There's nothing the FOSS crowd can do about half-assed buggy (and sometimes intentionally crippled) ACPI implementations, uncooperative hardware vendors and general apathy toward FOSS in general.
These are the issues preventing widespread Linux adoption.
It's not that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, it's that the current crop of desktop PC motherboards aren't ready for Linux. Especially in budget machines. They are slapped together quickly with very little if any testing to see if things are truly compliant. If it boots Windows, they consider it done.
Hell, they barely run Vista without catching fire.
A $280 eMachines POS is probably going to have a hard time. Unfortunately, this is the market where I've seen the most Linux interest from consumers. These consumers aren't smart enough to not buy crap.
Even worse is explaining, the A656-4666 runs it great but the A656-4667 used a slightly different incompatible audio chip.
This is an uphill battle that can't be won until vendors:
A.) Are more open with specs so the FOSS community can help.
B.) Stop taking bribes from MS.
C.) Actually give a crap.
We're getting much closer to C everyday but most vendors are only willing to provide buggy blobs. The unstable kernel API isn't helping any.
Vendors would have an EASIER time supporting BSD but the market admittedly just isn't there in a lot of cases.
I think the problem is actually that the computer field didn't come up with a proper term themselves. I remember way back-in-the-day some computer enthusiasts calling it "the CPU" which is also highly misleading. Nowadays, computer people will call it, "the tower", "the machine", "the box", or something like that. But let's face it--these are actually not very good terms. We don't actually have a precise and universal term that refer to it.
There's actually a very precise, professional and universal term for the "box"..... it's called..... the COMPUTER.
The monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc are not part of the computer, they are computer peripherals.
I correct even seasoned techs on this all the time. I make sure I teach MY students correctly at least.
Wake me up when Linux has pro-grade video editing and photo editing software.
Let me know when Linux has a standard GUI toolkit.
Tell me when all Linux distros are fairly consistent.
OSX has all three. Do I hate X11? No. It's a right tool, right job situation. I use X11 on my BSD and OSX machines every day. I run BSD in production server environments as well as the desktop.
You still can't get rid of the trojan issue. Most people don't compile from source. They download a binary package.
This was achieved by infecting a binary package with a Trojan and seeding it on bittorrent.
What about software that ISN'T in your repository? People shouldn't run it? Is the full version of Doom 3 in your repository?
I am not against free UNIX. You know, consistent, well documented, simple free UNIX. Like the kind that's been around since the 70's. It's called BSD. And guess what, it's TRULY free. Like free as in freedom. Not free as in communism.
Commercial software vendors are not the devil until they intentionally break open standards and stifle interoperability (yeah I know.... iPhone.... I try to pretend it doesn't exist). And don't beat that old tired "sell support" horse. It's not an option in many cases.
You're smoking crack. How would you be less free in a libertarian state?
The rich don't owe me anything unless I work for them.
On the same token I don't owe them a damn thing either.
It's the republicans that want to turn you into a corporate serf and allow companies to buy legislation at the expense of our freedoms.
The democrats want to control every aspect of your life and legislate us into a utopia where no one gets hurt, everyone is a winner, no one can ever be offended and violence will be permanently eliminated by disarming law abiding citizens as well as banning images of violence in movies, print, history and video games. I moved out of my parents house a LONG time ago. I don't need an oppressive nanny. I can make my own decisions and pay the consequences or reap the rewards. That's FREEDOM.
The libertarians just want pure and simple freedom without interference in our daily lives. Period. Ever. Call me a right wing extremist if you want. You want your tea sweetened or unsweetened?
BS..... Your average 7th grader knows how to use one to get on MySpace in the school computer lab. They might not understand how it really works but they can definitely use it.
The proliferation of massive amounts of private proxy servers has rendered my content filter at a local college where I teach (as well as being the SysAdmin) pretty much useless. Not that I care much, I just put it in place to cut down on gay porn and video streaming with our limited bandwidth (a single T-1 with >200 users).
Your dad is most likely fairly old and probably doesn't fully understand how to copy a file using Windows explorer much less understand anything about networking.
That's like saying using a gun in an armed robbery constitutes sophistication. No, it's standard practice.
Or sending cocaine in an opaque envelope with no return address instead of a clearly marked bag labeled Cocaine with the perp's social security number is "sophisticated".
Using a proxy is much simpler than the crime itself, all you do is google "proxy", and type a URL.
Using it to proxy your SSH connection to your employer when you wipe the servers takes a little sophistication so that might apply.
Using a web proxy to post anonymous information on a forum or web site is NOT sophisticated. It's standard practice and should be protected as such. Just because governments are abusing their citizens and are being caught, doesn't mean I deserve 25% more time for using a proxy to post it.
We already have computer trespassing laws. If they want tougher sentences, why not just amend those with harsher sentences? We already have laws against releasing sensitive government data? Why not just amend those with harsher sentences?
This is the kinda crap I'm getting tired of. We have so many laws that you have no idea if the cop is lying to you about your supposed "crime" when your arrested. Everything in some form or fashion is against the law somewhere in this country and it's getting stupid.
