I got one of the last 28" Widescreen CRT TVs on general sale in the UK for £120/$180 1-2 years ago. Brilliant picture, excellent value, but it's pretty damn heavy. I can *just* about lift it by myself. Got it as a bedroom TV, rested on the bed while clearing space, and it 'bounced' onto the floor - landed upside down about 1" from my foot. Didn't do *it* any harm but I would have been in hospital if it had landed on my foot. On balance, I'll be glad when these monsters have gone and I can have TVs than can be lifted/moved without being seriously dangerous, but I'm going to get a few years out of it first!
Can't even imagine how difficult a 36" CRT is to move...
They wanted the US to stop propping up the undemocratic Saudi regime which survives due to US support.
And replace it with something equally undemocratic and maybe even slightly more brutal in all probability, which would also be totally hostile to the US. Much as I hate to see the US supporting the truly appalling Saudi regime, the alternative appears to be (marginally) worse in this case. Even as a non-US citizen I can understand the US policy in this case (even if it may not be the best course in the long term).
The bathroom stuff isn't what annoys me personally, though I don't look forward to being near somebody who does have a problem with it.
It'll be a big fat guy stuffed with burgers, nachos, chilli and weak beer. And you'll have to sit next to him for 58 minutes after his control goes. And you'll *never* want to travel by air again!
But seriously, they need an emergency provision where you can go if you have to, but must endure the humiliation of being watched throughout by one of the crew. If you *have* to go, you'll put up with this.
the only reason viruses are not a big problem is that Linux is not a big target, being such a niche OS few people use. Windows is as secure as Linux is and perhaps due to the automatic updates usually kept more up to date.
Yeah, right. How about a few facts: Linux (and Unix) has historically had virtually no 'autorun' (inserted media, email viewing, activex etc.) type promblems. Windows has, and over the years has gradually blocked and dropped the features that caused the problem. But holes still remain because the design philosophy was wrong in the first place. Also, automated updates are usually set up pretty much the same on Linux as on Windows these days. Except that naturally they at least default to installing security updates for nearly all common Linux programs. One last thought as a result of this: Think of a common scenario - on a particular day, your browser, the Flash player and the Adobe Reader all have day zero exploits. On Windows you have three seperate updates, which may not get flagged immediately, involving three different updaters. In common Linux distros, you'll get something like a popup 'install security updates', click on this, type admin password, and that's it, flash, adobe reader and browser all sorted. This is quite a common setup (these three bits of software being the most important and used).
Mark this post and see it come true! In 5 years Linux will STILL be at under 4%
Sounds good to me. If Linux can go from about 0.1% 10 years ago, to 1%ish now, to 3% in 5 years, then it'll probably be heading for 10%+ in 10 years, and at that point it'll get near-universal hardware support for mass consumer hardware (particularly because the hardware companies will realize at some point that it's cheaper to release an open source driver and then it can be recompiled and tested by the kernel maintainers as necessary, at no expense to your company).
To generalize, I'm quite happy with Linux's slow but steady growth rate.
Both Linux and GCC are pretty much where they were 10 years ago, there has been little or no expansion into the desktop user base and it is such today that most people who try Linux end up dumping it and going back to windows, which works with all of their programs and devices
It's difficult to tell but most stats seem to support a 5x to 10x increase in Linux use over the last 10 years. Starting from a very low base, I would say Linux has gone from 'totally insignificant' to 'minor, but definitely relevant'.
Lets face it, windows just works while Linux is usually a pain in the ass to configure.
As a general statement, this is completely false.
With lots of common PCs and peripherals, Linux 'just works', with no need to have driver discs, and supports devices long after Windows drivers have been discontinued. My CanoScan N650U has no Windows drivers for Vista and above (and the XP drivers don't work on Vista). It's supported perfectly in Linux just by plugging it in and probably will be until the day it dies. I use what you might call very common standard hardware and it all works just fine in Linux with no configuration or extra drivers, truly 'plug and play'. I also recognize that some hardware isn't well supported, but my impression is that the situation improves year by year.
You realize that birth control is just another form of abortion, right?
WTF? Condoms and the standard birth control pill, two of the most popular methods of contraception, can in no way be classed as 'a form of abortion' since they *prevent* fertilisation. You do understand that the word 'abortion' refers to aborting a pregnancy that has actually started? *Some* forms of birth control like the coil and the 'morning after pill' could be classed as a form of very early abortion.
These should be prescribed for depressive illness (in addition to any other treatment, not instead!).
These really lift my spirits when I'm down.
