If nVidia goes down tomorrow or just drops support for your specific card, all your hardware will stop working in few months with the next kernel update. This is why I bought Intel hardware. It might not be the best, but I know I will be able to use the hardware and all of its features until it physically breaks.
In theory yes, but in my experience the Intel drivers can be quite lacking. They do support XRandR 1.2 which is great (although, again in my experience, switching external VGA on or off can either bring down X or make the computer completely unresponsive unless accessed via SSH), but I've been unable to get tearing-free video playback or 3D so far with them. And the 3D performance in general is abysmal - I don't expect to play recent games, but the hardware should be able to handle modern desktop compositing (Compiz/KDE4) just fine, which it doesn't, at least not with decent frame rates. Hell, KWin doesn't work at all.
Ironically it seems the chipset on my laptop (GM965/X3100) offers currently much worse performance than earlier chipsets, which packed a lot less punch. Granted, I haven't yet tried a GEMified kernel with the 2.5.x series of drivers, which should improve performance. This is not to say I don't appreciate the freedom aspect - actually that was why I chose a laptop with an Intel chipset in the first place - but it doesn't always guarantee that "I will be able to use the hardware and all of its features".
Ask and ye shall receive. Although application support is not quite there yet - there are patches for mplayer, and preliminary support in some branches of xine and MythTV; but it probably will soon be better.
(Not that I wouldn't welcome Nvidia opening up their drivers more, or at least offering proper XRandR 1.2 support. Unfortunately they still offer in my experience the best performance in Linux)
With jailbreaking, and tethering via WLAN, right? It's nice that both your phone and the device you wish to access the Internet with use WiFi instead of Bluetooth, since Bluetooth drains batteries much quicker, right?
Video calling is somewhat gimmicky, granted. The TV-out can be used if your phone supports recording video (or to display photos), but that's not so essential. So how about some real missing features?
Tethering. Seriously. Every phone I've owned in this decade (including cheap "dumb phones") has supported this, initially with cables which were a nuisance, now via Bluetooth which is very convenient. If I'm paying for unlimited data I will use it as I see fit.
Proper Bluetooth support. Not just tethering, and while I guess some people will use A2PD, I mean things like OBEX file transfer and wireless syncing.
Ability to use something else than iTunes with your phone. Ok, so no OBEX. Now how am I supposed to use the iPhone, given that I have no computers that run OSX or Windows?
The iPhone is nice, and I can see why some like it, but it's no $DEITY-phone. Personally, once my S60 phone dies or is lost, I'm going to get a regular S40 phone and use my N800 for browsing (tethering via Bluetooth) on the move. A N800/N810 (or a netbook) with a regular phone is more ideal to me - no matter how much you can "pinch" web pages, bigger resolution helps when browsing, plus you can run whatever software you wish on your tablet/netbook (not only those sanctioned by Apple).
I'm aware of other benefits of continuing breast feeding - in our case it was not possible as it was quite impossible to determine what our daughter was allergic to without switching to a dairy-free substitute (as I'm sure you're aware, the diet of the mother affects the milk - dairy-free, flour-free, soy-free and seafood-free diet makes a very tired mother; and yes, she was/is allergic to all those things). Regarding chicken pox, I'll look into it, but I've has the habit of following the local recommendations here (Finland); currently, chicken pox vaccination is not "mandatory".
Breastfeeding certainly has benefits, among them improved immunity against various diseases (immunologic defenses aren't fully developed in infants). However, the benefits (immunity-wise) start to decrease after six months or so - as the MMR vaccine is usually administered when the child is about a year, it's certainly not unheard of that the child could get sick, vaccine or not. Taking care of an ill child can be very stressful - as a father of a two year old who has spent several days hospitalized due to severe allergies and asthma there are many weeks I could have lived without. Still, until I'm presented with real, _scientific_, evidence of serious adverse effects of popular vaccines, I'll get them for our daughter even if it could result in nasty, but non life-threatening or permanent, conditions. Having said that, some vaccines are unneeded in my opinion; chicken pox, for example, is irritating but better to "experience" as a child.
To my knowledge the first _ever_ software patent was granted in the UK. See here. Note the last sentence in the abstract - The Specification is confined to a description of the programming method (also disclosed in Specification 1,039,142) which is applicable to any general-purpose digital computer. IANAL, but to me that sounds indeed like patent on the program / algorithm itself. According to Wikipedia, "UKIPO regularly grant patents to inventions that are partly or wholly implemented in software". Their enforceability is another matter though.
