My question is, are we some kind of freaks when it comes to gas use compared to most Americans? We live in a city neighborhood where we can walk to places for some basic errands...
Yes, you are freaks. Most people drive 5+ miles to Wal-Mart (in their SUV) for basic errands.
Why is tax on gasoline in the USA so ridiculously low?
Because, unlike in Europe, our cities are new enough to have been (stupidly) designed for cars instead of people. Now we're screwed, and have to have artificially low prices on gas to compensate.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. The road system in America is significantly subsidized, yet the rail system and public transportation systems are expected to make a profit! What. The. Fuck?!
On the flip side, updating the graphics is about the only thing they could do without risking screwing up the gameplay! From the videos, it plays exactly like Starcraft. And that's a good thing.
On the other hand, API's and middle-ware tools are becoming more and more prominent, and depending on which ones you choose and it can have a bit impact on portability.
Name a major API that's cross-platform between Windows and Mac but not Linux. I can think of plenty that are Windows-only, but it seems to me that once you commit to Mac support you pretty much get Linux support for free. That's why there's no excuse for not supporting Linux!
And don't whine to me about "writing installers" either -- just statically link the whole thing, write a one-liner bash script to copy all the files to/opt/starcraft2/ and be done with it!
If you want "Warcraft III's model," go play Warcraft III!
I, for one, am glad that it seems more like a macro-scale RTS, because I hate micromanagement. To this day, I still like Starcraft better than Warcraft III precisely for that reason!
MS will probably argue that this use of their limited licesne with Novell constitutes an act of bad faith.. intended to deprive them of their patent rights.. which would then go to a whole series of legal arguments that don't matter for now.
So? Only Novell is on the hook for that, not the FSF or anybody else.
Basically.. FSF thinks they're SO clever, they're letting MS know what's coming.
It seems to me that the FSF is perfectly happy to screw over Novell, as well as Microsoft.
Inequitable results or not, the "GPL team" (aka, the Free Software Foundation) is an entirely separate third party from the ones who made the vouchers (Novell and MS). So either MS is screwed and accidentally gave away all its patents, or Novell is screwed for making a contract it can't uphold.
Although I'd prefer to screw MS, I'm okay with either outcome -- the FSF wins no matter what.
Linus can change the license of the portion of the code he owns, though. And so can all the other developers. If they all agree (or if most of them agree, and the code written by the rest gets stripped out), the license of the whole thing can be changed.
If and only if the GPLv2 code contains the "or any later version" clause -- which most of the kernel code doesn't. For the kernel to switch to v3, either all developers need to agree to it, or the code written by the ones who don't has to be stripped out and re-implemented. Without Linus's support, switching to v3 would be impossible (because he owns so much of the code). Even with his support, it will be difficult.
I was under the impression that the "raging success" has been going on since about the first iMac, or at least the introduction of OS X, both of which happened long before the Intel switch.
On a side note you can just ask for the amount in the form of a gift card and use that towards your laptop, but no one really knows that.
That's what they've always given my family without us having to ask. Either that, or that's what they did the first time, and then we subsequently expected it.
Best Buy is actually a good place to buy computers, as long as they're low quality. Why? Their extended warranty has a "three strikes and you're out clause" whereby after the computer has been serviced three times, if it breaks again they give store credit for a replacement. So, the procedure is as follows:
Buy a crappy PC and a service plan from Best Buy
Take it in for service when it breaks the first time
Take it in for service when it breaks the second time
Take it in for service when it breaks the third time
Get store credit (of full original price!) towards replacement when it breaks the fourth time
Repeat.
My family went through this cycle about five times over about the past decade, starting with a refurbished Packard Bell 486 desktop and ending with a 20" iMac Core Duo (and no, we did not break anything on purpose, or be overly rough with our machines). Also, I don't count Apple as "crappy," although it should be noted that Best Buy replaces Macs on the first service instead of the fourth, because it doesn't have the facilities to repair them.
I've never had a car puncture, I'd had dozens on bikes.
