>> get the Windows people over first and once they know what they're doing they can compile their own Gentoo.
I was in Dennys at the weekend and couldn't help listening to a conversation that was taking place on the table behind me. Some woman was proud of her new netbook that she had to buy because her old laptop had too many virusses to boot any more.
She represents nearly all people. Most people have already been conditioned by companies like Microsoft, Dell and Apple to view laptops as appliances. They don't even want to know that the operating system is an independently (re)installable.
Also, most people know the windows environment, and even a slightly different desktop menu layout or whatever is enough to make them feel uncomfortable enough not to go further. Expecting people like this to ever want to get involved enough to compile their own gentoo is beyond sense. They just want it to plug and play. When it doesn't, in their ignorance they throw it away and buy another laptop.
The only way to get to those people is to beat Microsoft at being able to plug in any hardware or application and have it just work, which means getting hardware manufacturers and app developers to stop developing stuff for Microsoft-based OS only. As long as hardware suppliers don't provide Linux drivers and games developers still use DirectX and not OpenGL, Linux will never reach the public consciousness.
Also, most people still aren't even aware of the existence of Linux. We need to stop hoping people will find our community through just being intrinsically better, and start spending money on TV advertising. Linux needs to be shoved into the public perception through the media at least as hard and frequently as Microsoft do with their products in order to reach critical mass where manufacturers have to support it and 'normal' people take it seriously.
I thought the WHOLE POINT of an e-book reader is that e-ink displays are easier on the eyes for long periods than other display technologies. Otherwise jeez just use a tablet PC.
>> is it really wise for Mozilla to be so dependent on Google?
Probably not but how else would Mozilla/Firefox get such big funding than to promote a search provider?
IE continues to be total crap so Firefox is still a big threat to Microsoft. They are also pushing Bing hard now, so it probably makes even more business sense now for Microsoft to try and 'embrace and extend' Mozilla or at least Firefox.
They might just offer more money than Google paid/will pay just to make Firefox default to Bing instead, or they could just try to buy Mozilla. Watch for stupid patent suits from MS against Firefox/Mozilla as a precursor.
I for one would be pretty disappointed if Mozilla accepted any Microsoft deal, so I guess that still leaves me liking Firefox default to Google.
I'm glad that EA are finally feeling the pain for repeatedly screwing their own customers. I bet that EA management are still blaming the economy or something else rather than having to face the blatantly obvious fact that its their own fault for putting massively restrictive DRM on all their products, and assuming we the consumers are stupid enough to let them get away with silently installing rootkits on our PCs.
Taking over your whole PC and also limiting the number of times we can ever install the product we paid for is a massive abuse of our rights and just downright bloody insulting. The worst thing is that even after the lawsuits against EA and enormous backlash on most gaming forums about Spore DRM, I believe EA are rubbing our noses in it by continuing to use almost as bad DRM on all their new games.
I'm sure EA management will incorrectly conclude that declining sales of EA PC games show PC gaming in general is dead, rather than having to face that they made their own products suck.
why would it cost a massive 30% more to make porn in 3D? Apart from the initial investment in a stereoscopic camera, isn't every other production cost the same? Especially if you're using digital not film. I mean its not like you need to cut/splice the left and right eye-tracks differently.
Sorry I don't agree that we should try to eliminate all forms of natural selection of humans, least of all at the cost of unnecessary and often inconclusive testing based on massive animal suffering. Apart from anything else, its already been proved over and over that animal experimentation is not a foolproof or even good analog for human biology. Plenty of drugs have passed animal testing yet caused massive damage in humans. Also to your example, if someone is stupid enough to repeatedly overeat and avoid exercise to the point that they have a potentially fatal heart condition then I personally don't think any animals should suffer and die to help morons like them survive and potentially corrupt the gene pool any further.
>> trust me, we're far better off with animal testing..
Tell that to the animals.
The whole thing is about making money while explicitly not finding cures, so animals continue to live and die in acute pain just so the drug companies can introduce supposedly new products that are just the same old crap rebranded so they can get another 10 year patent without doing anything truly innovative. The world already has more than enough different versions of drugs to suppress practically every symptom, we don't actaully need yet more of the same.
Haven't you noticed how all the drugs out there aren't actual cures for things, they just suppress symptoms? The drug companies don't want to actually cure anything because they want repeat customers.
I can't imagine that wi-fi has enough bandwidth for full HD, at least without massive compression that would obviously downgrade picture quality. Someone wake me up when this technology can transmit pixel-perfect full screen HD video, without the annoying dropouts existing wi-fi suffers from.
