It's a stupid statement. No two ways about it. dpkg and rpm are pretty close to functional equivalents; apt and urpmi and yum (ugh) are more or less functionally equivalent; but comparing rpm to apt is just plain dumb. They work at different layers.
Obviously you don't know about apt4rpm either; since its very existence contradicts your assertion.
I did the calculations on this one. Energy we add isn't going to do jack, really. Average solar radiation that hits the Earth's surface: 240W/m^2. Assuming albedo of 0.20, we end up with 192W/m^2 being absorbed (and most of that subsequently re-emitted) by the Earth's surface. So now, let's take that and multiply it by the surface of the Earth, in square meters... and we get about 1.0e17 watts, over the Earth's entire surface. Small perturbations of this, on the order of a few tens of trillion watts, will not result in large changes in temperature. (Please take this with a grain of salt; I am not a climate modeller).
The problem is that when you increase the "greenhouse effect" (increasing atmospheric emissivity) you change the amount of those 1.0e17 watts emitted from Earth that get reflected back. You don't need a *huge* change to make the enormous amount of heat we as humans are generating on Earth look entirely trivial.
So no, I don't think I'm going to worry about pumping a trillion watts into the atmosphere nearly as much as doubling the CO2 content in the next hundred years. That's going to have a much larger effect. (strangely enough, a doubling in CO2 concentrations is one of the more *conservative* SRES scenarios the IPCC has proposed...)
Is that an interest free loan? If they're giving you a $5 million interest free loan for 5 years.. shit, they're basically -giving- you 2.5 million dollars. You can get 10% interest if you're smart about where you put your money. 10% interest, cumulative, on let's say 4 million of the 5 million, is an awful lot of money... principal + 60%, to be precise. So your $4 million invested turns into 6.4 million while the record company's giving you this "loan". Sounds like a good deal to me...
But even if they're giving you the money at say 5% interest... it's still a pretty picture. I'd take a $5 million interest-free loan any day, particularly if there's also potential for -making- money during that period...
Sorry, I gotta have some fun here at your expense.
SDL isn't included with every Windows and Mac system like DirectX is (emphasis added). Macs bundled with DirectX? Since when? *grin*
However, many developers also very used to working with DirectX - I think it'd be a burden (how much of one, I'm not sure) to relearn new APIs. Well, if they're going to do any porting at all they're going to be learning new APIs. If they already know OpenGL (they'd better, damn it) then the remaining APIs are rather simple; maybe a few days learning?
So overall, small time investments that result in sizeable dividends, if both APIs are just as easy to develop with. This I can't answer to.
You eat tuna, right? Tuna are carniverous fish....
So -- who gives a fuck about carnivores, too eh? What about omnivores? Like, oh say, Humans?:)
Muahaha.
Yeah yeah, it's funny and all, but it's pretty fucking uncool on a number of levels. People cutting themselves is really bad news; please don't make fun of it.
Re refusing to sell "Mature" games to minors... would you rather have them just pirate the game? It's simpler, easier, the installers are better, and the hacked game is almost always easier to run (don't have to search for a CD).
If you can't go into a store and buy it, why not just pirate it? That's what I'd do if I were in that situation.
I like the source/sink bit. It brings up an interesting point.
The more CO2 we have in the atmosphere, the worse this will become. So there's an interesting thing going on here -- even if we're dissipating far more heat by using massive amounts of fusion power, more will escape to space than it does currently.
This -could- level out quite nicely -- but it would be prudent to calculate what kind of a temperature rise would be "acceptable" and limit energy expenditure appropriately.
OK, basically this is what I've read. I don't go to stupid conspiracy theorist sites to get my info (because they're full of shit) -- I try to gather as much of it as I can from the published literature. And no, I don't quote things if they don't come from a reasonably reputable source.
As to what kind of problems, etc, read the WHO paper again -- it's fully referenced, so if you're determined you can go and look up the papers referenced. That would answer the "proven by who" and "proven how" questions. It also covers at least one of the proposed mechanisms (microheating).
The WHO paper covers this, but unfortunately they're rather fuzzy about it. So I'll do my best to clarify where the hell their numbers came from.