Any time someone says "There should be a law!", chances are they are wrong and one already exists to punish that offender anyway.
I have a bad feeling this exists solely for "selective enforcement".
Employers also prefer to hire those with no family who can pledge their soul to the company and nothing else.
It's like they think they buy you when you sign the dotted line for IT jobs these days including scrutinizing many aspects of your personal life that are frankly none of their f**king business. I'm to the point now that I've declined to take urinalysis tests a few times because I'm tired of being treated like a criminal. And yes, I have clean urine.
I've got a job, it doesn't pay well, but I can afford to hold out for a company that lets me do my job in exchange for a paycheck, not meet their hypocritical moral standard, take abuse, have orders barked at me or generally be treated like a serf.
Last I checked they were simply renting a block of my time. They demand complete loyalty and devotion to the company but then you are the first to get harshly laid off with little or no notice and escorted out of the building because you're a potential threat. Never mind that you were a model employee and devoted your life to the company, they don't care. Never mind that you were well liked and never showed signs of vindictive behavior.
net appliances, palm-sized PC's, handheld PC's, PDA's, etc.
They keep reinventing the name but they keep failing to kill the desktop computer.
Personally, I liked every single one of these devices but when people realized there was no good JVM or Flash player to play Sudoku and other gay, stupid online games tailored for a full-fledged PC with a bloated browser and a library of plugins, they shunned them.
That and the Windows expert next door told them they were useless and sucked. Never mind that this Windows expert was a 14-yr-old that did a book report on Windows for Dummies.
(Yes, I know that increasingly employers and governments are using credit scores to determine if someone can be trusted... what a big dumb idea that is!)
If they want to criminalize something, THAT should be it. I should never be turned down for a job because of personal financial issues. That's the whole reason I work in the first place.
Anyone else here been turned down for a job because of medical bills and a bounced check your wife incurred while you were unemployed?
Ah, the life of a corporate serf. Your rights mean nothing if you want to pay the rent.
You know, some of us actually need horsepower and large SUV's.
Just because you don't and you're scared my bumper has more real metal than your entire vehicle just doesn't justify the environazis crusade against SUV's.
Yes, a large segment of population buys them for status symbols. Yes, they are idiots. Most could go buy an old musclecar and some wax for half the price of their SUV's if they want to make a statement.
The fact is that SUV's have a lot of real-world uses, even for families. They are large, relatively safe, powerful enough to tow fairly heavy loads and the more recent ones are fairly fuel-efficient. I replaced my old pickup with an SUV and was able to eliminate a minivan as well with the same sized engine and reduce my "carbon footprint". The old Chevy S10 Blazer can haul a trailer, my wife, 2 kids, AND some equipment in the back all while getting 20-25mpg. And that's with a relatively large 4.3L V6.
Do you know of an electric mid-sized SUV that has similar torque/horsepower specs, carrying capacity and range of my old 1994 Chevy Blazer?
Really, you don't? Then STFU.
Electric vehicles are either powerful with very limited range, or slugs barely fit to carry 2 people 250 miles. Electric motors are NOT a replacement for large gas engines in practical vehicles at this point.
Electric commuter cars would be great and I welcome them with open arms but some of us need to move a little more than a bag of groceries.
If I could get a cheap $5,000 electric car just to go back and forth to work I would. I'm seriously considering a Tata Nano. I'll still have my big vehicle and enjoy it thoroughly however and there's nothing you or any lefties can do about it except conspire to raise gas prices.
Some of us travel over 200 miles every Saturday with the whole family. Some of us live in a country bigger than the UK or Germany and have family spread over hundreds or thousands of miles we actually keep in touch with and visit regularly. Some of us travel and do more than go to work and come home.
I'm not going to give that up just so some brat great-great-grandkid of yours can breath in 1 less nanogram of CO2. Wah. Get a life.
I'm more for Biodiesel than electric vehicles at this point unless some major battery or engine breakthrough happens. I whole-heartedly believe Biodiesel is the way to go. Running on cooking waste and degraded biomass definitely beats the toxins batteries release into landfills over generations.
Atari 2600. The console had only 128 bytes of RAM for runtime data that included the call stack! There was no frame buffer-- but some amazing things were done in 128 colors.
You basically had to chase the scan line on those things right?
I never did any 2600 coding. I grew up with the Atari 8-bit home computers, never got into consoles. The Atari 800 was f**kin awesome though. Very neat architecture.
Actually I have a point here- No one cares what you could do with a 386! In two years time, the "Quad-Core" monstrosity will be small and puny, too. Feature bloat that remains below Moore's law is perfectly acceptable.
If you're in the business of selling the latest and greatest barely-beta-quality-at-release software, then yes, you're right. Otherwise, people that have to use the things and think they have to buy way overpriced software every 2 years just to have a usable machine actually give a shit and can't stand it.
This is part of why M$ can not only inflate MSOffice, but also make past versions incompatible.