Either you typically cycle on caltrops, or you're doing something wrong (such as failing to inflate your tires properly, and getting pinch flats). Otherwise, bikes are no more prone to flats than cars are.
And having a spare doesn't mean a lot if it punctures when putting it in.
It's difficult for me to respond to this without insulting you, because fixing a flat on a bike is not that hard.
You are aware that you need to remove whatever punctured the tube from the tire before putting the new one in, and that you need avoid getting the tube caught between the bead of the tire and the rim, right?
Or if you're run over whilst changing it.
As opposed to being run over while changing a car's tire, which is more likely because the size of the car relative to the shoulder forces you to be closer to the road while doing so? Sounds like yet another argument in the bike's favor to me!
Oh and don't forget the punctures. Have fun pushing a bike home ten miles in the rain dodging cars.
What are you, an idiot? You do the same thing on a bike that you would in a car: carry a spare! An inner tube (you don't actually need a tire) and a frame-mounted pump take up only a little space and weight as it is, and a patch kit and CO2 inflator would take even less.
Besides, you could apply the same logic to cars, except you'd be trying to push a 3,000+ lb. car home instead of a 20 lb. bike -- the bike still wins!
A major crash with 3-6 bikes doesn't even fill a lane, and you can just ride around it.
Nor does it generally require emergency vehicles. Compare that with the situation this morning in Atlanta, where southbound Interstate 75 (probably 5 lanes wide) was entirely shut down in the middle of rush hour because a car got crushed under a big rig and they had to land a helicopter on the freeway to airlift the injured driver out.
I'll bet the money wasted in lost productivity alone from all those people stuck in traffic could fund bike paths serving half the city.
Fact is, if you're on the road, you follow the same rules a car does. That means stopping at red lights, not passing on the shoulder, etc.
And most importantly, riding with traffic, instead of pretending you're a pedestrian and riding against it (and crossing at crosswalks, riding the bike)! I've nearly hit cyclists multiple times because the idiots were somewhere they weren't supposed to be.
The fear she felt when Ubuntu's installer did not give any sign it was aware of, and respecting her Windows partition.
I felt exactly the same apprehension when installing Kubuntu Feisty last weekend (and I'm an advanced user, not a "clueless newbie"). I wasn't too worried since the only thing it would blow away would be a clean install of Vista, but still, it would be nice to see a picture of the changes it's making to the partition table.
My laptop works better out-of-the-box in Ubuntu than it does in Vista (I installed both, dual-booting, this past weekend).
Of course, I should probably mention that I cheated: the laptop in question is a Thinkpad x60 Tablet, and Thinkpads are almost always well-supported in Linux. It's got Intel graphics, a screen with a weird resolution (1400x1050), Atheros WiFi, a Wacom digitizer, extra buttons next to the screen, volume buttons, a fingerprint scanner, and a hard drive accelerometer. Here's what worked, and what didn't:
Windows Vista
accelerated graphics: worked, but Windows Update prompted me to install a new driver anyway
screen: worked, but sometimes switches to 1024x768 when waking from sleep
WiFi: worked
digitizer: had to be recalibrated
screen bezel buttons: had to install a driver from Lenovo (not Windows Update)
volume buttons: STILL DON'T WORK, even after installing every Lenovo driver that looked relevant! Grr...
fingerprint scanner: not listed in device manager until I installed Lenovo driver; haven't tested it yet
hard drive accelerometer: had to install a driver from Lenovo
Kubuntu Linux
accelerated graphics: worked (even with Beryl!)
screen: worked
WiFi: worked
digitizer: worked
screen bezel buttons: needed to use xmodmap to assign actions to them, and copy a few scripts to implement those actions
volume buttons: worked, except the "mute" button mutes but doesn't unmute (the "volume up" button works fine for that, however)
fingerprint scanner: probably doesn't work, but haven't looked into it
hard drive accelerometer: driver is broken, from what I've heard
I should note that this page was extremely useful.