I've been pleasantly surprized to find that they work really well even in the middle of the UK winter (i.e. today - 12th Dec - they are just finally fading out now, at nearly 3pm).
Just about any child would love these, and at least some of them will then find the solar panel/gearing system/prism interesting.
Linux developers can arbitrarily stop supporting whatever they damn well don't feel like supporting any longer so they can go program extra functions into their USB foam dart cannon. Just sayin'.
True...but lots of old drivers probably just need recompiling to keep working fine, with no real 'support' required. That's probably why my CanoScan N650U still works with the latest Linux kernel despite not being supported by any Windows version after XP.
A driver that breaks suspend and hibernate, needs power management tweaks to allow the PC to boot without freezing up and makes compiz hang on a regular basis "works pretty damn well?"
All this works fine for me. The question is whether your experience or mine is typical. Judging from the Ubuntu forums and other sources such as/., I get the impression suspend/resume/compiz work OK for most people. Of course, a good quality FOSS driver is the best option and I'll certainly try it out once I get onto the kernel version referred to in TFA.
But I thought AMD/ATI opened up their specs? I know that here on/. we hear all the time "if they would only open up their specs we would take care of the rest". So shouldn't the ATI drivers for Linux be much better now?
The full specs were provided relatively recently and this is a highly complex project which will probably take another year or two to produce reasonably mature drivers.
Waste of time but here are the sort of sources we're talking about: Atmospheric temperatures (satellite, weather balloons etc) Sea temperatures Land Temperatures Ice Core samples Tree rings Growing season changes Species Latitude/altitude changes Arctic ice retreat General glacier retreat. Peripheral Antarctic ice shelf collapse Measured mean sea level rise. Collected and analysed by various independent bodies across the world for decades. All essentially showing the same broad picture. I'd suggest looking at the IPCC reports but obviously if you believe that all the world's climatologists are conspiring together then no evidence will be sufficient.
What are climate forecasts? Are they not simply long-term weather forecasts?
OK, I'll assume you are really asking this question.
Consider the two following problems: a) Predicting the favorite color of an individual. b) Predicting the distribution of favorite colors in a large group of people.
a) Is typically impossible to do with any degree of accuracy. b) Can be done fairly accurately.
If you don't understand the difference in difficulty between predicting average values of a large number of items and predicting specific individual values then you're wasting everyone's time by posting on this sort of discussion.
When I said: Firefox has at least one addon (video downloader for sites like youtube) which does video transcoding
I meant *a* video downloader, not the addon called 'videodownloader' ! I can never remember the name of the addon I actually use (there are several with similar names), and I don't have access to my home PC at present. It's the one with a button that looks like 3 coloured balls.
Anyhow, it *does* do video transcoding because I used the feature for the first time about a week ago!
Oh, right, sorry, you were just trying to rationalize why everyone should wear a cheap digital watch for no apparent reason. Other than to make you feel better.
I said nothing of the sort. I just thought this was a mildly informative aside which might be of interest to/.ers, who often like to collect such odd bits of generally useless info. I'm totally indifferent as to whether other people wear a wristwatch or not. Maybe you got me confused with one of the other posters?
Its performance for video encoding or 7-zip compression is completely meaningless; it will never be running any of those applications
I wouldn't be so sure. Firefox has at least one addon (video downloader for sites like youtube) which does video transcoding; and google have stated that Chrome OS will run local multimedia content.
Sure, in a survival situation having the wristwatch allows you to tell time for a longer period of time but then again, do you really need to tell time in a survival situation.
In this case that would mean protective clothing and a gas mask. That seems unreasonable for a warranty repair since the problem is entirely of the user's own making.
I'm sure a basic DIY dust mask would be adequate - with a pair of normal rubber (or surgical?) gloves to prevent contact absorption of nicotine. Total cost less than $1 per PC repair. The mask would probably be advisable anyhow even for non-smokers' PCs due to general dust/debris. So there's no real health and safety reason for not repairing smokers' PCs.
Slashdot Mirror
I got one of the last 28" Widescreen CRT TVs on general sale in the UK for £120/$180 1-2 years ago. Brilliant picture, excellent value, but it's pretty damn heavy. I can *just* about lift it by myself. Got it as a bedroom TV, rested on the bed while clearing space, and it 'bounced' onto the floor - landed upside down about 1" from my foot. Didn't do *it* any harm but I would have been in hospital if it had landed on my foot. On balance, I'll be glad when these monsters have gone and I can have TVs than can be lifted/moved without being seriously dangerous, but I'm going to get a few years out of it first!
Can't even imagine how difficult a 36" CRT is to move...