And this causes more user confusion and help desk calls than anyone cares to admit. This in turn eats into the bottom line of people that use said software because they have to have an extra help desk monkey just to tell people how to do a "Save As..." operation in Office 2007 for the 5,000th time.
This is also why we are phasing out Office on all machines but the classroom machines for *gasp* MS Office classes.
WP8 won't open.docx or xml files.
Who gives a shit, tell them to resend in an older Word format or a different format. If they can't figure out the "Save As..." dialog box, they shouldn't be anywhere near a computer. Hell, there isn't a single OS X app that can't write PDF's.
Just because they're silly enough to want to use docx doesn't mean the rest of the world is.
It won't read ODF either, oh nooooooo!!!!!
Just because it won't read some other format from a COMPLETELY different vendor does not make it useless. docx won't make you type faster or save any more disk space than a WPS file. And I don't know a single word processor that won't read RTF for basic documents.
In short, if people stopped buying proprietary software and could find decent honest people to sell and service boxen, holier than thou WASTING attitude will mean something. As it is, your only stroking your own ego, or should I say UTILIZING it?
Statements like that usually come from MS shills or Hardware manufacturers.
Does Word 6 or Word 97 no longer run? Are there too many features in Word 2007 that didn't exist in Word 6 that 98% of users truly use on a regular basis? Most users just think of Word as a typewriter with a nice backspace key and fonts. The "power users" might know how to use tables, tab stops and might be able to pull off a mail merge or maybe a chart.
Filling landfills with perfectly good computers is pointless when they are still capable machines that could still be doing mundane work somewhere.
And you don't think a gun-toting cop or military man in your country has the potential for reckless homicide? And hell, I'd rather be shot than gutted by a street thug.
Evil is everywhere but I'm willing to accept 3 cops getting killed by a psycho for my wife to be able to defend herself and my children against a mugger or rapist in a dark Walmart parking lot at 2AM. Last I checked, said psycho was convicted.
People will commit evil acts. It's a fact. Doesn't matter if it's a knife, a gun, a fist or an atomic bomb, someone will eventually lose their head.
We already have laws against those sorts of crimes. They're called murder statutes. Attempting to protect people from themselves via mass amounts of legislation is the worst form of tyranny imaginable. My weapons HAVE indeed saved my life. Thankfully I didn't actually have to shoot the guy.
You may like a nanny state but the fact is, when seconds count, cops are minutes away. I'd much rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
Now, would I be against requiring a basic firearms course for first-time handgun purchases? Hell no, I think it's a great idea. Would I be against an IQ test to make sure they aren't retarded? That's stretching it but I kind of agree.
Banning guns is stupid however and is proven to hardly make a dent in overall violent crime. I've lived in a state that banned carrying guns and it was a shithole. Baltimore, MD to be precise.
Unless you ban open sections of pipe, ball bearings, charcoal, sulfur and bird shit, you will never eliminate firearms crime. Criminals by nature, break the law and they will ALWAYS have relatively easy access to firearms or they will simply make them. Guns are not marvels of modern science or chemistry.
I don't get up in the morning hoping I get a chance to legally shoot someone. Having the option in case I need it IS my right however. You might not like guns and you're perfectly free to never own one. I however take that right VERY seriously.
I bet you I'd get more done on that 386 w/ 16MB of RAM than you get done on your Quad-Core monstrosity. I could have a full version of BSD running complete with X, a desktop environment and apps. Might be older versions but still functional. GIMP 2 didn't render GIMP 1 useless. OO.org didn't magically make WordPerfect 8 or StarOffice 5 quit running.
Hell I used to run Photoshop on machines with crappier specs.
32MB RAM would speed things up a bit.
I don't like WASTING system resources, I have no problem with people UTILIZING them. I especially have no use for bug-ridden, flaky, poorly integrated Java apps when there's 1000 native apps that can do the job better.
A freaking file transfer tool should not even remotely use 7.5% of my RAM. Hell, in my book it shouldn't use much more than 750KB of RAM. I can understand bittorrent using a bit more than that but come on 300MB?
Then again, I grew up on machines with between 48KB and 128KB of memory where good code shined and bad code was glaringly obvious.
No, GUN violence goes down a bit when gun ownership declines but violent crime rates are actually shown to INCREASE when guns are banned.
Look at the UK trying ban knives with points after their gun ban had little effect on overall violent crime.
When Australia all but banned guns (they might as well have) violent crime went up 44% overall.
Gun bans don't work, they just turn honest, hardworking people into prey. And the honest, hardworking people that keep their guns become criminals and if caught, their lives are destroyed.
Leave my guns alone because I'm not giving them up. Ever. Not to you, this government or the government that gets started after a gun ban successfully gets put into place.
Another are where Linux has messed up is not properly documented kernel driver APIs and ABIs, not providing a stable software and driver ABI,
Yet another reason I run BSD. If it weren't for that USL suit, Linux would never have existed anyway.
The situation with libraries is also a huge mess that makes the windows dll hell of past times seem minor.
That's not just a Linux issue, that's a UNIX issue in general. I really don't care for shared libs, disk space and RAM are stupidly cheap now. What's wrong with compiling libs into the app staticly?