Overall, both Kubuntu and Vista work pretty well. Vista has a few unresolved annoyances though, such as the non-working volume keys and the fact that the screen orientation doesn't automatically change in tablet mode (note: I had to add acpi actions to do that in Linux). If it weren't for the lack of tablet-friendly applications in Linux, I wouldn't have Windows on here at all.
A party line is a single telephone line that you share with your neighbors. They were common in rural areas of the U.S. before WWII, probably becuase they were cheaper than dedicated phone lines (remember, back then each line was on a different physical circuit, and calls were switched by human operators).
Another posted replied with the Idea of this leading to an MS patent war were OSS spends all their time suing for slander to find out what is infringing and coding around it just to have Microsoft file more bad and overly broad patents to stifle the competition. I'm kind of thinking this would make the case for patent reform better then anything else possible.
Even without patent reform, sooner or later Microsoft would be trying to file patents so overly broad that even the current incompetents at the USPTO would reject them. Sounds like a good plan to me, assuming the money can be found to implement it. (On that note, I donate to the EFF and FSF. What about you, fellow Slashdot readers?)
I'm not sure that I am against all software patents. If someone comes up with something that is truly different and confined to a specific platform/device, maybe they have a place.
Did you know that software is the only thing covered by both patents and copyright? One of my primary reasons for hating software patents is that they're double-dipping: software should be protected by, at most, one or the other.
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Yes, you are freaks. Most people drive 5+ miles to Wal-Mart (in their SUV) for basic errands.
Because, unlike in Europe, our cities are new enough to have been (stupidly) designed for cars instead of people. Now we're screwed, and have to have artificially low prices on gas to compensate.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. The road system in America is significantly subsidized, yet the rail system and public transportation systems are expected to make a profit! What. The. Fuck?!
On the flip side, updating the graphics is about the only thing they could do without risking screwing up the gameplay! From the videos, it plays exactly like Starcraft. And that's a good thing.
Name a major API that's cross-platform between Windows and Mac but not Linux. I can think of plenty that are Windows-only, but it seems to me that once you commit to Mac support you pretty much get Linux support for free. That's why there's no excuse for not supporting Linux!
And don't whine to me about "writing installers" either -- just statically link the whole thing, write a one-liner bash script to copy all the files to /opt/starcraft2/ and be done with it!
If you want "Warcraft III's model," go play Warcraft III!
I, for one, am glad that it seems more like a macro-scale RTS, because I hate micromanagement. To this day, I still like Starcraft better than Warcraft III precisely for that reason!
So? Only Novell is on the hook for that, not the FSF or anybody else.
It seems to me that the FSF is perfectly happy to screw over Novell, as well as Microsoft.
Would you be able to maintain forks of an entire distribution worth of GPL software? No? Well, Novell probably can't either!
Inequitable results or not, the "GPL team" (aka, the Free Software Foundation) is an entirely separate third party from the ones who made the vouchers (Novell and MS). So either MS is screwed and accidentally gave away all its patents, or Novell is screwed for making a contract it can't uphold.
Although I'd prefer to screw MS, I'm okay with either outcome -- the FSF wins no matter what.
Linus can change the license of the portion of the code he owns, though. And so can all the other developers. If they all agree (or if most of them agree, and the code written by the rest gets stripped out), the license of the whole thing can be changed.
If and only if the GPLv2 code contains the "or any later version" clause -- which most of the kernel code doesn't. For the kernel to switch to v3, either all developers need to agree to it, or the code written by the ones who don't has to be stripped out and re-implemented. Without Linus's support, switching to v3 would be impossible (because he owns so much of the code). Even with his support, it will be difficult.
I was under the impression that the "raging success" has been going on since about the first iMac, or at least the introduction of OS X, both of which happened long before the Intel switch.
That's what they've always given my family without us having to ask. Either that, or that's what they did the first time, and then we subsequently expected it.
Hey, what can I say -- it's Best Buy! It's not being run by the sharpest tools in the shed, you know (although it is being run by tools).
