Even though this is a good step in the right direction, Nouveau still isn't even stable enough for general consumption, let alone seriously competitive with features or performance of nVidia's binary-only driver.
It annoys the heck out of me that Mint switched to installing nouveau by default and especially without any alternative graphics driver option at install time, as on my laptop at least, as soon as Nouveau starts it crashes and locks up the whole PC. Trendy political correctness for (broken) open source shouldn't ever trump a binary driver if it actually works better, or especialy if it is the only option that works at all in some cases.
Add on top of that the fact that Mint devs also removed Ubuntu's boot menu option to install Linux before X starts, means the retarded decision to use nouveau by default makes it impossible for me and presumably therefore many others to install Mint from scratch without some obscure and what should be completely unnecessary hacking every time.
If even just installing Mint is borked, its really going to put off people who are trying Linux for the first time.
If you really want a fair, balanced and equal world, there is no such thing as what some people choose to (divisively mis-)label as "posiitive" discrimination.
Any kind of discrimination Is still discrimination, just against a different group. (In this case, one that is to some people feel is more "socially acceptable" to persecute because they have strange prejudices that absolutely everyone of a particular gender/race is necessarily already over-empowered.
If this is how you feel then you need to stop generalizing and realize that not everyone is in the same situation just because they have the same skin color, racial background, or number of x/y chromosomes.
The world really won't get any better until we end ALL gender/race discrimination against everyone. We need to ensure everyone gets a truly equal opportunity, no matter what stereotypes you may feel justified to broad-brush an entire section of society with.
If more people of a particular group happen to choose not to take a particular opportunity (such as entering the tech field) then that is perfectly OK and should be celebrated as freedom of choice in action.
You said: I really don't think there's any sexism on the part of the companies here. Wrong. You yourself pointed out that Yahoo are running upto double the percentage of females than even graduate, and that Google are actively trying hard to recruit, hire retain and promote more women and minorities.
Sorry but being biassed pro-female and pro-minority is not only sexist/racist, but is actually illegal according to USC 2000e-2.
This is meaningless without knowing the gender/race ratios of suitable job applications.
Although I have no evidence to prove this, from my own long experience in the software industry I strongly suspect that high tech companies are actually NOT giving people a harder time getting in the door because of their ethnicity or gender. I am far more inclined to believe that the numbers of different groups actually employed more closely reflect the ratios of suitable job applications received in the first place.
If this is the case then the current balance is and should be seen as completely OK.
If qualified women and black people just aren't applying in as great a number as white males, the worst thing companies can do is artificially bump up their numbers by giving them an artificial advantage in the interview/selection process. Positive discrimination is still discrimination, just against someone that blind societal convention rather than actual fairness makes OK.
kinda makes you wonder why they are selling them at this point in time, and whether they know about something that is soon going to affec tthe price of bitcoins (beyond their own big auction).
Its not the drivers fault, or the engineer who installs the key mechanism, its the fault of a bad designer that the key hole is placed in a position in the cabin where the key could ever accidentally get hit with your knee (or anything else).
I've never had any problems with any/all nvidia cards under linux. Its just plug and play. Just make sure you use nVidia's own driver not Nouveau.
My biggest gripe with Mint is that a few versions ago they removed the option to do a non-graphical install, and also switched to using Nouveau by default, which for some reason locks up after a few seconds on my laptop, meaning I have all sorts of issues trying to install Mint on it.
Look at what you're meant to be providing: The access to the internet that they've already paid for, yet you're blocking sites that people would normally get with other ISPs, and so could reasonably expect access to with yours.
If you go ahead with this, you need to split the internet out of the rent, and specify in your contract up-front that you're blocking exactly those services that sudents are most likely to need. If you don't you're at least morally and also probably legally in the wrong to even advertise it as "internet access included"
Look at who you are targetting. Students. Exactly the group most likely to: a: Need full value for money. b: Be filled with (justified) righteous indignation and protest most vocally in a unified way. c: Find a way around it (e.g. use coffeeshop internet instead, or more likely find some way to hack it, eg. its acutally simple to find/use a proxy). The fact that thats exactly what people in countries with oppressive governments have to do will be used to make your comapny look like psycopathic idiots. d: Fire off a lawsuit driven by legal students (i.e. start a legal war of attrition that not only doesn't cost them anything to fight, they might even get course credits for) e: Complain en masse to the universities, who will in turn come down on your company and directly cost you future business.
The UK and most of Europe is unlike the US in that once convicted criminals that have been punished, unless of a particularly serious crime, there are laws protecting their rights to not have that information disclosed, so that they can resume a normal job or whatever in society.
With the US system of throwing more people into prison per capita than pretty much any other country, and also that in the US such things are permanently on your record, it can only make it much harder for ex-cons to ever find work again and resume a lawful life. The system is self-defeating in making it much more likely that ex-cons actually have no option but to turn back to crime to even make a living.