My understanding is you're basically right but that the differentiation between Hz and fps is based on colloquial usage rather than technical correctness. For example, you could correctly argue that a monitor has a certain number of frames per sec too. Its probably my bad for my original post not differentiating the two more clearly.
Nearly everyone these days uses LCD monitors that have a pathetic maximum of 60hz display at HD resolutions (I think because of DVI spec/bandwidth limitations, Whatever moron invented DVI needs to be shot because of that). I still have an analog CRT monitor that supports much higher frame rates at HD resolutions which gives a very noticeable edge when playing twitch-games like Unreal Tournament. I never understood why people claim framerates above 60hz are better when their monitor is only capable of displaying 60hz at the resolution they play at. The only difference that framerates above 60hz (i.e. vsync turned off) is obvious tearing. You're still getting an actual 60hz framerate because the monitor, regardless of what the PC is doing.
Don't mistake activity or attendance for productivity. Most new grads think they already know it all from what they learnt at school, but trust me your real learning experience is only just beginning. Even if you, the new grad, regularly work 80 hour weeks and the other guys still come in late and surf the web a lot, the chances are that they are actually still way more productive and valuable to the company than you. The reason is they have enough experience and specific product knowledge to be able to work much more effectively and deal with much bigger issues than a fresh grad who doesn't know anything about working in the real world, and hasn't yet had enough time to get intimately familiar with your companies products, technologies, target markets and customers. It sounds to me like they also already know another thing that you will inevitably come to realise: you can't win a marathon by trying to sprint the whole way.
>>> We developed these technologies over 15 years ago.... Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair... All we want is what's fair.'"
15 years is too long for a software patent to last. Eolas had more than enough opportunity in that time to capitalise and recover R&D costs on any software technology by making a real product. Eolas didn't ever do anything using this technology so is provably just patent trolling.
Whats fair is that the patent office should remove patent rights from owners not actively developing or marketing provably available products within a certain time period, otherwise they're just allowing troll companies to hold the whole tech world back from developing.
Cows ruined their own planet before they came to earth millenia ago. Its this migration that the child's nursery rhyme is referencing in the line "the cow jumped over the moon". They're now doing the same to the earth.
As a Brit now working/living in the US, one of the cultural differences I encountered was that in the US, management is really considered a promotion/reward from an engineering position.
Don't get fooled by the image. You need to be aware that management is NOT a promotion, especially if it doesn't come with a pay rise. Its actually a profession change that requires a completely different skill set than what makes a good software developer. It makes no more sense to 'promote' an engineer into management than it does to 'promote' a plumber into banking. If you're popular at work by being a good engineer it may come as a real shock to realise that you're actually now only a mediocre manager.
The other wierdness that I found in the US is that apparently most recruiters think Engineers technical skills are only as good/relevant as your last job. Like they think you can ever forget C++ or whatever. This means that your decision about whether to accept a management role at your current company means you are actually making a fairly binding career choice. It may be a lot harder to get another hands-on job if you have no recent technical experience.
I guess it comes down to whether you chose to study engineering just as a step to moving into management, or whether (like most of us) you're acutally a geek who enjoys it for its own end. As a self-test to determine whether you really want to be a manager, ask yourself if you'd rather be programming or working with Microsoft Project all day.
Why did you stop there? lets have the government tell us when we can meet our friends, what we must eat, what music we must listen to. Lets also burn any books with dangerous ideas in. Lets remove the word 'freedom' from the language and make it illegal to say it, that way people wont get dangerous ideas.
>> I've also tried the standard disbributed binary drivers from ATI (which I believe can't coexist in current kernels
Thanks for reinforcing my point that ATIs Linux drivers suck.
>> now that AMD (+ATI) have released the documentation on the hardware it should be possible for the Linux open source ATI drivers to improve over time to the same level as the proprietary drivers in the past.
Yeah well I guess its down to you to decide if you wanna wait for a year or two just to see if you can save an ATI card worth about $15, or just go ahead and buy an nvidia card from ebay for a few measly bucks and have it work immediately. I know which I'd do.
Slashdot Mirror
>> get the Windows people over first and once they know what they're doing they can compile their own Gentoo.
I was in Dennys at the weekend and couldn't help listening to a conversation that was taking place on the table behind me. Some woman was proud of her new netbook that she had to buy because her old laptop had too many virusses to boot any more.