Best Buy is actually a good place to buy computers, as long as they're low quality. Why? Their extended warranty has a "three strikes and you're out clause" whereby after the computer has been serviced three times, if it breaks again they give store credit for a replacement. So, the procedure is as follows:
My family went through this cycle about five times over about the past decade, starting with a refurbished Packard Bell 486 desktop and ending with a 20" iMac Core Duo (and no, we did not break anything on purpose, or be overly rough with our machines). Also, I don't count Apple as "crappy," although it should be noted that Best Buy replaces Macs on the first service instead of the fourth, because it doesn't have the facilities to repair them.
Either you typically cycle on caltrops, or you're doing something wrong (such as failing to inflate your tires properly, and getting pinch flats). Otherwise, bikes are no more prone to flats than cars are.
It's difficult for me to respond to this without insulting you, because fixing a flat on a bike is not that hard.
You are aware that you need to remove whatever punctured the tube from the tire before putting the new one in, and that you need avoid getting the tube caught between the bead of the tire and the rim, right?
As opposed to being run over while changing a car's tire, which is more likely because the size of the car relative to the shoulder forces you to be closer to the road while doing so? Sounds like yet another argument in the bike's favor to me!
What are you, an idiot? You do the same thing on a bike that you would in a car: carry a spare! An inner tube (you don't actually need a tire) and a frame-mounted pump take up only a little space and weight as it is, and a patch kit and CO2 inflator would take even less.
Besides, you could apply the same logic to cars, except you'd be trying to push a 3,000+ lb. car home instead of a 20 lb. bike -- the bike still wins!
Nor does it generally require emergency vehicles. Compare that with the situation this morning in Atlanta, where southbound Interstate 75 (probably 5 lanes wide) was entirely shut down in the middle of rush hour because a car got crushed under a big rig and they had to land a helicopter on the freeway to airlift the injured driver out.
I'll bet the money wasted in lost productivity alone from all those people stuck in traffic could fund bike paths serving half the city.
And most importantly, riding with traffic, instead of pretending you're a pedestrian and riding against it (and crossing at crosswalks, riding the bike)! I've nearly hit cyclists multiple times because the idiots were somewhere they weren't supposed to be.
I felt exactly the same apprehension when installing Kubuntu Feisty last weekend (and I'm an advanced user, not a "clueless newbie"). I wasn't too worried since the only thing it would blow away would be a clean install of Vista, but still, it would be nice to see a picture of the changes it's making to the partition table.
My laptop works better out-of-the-box in Ubuntu than it does in Vista (I installed both, dual-booting, this past weekend).
Of course, I should probably mention that I cheated: the laptop in question is a Thinkpad x60 Tablet, and Thinkpads are almost always well-supported in Linux. It's got Intel graphics, a screen with a weird resolution (1400x1050), Atheros WiFi, a Wacom digitizer, extra buttons next to the screen, volume buttons, a fingerprint scanner, and a hard drive accelerometer. Here's what worked, and what didn't:
Windows Vista
Kubuntu Linux
I should note that this page was extremely useful.
Overall, both Kubuntu and Vista work pretty well. Vista has a few unresolved annoyances though, such as the non-working volume keys and the fact that the screen orientation doesn't automatically change in tablet mode (note: I had to add acpi actions to do that in Linux). If it weren't for the lack of tablet-friendly applications in Linux, I wouldn't have Windows on here at all.
I said they were "common" pre-WWII, which only implies that they're uncommon now, not necessarily extinct.
A party line is a single telephone line that you share with your neighbors. They were common in rural areas of the U.S. before WWII, probably becuase they were cheaper than dedicated phone lines (remember, back then each line was on a different physical circuit, and calls were switched by human operators).
Even without patent reform, sooner or later Microsoft would be trying to file patents so overly broad that even the current incompetents at the USPTO would reject them. Sounds like a good plan to me, assuming the money can be found to implement it. (On that note, I donate to the EFF and FSF. What about you, fellow Slashdot readers?)
Did you know that software is the only thing covered by both patents and copyright? One of my primary reasons for hating software patents is that they're double-dipping: software should be protected by, at most, one or the other.
Or at least do the test in a wind tunnel with a moving floor...