You can have one frequency modulated by another -- a harmonic. The microwaves could be considered to be the base frequency, and the ELF frequency (the transmit beat; described lower down) to be the harmonic. I believe this answers your "frequency component" question. (Please don't argue this; it's a waste of both of our time to argue about known things)
To answer your "What biological frequencies" question, I'll link you to this ass-ugly page: Brain wave functions. Yes, it's ass ugly; yes, it could hardly be considered authoritative; but, pretty much everything I've read agrees with this. This is all pretty solid stuff; don't bother attacking it.
Now that we both know what frequency ranges the human brain can operate in, let's look at GSM. GSM has a basic 'flash rate' of 217 flashes per second, an ELF frequency in and of itself, but not one known to be important in the brain or body (hard to argue -- don't bother; well documented). However, these flashes happen in groups of 25 -- which means that you have an effective frequency of 8.34hz -- this is where the WHO paper got this number. This is the 'transmit beat' (my word) referred to above. This is well within the frequency for alpha brain waves. The source of my info on this is unfortunately a vested interest (they sell products to protect your precious grey mush from cell phone microwave radiation): RFSafe on cellular safety. However, what I have used from this article doesn't state anything new; it just gives enough detail to figure out where the WHO people got their numbers.
I believe that answers your question about "biological processes".
I'm sorry if you think this is bullshit; it's my firm opinion that it is not. I have seen plenty of research in recent times on the dangers of microwave radiation. However, I also am not attached to this being a real problem; I don't see it as some kind of open-and-shut case of safe or unsafe. I'd love to see some well-referenced counter-opinions -- I'd love to find out that cell phones are a lot safer than I think they are (hey, it'd be convenient).
In terms of safety, there is no black and white -- things cannot be declared to be "safe" or "unsafe". It's all relative. And my original argument -- that CDMA is -relatively- more safe than GSM -- is rather hard to disprove. No body of literature indicates it's healthier to receives more microwaves with your brain.
Sorry but this is bullshit! I don't think mobile phones produce "coherent" microwaves, they're not masers after all.
I believe what's meant here, from further reading on the web, is that the "coherence" component is the modulation frequency. For instance, most cell phones will transmit in bursts, then shut off for a few milliseconds, then transmit again. The frequency of this (if regular) is very similar in action to ELF radiation, which is proven to cause all sorts of problems. CDMA, as the article says, is not as bad about this because it doesn't have a regular 'beat' to its transmissions.
WTF is "oscillatory similitude" - does it have anything to do with crytals.
This is just fancy wording for saying that there is a frequency component of the microwaves emitted by cell phones which is very close in frequency to the frequency of some biological process.
I don't think I'll bother to dignify your last (stupid) jab by a comment about it, other than to say that it's a stupid jab.
Completely irrelevant. Cell phone radiation intensity is already miniscule compared to the ambient radiation we receive from space and our surroundings.
I'm quite sure you're incorrect on this point. For all intents and purposes, you can consider a cell phone to be a point source -- intensity of radiation varies with the inverse of the cube of the distance from the source. Background radiation is almost by definition the same everywhere. You're not going to see anywhere near the equivalent of a 200mW microwave radiation source (CDMA power level) from background radiation in that frequency band. Reference: How Cellular Phone Technologies Compare
Furthermore, one can show almost with high school physics that even if the intensities were much higher, the radiation from cell phones CANNOT disrupt biological systems.
(Rest snipped: Summary is that non-ionizing radiation cannot disrupt biological systems except by heating effects). Counter-argument: If it's so safe, then why are there standards bodies which set exposure limits for non-ionizing radiation? Microwaves can, and do, disrupt biological systems at levels well below those which would apparently cause heating effects. This is due to micro-heating of small areas -- interference patterns. In fact, there's enough concern that the WHO wrote a paper on it: Biological Effects of Microwaves and Mobile Telephony.
Getting back on topic, one interesting conclusion of the paper is that CDMA is considerably safer than GSM -- GSM's maximum transmit power level is about 1 watt, whereas CDMA has a maximum transmit power level of about 200 milliwatts.
Overall, I don't like that the US is shoving their weight around, but I also don't think CDMA is a technically inferior solution. Possibly the Japanese are suffering from not-invented-here or not-funded-here syndrome on this one. Time will tell.
