None of the open-source drivers, either from the manufacturer or 3rd party support hardware video decoding, however, closed-source Linux drivers for the big 3 GPU manufacturers (intel, nvidia, and AMD) all contain the necessary code to accelerate video playback, if the hardware supports it. Of these, nvidia's support in the playback applications (VLC, mplayer, etc.) is the most mature and robust. Intel is not far behind. AMD, to my knowledge, is not currently supported, even though the features are available in the drivers, the libraries to hook into the drivers are not available yet. I researched this when building a Linux-based HTPC. Went with a GeForce 8200-based board. Full support for MPEG, H.264, etc. decoding in hardware using Mplayer, VLC, and XBMC video player.
Linux versions of Flash are, IMHO, horrible. Ubuntu ships with an open-source alternative which is worse.
Windows is the best choice if you want it to just work. Most people that complain, shout, and scream about how terrible Linux is, and how they're switching back to Windows expected Linux to 'just work'. Linux is fine if you can put in a little time to get things to work that the distro wasn't specifically designed to do.
I was thinking that option 2 is probably their best bet. Strip down an open-source virtualization package and package it with an image of their new OS (virtualbox comes to mind, but there's no USB support in their open-source variant). Make it all up into a nice installer that installs the virtualization software and does all the heavy lifting configuring it. This eliminates the need for an optical drive that so many netbooks do not have.
To your last point, for large-scale adoption, open-sourcing an OS is not necessary. I'd be willing to bet that less than 5% of users of an OS care that it's free to change and make derivative works of. 95% or more would care that it's free-as-in-beer. The true killer OS is one that is functionally equivalent to the current leader (MS Windows), but cost-free (or even less costly that Windows). That's a tall order, because for much of the population, the cost of Windows is included with the computer when they order/buy it. When it gets old/slow, they go out and buy a new one, and the newest version of Windows is included with that one as well. They don't specifically see the cost, so they assume there is none.
I gave up on VMWare when they went to that terrible web-based interface. They had a perfectly good interface. Now I need to spin up a browser, JAVA, their buggy-assed plugin, and God knows what else.
I can get a VBox VM up from clicking on the virtualbox icon to VM up and usable in under a minute. It took 2 or 3 to get VMWare's crappy web interface up and responsive.
Well I'll be.. I've got the box mine came in right here in front of me, and you're right. But I swear I saw it there, or somewhere in the manual or something. Guess not. BTW, my box has Corinne Bailey Rae on the front, and also did not include a song.
I have a first generation iPod Touch. It says on the back of the box that software bugfixes are free for life. I'd post a link to google images, but noone's managed to get a picture of the back of the box, go figure.
Say what you will about the guy, that is showmanship.
That could also be considered assault. Especially if he insinuated that they were carrying malaria.
Bill Gates sometimes strikes me as the nerdy James-Bond-villan type that would invent some type of super-virus and release it on the world via mosquitoes.
Ahhh. There we go. Yes, quite lovely. Hard to imagine that kind of temperature flux in the time spans they are talking about. I must have missed the link because it was only a slightly darker brown than the surrounding text and not underlined. If it's not underlined, I'm not clicking on it. That's the way I like my Internets:)
Is it that one at the top? I get images like that looking cross-eyed at christmas lights. It's just a red blob with a blue corona on one side. I couldn't even tell it was supposed to be a planet unless someone told me.
Except for the fact that Garnet is an aging platform
Good thing they're releasing a brand-new OS with this thing too, then. They're calling it Web OS, and it is quite modern, and has all the relevant features.
BB Storm still has a virtual keyboard - which is the dealbreaker for me. Sure, it clicks when you press a key, but you still have to watch the keyboard to see _which_ key you clicked.
Thing here is that Palm isn't really going for an iPhone 'killer'. What they have is an iPhone 'competitor'. Palm finally has something _in the race_ again.
Cube or Sauerbraten. Both are FOSS. Sauerbraten is a favorite of mine - a couple coworkers and I play it at work at lunchtime. It's very reminiscent of Quake III. There's supposed to be a decent single-player campaign, and there's an RPG based on the engine, also. I've only played multiplayer deathmatch.
Uh, think you mean "post-Columbine" there pardner. You know, "bowling" not "Farenheit".
Whatever. You got the point, though.
WTF? If your school needs the cops to keep discipline you're fucked.
This doesn't just go for schools. If you seriously threaten my life, you'd better fucking bet I'm going defend myself AS ARE MY RIGHTS. The first step is to get the cops involved -- whether I am a teacher and you're a student, or I'm a bank teller, and you're a guy in a ski mask with a his hand in his coat saying he has a gun. The words "I'm going to kill you" carry the same weight in either case in the eyes of a court of law.