This gets real bad even on my BSD machines. Here's a quick way to cause a variety of interesting mental disorders:
- Install binary package for something like Firefox
- You decide you want features in a new version of let's say..... GIMP
- Your binary package repository only has the old version so you decide to build from source.
- It says your version of GTK is too old, you have GTK+ 2.0.3.4.1.5, you need GTK+ 2.0.3.4.1.5.1
- So you build and install the newer version of GTK and build and install the new version of GIMP
- Cool, GIMP works and the new version is just as awesome as they said it was!
- So you log out and back in.... Wait a sec.... WTF.... gnome-panel quit working.... GAIM explodes.... ARRRRGGGHHHHH
Fuck that, I hate dynamic shared libraries. Gimme static libs any day. I shouldn't have to update my whole damn machine for 6 days just to use a newer version of an app because of retarded dependency issues.
Hell, I don't even think the FreeBSD ports system has a flag to compile using static libs. Neither does APT as far as I know. I know GCC will happily deal with them.
Apple's answer of just bundling the shared lib with the app in an App Bundle seems to work a bit better. Maybe we should all switch to GNUstep.
Hmm...I consider them to be powerful enough to do real work. I'm looking to get one of the new macbook pros, the 15" model.It is powerful enough to run windows in VM (I really only need windows for a few things like Quickbooks), and any other real computer applications I need...some coding, scripting, etc.
I think the guy was talking more about the 17" monstrosities with testicle roasting GPU's and built-in RAID people buy to make up for their small penis. Like the huge 17" Macbook Pro or the even less portable Toshiba Qosmios and the like.
Everything you want to do there with the Macbook Pro I do quite easily on a standard Macbook. I can even play Windows DX and OpenGL games through Parallels. Even with a lot of mac apps going, Parallels doesn't really slow me down until I start running low on RAM.
The Pro is a nice machine but the regular Macbook is certainly no slouch. The GeForce 9400M in the new ones made a big difference.
I'd get one if I really needed better than 1280x800 resolution on my laptop, a little extra horsepower (more L2 cache) and a high-performance GPU.
I guess another thing I don't see about the small netbooks, and possibly it is my age...the screens are TOO damned small to do much reading. Ok, I've slipped recently into the 'reading glasses' crowd now, but, geez...even before that, I couldn't see how people could squint at a small screen for so long, unless they ran the resolutions so low that you basically had 3 characters at a time on the screen.
Really, they aren't that bad. The resolution is only 1024x600. On a 10" screen it's quite readable. Just wear your reading glasses. I'm pretty sure that's less than 115 pixels per inch.
I've done an unscientific comparison of a netbook sitting next to my white Macbook and the text looks no smaller on the netbook. Just less pixels.
It's not just useful for games. OpenCL can take advantage of it in snow leopard. iLife makes good use of it. More of the CoreImage functionality is usable without software fallbacks.
If you just do word processing and spreadsheets, why would you buy a mac anyway?
The 9400M in my Macbook destroys the 64MB AGP Radeon 9600 in my 1.42GHz eMac with ease. It would surely annihilate the 9200 in the G4 mini.
Quake 4 was barely playable at 6-15fps on my eMac at 640x480.
Quake 4 on the 9400M in my Macbook gets well over 40fps at 1024x768. I can't run Quake 4 @ 1280x800 because the game doesn't really support widescreen resolutions.
I also have the DDR2 white Macbook with the 9400M. The DDR3 macbooks would probably do a bit better.
Call of Duty 4 is also quite playable. IL2 1946 runs well in parallels as well.
The 9400M won't run Crysis at 1920x1600 or anything but it's really not that bad.
On my Macbook, it keeps up ok with CoD4 and some other modern titles @ 1280x800. Not in Ultra-Super-Quality w/ Anisotropic filtering and 4x Anti-Aliasing but it does a decent job.
It's not a replacement for a high-end card for serious gaming but it's very power-efficient and doesn't completely suck.
It's awesome in my laptop. I don't know about you but I value my testicles and don't really want a high-end GPU in a laptop.
It's a PERFECT fit for the mini. The DDR3 RAM is a nice touch too. You'd be hard pressed to find a comparable pre-built PC with the same gear and form factor that's cheaper than the mini.
I wouldn't bother with the $800 mini but the $600 mini is reasonably priced. Apple charges far too much for a little RAM and a bigger HDD.
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Linux is just fine as a desktop OS.
There's nothing the FOSS crowd can do about half-assed buggy (and sometimes intentionally crippled) ACPI implementations, uncooperative hardware vendors and general apathy toward FOSS in general.
These are the issues preventing widespread Linux adoption.
It's not that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, it's that the current crop of desktop PC motherboards aren't ready for Linux. Especially in budget machines. They are slapped together quickly with very little if any testing to see if things are truly compliant. If it boots Windows, they consider it done.
Hell, they barely run Vista without catching fire.