Err, pardon me, but that is not my experience. My experience is that the DRI drivers for r100, r200, mach64 aka Rage Pro, and i830 hardware are quite solid. I know performance for r100 and r200 isn't up to what the Windows drivers are; explanation for this below. Explanation for them getting boned by XiG is a bit more difficult; however, I do know that they continue to improve the code (I track the dri-devel mailing list). What is interesting, though, is that XiG's stuff beats out ATI's own in the majority of cases. Good on XiG:)
The problem with saying that they are slower is that in truth, they weren't provided with full specs. They don't have specs for the HyperZ technology -- which means they can't make use of the hardware's ability to do Z buffer clears in one op code, for instance. I'm still hella glad they have what they have, though -- the r200 driver is still the fastest and most featureful opensource 3D driver on Linux.
I put my money where my mouth is; I bought myself a 128M Radeon 9000 recently rather than buying an nVidia card. I got tired of the crashing, disgusting power consumption, and fan noise of nVidia's offerings. I simply wanted a really solid video card for some 3D and a lot of 2D that supported DVI and was going to last for a while. Basically, a high tech video card for a code monkey:)
By the way, I'm sorry I patronized a bit there -- I was writing in a hurry, and I'm none too fond of NDIS wrappers for a number of reasons. I wish you hadn't resorted to patronizing me, however.
Anyhow, onto the body....
Yeah, but if people buy some card because of $x feature knowing that there's NDIS wrappers, when they wouldn't otherwise, it gives companies less economic incentive to develop Linux drivers -- they aren't losing significant market share.
And they aren't gaining many sales to people who use NDIS wrappers, I think those people would say "Ok I have linux, I want a card to work in linux, oh this card supports it natively. If you buy a card for linux that uses some driver that probably won't work, you're not a very smart consumer and don't deserve native linux support in the first place. It's way better to use some kind of hardware with a manufacturers driver (most of the time, unless it really sucks but then at least you look for an open source alternative.) The only people that would use the NDIS wrappers are the people who might have bought a computer a year ago or from gateway or something like that, or found some hardware in a junked computer, then they say "Hey I wish this would work in linux" download some wrapper and they're set. And besides it's not like the company knows what OS anyone is running the hardware on right after they buy it.
You think most people would actually ask that? Hmm, you're assuming the manufacturer lists enough information on their website or on the box to _determine_ that the device does, or does not, have linux support. This is not always an easy task, even using corroborating information from the community. If there is an NDIS wrapper available which is nice and friendly and easy to use, a lot of people are apathetic enough to say, "well, OK, it doesn't work as well as I'd hoped, but I'll use it anyhow" -- and thus, the item won't get returned with said reason, and so on and so forth - and no feedback gets back to company.
A really nasty issue with the NDIS wrapper approach is that an unpleasant company could claim Linux support when really they just supply the NDIS wrapper on their CD, further confusing the marketplace. You could then have devices which don't have native drivers claiming linux support, beside devices that do have native drivers yet do not claim linux support. Talk about havoc!
As to the 'used' argument... The flip side to it is that once most devices have been out 1-2 years, there is linux support. There are exceptions, but they are usually limited to graphics cards and other such 'complicated' devices.
Please don't just look at the micro scale -- no one cares about Your Little Problem.
That's exactly why you should use a wrapper, the company isn't going to give a damn that you want to use the hardware in linux so why would they support it? They can't just look at their profits and say "Look at all these people buying our hardware to use in linux, we should develop some drivers for them" they just see people buying the hardware they have no idea what the people are going to do with them.
Apathy is a shitty solution. Companies do end up caring, when it hits them in the pocketbook. If they look online, and see how many people, for instance, are mad about Intel Pro Wireless stuff, the company's going to be thinking "Hmm, this can't be good PR"... alternatively, they might be thinking "We're probably losing sales because of this". Both are good arguments for spending a few dollars to create a Linux driver -- it results in community goodwill, and it results in direct profits. Also, a factor I think some companies are starting to clue into is that people who run Linux tend to be considerably more clueful than average -- and thus the average majority ask -them-, the "gurus", when they're going to make a purchasing decision or such. The reasons are as follows:
because they know that their "guru" will make sure they don't get a p
Yeah, but if people buy some card because of $x feature knowing that there's NDIS wrappers, when they wouldn't otherwise, it gives companies less economic incentive to develop Linux drivers -- they aren't losing significant market share.