The problem with Google is that they are clearly assuming that US law/mindset should operate worldwide. Google need to get over themselves and make sure their information retention follows the same rehabilitation law that exists already to protect the rights of ex-offenders, for a very good reason.
IMHO we should have the right to control any and all information about us that is stored by corporations. We should also be able to force them to disclose all the info they do store about us. In fact the whole question of who owns that information should be determined. I beleive if the information is about you, then you should own it and so have full control of it.
THis whole discussion is completely muddied by calling it Virtual DVDs.
It isn't virtual DVDs at all. I can't mount one remotely as a disk, or get an iso, and also probably not see the other stuff that would normally come on a DVD such as features and trailers.
You need to call it what it really is, conventional streaming on a views-per-month plan, which is pretty much identical to what you already get for your $8.99/month from Netflix other than what you get already isn't limited.
By adding a view limit you would probably save at most a buck month. If that amount of money is significant to you then you probably shouldn't have a Neflix account at all.
I'll stick to getting the physical DVDs by mail thanks. IMHO streaming sucks, no matter how you pay for it. DVDs dont assume a hidden requirement to have a stable internet connection, nor do they use bandwidth as you watch. They have far better image quailty than some masively compressed-for-internet video could ever provide, and you also ususally get all sorts of extras on DVDs such Directors voiceovers, bloopers and previews.
Yet another UBIsoft game that has so much shitty DRM it makes the game itself practically unplayable.
Seriously, Did anybody honestly expect Watch Dogs to be any different, given UBIsoft have been doing this since 2006?
I think the most newsworthy thing here is that anyone still buys their products at all.
>> I decided I will not buy any UBIsoft products until they reverse that policy and move away from it again, back to some saner way of protecting their assets.
I'm totally with you on that one, having made the same decision myself a while back.
Unfortunately UBIsoft mangement have apparently got exactly the same retarded mindset as the managment of a software company that I used to work for until recently. They are all used-car salesmen that clearly haven't the first clue about the technology behind their products or what their own customers are really thinking. They are also never going to acknowledge that they themselves might have ever possibly make any bad decisions, so there wont ever be any real change in direction from the fucked up road they are already on, even if that road makes them go bust through lack of sales.
Even if that happened they would still just reach for anything/everything else possible to blame (such as the unsupported claims of death of gaming on the PC as a platform) rather than ever accepting it was anything they themselves did, such as repeatedly runining their own products with layers of draconian fucked-up DRM.
>> This Chicago feels like a place you travel through rather than a world you inhabit. Pedestrians gasp and gawp at car crashes, but exhibit no real life.'
>> "It feels churlish to complain about something which is only magical 90% of the time,
This sounds very much like they've hit the Uncanny Valley problem.
Somehow we need to end the whole possibility that government can be even openly corrupt and continue to get away with it. A government that can be controlled through money, especially by "special interest" groups in no way represents the people.
For example we already don't know what the heck to do with all the corn we are already have (hence terrible ideas like E15), yet there is still a large corn subsidy in place that pays farmers for growing more corn. WTF? Yes its all about keeping the Corn Lobby rich regardless of common sense or doing the right thing.
>> Personally I believe that bio-fuels is a bunch of good intentions
The only way you could be right about this, is if lining the pockets of already rich and over-subsidized corn farmers further by using bad science and outright lies to justify coverups and blatantly corrupt federal legislation could in any way be classified as a "good intention".
It boggles my mind how anyone can think the electric chair is, or even could be, in any way humane.
Apart from anything else the victim takes time to die, partly from it boiling their blood and brain enough that their eyes can literally pop out of their sockets.
The only reason the electric chair made it at all is because it was Thomas Edison who was pushing it heavily for his own political and business gain, and another way to promote DC over AC. None of his actual reasons have anything to do with efficient or humane death.
Greater complexity = much greater chance to screw up.
I don't get why execution has been made this complex. We need to do away with the whole special death row areas, telling victims months ahead when they are goona get executed, the green mile walk, and multiple different hard-to-get injections conducted in stages by multiple different people. Whats wrong with an unexpected trip to a disguised room and a quick bullet (or 6 to be sure) to the head? Ideally when the victim isn't even slightly expecting it. Simple and immediate. I therefore think it would be ultimately much more humane too.
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Even though this is a good step in the right direction, Nouveau still isn't even stable enough for general consumption, let alone seriously competitive with features or performance of nVidia's binary-only driver.
It annoys the heck out of me that Mint switched to installing nouveau by default and especially without any alternative graphics driver option at install time, as on my laptop at least, as soon as Nouveau starts it crashes and locks up the whole PC. Trendy political correctness for (broken) open source shouldn't ever trump a binary driver if it actually works better, or especialy if it is the only option that works at all in some cases.