She represents nearly all people. Most people have already been conditioned by companies like Microsoft, Dell and Apple to view laptops as appliances. They don't even want to know that the operating system is an independently (re)installable.
Also, most people know the windows environment, and even a slightly different desktop menu layout or whatever is enough to make them feel uncomfortable enough not to go further. Expecting people like this to ever want to get involved enough to compile their own gentoo is beyond sense. They just want it to plug and play. When it doesn't, in their ignorance they throw it away and buy another laptop.
The only way to get to those people is to beat Microsoft at being able to plug in any hardware or application and have it just work, which means getting hardware manufacturers and app developers to stop developing stuff for Microsoft-based OS only. As long as hardware suppliers don't provide Linux drivers and games developers still use DirectX and not OpenGL, Linux will never reach the public consciousness.
Also, most people still aren't even aware of the existence of Linux. We need to stop hoping people will find our community through just being intrinsically better, and start spending money on TV advertising. Linux needs to be shoved into the public perception through the media at least as hard and frequently as Microsoft do with their products in order to reach critical mass where manufacturers have to support it and 'normal' people take it seriously.
Pretty sure I need a lot more than $4k US per year. Apparently that's about what they pay over there.
Apple are so scared of Google they jump into bed with Microsoft? wow.
>> An example of this type of organization would be Manav Sadhna in India
Great, you can spend your vacation voluntarily training up the guy who your company will outsource your job to.
I thought the WHOLE POINT of an e-book reader is that e-ink displays are easier on the eyes for long periods than other display technologies.
Otherwise jeez just use a tablet PC.
>> is it really wise for Mozilla to be so dependent on Google?
Probably not but how else would Mozilla/Firefox get such big funding than to promote a search provider?
IE continues to be total crap so Firefox is still a big threat to Microsoft. They are also pushing Bing hard now, so it probably makes even more business sense now for Microsoft to try and 'embrace and extend' Mozilla or at least Firefox.
They might just offer more money than Google paid/will pay just to make Firefox default to Bing instead, or they could just try to buy Mozilla. Watch for stupid patent suits from MS against Firefox/Mozilla as a precursor.
I for one would be pretty disappointed if Mozilla accepted any Microsoft deal, so I guess that still leaves me liking Firefox default to Google.
I'm glad that EA are finally feeling the pain for repeatedly screwing their own customers. I bet that EA management are still blaming the economy or something else rather than having to face the blatantly obvious fact that its their own fault for putting massively restrictive DRM on all their products, and assuming we the consumers are stupid enough to let them get away with silently installing rootkits on our PCs.
Taking over your whole PC and also limiting the number of times we can ever install the product we paid for is a massive abuse of our rights and just downright bloody insulting. The worst thing is that even after the lawsuits against EA and enormous backlash on most gaming forums about Spore DRM, I believe EA are rubbing our noses in it by continuing to use almost as bad DRM on all their new games.
I'm sure EA management will incorrectly conclude that declining sales of EA PC games show PC gaming in general is dead, rather than having to face that they made their own products suck.
why would it cost a massive 30% more to make porn in 3D?
Apart from the initial investment in a stereoscopic camera, isn't every other production cost the same? Especially if you're using digital not film. I mean its not like you need to cut/splice the left and right eye-tracks differently.
>>> My car doesn't come with tires,
Really? wow. It must have been a bitch to get it home from the dealership.
Sorry I don't agree that we should try to eliminate all forms of natural selection of humans, least of all at the cost of unnecessary and often inconclusive testing based on massive animal suffering.
Apart from anything else, its already been proved over and over that animal experimentation is not a foolproof or even good analog for human biology. Plenty of drugs have passed animal testing yet caused massive damage in humans.
Also to your example, if someone is stupid enough to repeatedly overeat and avoid exercise to the point that they have a potentially fatal heart condition then I personally don't think any animals should suffer and die to help morons like them survive and potentially corrupt the gene pool any further.
I'm sure you're right. I just wish they wouldn't use blatantly misleading phrases like HD when describing this tech then.
>> trust me, we're far better off with animal testing..
Tell that to the animals.
The whole thing is about making money while explicitly not finding cures, so animals continue to live and die in acute pain just so the drug companies can introduce supposedly new products that are just the same old crap rebranded so they can get another 10 year patent without doing anything truly innovative. The world already has more than enough different versions of drugs to suppress practically every symptom, we don't actaully need yet more of the same.
Haven't you noticed how all the drugs out there aren't actual cures for things, they just suppress symptoms? The drug companies don't want to actually cure anything because they want repeat customers.