Re:I always look forward to new Fedora Core's
on
Fedora 10 Released
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· Score: 1
If you want (in my opinion), the best, certainly one of the most configurable, KDE 4.x experience out there, try KDEmod. Currently it's at version 4.1.3, and includes some backports from the 4.2 branch as well (finally, panel auto-hiding for example). Even better, it runs on a very flexible and fast distribution, that's either i686 or x86-64 optimized, has a really fast package manager, uses precompiled packages by default but makes compiling packages with custom options very trivial and is as light (or heavy) as you want it to be. Granted, it doesn't offer as much hand holding for newcomers as Ubuntu or Fedora, but the community documentation is generally very good. Check out the wiki - if the installation instructions don't seem too intimidating I suggest you give it a go. Once you have a base Arch system up and running, installing KDEmod very easy.
Flash 9 exists for ARM/Linux, at least on the Maemo platform (N800/N810 only). But I think Nokia has paid something for it, whether it'll be available in Ubuntu remains to be seen.
The chipset in question is a bitch. You need to patch madwifi for it to work or use the new HAL branch (which hopefully will be merged to trunk soon), instructions here. You also have to make sure (with recent kernels) that the ath5k module is blacklisted. The process is much easier if you use a distribution that makes building custom packages easy. Although little blame lays on the distributions (the desktop oriented ones, at least) for not including the driver out of the box - the patch has been available for quite some time, although it is x86 only. But once you get past the hurdles, the chipset works fine, at least with WPA-PSK.
The average consumer shouldn't have to go through those steps; luckily with many wireless chipsets the drivers work out of the box, so IMHO hardware support in Linux is almost, but not entirely, there. Pleasant surprises exist though. For example, I've yet to meet a DVB (digital TV for us Europeans) tuner that would need external drivers apart from downloading a firmware file - most that I've tried haven't even required the firmware. The drivers in Windows for said tuners seem to be really flakey with much worse signal quality, some cannot record multiple channels simultaneously (although the hardware would allow this), not to mention the awful bundled software. Kaffeine is really good for simple viewing, and MythTV (once you get it installed, which can be a chore) is nothing short of amazing.
Adobe have consistently refused to give their code to anyone. They wouldn't even give it to Apple for use on the iPhone.
Code, perhaps, but it seems they're happy to port the software for some $$$. At least I have Flash 9 out of the box on my Nokia N800 (Linux/ARM). I think it's Apple that doesn't want Flash...
In particular, I do recommend MxTube - download and watch YouTube videos (rather than stream the videos). I don't think there's any other mobile platform that has a YouTube app that downloads the videos for later replay (offline).
Supposedly keeping the battery between 30% to 70% charge is helpful; there are utilities for this for laptops, don't know about PSP.
Somewhat offtopic, but I've been wondering about this: my main laptop is currently also my main desktop. As such, while I run it off the battery every now and then, it's plugged in most of the time. Does this have a negative effect on the battery life? Should I use the battery more often?
I supsect that was the reason Mandrake Linux decided to forgo the name of a deadly plant for Mandriva. But does anyone use Mandriva? And what is a Mandriva anyway?
Or maybe, just maybe, they changed their name because (quoting from Wikipedia): "MandrakeSoft was forced to change its name as a result of losing litigation to the Hearst Corporation over the name Mandrake" and the current form is because "In 2005, MandrakeSoft acquired the assets of Lycoris, and purchased Conectiva". One might make the bold assumption that Mandrake + Conectiva = Mandriva. A lame name, granted.
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now
on
GIMP 2.6 Released
·
· Score: 1
Drawing with the selection tool may not be laborious, but it is obscure and counter-intuitive.
Perhaps - I guess I've used Gimp for so long that it doesn't seem counter-intuitive, but YMMV. However, given how many tools already exist in the toolbox, I'll gladly draw this way as opposed to having a few (not so essential, IMHO) icons more there.
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now
on
GIMP 2.6 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Make an oval / rectangular selection, stroke with the desired width. Wasn't so laborious now was it? But for a more drawing oriented program check out Krita. There should be a Windows port soon as well.
Sure. The first result in Google for HSDPA latency is this - note that the thread is almost two years old so things should have improved since with improved coverage. If you are unable to get such results with HSDPA a) complain to your network or b) to the manufacturer of your phone. FWIW in my experience Skype (via Fring) is bearable on 3G as well. Fatal on the battery though, so best not to background it unless plugged in.
I can't figure out how to move plasmoid applets around the desktop. So if I have a weather applet, it goes in the top left corner and can't be moved. Luckily, if I make a Folder Browser plasmoid, it goes right over the weather one, and also can't be moved, so...problem solved?
When the widgets are "unlocked", hover above a widget. On the right / left side of the widget (depending on the position of the widget) you should see a vertical bar, with icons at least for resizing, rotating and removing the widget (sometimes there's an icon for settings as well, depending on the widget). Click on the bar (not on the icons) and drag to desired location. Granted, it's not very intuitive, and I'd prefer something like alt+drag, but one can certainly move them. And rotating widgets is kind of cool, although not very useful.
