I hope Canonical isn't paying him much, seeing how the vast majority (all?) of the stuff he's bitching about is either GNOME or other specific apps and has nothing to do with Ubuntu.
And even if it were Ubuntu, I'm more worried about hardware detection than about 'shut down' being mispelled as shutdown'.
The thing in the technology world that I absolutely hate the worst is when a company expends extra effort to make a product worse. It make me really despise them.
I would understand if the low budget version was worse because they *didn't* put as much effort into it. But they actually paid someone to make it worse on purpose. I know this practice has been around for years. I just wanted to complain now.
Definitely. Another thing that I find happening is that I'll see an ad for the 50th time or so, but I'll still have no idea what it's promoting until the end. Even the ones that are actually funny or enjoyable in some other way.
This may just be another result of the extremely short attention span TV and the internet have given me.
And here on slashdot I see just as many people flaming those so called zealots. And as many people proclaiming that they don't care if the software or drivers are closed, just make it work (why are they using Linux?).
Everyone's free to speak their mind. Just because you don't agree doesn't make it whining or them zealots. Those zealots, if you recall, are the ones who started this GNU thing.
He was just trying to make the point that Africa is much more than the things we hear on the news. When many people outside of America think of it, they think of McDonalds for good or bad. He could have said 'there's more to America than baseball and apple pie', without implying that apple pie is as bad as Darfur. It's just that the things we usually hear about Africa are bad.
But if he was ascribing a value to Mcdonalds maybe he was comparing Zimbabwe to McDonalds and Darfur to Shock-and-Awe. Zim's a really beautiful place, even if it does have some problems now. I'd still much rather go there than McDonalds.
I understand the privacy watchdogs being concerned about stuff like this. But it amazes me that I don't hear more complaints from Christians. What with some of them claiming Judgement day is near, and soon we're all going to have the mark of the beast on our hand without which we can't buy stuff, fly or do just about anything else. Maybe I'm just not paying attention.
As for the article, the whole thing does seem pretty cool. And he talks about how it only has a range of a couple of inches, making it hard for someone to scan his info without his say so. That's a bit more reassuring. But then it also makes it hard to do all the cool stuff we see in the ads like pick up items in a store and then just walk out as your tag gets scanned.
There should be some kind of flap that blocks a scan, like a mini-faraday cage, that you can easily cover it with. Then we could get these things with long range, but still feel secure.
Re:Hi, allow me to introduce myself...
on
Gaiman Naming Auction
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Anansi The Spider
is a West African folk character who is also quite popular in the carribean and the States.
The main character in Gaiman's book is the son of a spider god.
You get modded a troll because you call something that obviously lots of people like half-assed and Chevy-like. If you had merely asked 'why would someone install Linux on expensive hardware that already comes with it's own OS that is arguably better?' you probably wouldn't have gotten modded down. But no, you called people idiots, masochists and compared their favourite OS to a cheap car. Them's trollin' words guy.
From first hand experience there are several distros that take less than an hour to install and configure. At least one took me less than half an hour.
because a) some people think that ppc processors are better than intel's. b) some people like Linux over the Mac Os.
Some people belong to both these sets.
Other comments have questioned putting Linux on Mac hardware, but they didn't call those who did so idiots or masochists. That's probably why they weren't modded as trolls. I probably would've just modded them redundant since someone asks this question every single time there's an article about Linux on ppc
This might be fun for a hobbyist with lots and lots of extra time and money
So you can't conceive of having $500 and an hour to spare?
Has it occured to you that since there are companies making money from selling and servicing Linux on ppc, that this must be more than an 'obsure hobby'? Did you see the article earlier today about Linus and his mac? And all the comments from people stating how they too would like to run Linux on ppc hardware?
It's not a default. Anyone running xorg can do it. I've tried it but it makes my system (2.6Ghz) really, really slow. Apparently the slowdown is only on Gnome, which makes it kind of ironic that the screenies showing off 2.10 use it. I've heard that doing it on xfce works fine.
I say you're both right. My desktop certainly isn't fragmented. There's enough apps for QT or GTK to use only one.