Add on top of that the fact that Mint devs also removed Ubuntu's boot menu option to install Linux before X starts, means the retarded decision to use nouveau by default makes it impossible for me and presumably therefore many others to install Mint from scratch without some obscure and what should be completely unnecessary hacking every time.
If even just installing Mint is borked, its really going to put off people who are trying Linux for the first time.
No there really isn't.
If you really want a fair, balanced and equal world, there is no such thing as what some people choose to (divisively mis-)label as "posiitive" discrimination.
Any kind of discrimination Is still discrimination, just against a different group. (In this case, one that is to some people feel is more "socially acceptable" to persecute because they have strange prejudices that absolutely everyone of a particular gender/race is necessarily already over-empowered.
If this is how you feel then you need to stop generalizing and realize that not everyone is in the same situation just because they have the same skin color, racial background, or number of x/y chromosomes.
The world really won't get any better until we end ALL gender/race discrimination against everyone. We need to ensure everyone gets a truly equal opportunity, no matter what stereotypes you may feel justified to broad-brush an entire section of society with.
If more people of a particular group happen to choose not to take a particular opportunity (such as entering the tech field) then that is perfectly OK and should be celebrated as freedom of choice in action.
$1,000,000 - $2,000,000 for what is basically a transistor?
Wow.
I have some swamp land in Florida you may be interested in.
You said:
I really don't think there's any sexism on the part of the companies here.
Wrong.
You yourself pointed out that Yahoo are running upto double the percentage of females than even graduate, and that Google are actively trying hard to recruit, hire retain and promote more women and minorities.
Sorry but being biassed pro-female and pro-minority is not only sexist/racist, but is actually illegal according to USC 2000e-2.
This is meaningless without knowing the gender/race ratios of suitable job applications.
Although I have no evidence to prove this, from my own long experience in the software industry I strongly suspect that high tech companies are actually NOT giving people a harder time getting in the door because of their ethnicity or gender. I am far more inclined to believe that the numbers of different groups actually employed more closely reflect the ratios of suitable job applications received in the first place.
If this is the case then the current balance is and should be seen as completely OK.
If qualified women and black people just aren't applying in as great a number as white males, the worst thing companies can do is artificially bump up their numbers by giving them an artificial advantage in the interview/selection process. Positive discrimination is still discrimination, just against someone that blind societal convention rather than actual fairness makes OK.
All Americans that still believe their "built In America === higher quality" brainwashing are currently paying for it over and over.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/1...
kinda makes you wonder why they are selling them at this point in time, and whether they know about something that is soon going to affec tthe price of bitcoins (beyond their own big auction).
Its not the drivers fault, or the engineer who installs the key mechanism, its the fault of a bad designer that the key hole is placed in a position in the cabin where the key could ever accidentally get hit with your knee (or anything else).
I've never had any problems with any/all nvidia cards under linux.
Its just plug and play. Just make sure you use nVidia's own driver not Nouveau.
My biggest gripe with Mint is that a few versions ago they removed the option to do a non-graphical install, and also switched to using Nouveau by default, which for some reason locks up after a few seconds on my laptop, meaning I have all sorts of issues trying to install Mint on it.
So all 3 Windows 8 customers have now upgraded to Linux then?
Me: No more Windows on my PC until.... forever.
Linux... I heart you.
Meh.
Its been 15 years now I'm STILL waiting for them to implement the "any" key.
I hope they are careful to show her life story as it was, warts and all, instead of Hollywood-izing it into some overdramatized biopic of a saint.
Look at what you're meant to be providing: The access to the internet that they've already paid for, yet you're blocking sites that people would normally get with other ISPs, and so could reasonably expect access to with yours.
If you go ahead with this, you need to split the internet out of the rent, and specify in your contract up-front that you're blocking exactly those services that sudents are most likely to need. If you don't you're at least morally and also probably legally in the wrong to even advertise it as "internet access included"
Look at who you are targetting. Students. Exactly the group most likely to:
a: Need full value for money.
b: Be filled with (justified) righteous indignation and protest most vocally in a unified way.
c: Find a way around it (e.g. use coffeeshop internet instead, or more likely find some way to hack it, eg. its acutally simple to find/use a proxy). The fact that thats exactly what people in countries with oppressive governments have to do will be used to make your comapny look like psycopathic idiots.
d: Fire off a lawsuit driven by legal students (i.e. start a legal war of attrition that not only doesn't cost them anything to fight, they might even get course credits for)
e: Complain en masse to the universities, who will in turn come down on your company and directly cost you future business.
The UK and most of Europe is unlike the US in that once convicted criminals that have been punished, unless of a particularly serious crime, there are laws protecting their rights to not have that information disclosed, so that they can resume a normal job or whatever in society.