Please don't just look at the micro scale -- no one cares about Your Little Problem. It's more important to solve the larger problems (like companies that don't *properly* support their hardware aka don't provide linux drivers or specs to create said drivers) than to solve stupid problems like "waa I got a shitty wireless NIC, I want it to work, waa".
Buy another NIC, and send the original back to the manufacturer charred and burned, with a note saying "It's about as useful in this state to me as it was when I hadn't drenched it in gasoline and tossed a match at it". A less flippant solution that's less destructive to the environment (heh) is to get a refund for the piece of hardware. That sends a clearer, and less ambiguous message.
What they (the management company IUSN) done is in pretty clear violation of all propriety. You don't modify your customer's webpages, block content, violate local laws, etc. Again, RTFA. Just because the son is a nice guy doesn't mean the business that father and son run is anything nice.
Oh my. Not confidence inspiring. I wonder how many other networks like this aren't built to withstand problems from, er, without... considering the error originated on an external system.
I do wonder whatever made NASDAQ think that all networks connected to it should be trusted. That's just foolishness. And to let it affect the system so dramatically... well, it's interesting.
Plenty of meat for the conspiracy theorists. I'll leave the rest for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, hunter-gatherer societies spent something like 2 hours per person per day on food gathering. The rest was playtime.
Compare that to the current 8-hours-a-day drudgery, followed by "chores" aka work at home. Are we -really- so well off?
sshutup-theo
Anyone -else- recall the OpenSSH exploits ca v3.4?
Wear levelling can mitigate this to some extent, but fundamentally you still do have this problem. This is why I haven't moved to flash.
It's a stupid statement. No two ways about it. dpkg and rpm are pretty close to functional equivalents; apt and urpmi and yum (ugh) are more or less functionally equivalent; but comparing rpm to apt is just plain dumb. They work at different layers.
Obviously you don't know about apt4rpm either; since its very existence contradicts your assertion.
I did the calculations on this one. Energy we add isn't going to do jack, really. Average solar radiation that hits the Earth's surface: 240W/m^2. Assuming albedo of 0.20, we end up with 192W/m^2 being absorbed (and most of that subsequently re-emitted) by the Earth's surface. So now, let's take that and multiply it by the surface of the Earth, in square meters... and we get about 1.0e17 watts, over the Earth's entire surface. Small perturbations of this, on the order of a few tens of trillion watts, will not result in large changes in temperature. (Please take this with a grain of salt; I am not a climate modeller).
The problem is that when you increase the "greenhouse effect" (increasing atmospheric emissivity) you change the amount of those 1.0e17 watts emitted from Earth that get reflected back. You don't need a *huge* change to make the enormous amount of heat we as humans are generating on Earth look entirely trivial.
So no, I don't think I'm going to worry about pumping a trillion watts into the atmosphere nearly as much as doubling the CO2 content in the next hundred years. That's going to have a much larger effect. (strangely enough, a doubling in CO2 concentrations is one of the more *conservative* SRES scenarios the IPCC has proposed...)
Is that an interest free loan? If they're giving you a $5 million interest free loan for 5 years.. shit, they're basically -giving- you 2.5 million dollars. You can get 10% interest if you're smart about where you put your money. 10% interest, cumulative, on let's say 4 million of the 5 million, is an awful lot of money... principal + 60%, to be precise. So your $4 million invested turns into 6.4 million while the record company's giving you this "loan". Sounds like a good deal to me...
But even if they're giving you the money at say 5% interest... it's still a pretty picture. I'd take a $5 million interest-free loan any day, particularly if there's also potential for -making- money during that period...
Sorry, I gotta have some fun here at your expense.
SDL isn't included with every Windows and Mac system like DirectX is (emphasis added). Macs bundled with DirectX? Since when? *grin*
However, many developers also very used to working with DirectX - I think it'd be a burden (how much of one, I'm not sure) to relearn new APIs. Well, if they're going to do any porting at all they're going to be learning new APIs. If they already know OpenGL (they'd better, damn it) then the remaining APIs are rather simple; maybe a few days learning?
