> How about "What I like about you" or "I want candy" playing in the background like every other > trailer. Can somebody please "mash" that up, post it, and then boing boing can blog about it.
> If anything the extremists should be encouraging Microsoft to be as closed, > proprietary and cumbersome as they can possibly get
You're falling into a common trap of assuming that anybody that encourages MS to open their formats and code is an "extremist". There are plenty of practical (i.e. non-idealogical) reasons why this is a good idea for MS's customers and arguably for MS themselves. Hell, I'm as much a Linux enthusiast as you're likely to find, but I don't hate MS nor want them to dry up and blow away. I have to work in this economy. =) And, I would much rather the biggest software company in the world, employing some of the greatest programmers in the field (and employing them well, or so I'm told) would start to work on actually moving the state of the art forward for a change, make a positive impact on the industry by opening up and working collectively to build things that haven't been attempted yet.
I just want to point out that those wikipedia dudes have already updated the Chewbacca Defense article to refer to "the late Johnnie Cochran". If that's not evidence that they're doing something right, I don't know what is.
> That's probably the best way to tune the page file. There, I saved you from having to take the time to read the article.
-nod- Although it costs, DiskKeeper Pro can do this directly without all the hoops. I think it's worth the money, and they have a free time-limited demo.
> and I still agree with the OP that $500 is a pretty good disincentive =/
-nod- If this thread isn't evidence enough, we find our biggest challenge is convincing potential customers that what we do is far enough beyond what your average 30-minute Linux install gets you that it's worth our markup. The support is a big part of that. Getting all the wacky drivers for wireless, modems, power managment, etc together is also not as trivial as some people who haven't done it think it is. Considering that Sony, for instance, comes out with new revisions of their machines every few weeks, and each one usually requires a few tweaks, we stay very, very busy making sure our customers never have to realize how hard it is to get a system to work with all that crazy stuff. =)
That said, we still aren't priced to where your average poor college student will go to us. Most of our customers are people who, if we save them 10 on-the-clock hours of work by giving them an out-of-the-box system, then they've broken even.
> but they're some shop I've never heard of > before... and Sharp may never have heard of > before, or reasonably close
We're actually official partners with Sharp, IBM, and Dell (working on Sony). The AL3D we demoed at Boston LWE was a prototype that the Sharp mobile division guys hooked us up with. It's serial number was 3. =)
We have to pay the MS tax too. ( I work at Emperor ).
It's not that bad for us since most of our customers still want dual-boot, but it's disheartening when somebody orders a 100% Linux (the "no-Win situation" in our parlance) and still has to pay the same Windows license price. =/
> but I ask one thing, who buy this kind of laptop?
A lot of our customers are engineers and research scientists, and a lot are college professors or otherwise attached to education in some way. Most of them come to us because the already know they want Linux; we're not in the business of trying to sell Linux, just Linux Laptops. =)
-nod- Right now, this technology (the 3D screen) is definitely targetted at a very specific professional market. We're mainly seeing interest from people who want to use them for scientific visualization, medical imaging, and so on. Gamers are not the market Sharp had in mind, I think. =)
I will say though, that with a Dothan processor and 2.5" Sata hard drive (and nVidia 6200 video driving only a 1024x768 screen), this is one of the fastest computers I've used.
> You know, I want to support Linux vendors, but the model with Linux costs *$500* more than the version with > Windows direct from Sharp. That seems a little pricey for a free OS, eh?
I responded to this above, but briefly:
o) All our laptops work out of the box with Linux. Wireless, power management, winmodems, etc. all work. Most of our customers don't have time to spend half a week getting their laptops up and running, but they do need Linux for a variety of reasons.
o) We provide Linux tech support to our customers.
Disclaimer: I work at Emperor Linux. We worked with the guys at Delano Scientific to get PyMol (the open source Python molecule viewer) to get a demo of it ready for the show. However, the nVidia driver for Windows already includes support for it directly, and the Sharp guys are working with nVidia to get that pushed into the Linux nVidia drivers, so that any OpenGL app will work with the display. Even now, it only requires two additional OpenGL calls to get a standard app to work with this; we did a quick hack to bzflag that we unfortunately didn't have ready in time for the Boston show.
> The only thing is, it is very viewer-position dependent. Meaning, you have to be sitting right in the sweet spot > to get the full effect
-nod- There's a little color-strip at the bottom that helps you find the right orientation. They're making big strides in viewability though.
> but 2D res looked pretty low to me, I'll stick with my SXGA+ thinkpad thanks).
