Wind farms require areas with steady wind, and they tend to harm the indigenous fauna and flora. Also, their energy production to area ratio is pretty crappy, with turbines averaging 20% efficiency. Check the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Energy_ext raction_calculations
So in your list, (c) and (d) conflict with each other. I don't think wind is a viable energy solution, at least not on land.
Or AMD could just fork GCC. Which they will, if it becomes a large enough issue.
Why fork rather than their current method of support? Commercial environments tend to focus on particular tasks and finish them faster.
Of course, with the GPL, an AMD-specific compiler could quickly be remerged into the main branch of GCC, where the randomness of open source development could introduce interesting changes. At the least, the remerging would guarantee that AMD would perform better with most GCC-compiled applications, which would be very good for business.
Are those compiler optimizations especially difficult to reproduce? If Intel were reasonable, they'd add a flag to the Intel C compiler that enables Itanium2 optimizations all in one go. More reasonable, and they'd share some of the information with the GCC developers.
I switch between Dvorak and Qwerty very often (usually two or three switches per day). Qwerty is literally painful to use.
I've noticed, though, that while I can type faster with Dvorak, I'm less likely to be accurate. Overall there's a speed increase, but if I concentrated on fast typing in Qwerty, I'd probably get the same results. It's mainly wrist strain at this point--and the fact that I don't accidentally press Control+V rather than Control+C and lose data.
Are these people who are willing to learn and won't be annoyed or afraid by the idea of manually editing config files? Then Gentoo with a default --usepkg might be best. Or VidaLinux, if it's for the desktop.
Otherwise, I'd go for a Debian-style (or Debian-based) distro. These days, Debian is seen to lack support; you might prefer Ubuntu, as a server or a workstation.
I admit I haven't tried SuSE or RedHat. Perhaps when I have a hard drive with more than 10.2GB total, I'll try them.
LiveCDs are toys. If you actually try them out on a regular basis, you find that they're either slow or feature-bereft, and if it's the former you usually spend a few minutes taking care of minor annoyances.
True, you get about the same deal working with thin clients, but you're not helping someone choose between thin clients and livecds in most circumstances. It isn't a good showing of Linux if you have to spend ten minutes waiting for the system to be useable, or if you have to show a Windows neophyte a black screen with "bash2.05$" at the top.
Let's deal with something we know about: Mac OS X. It's BSD-based, with changes. Their kernel development is somewhat independent of the operating system, as long as they update the compatibility layer as necessary. The largest issue would be the display manager.
If BSD changed today, and significantly enough that OS X's display manager would need to be rewritten for the new version--or the new version would have to be significantly modified--why would Apple update OS X to use the new BSD code? If anything, they'd port sections of the new BSD to their operating system.
We're talking about forking development into proprietary and open source versions. If Microsoft appropriated BSD, would they do any different? The best-case scenario would be like the relationship between Wine and Transgaming: the proprietary version takes the interesting bits of code from the open source version, and throws an occasional bone back in return. The worst case is as the original post said.
Of course, this is assuming that Microsoft uses whatever OSS OS under a BSD license. And it's a description of what could happen to FreeBSD / OS X.
I wouldn't have thought it'd be much because the retailer/game producers/distributers/etc would want their cut first.
Actually, according to an article I read the other day on Gamasutra (if I recall correctly), retailers get about $2-5 per copy sold. And oftentimes they're lucky to pay no more than the MSRP for the console.
That doesn't necessarily apply to larger stores like Electronics Boutique or Gamestop. I trust them to have special arrangements.
I'll remember that the blood vessels in my hand are also altered whenever I get cut. So if you want a reliable system, you need people to avoid getting cut; or alternately, you need scanners that note "small difference" and update the server-side copy to match the client-side copy.
But that means you have to send whatever the scanner reads to the server, not a hash.
Hm, you seem to be out for a fight. At least you're being moderately informative.
If I need the software, it's for a project with a professor, and that professor can use grant money to get it for me. They could get me Quark Xpress, probably. On the other hand, if I have personal projects that could be accomplished very efficiently with MSPub or equivalent, or inefficiently using HTML, I'll have to use HTML. With cascading stylesheets, that's not as troublesome as it would have been previously, but it still isn't very effective.
Here's something that I really can't do with HTML, short of changing text to images and rotating them using the GIMP: making greeting cards. Store-bought cards are gauche these days, and if I can't draw them by hand, I'm left with printing out the parts and pasting them together. Not a good solution. Using a typesetting program would allow me to accomplish my goal quickly and easily.