I can't imagine that wi-fi has enough bandwidth for full HD, at least without massive compression that would obviously downgrade picture quality.
Someone wake me up when this technology can transmit pixel-perfect full screen HD video, without the annoying dropouts existing wi-fi suffers from.
My understanding is you're basically right but that the differentiation between Hz and fps is based on colloquial usage rather than technical correctness. For example, you could correctly argue that a monitor has a certain number of frames per sec too.
Its probably my bad for my original post not differentiating the two more clearly.
yes
Nearly everyone these days uses LCD monitors that have a pathetic maximum of 60hz display at HD resolutions (I think because of DVI spec/bandwidth limitations, Whatever moron invented DVI needs to be shot because of that).
I still have an analog CRT monitor that supports much higher frame rates at HD resolutions which gives a very noticeable edge when playing twitch-games like Unreal Tournament.
I never understood why people claim framerates above 60hz are better when their monitor is only capable of displaying 60hz at the resolution they play at. The only difference that framerates above 60hz (i.e. vsync turned off) is obvious tearing. You're still getting an actual 60hz framerate because the monitor, regardless of what the PC is doing.
Don't mistake activity or attendance for productivity.
Most new grads think they already know it all from what they learnt at school, but trust me your real learning experience is only just beginning.
Even if you, the new grad, regularly work 80 hour weeks and the other guys still come in late and surf the web a lot, the chances are that they are actually still way more productive and valuable to the company than you.
The reason is they have enough experience and specific product knowledge to be able to work much more effectively and deal with much bigger issues than a fresh grad who doesn't know anything about working in the real world, and hasn't yet had enough time to get intimately familiar with your companies products, technologies, target markets and customers.
It sounds to me like they also already know another thing that you will inevitably come to realise: you can't win a marathon by trying to sprint the whole way.
Verizon have just made it easier for me to choose my next phone and carrier.
Now it definately wont be Verizon.
No backups. Years of work only on her laptop. What a dumbass.
nerd.
>>> We developed these technologies over 15 years ago .... Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair... All we want is what's fair.'"
15 years is too long for a software patent to last. Eolas had more than enough opportunity in that time to capitalise and recover R&D costs on any software technology by making a real product. Eolas didn't ever do anything using this technology so is provably just patent trolling.
Whats fair is that the patent office should remove patent rights from owners not actively developing or marketing provably available products within a certain time period, otherwise they're just allowing troll companies to hold the whole tech world back from developing.
Cows ruined their own planet before they came to earth millenia ago.
Its this migration that the child's nursery rhyme is referencing in the line "the cow jumped over the moon".
They're now doing the same to the earth.
As a Brit now working/living in the US, one of the cultural differences I encountered was that in the US, management is really considered a promotion/reward from an engineering position.
Don't get fooled by the image. You need to be aware that management is NOT a promotion, especially if it doesn't come with a pay rise. Its actually a profession change that requires a completely different skill set than what makes a good software developer. It makes no more sense to 'promote' an engineer into management than it does to 'promote' a plumber into banking. If you're popular at work by being a good engineer it may come as a real shock to realise that you're actually now only a mediocre manager.
The other wierdness that I found in the US is that apparently most recruiters think Engineers technical skills are only as good/relevant as your last job. Like they think you can ever forget C++ or whatever. This means that your decision about whether to accept a management role at your current company means you are actually making a fairly binding career choice. It may be a lot harder to get another hands-on job if you have no recent technical experience.
I guess it comes down to whether you chose to study engineering just as a step to moving into management, or whether (like most of us) you're acutally a geek who enjoys it for its own end. As a self-test to determine whether you really want to be a manager, ask yourself if you'd rather be programming or working with Microsoft Project all day.
Why did you stop there? lets have the government tell us when we can meet our friends, what we must eat, what music we must listen to. Lets also burn any books with dangerous ideas in. Lets remove the word 'freedom' from the language and make it illegal to say it, that way people wont get dangerous ideas.
>> I've also tried the standard disbributed binary drivers from ATI (which I believe can't coexist in current kernels
Thanks for reinforcing my point that ATIs Linux drivers suck.
>> now that AMD (+ATI) have released the documentation on the hardware it should be possible for the Linux open source ATI drivers to improve over time to the same level as the proprietary drivers in the past.
Yeah well I guess its down to you to decide if you wanna wait for a year or two just to see if you can save an ATI card worth about $15, or just go ahead and buy an nvidia card from ebay for a few measly bucks and have it work immediately. I know which I'd do.