It's 1024x768. We're hoping the next generation is higher res. But, considering I'm on an IBM X31 right now, that's the res I'm used to; then again, the AL3D is a bit heavier, too. =D
> I'm not great fan of Windows, but why should I pay $500 so that some screw up can spend 15min installing > a version of Linux I don't like (vs one I do like)?
Somebody didn't rtfa (yeah yeah, I must be new here). First, we install all the major distros standard, and will do any distro you like for an additional fee. I'm the maintainer of our Debian and Ubuntu installers, for instance. And, we "justify" our markup because we put hundreds of hours of work into building a custom kernel for the machine that supports everything on it. That's winmodems, wireless, all the power management features, etc. When necessary, we write the code ourselves (and submit it upstream.)
We also provide technical support to all our customers, and frankly I suspect that's why most of them keep coming back to us.
When there's no clearly dominant browser to code to, the real standards take on a new gravitas. It becomes an expectation of the browser developers to fix a page when it looks broken, as it should be. At least... that's what I'm hoping and expecting. =)
It's a shame it's so expensive... I try my damndest to buy from any company that supports their products on Linux. I bought all but maybe 2 of Loki's games... even the ones that were dubious like Eric's Ultimate Solitaire. But I just can't justify $100 for something that does less than what I can do with free software. Not a zealot here, just have a house payment to make. =/
> Well, why would you want power management on a virtual machine? the host machine should manage the power...
Never used Xen, have you? You have to run a Xen-patched kernel as the HOST system, and THAT is what doesn't support power management. i.e. if you're running Xen, you cannot simultaneously use any power management features of your hardware.
> That would take care of the motivation to have children so you can get them aborted and get something out of it.
Unless you're motivated by wanting to save lives by donating embryonic stem cells. I'm not female, but if I was you'd better believe I'd be doing everything I could to provide tissue for embryonic stem cell research. I'm a cancer survivor, so this is NOT an issue I take lightly.
Slashdot Mirror
> Human: What's cooking?
> ALICE: Food preparation.
That's exactly what I would have said; looks to me like you fail it!
> How about "What I like about you" or "I want candy" playing in the background like every other
> trailer. Can somebody please "mash" that up, post it, and then boing boing can blog about it.
Dear God... is this even English ?
> If anything the extremists should be encouraging Microsoft to be as closed,
> proprietary and cumbersome as they can possibly get
You're falling into a common trap of assuming that anybody that encourages MS to open their formats and
code is an "extremist". There are plenty of practical (i.e. non-idealogical) reasons why this is a
good idea for MS's customers and arguably for MS themselves. Hell, I'm as much a Linux enthusiast as
you're likely to find, but I don't hate MS nor want them to dry up and blow away. I have to work in
this economy. =) And, I would much rather the biggest software company in the world, employing some
of the greatest programmers in the field (and employing them well, or so I'm told) would start to work
on actually moving the state of the art forward for a change, make a positive impact on the industry
by opening up and working collectively to build things that haven't been attempted yet.
> When I can have all my "new window" links open in a new tab instead,
m l.en
> firefox will be more of a force.
You can:
http://hemiolapei.free.fr/divers/tabmix/tabmix.ht
I just want to point out that those wikipedia dudes have already updated the Chewbacca Defense article to refer to
"the late Johnnie Cochran". If that's not evidence that they're doing something right, I don't know what is.
> have we found a new use for the activities associated with p0rn?
Ah, pr0n... is there anything it _can't_ do ?
The mixer GUI lets you individually set volume/mute on each application. Hope this makes it into ALSA someday...
Now, can I trade in my BeOS Professional CD for ZetaOS 1.0? (I think I'm one of the 11 people who bought it...
> How is DiskKeeper Pro any better?
For starters, Pro can defrag the paging file, the whole point of this article. Lite can't.
> That's probably the best way to tune the page file. There, I saved you from having to take the time to read the article.
-nod- Although it costs, DiskKeeper Pro can do this directly without all the hoops. I think it's
worth the money, and they have a free time-limited demo.
> and I still agree with the OP that $500 is a pretty good disincentive =/
-nod- If this thread isn't evidence enough, we find our biggest challenge is convincing potential customers that what
we do is far enough beyond what your average 30-minute Linux install gets you that it's worth our markup. The support is
a big part of that. Getting all the wacky drivers for wireless, modems, power managment, etc together is also not
as trivial as some people who haven't done it think it is. Considering that Sony, for instance, comes out with
new revisions of their machines every few weeks, and each one usually requires a few tweaks, we stay very,
very busy making sure our customers never have to realize how hard it is to get a system to work with all that
crazy stuff. =)
That said, we still aren't priced to where your average poor college student will go to us. Most of our customers
are people who, if we save them 10 on-the-clock hours of work by giving them an out-of-the-box system, then
they've broken even.