Can you tell me why people pay $$$ to buy windows? Are they crazy?
Well, mostly they don't. They buy a PC, it comes with windows 'free' as far as they are concerned.
They wanted the US to stop propping up the undemocratic Saudi regime which survives due to US support.
And replace it with something equally undemocratic and maybe even slightly more brutal in all probability, which would also be totally hostile to the US. Much as I hate to see the US supporting the truly appalling Saudi regime, the alternative appears to be (marginally) worse in this case. Even as a non-US citizen I can understand the US policy in this case (even if it may not be the best course in the long term).
The bathroom stuff isn't what annoys me personally, though I don't look forward to being near somebody who does have a problem with it.
It'll be a big fat guy stuffed with burgers, nachos, chilli and weak beer. And you'll have to sit next to him for 58 minutes after his control goes. And you'll *never* want to travel by air again!
But seriously, they need an emergency provision where you can go if you have to, but must endure the humiliation of being watched throughout by one of the crew. If you *have* to go, you'll put up with this.
the only reason viruses are not a big problem is that Linux is not a big target, being such a niche OS few people use. Windows is as secure as Linux is and perhaps due to the automatic updates usually kept more up to date.
Yeah, right.
How about a few facts: Linux (and Unix) has historically had virtually no 'autorun' (inserted media, email viewing, activex etc.) type promblems. Windows has, and over the years has gradually blocked and dropped the features that caused the problem. But holes still remain because the design philosophy was wrong in the first place.
Also, automated updates are usually set up pretty much the same on Linux as on Windows these days. Except that naturally they at least default to installing security updates for nearly all common Linux programs. One last thought as a result of this: Think of a common scenario - on a particular day, your browser, the Flash player and the Adobe Reader all have day zero exploits. On Windows you have three seperate updates, which may not get flagged immediately, involving three different updaters. In common Linux distros, you'll get something like a popup 'install security updates', click on this, type admin password, and that's it, flash, adobe reader and browser all sorted. This is quite a common setup (these three bits of software being the most important and used).
Mark this post and see it come true! In 5 years Linux will STILL be at under 4%
Sounds good to me. If Linux can go from about 0.1% 10 years ago, to 1%ish now, to 3% in 5 years, then it'll probably be heading for 10%+ in 10 years, and at that point it'll get near-universal hardware support for mass consumer hardware (particularly because the hardware companies will realize at some point that it's cheaper to release an open source driver and then it can be recompiled and tested by the kernel maintainers as necessary, at no expense to your company).
To generalize, I'm quite happy with Linux's slow but steady growth rate.
Both Linux and GCC are pretty much where they were 10 years ago, there has been little or no expansion into the desktop user base and it is such today that most people who try Linux end up dumping it and going back to windows, which works with all of their programs and devices
It's difficult to tell but most stats seem to support a 5x to 10x increase in Linux use over the last 10 years. Starting from a very low base, I would say Linux has gone from 'totally insignificant' to 'minor, but definitely relevant'.
Lets face it, windows just works while Linux is usually a pain in the ass to configure.
As a general statement, this is completely false.
With lots of common PCs and peripherals, Linux 'just works', with no need to have driver discs, and supports devices long after Windows drivers have been discontinued. My CanoScan N650U has no Windows drivers for Vista and above (and the XP drivers don't work on Vista). It's supported perfectly in Linux just by plugging it in and probably will be until the day it dies. I use what you might call very common standard hardware and it all works just fine in Linux with no configuration or extra drivers, truly 'plug and play'. I also recognize that some hardware isn't well supported, but my impression is that the situation improves year by year.
You realize that birth control is just another form of abortion, right?
WTF? Condoms and the standard birth control pill, two of the most popular methods of contraception, can in no way be classed as 'a form of abortion' since they *prevent* fertilisation. You do understand that the word 'abortion' refers to aborting a pregnancy that has actually started?
*Some* forms of birth control like the coil and the 'morning after pill' could be classed as a form of very early abortion.
There are warts in Linux that do not get fixed, such as the flickering screen in Ubuntu boot and shut down, despite attention from distro's...
I thought kernel mode setting (currently being rolled out) was the fix for this?
These should be prescribed for depressive illness (in addition to any other treatment, not instead!).
These really lift my spirits when I'm down.
I've been pleasantly surprized to find that they work really well even in the middle of the UK winter (i.e. today - 12th Dec - they are just finally fading out now, at nearly 3pm).
Just about any child would love these, and at least some of them will then find the solar panel/gearing system/prism interesting.