A $280 eMachines POS is probably going to have a hard time. Unfortunately, this is the market where I've seen the most Linux interest from consumers. These consumers aren't smart enough to not buy crap.
Even worse is explaining, the A656-4666 runs it great but the A656-4667 used a slightly different incompatible audio chip.
This is an uphill battle that can't be won until vendors:
A.) Are more open with specs so the FOSS community can help.
B.) Stop taking bribes from MS.
C.) Actually give a crap.
We're getting much closer to C everyday but most vendors are only willing to provide buggy blobs. The unstable kernel API isn't helping any.
Vendors would have an EASIER time supporting BSD but the market admittedly just isn't there in a lot of cases.
I think the problem is actually that the computer field didn't come up with a proper term themselves. I remember way back-in-the-day some computer enthusiasts calling it "the CPU" which is also highly misleading. Nowadays, computer people will call it, "the tower", "the machine", "the box", or something like that. But let's face it--these are actually not very good terms. We don't actually have a precise and universal term that refer to it.
There's actually a very precise, professional and universal term for the "box"..... it's called..... the COMPUTER.
The monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc are not part of the computer, they are computer peripherals.
I correct even seasoned techs on this all the time. I make sure I teach MY students correctly at least.
Wake me up when Linux has pro-grade video editing and photo editing software.
Let me know when Linux has a standard GUI toolkit.
Tell me when all Linux distros are fairly consistent.
OSX has all three. Do I hate X11? No. It's a right tool, right job situation. I use X11 on my BSD and OSX machines every day. I run BSD in production server environments as well as the desktop.
You still can't get rid of the trojan issue. Most people don't compile from source. They download a binary package.
This was achieved by infecting a binary package with a Trojan and seeding it on bittorrent.
What about software that ISN'T in your repository? People shouldn't run it? Is the full version of Doom 3 in your repository?
I am not against free UNIX. You know, consistent, well documented, simple free UNIX. Like the kind that's been around since the 70's. It's called BSD. And guess what, it's TRULY free. Like free as in freedom. Not free as in communism.
Commercial software vendors are not the devil until they intentionally break open standards and stifle interoperability (yeah I know.... iPhone.... I try to pretend it doesn't exist). And don't beat that old tired "sell support" horse. It's not an option in many cases.
BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA
Glad to see how well THAT is working out.
You're smoking crack. How would you be less free in a libertarian state?
The rich don't owe me anything unless I work for them.
On the same token I don't owe them a damn thing either.
It's the republicans that want to turn you into a corporate serf and allow companies to buy legislation at the expense of our freedoms.
The democrats want to control every aspect of your life and legislate us into a utopia where no one gets hurt, everyone is a winner, no one can ever be offended and violence will be permanently eliminated by disarming law abiding citizens as well as banning images of violence in movies, print, history and video games. I moved out of my parents house a LONG time ago. I don't need an oppressive nanny. I can make my own decisions and pay the consequences or reap the rewards. That's FREEDOM.
The libertarians just want pure and simple freedom without interference in our daily lives. Period. Ever. Call me a right wing extremist if you want. You want your tea sweetened or unsweetened?
Get a life.
Ummm.... You can own ANY OS by embedding a trojan in a legit OS.
Unless you eliminate programmable CPU's, you'll never get rid of this problem.
That's not a real virus. Not news.
BS..... Your average 7th grader knows how to use one to get on MySpace in the school computer lab. They might not understand how it really works but they can definitely use it.
The proliferation of massive amounts of private proxy servers has rendered my content filter at a local college where I teach (as well as being the SysAdmin) pretty much useless. Not that I care much, I just put it in place to cut down on gay porn and video streaming with our limited bandwidth (a single T-1 with >200 users).
Your dad is most likely fairly old and probably doesn't fully understand how to copy a file using Windows explorer much less understand anything about networking.
That's like saying using a gun in an armed robbery constitutes sophistication. No, it's standard practice.
Or sending cocaine in an opaque envelope with no return address instead of a clearly marked bag labeled Cocaine with the perp's social security number is "sophisticated".
Using a proxy is much simpler than the crime itself, all you do is google "proxy", and type a URL.
Using it to proxy your SSH connection to your employer when you wipe the servers takes a little sophistication so that might apply.
Using a web proxy to post anonymous information on a forum or web site is NOT sophisticated. It's standard practice and should be protected as such. Just because governments are abusing their citizens and are being caught, doesn't mean I deserve 25% more time for using a proxy to post it.
We already have computer trespassing laws. If they want tougher sentences, why not just amend those with harsher sentences? We already have laws against releasing sensitive government data? Why not just amend those with harsher sentences?
This is the kinda crap I'm getting tired of. We have so many laws that you have no idea if the cop is lying to you about your supposed "crime" when your arrested. Everything in some form or fashion is against the law somewhere in this country and it's getting stupid.
Any time someone says "There should be a law!", chances are they are wrong and one already exists to punish that offender anyway.
I have a bad feeling this exists solely for "selective enforcement".
Employers also prefer to hire those with no family who can pledge their soul to the company and nothing else.