Besides, I could use some QT or GTK apps in Windows and bitch about the lack of uniformity there too. And it wouldn't be any sillier to do so than to complain about the situation in the Linux world.
That means they make $1.30 per CD track, versus $0.65 per digital track
That can't possibly be true. We buy CDs for $1.30 or less per CD track. Which means their profit per CD track is less than $1.30.
I see your argument, I just don't agree with your numbers. I don't believe they make that much more on physical CD sales per track than on digital tracks. And unless someone shows me some actual numbers on the profit they make for each CD sold I remain unconvinced.
And of course it matters "what it costs" to produce a digital vs physical cd. If it cost $2 per track just to get the song online the costs to sell online music would be to high and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Well then please explain this Mr. Economy. If I can buy music now on a physical CD and it only costs about a $1.50 per track and the recording industry makes a profit off of that even after accounting for the costs of the physical cd, printing, and shipping, how could they not make more of a profit off of me buying for $1 a digital file that has virtually no reproduction costs?
Also, I never said that tracks could be made for 65 cents. Of course an original track costs more than that to make. But since they can then reproduce it as much as they like the actual cost of one of those copies goes dramatically down. Obviously down to $1.50 at most for the physical copy since they make a profit at that price. Much less for the digital version.
The Financial Times, quoting unnamed music executives, said wholesale music prices, thought to be around 65 cents a song, were originally set
artificially low in a bid to stimulate demand
lol!. I guess for them it costs more than 65 cents to make a copy of a 4MB file and upload it to servers? This is utter crap. They actually expect us to believe that a digital version of a song is more expensive than it's CD version? Not that it is for us now, but if they raise prices...
Of course normal joes play games. Who do you think buys all those Xbox's and Playstations? Some of those normal joes need to use computers. I'm sure it would be appreciated by them if they could use the same hardware to play games and work. Though they'd probably still by the console players.
That mp3tunes reminds me that the guy who started easyjet and easycafe started a music download service. Don't think it's been covered here. It'd be nice if one of the European readers found out more and tried to get it on/.'s main page.
If I ever have the time and money I think it would be a cool project to make a car that is almost entirely mechanical. The only electrical parts would be the sound sytem, lights, heat and ac.
The car I grew up with was like this. When it broke down my dad would get out the 500 page maintenance manual (they used to have those things for cars) and fix it himself. Now even mechanics can't fix some cars unless they pay the manufacturer for the 'right' to know how the hell the car's operating system works.
If you don't care about the games it was announced on slashdot 5 days ago that Ubuntu has a graphical
live ppc cd, so there's more than one option. Actaully since it says a mac verstion of this Gentoo one is 'in the works' it looks like Ubuntu is the only option
I wonder how they do on oldworld macs?
Besides that, those screenies of cube look great. Anyone played it?
I guess, as someone else mentinoed, it's the part about the live cd using the same kernal as the installer cd. But others do this, like Mepis. I guess it's a milestone for them.
More of a milestone, I would think, is that there's one for ppc as well which, despite this next article would make it the first graphical live cd for ppc
I'm sorry, but a lot of that, if not rubbish, is an exaggerated account of how things used to be.
The average user will not be adding other repositories to their system. They will not have to use the command line, they wont have to worry, care or even know about dependencies.
They will have a package manager that came with their distro that takes care of everything with one repository. Any program that is not in their repository is beta software at best that the average person does not need to be messing with. More so for programs that only come in source code.
I can install a program in less than 30 seconds. I don't get asked any questions about where it should go. I never have to reboot my computer. If I want to use the internet to klik on an app to install it I can do that too.
If you had a hard time getting an easy productive desktop, you probably just had the wrong distro.
Which is the only weakness when it comes to newcomers. They have to get the right distribution in the first place. But none of those hardships you mention ever has to be suffered through in any of the distros reviewed in this article. And they didn't even cover Mepis or Ubuntu.
All of the 'third world countries' I've been to still had plenty of people with computers as well as internet cafes. I'm sure none of the computers there cost less than $100 or anywhere close.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope Canonical isn't paying him much, seeing how the vast majority (all?) of the stuff he's bitching about is either GNOME or other specific apps and has nothing to do with Ubuntu.