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If nVidia goes down tomorrow or just drops support for your specific card, all your hardware will stop working in few months with the next kernel update. This is why I bought Intel hardware. It might not be the best, but I know I will be able to use the hardware and all of its features until it physically breaks.
In theory yes, but in my experience the Intel drivers can be quite lacking. They do support XRandR 1.2 which is great (although, again in my experience, switching external VGA on or off can either bring down X or make the computer completely unresponsive unless accessed via SSH), but I've been unable to get tearing-free video playback or 3D so far with them. And the 3D performance in general is abysmal - I don't expect to play recent games, but the hardware should be able to handle modern desktop compositing (Compiz/KDE4) just fine, which it doesn't, at least not with decent frame rates. Hell, KWin doesn't work at all.
Ironically it seems the chipset on my laptop (GM965/X3100) offers currently much worse performance than earlier chipsets, which packed a lot less punch. Granted, I haven't yet tried a GEMified kernel with the 2.5.x series of drivers, which should improve performance. This is not to say I don't appreciate the freedom aspect - actually that was why I chose a laptop with an Intel chipset in the first place - but it doesn't always guarantee that "I will be able to use the hardware and all of its features".
Ask and ye shall receive. Although application support is not quite there yet - there are patches for mplayer, and preliminary support in some branches of xine and MythTV; but it probably will soon be better.
(Not that I wouldn't welcome Nvidia opening up their drivers more, or at least offering proper XRandR 1.2 support. Unfortunately they still offer in my experience the best performance in Linux)
With jailbreaking, and tethering via WLAN, right? It's nice that both your phone and the device you wish to access the Internet with use WiFi instead of Bluetooth, since Bluetooth drains batteries much quicker, right?
The iPhone is nice, and I can see why some like it, but it's no $DEITY-phone. Personally, once my S60 phone dies or is lost, I'm going to get a regular S40 phone and use my N800 for browsing (tethering via Bluetooth) on the move. A N800/N810 (or a netbook) with a regular phone is more ideal to me - no matter how much you can "pinch" web pages, bigger resolution helps when browsing, plus you can run whatever software you wish on your tablet/netbook (not only those sanctioned by Apple).
And should you not like Wine (the non-native look puts me off), there's always K9Copy, which IMHO is a worthy alternative to DVDShrink.
I'm aware of other benefits of continuing breast feeding - in our case it was not possible as it was quite impossible to determine what our daughter was allergic to without switching to a dairy-free substitute (as I'm sure you're aware, the diet of the mother affects the milk - dairy-free, flour-free, soy-free and seafood-free diet makes a very tired mother; and yes, she was/is allergic to all those things). Regarding chicken pox, I'll look into it, but I've has the habit of following the local recommendations here (Finland); currently, chicken pox vaccination is not "mandatory".
Breastfeeding certainly has benefits, among them improved immunity against various diseases (immunologic defenses aren't fully developed in infants). However, the benefits (immunity-wise) start to decrease after six months or so - as the MMR vaccine is usually administered when the child is about a year, it's certainly not unheard of that the child could get sick, vaccine or not. Taking care of an ill child can be very stressful - as a father of a two year old who has spent several days hospitalized due to severe allergies and asthma there are many weeks I could have lived without. Still, until I'm presented with real, _scientific_, evidence of serious adverse effects of popular vaccines, I'll get them for our daughter even if it could result in nasty, but non life-threatening or permanent, conditions. Having said that, some vaccines are unneeded in my opinion; chicken pox, for example, is irritating but better to "experience" as a child.
To my knowledge the first _ever_ software patent was granted in the UK. See here. Note the last sentence in the abstract - The Specification is confined to a description of the programming method (also disclosed in Specification 1,039,142) which is applicable to any general-purpose digital computer. IANAL, but to me that sounds indeed like patent on the program / algorithm itself. According to Wikipedia, "UKIPO regularly grant patents to inventions that are partly or wholly implemented in software". Their enforceability is another matter though.
If you want (in my opinion), the best, certainly one of the most configurable, KDE 4.x experience out there, try KDEmod. Currently it's at version 4.1.3, and includes some backports from the 4.2 branch as well (finally, panel auto-hiding for example). Even better, it runs on a very flexible and fast distribution, that's either i686 or x86-64 optimized, has a really fast package manager, uses precompiled packages by default but makes compiling packages with custom options very trivial and is as light (or heavy) as you want it to be. Granted, it doesn't offer as much hand holding for newcomers as Ubuntu or Fedora, but the community documentation is generally very good. Check out the wiki - if the installation instructions don't seem too intimidating I suggest you give it a go. Once you have a base Arch system up and running, installing KDEmod very easy.