So overall, small time investments that result in sizeable dividends, if both APIs are just as easy to develop with. This I can't answer to.
*cough* SDL *cough*
Seriously. OpenGL with SDL gets you Mac, Linux, and Windows. Why bother with anything else?
http://www.libsdl.org/
Dillo is faster. Dillo rocks.
You eat tuna, right? Tuna are carniverous fish.... So -- who gives a fuck about carnivores, too eh? What about omnivores? Like, oh say, Humans? :)
Muahaha.
Yeah yeah, it's funny and all, but it's pretty fucking uncool on a number of levels. People cutting themselves is really bad news; please don't make fun of it.
Re refusing to sell "Mature" games to minors... would you rather have them just pirate the game? It's simpler, easier, the installers are better, and the hacked game is almost always easier to run (don't have to search for a CD).
If you can't go into a store and buy it, why not just pirate it? That's what I'd do if I were in that situation.
Usually unreadable output is called a bug.
Likewise with unexpected behaviour when you go outside the expected set of inputs -- eg programs that sigsegv when called with no arguments...
Heh, your "hello world" example has a bug.
:P
Specifically, you didn't tack a newline onto the end of the string, so it prints at the beginning of the prompt which appears after running it.
A common mistake
Proper code (with proper punctuation and capitalization):
perl -e 'print "Hello, world!\n";'
I like the source/sink bit. It brings up an interesting point.
The more CO2 we have in the atmosphere, the worse this will become. So there's an interesting thing going on here -- even if we're dissipating far more heat by using massive amounts of fusion power, more will escape to space than it does currently.
This -could- level out quite nicely -- but it would be prudent to calculate what kind of a temperature rise would be "acceptable" and limit energy expenditure appropriately.
Interesting idea. Might be a good application for OLED displays.
One concern, though -- what about the cameras?
OK, basically this is what I've read. I don't go to stupid conspiracy theorist sites to get my info (because they're full of shit) -- I try to gather as much of it as I can from the published literature. And no, I don't quote things if they don't come from a reasonably reputable source.
As to what kind of problems, etc, read the WHO paper again -- it's fully referenced, so if you're determined you can go and look up the papers referenced. That would answer the "proven by who" and "proven how" questions. It also covers at least one of the proposed mechanisms (microheating).
The WHO paper covers this, but unfortunately they're rather fuzzy about it. So I'll do my best to clarify where the hell their numbers came from.
You can have one frequency modulated by another -- a harmonic. The microwaves could be considered to be the base frequency, and the ELF frequency (the transmit beat; described lower down) to be the harmonic. I believe this answers your "frequency component" question. (Please don't argue this; it's a waste of both of our time to argue about known things)
To answer your "What biological frequencies" question, I'll link you to this ass-ugly page: Brain wave functions. Yes, it's ass ugly; yes, it could hardly be considered authoritative; but, pretty much everything I've read agrees with this. This is all pretty solid stuff; don't bother attacking it.
Now that we both know what frequency ranges the human brain can operate in, let's look at GSM. GSM has a basic 'flash rate' of 217 flashes per second, an ELF frequency in and of itself, but not one known to be important in the brain or body (hard to argue -- don't bother; well documented). However, these flashes happen in groups of 25 -- which means that you have an effective frequency of 8.34hz -- this is where the WHO paper got this number. This is the 'transmit beat' (my word) referred to above. This is well within the frequency for alpha brain waves. The source of my info on this is unfortunately a vested interest (they sell products to protect your precious grey mush from cell phone microwave radiation): RFSafe on cellular safety. However, what I have used from this article doesn't state anything new; it just gives enough detail to figure out where the WHO people got their numbers.
I believe that answers your question about "biological processes".
I'm sorry if you think this is bullshit; it's my firm opinion that it is not. I have seen plenty of research in recent times on the dangers of microwave radiation. However, I also am not attached to this being a real problem; I don't see it as some kind of open-and-shut case of safe or unsafe. I'd love to see some well-referenced counter-opinions -- I'd love to find out that cell phones are a lot safer than I think they are (hey, it'd be convenient).