With the US system of throwing more people into prison per capita than pretty much any other country, and also that in the US such things are permanently on your record, it can only make it much harder for ex-cons to ever find work again and resume a lawful life. The system is self-defeating in making it much more likely that ex-cons actually have no option but to turn back to crime to even make a living.
The problem with Google is that they are clearly assuming that US law/mindset should operate worldwide. Google need to get over themselves and make sure their information retention follows the same rehabilitation law that exists already to protect the rights of ex-offenders, for a very good reason.
IMHO we should have the right to control any and all information about us that is stored by corporations. We should also be able to force them to disclose all the info they do store about us. In fact the whole question of who owns that information should be determined. I beleive if the information is about you, then you should own it and so have full control of it.
THis whole discussion is completely muddied by calling it Virtual DVDs.
It isn't virtual DVDs at all. I can't mount one remotely as a disk, or get an iso, and also probably not see the other stuff that would normally come on a DVD such as features and trailers.
You need to call it what it really is, conventional streaming on a views-per-month plan, which is pretty much identical to what you already get for your $8.99/month from Netflix other than what you get already isn't limited.
By adding a view limit you would probably save at most a buck month. If that amount of money is significant to you then you probably shouldn't have a Neflix account at all.
I'll stick to getting the physical DVDs by mail thanks. IMHO streaming sucks, no matter how you pay for it. DVDs dont assume a hidden requirement to have a stable internet connection, nor do they use bandwidth as you watch. They have far better image quailty than some masively compressed-for-internet video could ever provide, and you also ususally get all sorts of extras on DVDs such Directors voiceovers, bloopers and previews.
Yet another UBIsoft game that has so much shitty DRM it makes the game itself practically unplayable. Seriously, Did anybody honestly expect Watch Dogs to be any different, given UBIsoft have been doing this since 2006? I think the most newsworthy thing here is that anyone still buys their products at all.
>> I decided I will not buy any UBIsoft products until they reverse that policy and move away from it again, back to some saner way of protecting their assets.
I'm totally with you on that one, having made the same decision myself a while back.
Unfortunately UBIsoft mangement have apparently got exactly the same retarded mindset as the managment of a software company that I used to work for until recently. They are all used-car salesmen that clearly haven't the first clue about the technology behind their products or what their own customers are really thinking.
They are also never going to acknowledge that they themselves might have ever possibly make any bad decisions, so there wont ever be any real change in direction from the fucked up road they are already on, even if that road makes them go bust through lack of sales.
Even if that happened they would still just reach for anything/everything else possible to blame (such as the unsupported claims of death of gaming on the PC as a platform) rather than ever accepting it was anything they themselves did, such as repeatedly runining their own products with layers of draconian fucked-up DRM.
So in short, don't hold your breath.
Hell yeah if Tropico 5 comes to Linux it will get my money.
>> This Chicago feels like a place you travel through rather than a world you inhabit. Pedestrians gasp and gawp at car crashes, but exhibit no real life.'
>> "It feels churlish to complain about something which is only magical 90% of the time,
This sounds very much like they've hit the Uncanny Valley problem.
>> For non-programmers, a spreadsheet lowers the barrier to entry.
Possibly, but this guy is a Computer Science prof. He should have already known much better.
Somehow we need to end the whole possibility that government can be even openly corrupt and continue to get away with it. A government that can be controlled through money, especially by "special interest" groups in no way represents the people.
For example we already don't know what the heck to do with all the corn we are already have (hence terrible ideas like E15), yet there is still a large corn subsidy in place that pays farmers for growing more corn. WTF? Yes its all about keeping the Corn Lobby rich regardless of common sense or doing the right thing.
>> Personally I believe that bio-fuels is a bunch of good intentions
The only way you could be right about this, is if lining the pockets of already rich and over-subsidized corn farmers further by using bad science and outright lies to justify coverups and blatantly corrupt federal legislation could in any way be classified as a "good intention".
It boggles my mind how anyone can think the electric chair is, or even could be, in any way humane.
Apart from anything else the victim takes time to die, partly from it boiling their blood and brain enough that their eyes can literally pop out of their sockets.
The only reason the electric chair made it at all is because it was Thomas Edison who was pushing it heavily for his own political and business gain, and another way to promote DC over AC. None of his actual reasons have anything to do with efficient or humane death.
Greater complexity = much greater chance to screw up.
I don't get why execution has been made this complex.
We need to do away with the whole special death row areas, telling victims months ahead when they are goona get executed, the green mile walk, and multiple different hard-to-get injections conducted in stages by multiple different people.
Whats wrong with an unexpected trip to a disguised room and a quick bullet (or 6 to be sure) to the head? Ideally when the victim isn't even slightly expecting it.
Simple and immediate. I therefore think it would be ultimately much more humane too.