Astrology, physics and biology comes to mind in a field trip.
Is this a joke, some sort of megatypo, a Freudian slip, or (God save us all) serious?
(Honestly, it's hard to be sure...)
Nvidia 8300GS - cheap low end card, works perfectly with the binary driver (suspend/resume/compiz/fullscreen video/3d games).
Linux developers can arbitrarily stop supporting whatever they damn well don't feel like supporting any longer so they can go program extra functions into their USB foam dart cannon. Just sayin'.
True...but lots of old drivers probably just need recompiling to keep working fine, with no real 'support' required. That's probably why my CanoScan N650U still works with the latest Linux kernel despite not being supported by any Windows version after XP.
A driver that breaks suspend and hibernate, needs power management tweaks to allow the PC to boot without freezing up and makes compiz hang on a regular basis "works pretty damn well?"
All this works fine for me. The question is whether your experience or mine is typical. Judging from the Ubuntu forums and other sources such as /., I get the impression suspend/resume/compiz work OK for most people.
Of course, a good quality FOSS driver is the best option and I'll certainly try it out once I get onto the kernel version referred to in TFA.
But I thought AMD/ATI opened up their specs? I know that here on /. we hear all the time "if they would only open up their specs we would take care of the rest". So shouldn't the ATI drivers for Linux be much better now?
The full specs were provided relatively recently and this is a highly complex project which will probably take another year or two to produce reasonably mature drivers.
Waste of time but here are the sort of sources we're talking about:
Atmospheric temperatures (satellite, weather balloons etc)
Sea temperatures
Land Temperatures
Ice Core samples
Tree rings
Growing season changes
Species Latitude/altitude changes
Arctic ice retreat
General glacier retreat.
Peripheral Antarctic ice shelf collapse
Measured mean sea level rise.
Collected and analysed by various independent bodies across the world for decades.
All essentially showing the same broad picture.
I'd suggest looking at the IPCC reports but obviously if you believe that all the world's climatologists are conspiring together then no evidence will be sufficient.
If data that all those millions of man-hours of research is based on is bogus then the conclusions are worthless.
It's lucky then that the data comes from many different independent sources and is therefore not bogus at all then, isn't it?
What are climate forecasts? Are they not simply long-term weather forecasts?
OK, I'll assume you are really asking this question.
Consider the two following problems:
a) Predicting the favorite color of an individual.
b) Predicting the distribution of favorite colors in a large group of people.
a) Is typically impossible to do with any degree of accuracy.
b) Can be done fairly accurately.
If you don't understand the difference in difficulty between predicting average values of a large number of items and predicting specific individual values then you're wasting everyone's time by posting on this sort of discussion.
Video Downloader doesn't do any transcoding.
When I said:
Firefox has at least one addon (video downloader for sites like youtube) which does video transcoding
I meant *a* video downloader, not the addon called 'videodownloader' ! I can never remember the name of the addon I actually use (there are several with similar names), and I don't have access to my home PC at present. It's the one with a button that looks like 3 coloured balls.
Anyhow, it *does* do video transcoding because I used the feature for the first time about a week ago!
Oh, right, sorry, you were just trying to rationalize why everyone should wear a cheap digital watch for no apparent reason. Other than to make you feel better.
I said nothing of the sort. I just thought this was a mildly informative aside which might be of interest to /.ers, who often like to collect such odd bits of generally useless info. I'm totally indifferent as to whether other people wear a wristwatch or not. Maybe you got me confused with one of the other posters?
Its performance for video encoding or 7-zip compression is completely meaningless; it will never be running any of those applications
I wouldn't be so sure. Firefox has at least one addon (video downloader for sites like youtube) which does video transcoding; and google have stated that Chrome OS will run local multimedia content.
$2.85
Actually $2.86.
.49+.87+1.34=2.7
2.7*1.06=2.862
Sure, in a survival situation having the wristwatch allows you to tell time for a longer period of time but then again, do you really need to tell time in a survival situation.
In a survival situation, an analogue wristwatch can be used in conjunction with the sun as an emergency compass:
http://lifehacker.com/289805/use-your-wristwatch-as-a-compass
In this case that would mean protective clothing and a gas mask. That seems unreasonable for a warranty repair since the problem is entirely of the user's own making.
I'm sure a basic DIY dust mask would be adequate - with a pair of normal rubber (or surgical?) gloves to prevent contact absorption of nicotine. Total cost less than $1 per PC repair. The mask would probably be advisable anyhow even for non-smokers' PCs due to general dust/debris. So there's no real health and safety reason for not repairing smokers' PCs.