talking about with suse. I'm not sure what switches were set where, but I've never seen the busy cursor lose its animation nor have I seen a busy window just quit responding. Even when the task takes a few minutes it remains well behaved on the desktop. This is the sort of polish that makes a computer feel "professional" and even "fast" - it doesn't have to get done this very second, but "at least act rational while you're doing it."
I love you guys who talk of compilers and switches and say things like "hack the top level makefile" when you're supposedly talking to "noobs."
This is just one of the many reasons people:
a) stick with windows
b) buy a mac.
So, I know what you mean. And I've even noticed the same thing when trying ootb installs of mandrake 7,8,9,10, redhat 6,7 etc. on my 1600 athlon xp.
Until I tried SuSE 9.1. I'm not a fan of kde but this distro looks really nice and it feels snappy in a way I've never known from linux in the half dozen or so commercial distros I've tried over the years. Between the snappy desktop, the eye candy and yast, it sets a REALLY high bar for every other desktop. You might give it a try and see if you don't agree.
And no, I don't work for novell...