Oh, and one other thing -- <sarcasm>Yes, let's not have law enforcement in schools at all. Let's leave that to teachers and administration that have very little experience in law or the enforcement thereof.</sarcasm>
I went to high school in a district that had some fairly bad gang activity. All it took was one cop (in full uniform) to stand in the cafeteria during lunch, and be around school grounds at other times to keep a an eye on it. Those 98% of us that didn't want anything to do with throwing down with a bunch of wannabe thugs felt markedly safer with the officer around. Go troll elsewhere.
Say that to any teacher anywhere in this great post-9/11 nation and YOU WILL BE ARRESTED. And rightly so. A better approach would be to tell them "you are in the wrong, and I'll be asking the principal (your boss) to have you return my property which you have taken from me against the law." Now, if you were screwing around on your laptop instead of participating in class, and the classroom rules stated as such, then the teacher has the right to confiscate your laptop and return it at the end of the day, just as if you had a cellphone, iPod, gum, whatever would be against the rules to use in class.
"Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by ignorance." Tell and show the teacher that they are wrong. If they resist, go to the principal. If they resist, the superintendant. If they resist, the media. Don't go around threatening people's lives just because they made a mistake (even this stupid and arrogant).
I don't think Apple cares that you're making calls. They care about the internet connection. If you enable bluetooth on the Touch, then you can get a cheap bluetooth-enabled phone and tether the Touch to it, and have what I believe Apple thinks is the essence of the iPhone -- 24/7 internet connectivity.
Fricken'. Sweet. But, can they still target my router and knock it out? What about my provider's router. Works on anything with a TCP stack, so they say.
Amen. If you're doing folding@home or the like, how much does a PS3 cost? You'll spend that much in a month's electricity and cooling trying to out-power it with 5-6 year old celerons.
Educational value of old hardware is minimal, as new tech has pretty much replaced everything in a 5 year old box.
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None of the open-source drivers, either from the manufacturer or 3rd party support hardware video decoding, however, closed-source Linux drivers for the big 3 GPU manufacturers (intel, nvidia, and AMD) all contain the necessary code to accelerate video playback, if the hardware supports it. Of these, nvidia's support in the playback applications (VLC, mplayer, etc.) is the most mature and robust. Intel is not far behind. AMD, to my knowledge, is not currently supported, even though the features are available in the drivers, the libraries to hook into the drivers are not available yet. I researched this when building a Linux-based HTPC. Went with a GeForce 8200-based board. Full support for MPEG, H.264, etc. decoding in hardware using Mplayer, VLC, and XBMC video player.
Linux versions of Flash are, IMHO, horrible. Ubuntu ships with an open-source alternative which is worse.
Windows is the best choice if you want it to just work. Most people that complain, shout, and scream about how terrible Linux is, and how they're switching back to Windows expected Linux to 'just work'. Linux is fine if you can put in a little time to get things to work that the distro wasn't specifically designed to do.
I was thinking that option 2 is probably their best bet. Strip down an open-source virtualization package and package it with an image of their new OS (virtualbox comes to mind, but there's no USB support in their open-source variant). Make it all up into a nice installer that installs the virtualization software and does all the heavy lifting configuring it. This eliminates the need for an optical drive that so many netbooks do not have. To your last point, for large-scale adoption, open-sourcing an OS is not necessary. I'd be willing to bet that less than 5% of users of an OS care that it's free to change and make derivative works of. 95% or more would care that it's free-as-in-beer. The true killer OS is one that is functionally equivalent to the current leader (MS Windows), but cost-free (or even less costly that Windows). That's a tall order, because for much of the population, the cost of Windows is included with the computer when they order/buy it. When it gets old/slow, they go out and buy a new one, and the newest version of Windows is included with that one as well. They don't specifically see the cost, so they assume there is none.
I gave up on VMWare when they went to that terrible web-based interface. They had a perfectly good interface. Now I need to spin up a browser, JAVA, their buggy-assed plugin, and God knows what else. I can get a VBox VM up from clicking on the virtualbox icon to VM up and usable in under a minute. It took 2 or 3 to get VMWare's crappy web interface up and responsive.
Well I'll be.. I've got the box mine came in right here in front of me, and you're right. But I swear I saw it there, or somewhere in the manual or something. Guess not. BTW, my box has Corinne Bailey Rae on the front, and also did not include a song.
I have a first generation iPod Touch. It says on the back of the box that software bugfixes are free for life. I'd post a link to google images, but noone's managed to get a picture of the back of the box, go figure.
But, I distinctly remember wild sex... with...
Oh. Dear. GOD.
and hot green alien nymphomaniac bikini chicks. From Mars.
Now do you care?
Dude, bikini chicks from Alpha Centauri are much hotter!
Off-Topic, but your sig is so great that it made my head hurt from internal laughter. Good Show!
