It's also impractical for them to test every hardware configuration with all of those distributions.
Why do you say that? I would hope Dell uses a relatively small number of standardized parts anyway (how else do you suppose it keeps costs so low?). For a company like that, it should be easy to make everything work with Linux because it's all basically the same to begin with.
Now, I can imagine one problem, which is that Dell could be sourcing non-compatible hardware currently. In that case, it would either have to transition all its models (which, I admit, could cause it to take a while before they all support Linux), or -- the better option -- it could just commission a kernel hacker to write the necessary drivers and get everything to work at once. I'll bet it wouldn't be all that expensive, either, considering that it would only be one or two devices here and there.
Most of the people who say this haven't actually looked at the price situation recently.
I'm one of the people who have, and I'll tell you he's right. I bought a Thinkpad X60 tablet directly from Lenovo back in December (and got it in February -- Lenovo's supply problems suck). Before doing so, I also checked Emperor Linux, Inc., which is the only one I've heard of that sells X60s with Linux. The specific configuration (high-res screen but otherwise low-end) I ordered is not available from them, but even their cheapest configuration is several hundred dollars more than I spent ($2300 vs. ~$2000). And if I had bought the SXGA version from them I would have had to spend $3500, which is a whopping fifteen hundred dollar markup!
I like Linux and want to support it, but I can't afford to support it that much!
So if you are doing something that you don't want people to know you are doing, my question is, what the hell is wrong with you?
Have you ever typed in your PIN at an ATM? Do you want all the identity thieves to know what numbers you're typing? No? Then what the hell is wrong with you?
Well, you see, since the executive branch of the government and AT&T want to "suspend" the need to provide evidence, it's only fair to "suspend" the "innocent until proven guilty" requirement too! Besides, the government has already done that for the people sent to Gitmo or "extraordinarily rendered" to Libya for torture....
And one last thing: only actual people have rights. Corporations don't (and shouldn't!), even if politicians like to pretend otherwise.
Yeah there is; it's called the DMCA. It says that even if you would otherwise have the right to make the backup (due to Fair Use), you aren't allowed to because it requires circumventing the CSS encryption on the DVD.
Just for the sake of this discussion: If I have two lamps - one in my den and the other in the bedroom - and only one light bulb, would it be acceptable for me to clone another light bulb so I can have light in both places?
First of all, to make that comparable to electronic media you also need to assume you have a Star Trek style replicator, in order to duplicate the light bulb at zero cost.
In that case, sure, it should be acceptable to clone a light bulb! Why wouldn't it be?
The ability to call upon such protection should be regulated and restricted
No, that ability should be abolished entirely because it is fundamentally incompatible with a free society. I don't care it it's spying, military strategy, or even Roswell aliens, nothing the government does should be secret!
However, I love knowing that I can uninstall a game, and 5 years later if I get the urge to play it again, then that game is mine, and I can just re-download without any fear that the game disc has been lost or damaged over that time.
See, this is exactly why I don't like digital distribution. With a physical CD, I know that I can just go grab it and reinstall it 5 years down the road. With Steam (or another service), on the other hand, there's always the various risks that Valve went out of business, or lost my account, or disabled it because it got hacked (this actually happened and I had to email Valve a photo of my original Half-Life 1 CDs to get it reinstated), etc. that only occur because my property is out of my control.
Incidentally, it is because of this that I don't own Half-Life 2 (although I might go buy a physical copy in a store, eventually).
Their "old binary cruft" preserves backwards compatibility. Are you against that for some reason?
Yes, damnit! Yes, we are against "backwards compatibility," because it's just a euphemism for "keeping the same shitty status quo we have now!"
A "standard" is supposed to be just that: a standard. That means it's supposed to be completely specified, cleanly designed, implementable by all parties (not just the organization that wrote it), etc. MS XML is NONE of these things, and is therefore not a "standard!" ISO should recognize that, and reject MS's bullshit. Unfortunately, it appears to be doing the opposite, most likely because of corruption and graft. It's a damn shame, and it's made even worse by people like you that can't even see it happening right in front of your face!
You're being serious? saying RTG implementations couldn't be deployed out of fears of terrorists collecting the plutonium and using it in a bomb doesn't make much since because If they wanted to what would keep terrorists from collecting the plutonium simply for the purpose of building a bomb rather than it just being a byproduct of the searching for it for a RTG?
First of all, it's sense, not "since."
Second, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. My point was that putting plutonium on a cellphone tower would make it (relatively) easy to get to, and that would cause a (perceived) danger. The terrorists would be "collecting the plutonium simply for the purpose of building a bomb;" it would be the phone company who put the RTG there, to power the cell tower.
Third, whether the danger is real or not is irrelevant. The whole idea would never fly simply because people would be too scared of it even if their fears were not justified.
The bomb that could be produced from a 238pu material would be the most simplest least dangerous type of radioactive bomb known to exist.
Doesn't matter. The naysayers would just scream "OMG Plutonium!!!11!" and that would be the end of it.