And even if it were Ubuntu, I'm more worried about hardware detection than about 'shut down' being mispelled as shutdown'.
The thing in the technology world that I absolutely hate the worst is when a company expends extra effort to make a product worse. It make me really despise them.
I would understand if the low budget version was worse because they *didn't* put as much effort into it. But they actually paid someone to make it worse on purpose. I know this practice has been around for years. I just wanted to complain now.
Anyway, go Brasil!
if you don't like it don't buy it.
Insecure computers affect us all. We have the right to be upset.
Definitely. Another thing that I find happening is that I'll see an ad for the 50th time or so, but I'll still have no idea what it's promoting until the end. Even the ones that are actually funny or enjoyable in some other way.
This may just be another result of the extremely short attention span TV and the internet have given me.
And here on slashdot I see just as many people flaming those so called zealots. And as many people proclaiming that they don't care if the software or drivers are closed, just make it work (why are they using Linux?).
Everyone's free to speak their mind. Just because you don't agree doesn't make it whining or them zealots. Those zealots, if you recall, are the ones who started this GNU thing.
Works fine on my beige G3 which isn't even officially supported. Have you tried ppc Ubuntu forums?
He was just trying to make the point that Africa is much more than the things we hear on the news. When many people outside of America think of it, they think of McDonalds for good or bad. He could have said 'there's more to America than baseball and apple pie', without implying that apple pie is as bad as Darfur. It's just that the things we usually hear about Africa are bad.
But if he was ascribing a value to Mcdonalds maybe he was comparing Zimbabwe to McDonalds and Darfur to Shock-and-Awe. Zim's a really beautiful place, even if it does have some problems now. I'd still much rather go there than McDonalds.
I understand the privacy watchdogs being concerned about stuff like this. But it amazes me that I don't hear more complaints from Christians. What with some of them claiming Judgement day is near, and soon we're all going to have the mark of the beast on our hand without which we can't buy stuff, fly or do just about anything else. Maybe I'm just not paying attention.
As for the article, the whole thing does seem pretty cool. And he talks about how it only has a range of a couple of inches, making it hard for someone to scan his info without his say so. That's a bit more reassuring. But then it also makes it hard to do all the cool stuff we see in the ads like pick up items in a store and then just walk out as your tag gets scanned.
There should be some kind of flap that blocks a scan, like a mini-faraday cage, that you can easily cover it with. Then we could get these things with long range, but still feel secure.
Anansi The Spider is a West African folk character who is also quite popular in the carribean and the States.
The main character in Gaiman's book is the son of a spider god.
You get modded a troll because you call something that obviously lots of people like half-assed and Chevy-like. If you had merely asked 'why would someone install Linux on expensive hardware that already comes with it's own OS that is arguably better?' you probably wouldn't have gotten modded down. But no, you called people idiots, masochists and compared their favourite OS to a cheap car. Them's trollin' words guy.
From first hand experience there are several distros that take less than an hour to install and configure. At least one took me less than half an hour.
because
a) some people think that ppc processors are better than intel's.
b) some people like Linux over the Mac Os.
Some people belong to both these sets.
Other comments have questioned putting Linux on Mac hardware, but they didn't call those who did so idiots or masochists. That's probably why they weren't modded as trolls. I probably would've just modded them redundant since someone asks this question every single time there's an article about Linux on ppc
This might be fun for a hobbyist with lots and lots of extra time and money
So you can't conceive of having $500 and an hour to spare?
Has it occured to you that since there are companies making money from selling and servicing Linux on ppc, that this must be more than an 'obsure hobby'? Did you see the article earlier today about Linus and his mac? And all the comments from people stating how they too would like to run Linux on ppc hardware?
It's not a default. Anyone running xorg can do it. I've tried it but it makes my system (2.6Ghz) really, really slow. Apparently the slowdown is only on Gnome, which makes it kind of ironic that the screenies showing off 2.10 use it. I've heard that doing it on xfce works fine.
I say you're both right. My desktop certainly isn't fragmented. There's enough apps for QT or GTK to use only one.