Don't Friend so many morons, and it wouldn't be a problem ;)
This is why I use Picasa web albums. Because Google will "Do No Evil."
That could also be considered assault. Especially if he insinuated that they were carrying malaria.
Bill Gates sometimes strikes me as the nerdy James-Bond-villan type that would invent some type of super-virus and release it on the world via mosquitoes.
Ahhh. There we go. Yes, quite lovely. Hard to imagine that kind of temperature flux in the time spans they are talking about. I must have missed the link because it was only a slightly darker brown than the surrounding text and not underlined. If it's not underlined, I'm not clicking on it. That's the way I like my Internets :)
Is it that one at the top? I get images like that looking cross-eyed at christmas lights. It's just a red blob with a blue corona on one side. I couldn't even tell it was supposed to be a planet unless someone told me.
Except for the fact that Garnet is an aging platform
Good thing they're releasing a brand-new OS with this thing too, then. They're calling it Web OS, and it is quite modern, and has all the relevant features.
BB Storm still has a virtual keyboard - which is the dealbreaker for me. Sure, it clicks when you press a key, but you still have to watch the keyboard to see _which_ key you clicked.
I'm not surprised he hit a lightpole, it's all I can ever manage to do.
At least he didn't hit one of those indestructible trees.
Did he go flying through the windshield upon impact with realistic ragdoll physics?
Oh, wait, I got one more - he only hit the lightpole 'cause his cousin called him up and wouldn't stop babbling about Spongebob, the annoying bastard.
Thing here is that Palm isn't really going for an iPhone 'killer'. What they have is an iPhone 'competitor'. Palm finally has something _in the race_ again.
Cube or Sauerbraten. Both are FOSS. Sauerbraten is a favorite of mine - a couple coworkers and I play it at work at lunchtime. It's very reminiscent of Quake III. There's supposed to be a decent single-player campaign, and there's an RPG based on the engine, also. I've only played multiplayer deathmatch.
Uh, think you mean "post-Columbine" there pardner. You know, "bowling" not "Farenheit".
Whatever. You got the point, though.
WTF? If your school needs the cops to keep discipline you're fucked.
This doesn't just go for schools. If you seriously threaten my life, you'd better fucking bet I'm going defend myself AS ARE MY RIGHTS. The first step is to get the cops involved -- whether I am a teacher and you're a student, or I'm a bank teller, and you're a guy in a ski mask with a his hand in his coat saying he has a gun. The words "I'm going to kill you" carry the same weight in either case in the eyes of a court of law.
Oh, and one other thing -- <sarcasm>Yes, let's not have law enforcement in schools at all. Let's leave that to teachers and administration that have very little experience in law or the enforcement thereof.</sarcasm>
I went to high school in a district that had some fairly bad gang activity. All it took was one cop (in full uniform) to stand in the cafeteria during lunch, and be around school grounds at other times to keep a an eye on it. Those 98% of us that didn't want anything to do with throwing down with a bunch of wannabe thugs felt markedly safer with the officer around. Go troll elsewhere.
Say that to any teacher anywhere in this great post-9/11 nation and YOU WILL BE ARRESTED. And rightly so. A better approach would be to tell them "you are in the wrong, and I'll be asking the principal (your boss) to have you return my property which you have taken from me against the law." Now, if you were screwing around on your laptop instead of participating in class, and the classroom rules stated as such, then the teacher has the right to confiscate your laptop and return it at the end of the day, just as if you had a cellphone, iPod, gum, whatever would be against the rules to use in class.
"Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by ignorance." Tell and show the teacher that they are wrong. If they resist, go to the principal. If they resist, the superintendant. If they resist, the media. Don't go around threatening people's lives just because they made a mistake (even this stupid and arrogant).
THAT is how it SHOULD be handled.
High school technology teachers are, in my experience, are the epitome of "those who can, do; those who can't, teach".
Most of them that I've met spend less of their time actually teaching, and more of it being policemen.
I don't think Apple cares that you're making calls. They care about the internet connection. If you enable bluetooth on the Touch, then you can get a cheap bluetooth-enabled phone and tether the Touch to it, and have what I believe Apple thinks is the essence of the iPhone -- 24/7 internet connectivity.
pjones@pkjones:~$ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies
0
pjones@pkjones:~$
Fricken'. Sweet. But, can they still target my router and knock it out? What about my provider's router. Works on anything with a TCP stack, so they say.
If I had mod points, this post would be +1 funny. Unfortunately, +1 insightful would also apply.
...browser from Google that does anything just as well as FF does it...
No plugins => no AdBlock && no Greasemonkey --> No Deal.
Amen. If you're doing folding@home or the like, how much does a PS3 cost? You'll spend that much in a month's electricity and cooling trying to out-power it with 5-6 year old celerons.
Educational value of old hardware is minimal, as new tech has pretty much replaced everything in a 5 year old box.