And before anyone freaks out about this post and goes calling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or homeland security all of what is described above is common knowledge and is vague enough that it would take someone with considerable knowledge to create a breeder reactor. Someone with that level of knowledge would already know far more than I have stated in this article.
Society has been conditioned to fear anything associated with the word radioactive that research and development into safe alternative power sources using any type of radioactive material has been completely stalled.
Using BSD-licensed open source eliminates those additional concerns.
No it doesn't. If you use GPL code, you have to perform the due diligence to comply with the GPL. If you use proprietary code, you have to perform the due diligence to comply with the proprietary license. And if you use BSD code, you have to perform the due diligence to comply with the BSD license. No matter what license you use, if a license exists you still have to be careful to comply with it! There's no difference between the GPL, BSD, or any proprietary license in this regard.
But it certainly is something, a "PHB" is justified to be concerned about.
Yeah, but so what? Do you think that the PHB somehow doesn't have to be concerned about the alternative, which is either licensing some proprietary solution (which, legally, is probably even more complicated to deal with) or writing it in-house from scratch (which, obviously, would be complicated too).
In other words, there's going to be issues (licensing or otherwise) whether OSS is used or not, and I've yet to find any situation where the issues with OSS are more onerous than the alternative.
I imagine that, in Africa, such a thing couldn't be deployed due to (rational or irrational; doesn't matter which) fears of terrorists collecting the plutonium and using it in a bomb.
For non Apple PC users out there, this is probably pretty surprising, since Software Suspend and Hibernate has been a part of OSes and even APM BIOS features since the early 1990s, and something most non-Mac users have taken for granted for a long time.
Yes, it's existed, but it hasn't necessarily worked properly. I know when I got that (non-safe-sleeping) iBook in 2003 I was actually extremely impressed with the fact that regular sleep actually worked (and did so quickly!).
Interesting! I'd never heard of "map and reduce" before, but it seems like just the sort of idiom that would be useful for the program I'm getting ready to write.
Would it make sense to have an interface for it like this in C:
void map(int (*op)(void*), void** data, int len);
Where the implementation could be either a for loop:
void map(int (*op)(void*), void** data, int len) { int i; for(i = 0; i < len; i++) { (*op)(data[i]); } }
or an actual parallel implementation, such as one using pthreads or running on a GPU?
Then there's the non-US market. Yes, Americans want 21" screens, 6 speakers, 200 GB hard drives, and accept 30 minute battery life from their portables (oftentimes too big even for American laps). The rest of the world typically wants really small, really light, just enough computing enough power for on-the-road use, and 12 hour battery life. Thus an ultraportable will fill a huge hole in the Apple product line, one many posters to/. may not even be fully aware of.
Hey asshole, the US-bashing was completely uncalled for! There's plenty of us Americans who want ultraportables too, you know. In fact, I've chosen to forgo a Mac in favor of a Thinkpad X60, specifically because Apple didn't have anything small enough (or that was a tablet, but that's beside the point).
My old G4 iBook and iMac Core Duo both wake from sleep in 1-2 seconds. My Thinkpad x60 wakes from sleep (note: not hibernate) in 3-5 seconds. I think OS X is still a bit better than Windows in this regard, although not by all that much.
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Other vendors, such as system76, don't have Thinkpads either.
Why do you say that? I would hope Dell uses a relatively small number of standardized parts anyway (how else do you suppose it keeps costs so low?). For a company like that, it should be easy to make everything work with Linux because it's all basically the same to begin with.
Now, I can imagine one problem, which is that Dell could be sourcing non-compatible hardware currently. In that case, it would either have to transition all its models (which, I admit, could cause it to take a while before they all support Linux), or -- the better option -- it could just commission a kernel hacker to write the necessary drivers and get everything to work at once. I'll bet it wouldn't be all that expensive, either, considering that it would only be one or two devices here and there.
I'm one of the people who have, and I'll tell you he's right. I bought a Thinkpad X60 tablet directly from Lenovo back in December (and got it in February -- Lenovo's supply problems suck). Before doing so, I also checked Emperor Linux, Inc., which is the only one I've heard of that sells X60s with Linux. The specific configuration (high-res screen but otherwise low-end) I ordered is not available from them, but even their cheapest configuration is several hundred dollars more than I spent ($2300 vs. ~$2000). And if I had bought the SXGA version from them I would have had to spend $3500, which is a whopping fifteen hundred dollar markup!
I like Linux and want to support it, but I can't afford to support it that much!
Have you ever typed in your PIN at an ATM? Do you want all the identity thieves to know what numbers you're typing? No? Then what the hell is wrong with you?
The fact that you're apparently too stupid to understand the rational explanation does not make it any less rational.
Also, if you won't believe a "teen," maybe you'll at least believe the Supreme Court -- if not, then you're truly an idiot!
Is it really the cheapest? What about telephone wire?
Well, you see, since the executive branch of the government and AT&T want to "suspend" the need to provide evidence, it's only fair to "suspend" the "innocent until proven guilty" requirement too! Besides, the government has already done that for the people sent to Gitmo or "extraordinarily rendered" to Libya for torture....