It's like they think they buy you when you sign the dotted line for IT jobs these days including scrutinizing many aspects of your personal life that are frankly none of their f**king business. I'm to the point now that I've declined to take urinalysis tests a few times because I'm tired of being treated like a criminal. And yes, I have clean urine.
I've got a job, it doesn't pay well, but I can afford to hold out for a company that lets me do my job in exchange for a paycheck, not meet their hypocritical moral standard, take abuse, have orders barked at me or generally be treated like a serf.
Last I checked they were simply renting a block of my time. They demand complete loyalty and devotion to the company but then you are the first to get harshly laid off with little or no notice and escorted out of the building because you're a potential threat. Never mind that you were a model employee and devoted your life to the company, they don't care. Never mind that you were well liked and never showed signs of vindictive behavior.
I guess there's a reason I'm teaching now.
net appliances, palm-sized PC's, handheld PC's, PDA's, etc.
They keep reinventing the name but they keep failing to kill the desktop computer.
Personally, I liked every single one of these devices but when people realized there was no good JVM or Flash player to play Sudoku and other gay, stupid online games tailored for a full-fledged PC with a bloated browser and a library of plugins, they shunned them.
That and the Windows expert next door told them they were useless and sucked. Never mind that this Windows expert was a 14-yr-old that did a book report on Windows for Dummies.
(Yes, I know that increasingly employers and governments are using credit scores to determine if someone can be trusted... what a big dumb idea that is!)
If they want to criminalize something, THAT should be it. I should never be turned down for a job because of personal financial issues. That's the whole reason I work in the first place.
Anyone else here been turned down for a job because of medical bills and a bounced check your wife incurred while you were unemployed?
Ah, the life of a corporate serf. Your rights mean nothing if you want to pay the rent.
You know, some of us actually need horsepower and large SUV's.
Just because you don't and you're scared my bumper has more real metal than your entire vehicle just doesn't justify the environazis crusade against SUV's.
Yes, a large segment of population buys them for status symbols. Yes, they are idiots. Most could go buy an old musclecar and some wax for half the price of their SUV's if they want to make a statement.
The fact is that SUV's have a lot of real-world uses, even for families. They are large, relatively safe, powerful enough to tow fairly heavy loads and the more recent ones are fairly fuel-efficient. I replaced my old pickup with an SUV and was able to eliminate a minivan as well with the same sized engine and reduce my "carbon footprint". The old Chevy S10 Blazer can haul a trailer, my wife, 2 kids, AND some equipment in the back all while getting 20-25mpg. And that's with a relatively large 4.3L V6.
Do you know of an electric mid-sized SUV that has similar torque/horsepower specs, carrying capacity and range of my old 1994 Chevy Blazer?
Really, you don't? Then STFU.
Electric vehicles are either powerful with very limited range, or slugs barely fit to carry 2 people 250 miles. Electric motors are NOT a replacement for large gas engines in practical vehicles at this point.
Electric commuter cars would be great and I welcome them with open arms but some of us need to move a little more than a bag of groceries.
If I could get a cheap $5,000 electric car just to go back and forth to work I would. I'm seriously considering a Tata Nano. I'll still have my big vehicle and enjoy it thoroughly however and there's nothing you or any lefties can do about it except conspire to raise gas prices.
Some of us travel over 200 miles every Saturday with the whole family. Some of us live in a country bigger than the UK or Germany and have family spread over hundreds or thousands of miles we actually keep in touch with and visit regularly. Some of us travel and do more than go to work and come home.
I'm not going to give that up just so some brat great-great-grandkid of yours can breath in 1 less nanogram of CO2. Wah. Get a life.
I'm more for Biodiesel than electric vehicles at this point unless some major battery or engine breakthrough happens. I whole-heartedly believe Biodiesel is the way to go. Running on cooking waste and degraded biomass definitely beats the toxins batteries release into landfills over generations.
Atari 2600. The console had only 128 bytes of RAM for runtime data that included the call stack! There was no frame buffer-- but some amazing things were done in 128 colors.
You basically had to chase the scan line on those things right?
I never did any 2600 coding. I grew up with the Atari 8-bit home computers, never got into consoles. The Atari 800 was f**kin awesome though. Very neat architecture.
Actually I have a point here- No one cares what you could do with a 386! In two years time, the "Quad-Core" monstrosity will be small and puny, too. Feature bloat that remains below Moore's law is perfectly acceptable.
If you're in the business of selling the latest and greatest barely-beta-quality-at-release software, then yes, you're right. Otherwise, people that have to use the things and think they have to buy way overpriced software every 2 years just to have a usable machine actually give a shit and can't stand it.
This is part of why M$ can not only inflate MSOffice, but also make past versions incompatible.
And this causes more user confusion and help desk calls than anyone cares to admit. This in turn eats into the bottom line of people that use said software because they have to have an extra help desk monkey just to tell people how to do a "Save As..." operation in Office 2007 for the 5,000th time.
This is also why we are phasing out Office on all machines but the classroom machines for *gasp* MS Office classes.
WP8 won't open .docx or xml files.