I think it would be relatively simple to make a dedicated typesetting program starting from OOo Writer. I'm not entirely certain, though--you'd have to implement print orientation, maybe object rotation, and set up pages to start blank, not as targets for entering text. Then text boxes and layout guides, and you're nearly done. I think. I'm not as familiar with OOo as I perhaps should be. But it's largely a user interface issue--making paper sizing and such simple and accessible.
Well, that's an improvement, I guess. I'm a poor college student; I use Linux because I couldn't afford another Windows license when it last crashed completely, so I'll just go out and blow $700 on InDesign. No problem. I didn't really need to pay bills or rent. Or eat.
Currently, iWork consists of Pages (a word processor) and Keynote (a presentation application, similar to MS Powerpoint). Slashdot mentioned the possibility of iWork Numbers as a spreadsheet (or possibly database) application.
Now, if only someone would offer an alternative to MS Publisher, aside from Quark Xpress, which currently costs well over $1k.
Au contraire--the better someone is with a rifle before drafting, the less marksmanship training they'll need. So if you need a sniper quickly, you'll ask for a military marksman, then a civilian marksman. If you just need snipers, you'll draft/recruit more, keeping an eye out for marksmen.
The military can use bullet stoppers on occasion, but you're more valuable if you can shoot and hit what you're aiming at. Just because you can shoot well doesn't mean the army will call you tomorrow, but if they know you shoot well and might be receptive to scholarship offers, they'll probably be quite interested in you.
Not to mention the fact that law enforcement officers might find that information useful....
If the poor people see military conscription as a means to get rid of poor people, they'll be angry. If they seem likely to acknowledge this possibility as fact (regardless of whether it actually is factual), then conscription efforts will quickly become egalitarian, else target richer people outright.
You're right! You're so right! I was lured in at a young age by a friendly smile and a promise of free software, but now I realize my error. I want to convert; I've been led so far astray, I don't know how to get back. Can someone send me a copy of Windows ME so I can regain my sense of self independent of a prescriptive, prohibitive monoculture of an operating system?
I want to change. Please help me--I don't think I can do it on my own.
Slashdot Mirror
Wind farms require areas with steady wind, and they tend to harm the indigenous fauna and flora. Also, their energy production to area ratio is pretty crappy, with turbines averaging 20% efficiency. Check the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Energy_ext raction_calculations
So in your list, (c) and (d) conflict with each other. I don't think wind is a viable energy solution, at least not on land.
Or AMD could just fork GCC. Which they will, if it becomes a large enough issue.
Why fork rather than their current method of support? Commercial environments tend to focus on particular tasks and finish them faster.
Of course, with the GPL, an AMD-specific compiler could quickly be remerged into the main branch of GCC, where the randomness of open source development could introduce interesting changes. At the least, the remerging would guarantee that AMD would perform better with most GCC-compiled applications, which would be very good for business.
Come to think of it, why haven't they?
Are those compiler optimizations especially difficult to reproduce? If Intel were reasonable, they'd add a flag to the Intel C compiler that enables Itanium2 optimizations all in one go. More reasonable, and they'd share some of the information with the GCC developers.
I switch between Dvorak and Qwerty very often (usually two or three switches per day). Qwerty is literally painful to use.
I've noticed, though, that while I can type faster with Dvorak, I'm less likely to be accurate. Overall there's a speed increase, but if I concentrated on fast typing in Qwerty, I'd probably get the same results. It's mainly wrist strain at this point--and the fact that I don't accidentally press Control+V rather than Control+C and lose data.
Otherwise, I'd go for a Debian-style (or Debian-based) distro. These days, Debian is seen to lack support; you might prefer Ubuntu, as a server or a workstation.
I admit I haven't tried SuSE or RedHat. Perhaps when I have a hard drive with more than 10.2GB total, I'll try them.
LiveCDs are toys. If you actually try them out on a regular basis, you find that they're either slow or feature-bereft, and if it's the former you usually spend a few minutes taking care of minor annoyances.
True, you get about the same deal working with thin clients, but you're not helping someone choose between thin clients and livecds in most circumstances. It isn't a good showing of Linux if you have to spend ten minutes waiting for the system to be useable, or if you have to show a Windows neophyte a black screen with "bash2.05$" at the top.
Keep all the files rigidly aligned and named in the filesystem. Just show the user a pseudofilesystem based on the metadata.