And one last thing: only actual people have rights. Corporations don't (and shouldn't!), even if politicians like to pretend otherwise.
Yeah there is; it's called the DMCA. It says that even if you would otherwise have the right to make the backup (due to Fair Use), you aren't allowed to because it requires circumventing the CSS encryption on the DVD.
First of all, to make that comparable to electronic media you also need to assume you have a Star Trek style replicator, in order to duplicate the light bulb at zero cost.
In that case, sure, it should be acceptable to clone a light bulb! Why wouldn't it be?
And that's our problem how? Perhaps AT&T should have thought of that before it decided to aid and abet illegal spying!
If the whole company goes out of business and all the execs hang for treason, it'll be too good for them!
No, that ability should be abolished entirely because it is fundamentally incompatible with a free society. I don't care it it's spying, military strategy, or even Roswell aliens, nothing the government does should be secret!
That's not the point! The point is that we shouldn't have to break the law to use the media we legally purchased!
Seems like it might be a good time for Valve to stop ignoring Mac and Linux, then, if Microsoft is beginning to compete with it...
See, this is exactly why I don't like digital distribution. With a physical CD, I know that I can just go grab it and reinstall it 5 years down the road. With Steam (or another service), on the other hand, there's always the various risks that Valve went out of business, or lost my account, or disabled it because it got hacked (this actually happened and I had to email Valve a photo of my original Half-Life 1 CDs to get it reinstated), etc. that only occur because my property is out of my control.
Incidentally, it is because of this that I don't own Half-Life 2 (although I might go buy a physical copy in a store, eventually).
Yes, damnit! Yes, we are against "backwards compatibility," because it's just a euphemism for "keeping the same shitty status quo we have now!"
A "standard" is supposed to be just that: a standard. That means it's supposed to be completely specified, cleanly designed, implementable by all parties (not just the organization that wrote it), etc. MS XML is NONE of these things, and is therefore not a "standard!" ISO should recognize that, and reject MS's bullshit. Unfortunately, it appears to be doing the opposite, most likely because of corruption and graft. It's a damn shame, and it's made even worse by people like you that can't even see it happening right in front of your face!
First of all, it's sense, not "since."
Second, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. My point was that putting plutonium on a cellphone tower would make it (relatively) easy to get to, and that would cause a (perceived) danger. The terrorists would be "collecting the plutonium simply for the purpose of building a bomb;" it would be the phone company who put the RTG there, to power the cell tower.
Third, whether the danger is real or not is irrelevant. The whole idea would never fly simply because people would be too scared of it even if their fears were not justified.
Doesn't matter. The naysayers would just scream "OMG Plutonium!!!11!" and that would be the end of it.
Oh, yes, "considerable" knowledge... surely more than a 17-year-old boy scout with an "atomic energy" merit badge could possibly have, right?
Yep. It sucks, but it's true.
No it doesn't. If you use GPL code, you have to perform the due diligence to comply with the GPL. If you use proprietary code, you have to perform the due diligence to comply with the proprietary license. And if you use BSD code, you have to perform the due diligence to comply with the BSD license. No matter what license you use, if a license exists you still have to be careful to comply with it! There's no difference between the GPL, BSD, or any proprietary license in this regard.
Yeah, but so what? Do you think that the PHB somehow doesn't have to be concerned about the alternative, which is either licensing some proprietary solution (which, legally, is probably even more complicated to deal with) or writing it in-house from scratch (which, obviously, would be complicated too).
In other words, there's going to be issues (licensing or otherwise) whether OSS is used or not, and I've yet to find any situation where the issues with OSS are more onerous than the alternative.
I imagine that, in Africa, such a thing couldn't be deployed due to (rational or irrational; doesn't matter which) fears of terrorists collecting the plutonium and using it in a bomb.
Well, I meant in the more general sense (i.e., your mention of "MapReduce" eventually lead me to find this).
No, apply this to the entire Apple line and it will keep up with the "designed for Vista" laptops that will also have hybrid hard drives.
Yes, it's existed, but it hasn't necessarily worked properly. I know when I got that (non-safe-sleeping) iBook in 2003 I was actually extremely impressed with the fact that regular sleep actually worked (and did so quickly!).
Interesting! I'd never heard of "map and reduce" before, but it seems like just the sort of idiom that would be useful for the program I'm getting ready to write.
Would it make sense to have an interface for it like this in C:
Where the implementation could be either a for loop:
or an actual parallel implementation, such as one using pthreads or running on a GPU?
Hey asshole, the US-bashing was completely uncalled for! There's plenty of us Americans who want ultraportables too, you know. In fact, I've chosen to forgo a Mac in favor of a Thinkpad X60, specifically because Apple didn't have anything small enough (or that was a tablet, but that's beside the point).
My old G4 iBook and iMac Core Duo both wake from sleep in 1-2 seconds. My Thinkpad x60 wakes from sleep (note: not hibernate) in 3-5 seconds. I think OS X is still a bit better than Windows in this regard, although not by all that much.