Who gives a shit, tell them to resend in an older Word format or a different format. If they can't figure out the "Save As..." dialog box, they shouldn't be anywhere near a computer. Hell, there isn't a single OS X app that can't write PDF's.
Just because they're silly enough to want to use docx doesn't mean the rest of the world is.
It won't read ODF either, oh nooooooo!!!!!
Just because it won't read some other format from a COMPLETELY different vendor does not make it useless. docx won't make you type faster or save any more disk space than a WPS file. And I don't know a single word processor that won't read RTF for basic documents.
In short, if people stopped buying proprietary software and could find decent honest people to sell and service boxen, holier than thou WASTING attitude will mean something. As it is, your only stroking your own ego, or should I say UTILIZING it?
Statements like that usually come from MS shills or Hardware manufacturers.
Does Word 6 or Word 97 no longer run? Are there too many features in Word 2007 that didn't exist in Word 6 that 98% of users truly use on a regular basis? Most users just think of Word as a typewriter with a nice backspace key and fonts. The "power users" might know how to use tables, tab stops and might be able to pull off a mail merge or maybe a chart.
Filling landfills with perfectly good computers is pointless when they are still capable machines that could still be doing mundane work somewhere.
And you don't think a gun-toting cop or military man in your country has the potential for reckless homicide? And hell, I'd rather be shot than gutted by a street thug.
Evil is everywhere but I'm willing to accept 3 cops getting killed by a psycho for my wife to be able to defend herself and my children against a mugger or rapist in a dark Walmart parking lot at 2AM. Last I checked, said psycho was convicted.
People will commit evil acts. It's a fact. Doesn't matter if it's a knife, a gun, a fist or an atomic bomb, someone will eventually lose their head.
We already have laws against those sorts of crimes. They're called murder statutes. Attempting to protect people from themselves via mass amounts of legislation is the worst form of tyranny imaginable. My weapons HAVE indeed saved my life. Thankfully I didn't actually have to shoot the guy.
You may like a nanny state but the fact is, when seconds count, cops are minutes away. I'd much rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
Now, would I be against requiring a basic firearms course for first-time handgun purchases? Hell no, I think it's a great idea. Would I be against an IQ test to make sure they aren't retarded? That's stretching it but I kind of agree.
Banning guns is stupid however and is proven to hardly make a dent in overall violent crime. I've lived in a state that banned carrying guns and it was a shithole. Baltimore, MD to be precise.
Unless you ban open sections of pipe, ball bearings, charcoal, sulfur and bird shit, you will never eliminate firearms crime. Criminals by nature, break the law and they will ALWAYS have relatively easy access to firearms or they will simply make them. Guns are not marvels of modern science or chemistry.
I don't get up in the morning hoping I get a chance to legally shoot someone. Having the option in case I need it IS my right however. You might not like guns and you're perfectly free to never own one. I however take that right VERY seriously.
Anyone else find the light produced by CFL bulbs to be a bit "harsh" compared to incandescent bulbs?
I know they have some "yellow" CFL bulbs but I've yet to try one.
I'd rather go with high powered LED's if I had the choice..... and money.
I bet you I'd get more done on that 386 w/ 16MB of RAM than you get done on your Quad-Core monstrosity. I could have a full version of BSD running complete with X, a desktop environment and apps. Might be older versions but still functional. GIMP 2 didn't render GIMP 1 useless. OO.org didn't magically make WordPerfect 8 or StarOffice 5 quit running.
Hell I used to run Photoshop on machines with crappier specs.
32MB RAM would speed things up a bit.
I don't like WASTING system resources, I have no problem with people UTILIZING them. I especially have no use for bug-ridden, flaky, poorly integrated Java apps when there's 1000 native apps that can do the job better.
A freaking file transfer tool should not even remotely use 7.5% of my RAM. Hell, in my book it shouldn't use much more than 750KB of RAM. I can understand bittorrent using a bit more than that but come on 300MB?
Then again, I grew up on machines with between 48KB and 128KB of memory where good code shined and bad code was glaringly obvious.
God I feel old sometimes.... get off my lawn.
Sadly, I'm only in my late 20's.
Says you. I still have machines as slow as 450mhz (a G4 and some older SPARC boxen) still in active service.
I go out of my way to avoid Java. Native apps all the way.
Transmission is tiny, native, well integrated and just plain works and stays out of the way. It's far from hideous looking too.
It's feature creep. Sometimes I just want to download a torrent.
And for that, we have Transmission-GTK!
Seriously, Transmission really got the UI right for a BitTorrent client.
No, GUN violence goes down a bit when gun ownership declines but violent crime rates are actually shown to INCREASE when guns are banned.
Look at the UK trying ban knives with points after their gun ban had little effect on overall violent crime.
When Australia all but banned guns (they might as well have) violent crime went up 44% overall.
Gun bans don't work, they just turn honest, hardworking people into prey. And the honest, hardworking people that keep their guns become criminals and if caught, their lives are destroyed.
Leave my guns alone because I'm not giving them up. Ever. Not to you, this government or the government that gets started after a gun ban successfully gets put into place.