In terms of safety, there is no black and white -- things cannot be declared to be "safe" or "unsafe". It's all relative. And my original argument -- that CDMA is -relatively- more safe than GSM -- is rather hard to disprove. No body of literature indicates it's healthier to receives more microwaves with your brain.
Sorry but this is bullshit! I don't think mobile phones produce "coherent" microwaves, they're not masers after all.
I believe what's meant here, from further reading on the web, is that the "coherence" component is the modulation frequency. For instance, most cell phones will transmit in bursts, then shut off for a few milliseconds, then transmit again. The frequency of this (if regular) is very similar in action to ELF radiation, which is proven to cause all sorts of problems. CDMA, as the article says, is not as bad about this because it doesn't have a regular 'beat' to its transmissions.
WTF is "oscillatory similitude" - does it have anything to do with crytals.
This is just fancy wording for saying that there is a frequency component of the microwaves emitted by cell phones which is very close in frequency to the frequency of some biological process.
I don't think I'll bother to dignify your last (stupid) jab by a comment about it, other than to say that it's a stupid jab.
Completely irrelevant. Cell phone radiation intensity is already miniscule compared to the ambient radiation we receive from space and our surroundings.
I'm quite sure you're incorrect on this point. For all intents and purposes, you can consider a cell phone to be a point source -- intensity of radiation varies with the inverse of the cube of the distance from the source. Background radiation is almost by definition the same everywhere. You're not going to see anywhere near the equivalent of a 200mW microwave radiation source (CDMA power level) from background radiation in that frequency band. Reference: How Cellular Phone Technologies Compare
Furthermore, one can show almost with high school physics that even if the intensities were much higher, the radiation from cell phones CANNOT disrupt biological systems.
(Rest snipped: Summary is that non-ionizing radiation cannot disrupt biological systems except by heating effects). Counter-argument: If it's so safe, then why are there standards bodies which set exposure limits for non-ionizing radiation? Microwaves can, and do, disrupt biological systems at levels well below those which would apparently cause heating effects. This is due to micro-heating of small areas -- interference patterns. In fact, there's enough concern that the WHO wrote a paper on it: Biological Effects of Microwaves and Mobile Telephony.
Getting back on topic, one interesting conclusion of the paper is that CDMA is considerably safer than GSM -- GSM's maximum transmit power level is about 1 watt, whereas CDMA has a maximum transmit power level of about 200 milliwatts.
Overall, I don't like that the US is shoving their weight around, but I also don't think CDMA is a technically inferior solution. Possibly the Japanese are suffering from not-invented-here or not-funded-here syndrome on this one. Time will tell.
Err, pardon me, but that is not my experience. My experience is that the DRI drivers for r100, r200, mach64 aka Rage Pro, and i830 hardware are quite solid. I know performance for r100 and r200 isn't up to what the Windows drivers are; explanation for this below. Explanation for them getting boned by XiG is a bit more difficult; however, I do know that they continue to improve the code (I track the dri-devel mailing list). What is interesting, though, is that XiG's stuff beats out ATI's own in the majority of cases. Good on XiG :)
The problem with saying that they are slower is that in truth, they weren't provided with full specs. They don't have specs for the HyperZ technology -- which means they can't make use of the hardware's ability to do Z buffer clears in one op code, for instance. I'm still hella glad they have what they have, though -- the r200 driver is still the fastest and most featureful opensource 3D driver on Linux.
I put my money where my mouth is; I bought myself a 128M Radeon 9000 recently rather than buying an nVidia card. I got tired of the crashing, disgusting power consumption, and fan noise of nVidia's offerings. I simply wanted a really solid video card for some 3D and a lot of 2D that supported DVI and was going to last for a while. Basically, a high tech video card for a code monkey :)
Anyhow, my 2c on the issue.
By the way, I'm sorry I patronized a bit there -- I was writing in a hurry, and I'm none too fond of NDIS wrappers for a number of reasons. I wish you hadn't resorted to patronizing me, however.
Anyhow, onto the body....
Yeah, but if people buy some card because of $x feature knowing that there's NDIS wrappers, when they wouldn't otherwise, it gives companies less economic incentive to develop Linux drivers -- they aren't losing significant market share.