Besides, I could use some QT or GTK apps in Windows and bitch about the lack of uniformity there too. And it wouldn't be any sillier to do so than to complain about the situation in the Linux world.
That means they make $1.30 per CD track, versus $0.65 per digital track
That can't possibly be true. We buy CDs for $1.30 or less per CD track. Which means their profit per CD track is less than $1.30.
I see your argument, I just don't agree with your numbers. I don't believe they make that much more on physical CD sales per track than on digital tracks. And unless someone shows me some actual numbers on the profit they make for each CD sold I remain unconvinced.
And of course it matters "what it costs" to produce a digital vs physical cd. If it cost $2 per track just to get the song online the costs to sell online music would be to high and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Well then please explain this Mr. Economy. If I can buy music now on a physical CD and it only costs about a $1.50 per track and the recording industry makes a profit off of that even after accounting for the costs of the physical cd, printing, and shipping, how could they not make more of a profit off of me buying for $1 a digital file that has virtually no reproduction costs?
Also, I never said that tracks could be made for 65 cents. Of course an original track costs more than that to make. But since they can then reproduce it as much as they like the actual cost of one of those copies goes dramatically down. Obviously down to $1.50 at most for the physical copy since they make a profit at that price. Much less for the digital version.
The Financial Times, quoting unnamed music executives, said wholesale music prices, thought to be around 65 cents a song, were originally set artificially low in a bid to stimulate demand
lol!. I guess for them it costs more than 65 cents to make a copy of a 4MB file and upload it to servers? This is utter crap. They actually expect us to believe that a digital version of a song is more expensive than it's CD version? Not that it is for us now, but if they raise prices...
Of course normal joes play games. Who do you think buys all those Xbox's and Playstations?
Some of those normal joes need to use computers. I'm sure it would be appreciated by them if they could use the same hardware to play games and work. Though they'd probably still by the console players.
That mp3tunes reminds me that the guy who started easyjet and easycafe started a music download service. Don't think it's been covered here. It'd be nice if one of the European readers found out more and tried to get it on /.'s main page.
If I ever have the time and money I think it would be a cool project to make a car that is almost entirely mechanical. The only electrical parts would be the sound sytem, lights, heat and ac.
The car I grew up with was like this. When it broke down my dad would get out the 500 page maintenance manual (they used to have those things for cars) and fix it himself. Now even mechanics can't fix some cars unless they pay the manufacturer for the 'right' to know how the hell the car's operating system works.
If you don't care about the games it was announced on slashdot 5 days ago that Ubuntu has a graphical live ppc cd, so there's more than one option. Actaully since it says a mac verstion of this Gentoo one is 'in the works' it looks like Ubuntu is the only option
I wonder how they do on oldworld macs?
Besides that, those screenies of cube look great. Anyone played it?
I guess, as someone else mentinoed, it's the part about the live cd using the same kernal as the installer cd. But others do this, like Mepis. I guess it's a milestone for them.
More of a milestone, I would think, is that there's one for ppc as well which, despite this next article would make it the first graphical live cd for ppc
I'm sorry, but a lot of that, if not rubbish, is an exaggerated account of how things used to be.
The average user will not be adding other repositories to their system. They will not have to use the command line, they wont have to worry, care or even know about dependencies.
They will have a package manager that came with their distro that takes care of everything with one repository. Any program that is not in their repository is beta software at best that the average person does not need to be messing with. More so for programs that only come in source code.
I can install a program in less than 30 seconds. I don't get asked any questions about where it should go. I never have to reboot my computer. If I want to use the internet to klik on an app to install it I can do that too.
If you had a hard time getting an easy productive desktop, you probably just had the wrong distro.
Which is the only weakness when it comes to newcomers. They have to get the right distribution in the first place. But none of those hardships you mention ever has to be suffered through in any of the distros reviewed in this article. And they didn't even cover Mepis or Ubuntu.
All of the 'third world countries' I've been to still had plenty of people with computers as well as internet cafes. I'm sure none of the computers there cost less than $100 or anywhere close.
So of course this will help
didn't see this one before i posted. or maybe I have a split personality