Another are where Linux has messed up is not properly documented kernel driver APIs and ABIs, not providing a stable software and driver ABI,
Yet another reason I run BSD. If it weren't for that USL suit, Linux would never have existed anyway.
The situation with libraries is also a huge mess that makes the windows dll hell of past times seem minor.
That's not just a Linux issue, that's a UNIX issue in general. I really don't care for shared libs, disk space and RAM are stupidly cheap now. What's wrong with compiling libs into the app staticly?
This gets real bad even on my BSD machines. Here's a quick way to cause a variety of interesting mental disorders:
- Install binary package for something like Firefox
- You decide you want features in a new version of let's say..... GIMP
- Your binary package repository only has the old version so you decide to build from source.
- It says your version of GTK is too old, you have GTK+ 2.0.3.4.1.5, you need GTK+ 2.0.3.4.1.5.1
- So you build and install the newer version of GTK and build and install the new version of GIMP
- Cool, GIMP works and the new version is just as awesome as they said it was!
- So you log out and back in.... Wait a sec.... WTF.... gnome-panel quit working.... GAIM explodes.... ARRRRGGGHHHHH
Fuck that, I hate dynamic shared libraries. Gimme static libs any day. I shouldn't have to update my whole damn machine for 6 days just to use a newer version of an app because of retarded dependency issues.
Hell, I don't even think the FreeBSD ports system has a flag to compile using static libs. Neither does APT as far as I know. I know GCC will happily deal with them.
Apple's answer of just bundling the shared lib with the app in an App Bundle seems to work a bit better. Maybe we should all switch to GNUstep.
Hmm...I consider them to be powerful enough to do real work. I'm looking to get one of the new macbook pros, the 15" model.It is powerful enough to run windows in VM (I really only need windows for a few things like Quickbooks), and any other real computer applications I need...some coding, scripting, etc.
I think the guy was talking more about the 17" monstrosities with testicle roasting GPU's and built-in RAID people buy to make up for their small penis. Like the huge 17" Macbook Pro or the even less portable Toshiba Qosmios and the like.
Everything you want to do there with the Macbook Pro I do quite easily on a standard Macbook. I can even play Windows DX and OpenGL games through Parallels. Even with a lot of mac apps going, Parallels doesn't really slow me down until I start running low on RAM.
The Pro is a nice machine but the regular Macbook is certainly no slouch. The GeForce 9400M in the new ones made a big difference.
I'd get one if I really needed better than 1280x800 resolution on my laptop, a little extra horsepower (more L2 cache) and a high-performance GPU.
I guess another thing I don't see about the small netbooks, and possibly it is my age...the screens are TOO damned small to do much reading. Ok, I've slipped recently into the 'reading glasses' crowd now, but, geez...even before that, I couldn't see how people could squint at a small screen for so long, unless they ran the resolutions so low that you basically had 3 characters at a time on the screen.
Really, they aren't that bad. The resolution is only 1024x600. On a 10" screen it's quite readable. Just wear your reading glasses. I'm pretty sure that's less than 115 pixels per inch.
I've done an unscientific comparison of a netbook sitting next to my white Macbook and the text looks no smaller on the netbook. Just less pixels.
It's not just useful for games. OpenCL can take advantage of it in snow leopard. iLife makes good use of it. More of the CoreImage functionality is usable without software fallbacks.
If you just do word processing and spreadsheets, why would you buy a mac anyway?
The 9400M in my Macbook destroys the 64MB AGP Radeon 9600 in my 1.42GHz eMac with ease. It would surely annihilate the 9200 in the G4 mini.
Quake 4 was barely playable at 6-15fps on my eMac at 640x480.
Quake 4 on the 9400M in my Macbook gets well over 40fps at 1024x768. I can't run Quake 4 @ 1280x800 because the game doesn't really support widescreen resolutions.
I also have the DDR2 white Macbook with the 9400M. The DDR3 macbooks would probably do a bit better.
Call of Duty 4 is also quite playable. IL2 1946 runs well in parallels as well.
You forgot much improved memory BANDWIDTH.
The mini moved to DDR3 vs DDR2 RAM.
That's a pretty serious upgrade IMHO.
The 9400M won't run Crysis at 1920x1600 or anything but it's really not that bad.
On my Macbook, it keeps up ok with CoD4 and some other modern titles @ 1280x800. Not in Ultra-Super-Quality w/ Anisotropic filtering and 4x Anti-Aliasing but it does a decent job.
It's not a replacement for a high-end card for serious gaming but it's very power-efficient and doesn't completely suck.
It's awesome in my laptop. I don't know about you but I value my testicles and don't really want a high-end GPU in a laptop.
It's a PERFECT fit for the mini. The DDR3 RAM is a nice touch too. You'd be hard pressed to find a comparable pre-built PC with the same gear and form factor that's cheaper than the mini.
I wouldn't bother with the $800 mini but the $600 mini is reasonably priced. Apple charges far too much for a little RAM and a bigger HDD.