And they aren't gaining many sales to people who use NDIS wrappers, I think those people would say "Ok I have linux, I want a card to work in linux, oh this card supports it natively. If you buy a card for linux that uses some driver that probably won't work, you're not a very smart consumer and don't deserve native linux support in the first place. It's way better to use some kind of hardware with a manufacturers driver (most of the time, unless it really sucks but then at least you look for an open source alternative.) The only people that would use the NDIS wrappers are the people who might have bought a computer a year ago or from gateway or something like that, or found some hardware in a junked computer, then they say "Hey I wish this would work in linux" download some wrapper and they're set. And besides it's not like the company knows what OS anyone is running the hardware on right after they buy it.
You think most people would actually ask that? Hmm, you're assuming the manufacturer lists enough information on their website or on the box to _determine_ that the device does, or does not, have linux support. This is not always an easy task, even using corroborating information from the community. If there is an NDIS wrapper available which is nice and friendly and easy to use, a lot of people are apathetic enough to say, "well, OK, it doesn't work as well as I'd hoped, but I'll use it anyhow" -- and thus, the item won't get returned with said reason, and so on and so forth - and no feedback gets back to company.
A really nasty issue with the NDIS wrapper approach is that an unpleasant company could claim Linux support when really they just supply the NDIS wrapper on their CD, further confusing the marketplace. You could then have devices which don't have native drivers claiming linux support, beside devices that do have native drivers yet do not claim linux support. Talk about havoc!
As to the 'used' argument... The flip side to it is that once most devices have been out 1-2 years, there is linux support. There are exceptions, but they are usually limited to graphics cards and other such 'complicated' devices.
Please don't just look at the micro scale -- no one cares about Your Little Problem.
That's exactly why you should use a wrapper, the company isn't going to give a damn that you want to use the hardware in linux so why would they support it? They can't just look at their profits and say "Look at all these people buying our hardware to use in linux, we should develop some drivers for them" they just see people buying the hardware they have no idea what the people are going to do with them.
Apathy is a shitty solution. Companies do end up caring, when it hits them in the pocketbook. If they look online, and see how many people, for instance, are mad about Intel Pro Wireless stuff, the company's going to be thinking "Hmm, this can't be good PR"... alternatively, they might be thinking "We're probably losing sales because of this". Both are good arguments for spending a few dollars to create a Linux driver -- it results in community goodwill, and it results in direct profits. Also, a factor I think some companies are starting to clue into is that people who run Linux tend to be considerably more clueful than average -- and thus the average majority ask -them-, the "gurus", when they're going to make a purchasing decision or such. The reasons are as follows:
Yeah, but if people buy some card because of $x feature knowing that there's NDIS wrappers, when they wouldn't otherwise, it gives companies less economic incentive to develop Linux drivers -- they aren't losing significant market share.
Please don't just look at the micro scale -- no one cares about Your Little Problem. It's more important to solve the larger problems (like companies that don't *properly* support their hardware aka don't provide linux drivers or specs to create said drivers) than to solve stupid problems like "waa I got a shitty wireless NIC, I want it to work, waa".
Buy another NIC, and send the original back to the manufacturer charred and burned, with a note saying "It's about as useful in this state to me as it was when I hadn't drenched it in gasoline and tossed a match at it". A less flippant solution that's less destructive to the environment (heh) is to get a refund for the piece of hardware. That sends a clearer, and less ambiguous message.
Take a more long-term look at things. Please.
Everyone loves a moron! (They taste like chicken; best parbroiled)
-- Funny comments from the Vegan Underground
Umm. RTFA.
What they (the management company IUSN) done is in pretty clear violation of all propriety. You don't modify your customer's webpages, block content, violate local laws, etc. Again, RTFA. Just because the son is a nice guy doesn't mean the business that father and son run is anything nice.
Oh my. Not confidence inspiring. I wonder how many other networks like this aren't built to withstand problems from, er, without... considering the error originated on an external system.
I do wonder whatever made NASDAQ think that all networks connected to it should be trusted. That's just foolishness. And to let it affect the system so dramatically... well, it's interesting.
Plenty of meat for the conspiracy theorists. I'll leave the rest for them.