Flash 9 exists for ARM/Linux, at least on the Maemo platform (N800/N810 only). But I think Nokia has paid something for it, whether it'll be available in Ubuntu remains to be seen.
The chipset in question is a bitch. You need to patch madwifi for it to work or use the new HAL branch (which hopefully will be merged to trunk soon), instructions here. You also have to make sure (with recent kernels) that the ath5k module is blacklisted. The process is much easier if you use a distribution that makes building custom packages easy. Although little blame lays on the distributions (the desktop oriented ones, at least) for not including the driver out of the box - the patch has been available for quite some time, although it is x86 only. But once you get past the hurdles, the chipset works fine, at least with WPA-PSK.
The average consumer shouldn't have to go through those steps; luckily with many wireless chipsets the drivers work out of the box, so IMHO hardware support in Linux is almost, but not entirely, there. Pleasant surprises exist though. For example, I've yet to meet a DVB (digital TV for us Europeans) tuner that would need external drivers apart from downloading a firmware file - most that I've tried haven't even required the firmware. The drivers in Windows for said tuners seem to be really flakey with much worse signal quality, some cannot record multiple channels simultaneously (although the hardware would allow this), not to mention the awful bundled software. Kaffeine is really good for simple viewing, and MythTV (once you get it installed, which can be a chore) is nothing short of amazing.
Adobe have consistently refused to give their code to anyone. They wouldn't even give it to Apple for use on the iPhone.
Code, perhaps, but it seems they're happy to port the software for some $$$. At least I have Flash 9 out of the box on my Nokia N800 (Linux/ARM). I think it's Apple that doesn't want Flash...
In particular, I do recommend MxTube - download and watch YouTube videos (rather than stream the videos). I don't think there's any other mobile platform that has a YouTube app that downloads the videos for later replay (offline).
Here's one for the Nokia N8x0 tablets.
Supposedly keeping the battery between 30% to 70% charge is helpful; there are utilities for this for laptops, don't know about PSP.
Somewhat offtopic, but I've been wondering about this: my main laptop is currently also my main desktop. As such, while I run it off the battery every now and then, it's plugged in most of the time. Does this have a negative effect on the battery life? Should I use the battery more often?
I supsect that was the reason Mandrake Linux decided to forgo the name of a deadly plant for Mandriva. But does anyone use Mandriva? And what is a Mandriva anyway?
Or maybe, just maybe, they changed their name because (quoting from Wikipedia): "MandrakeSoft was forced to change its name as a result of losing litigation to the Hearst Corporation over the name Mandrake" and the current form is because "In 2005, MandrakeSoft acquired the assets of Lycoris, and purchased Conectiva". One might make the bold assumption that Mandrake + Conectiva = Mandriva. A lame name, granted.
Drawing with the selection tool may not be laborious, but it is obscure and counter-intuitive.
Perhaps - I guess I've used Gimp for so long that it doesn't seem counter-intuitive, but YMMV. However, given how many tools already exist in the toolbox, I'll gladly draw this way as opposed to having a few (not so essential, IMHO) icons more there.
Make an oval / rectangular selection, stroke with the desired width. Wasn't so laborious now was it? But for a more drawing oriented program check out Krita. There should be a Windows port soon as well.
Feeling lazy? Try k9copy. I used to use DVD Shrink via wine before (works relatively fine), but native programs are always better.
It was a reference to this episode.
If not Osama and not Saddam, who did 9/11?
A bunch of pissed of muslims. What are you, retarded?
As John Carmack points out [slashdot.org], it is not only possible to have explosives like this, it's not very difficult.
Some people disagree
Sure. The first result in Google for HSDPA latency is this - note that the thread is almost two years old so things should have improved since with improved coverage. If you are unable to get such results with HSDPA a) complain to your network or b) to the manufacturer of your phone. FWIW in my experience Skype (via Fring) is bearable on 3G as well. Fatal on the battery though, so best not to background it unless plugged in.
Actually no, if the language you're using (e.g. Java) restricts break and continues to refer only to loops that they appear in the body of
I take it you don't know about loop labels in Java?
Yeah, Apple bought CUPS, in 2007. How exactly is that beneficial for *nix?
I can't figure out how to move plasmoid applets around the desktop. So if I have a weather applet, it goes in the top left corner and can't be moved. Luckily, if I make a Folder Browser plasmoid, it goes right over the weather one, and also can't be moved, so...problem solved?
When the widgets are "unlocked", hover above a widget. On the right / left side of the widget (depending on the position of the widget) you should see a vertical bar, with icons at least for resizing, rotating and removing the widget (sometimes there's an icon for settings as well, depending on the widget). Click on the bar (not on the icons) and drag to desired location. Granted, it's not very intuitive, and I'd prefer something like alt+drag, but one can certainly move them. And rotating widgets is kind of cool, although not very useful.