Let's deal with something we know about: Mac OS X. It's BSD-based, with changes. Their kernel development is somewhat independent of the operating system, as long as they update the compatibility layer as necessary. The largest issue would be the display manager.
If BSD changed today, and significantly enough that OS X's display manager would need to be rewritten for the new version--or the new version would have to be significantly modified--why would Apple update OS X to use the new BSD code? If anything, they'd port sections of the new BSD to their operating system.
We're talking about forking development into proprietary and open source versions. If Microsoft appropriated BSD, would they do any different? The best-case scenario would be like the relationship between Wine and Transgaming: the proprietary version takes the interesting bits of code from the open source version, and throws an occasional bone back in return. The worst case is as the original post said.
Of course, this is assuming that Microsoft uses whatever OSS OS under a BSD license. And it's a description of what could happen to FreeBSD / OS X.
I'd help pay for a wiki (domain registration, hosting, etc) that indexed the content formerly hosted by the Cult TV Repository.
Actually, according to an article I read the other day on Gamasutra (if I recall correctly), retailers get about $2-5 per copy sold. And oftentimes they're lucky to pay no more than the MSRP for the console.
That doesn't necessarily apply to larger stores like Electronics Boutique or Gamestop. I trust them to have special arrangements.
I'll remember that the blood vessels in my hand are also altered whenever I get cut. So if you want a reliable system, you need people to avoid getting cut; or alternately, you need scanners that note "small difference" and update the server-side copy to match the client-side copy.
But that means you have to send whatever the scanner reads to the server, not a hash.
And you think the hardware can handle Longhorn at a reasonable rate? How optimistic.
Indeed. I prefer to issue the command "DO COME FROM".
The available fonts are in a directory called consolefonts. The location of that directory is, I believe, distro-dependent.
These are classics, though, so they're probably a bit longer than average. And it includes Finnegan's Wake--that'll be two weeks on its own.
If I need the software, it's for a project with a professor, and that professor can use grant money to get it for me. They could get me Quark Xpress, probably. On the other hand, if I have personal projects that could be accomplished very efficiently with MSPub or equivalent, or inefficiently using HTML, I'll have to use HTML. With cascading stylesheets, that's not as troublesome as it would have been previously, but it still isn't very effective.
Here's something that I really can't do with HTML, short of changing text to images and rotating them using the GIMP: making greeting cards. Store-bought cards are gauche these days, and if I can't draw them by hand, I'm left with printing out the parts and pasting them together. Not a good solution. Using a typesetting program would allow me to accomplish my goal quickly and easily.
I think it would be relatively simple to make a dedicated typesetting program starting from OOo Writer. I'm not entirely certain, though--you'd have to implement print orientation, maybe object rotation, and set up pages to start blank, not as targets for entering text. Then text boxes and layout guides, and you're nearly done. I think. I'm not as familiar with OOo as I perhaps should be. But it's largely a user interface issue--making paper sizing and such simple and accessible.
Well, that's an improvement, I guess. I'm a poor college student; I use Linux because I couldn't afford another Windows license when it last crashed completely, so I'll just go out and blow $700 on InDesign. No problem. I didn't really need to pay bills or rent. Or eat.
Because there are a lot more home users than offices, I suppose. Plus the lack of spreadsheet applications hurts office sales significantly.
Now, if only someone would offer an alternative to MS Publisher, aside from Quark Xpress, which currently costs well over $1k.
The military can use bullet stoppers on occasion, but you're more valuable if you can shoot and hit what you're aiming at. Just because you can shoot well doesn't mean the army will call you tomorrow, but if they know you shoot well and might be receptive to scholarship offers, they'll probably be quite interested in you.
Not to mention the fact that law enforcement officers might find that information useful....
Surely if the government can't do it because it violates your privact, corporations and citizens should have the same restrictions?
If the poor people see military conscription as a means to get rid of poor people, they'll be angry. If they seem likely to acknowledge this possibility as fact (regardless of whether it actually is factual), then conscription efforts will quickly become egalitarian, else target richer people outright.
Doesn't Apple ship boxen with Radeons?
1) Fedora Core 4: an updated version of the hats you see in gangster movies, except the brim comes separate.
2) SUSE: too obvious
3) Gentoo: pretty
4) Slackware: the guy in the cubicle next to mine
5) Lycoris: Twizzler?
6) Mandriva: the reason New York City traffic is so bad. (No, really, female drivers aren't bad. They're the only ones who stop to let me bike past.)
Okay, I'll stop while I'm ahead.
I want to change. Please help me--I don't think I can do it on my own.