Believe it or not, there are people who don't read every single subthread in a conversation. =)
> but they're some shop I've never heard of
> before... and Sharp may never have heard of
> before, or reasonably close
We're actually official partners with Sharp, IBM, and Dell (working on Sony). The AL3D we demoed at Boston LWE was
a prototype that the Sharp mobile division guys hooked us up with. It's serial number was 3. =)
> They're probably paying full price, with MS tax
We do have to pay the microsoft tax, sadly.
We have to pay the MS tax too. ( I work at Emperor ).
It's not that bad for us since most of our customers still want dual-boot, but it's disheartening when somebody
orders a 100% Linux (the "no-Win situation" in our parlance) and still has to pay the same Windows license price. =/
> but I ask one thing, who buy this kind of laptop?
A lot of our customers are engineers and research scientists, and a lot are college professors or otherwise attached
to education in some way. Most of them come to us because the already know they want Linux; we're not in the business
of trying to sell Linux, just Linux Laptops. =)
> They just forgot to add that there is no free Linux driver for software win-modems with Conexant chipsets
Not to give away the family jewels (I work at Emperor Linux), but... check under the alsa heading of your kernel config,
and google for slmodem.
-nod- Right now, this technology (the 3D screen) is definitely targetted at a very specific professional market. We're
mainly seeing interest from people who want to use them for scientific visualization, medical imaging, and so on.
Gamers are not the market Sharp had in mind, I think. =)
I will say though, that with a Dothan processor and 2.5" Sata hard drive (and nVidia 6200 video driving only
a 1024x768 screen), this is one of the fastest computers I've used.
If it's not obvious, I work at Emperor Linux.
> You know, I want to support Linux vendors, but the model with Linux costs *$500* more than the version with
> Windows direct from Sharp. That seems a little pricey for a free OS, eh?
I responded to this above, but briefly:
o) All our laptops work out of the box with Linux. Wireless, power management, winmodems, etc. all work. Most
of our customers don't have time to spend half a week getting their laptops up and running, but they do need
Linux for a variety of reasons.
o) We provide Linux tech support to our customers.
> And what linux apps are optimized for this?
Disclaimer: I work at Emperor Linux. We worked with the guys at Delano Scientific to get PyMol (the
open source Python molecule viewer) to get a demo of it ready for the show. However, the nVidia driver for Windows
already includes support for it directly, and the Sharp guys are working with nVidia to get that pushed into the
Linux nVidia drivers, so that any OpenGL app will work with the display. Even now, it only requires two additional
OpenGL calls to get a standard app to work with this; we did a quick hack to bzflag that we unfortunately didn't
have ready in time for the Boston show.
> The only thing is, it is very viewer-position dependent. Meaning, you have to be sitting right in the sweet spot
> to get the full effect
-nod- There's a little color-strip at the bottom that helps you find the right orientation. They're making big
strides in viewability though.
> but 2D res looked pretty low to me, I'll stick with my SXGA+ thinkpad thanks).
It's 1024x768. We're hoping the next generation is higher res. But, considering I'm on an IBM X31 right now, that's
the res I'm used to; then again, the AL3D is a bit heavier, too. =D
> I'm not great fan of Windows, but why should I pay $500 so that some screw up can spend 15min installing
> a version of Linux I don't like (vs one I do like)?
Somebody didn't rtfa (yeah yeah, I must be new here). First, we install all the major distros standard, and will do any
distro you like for an additional fee. I'm the maintainer of our Debian and Ubuntu installers, for instance. And, we
"justify" our markup because we put hundreds of hours of work into building a custom kernel for the machine that
supports everything on it. That's winmodems, wireless, all the power management features, etc. When necessary,
we write the code ourselves (and submit it upstream.)
We also provide technical support to all our customers, and frankly I suspect that's why most of them keep coming
back to us.
When there's no clearly dominant browser to code to, the real standards take on a new gravitas. It becomes an
expectation of the browser developers to fix a page when it looks broken, as it should be. At least... that's what I'm hoping
and expecting. =)
It's a shame it's so expensive... I try my damndest to buy from any company that supports their products on Linux. I
bought all but maybe 2 of Loki's games... even the ones that were dubious like Eric's Ultimate Solitaire.
But I just can't justify $100 for something that does less than what I can do with free software. Not a zealot
here, just have a house payment to make. =/
> Well, why would you want power management on a virtual machine? the host machine should manage the power...
Never used Xen, have you? You have to run a Xen-patched kernel as the HOST system, and THAT is what doesn't
support power management. i.e. if you're running Xen, you cannot simultaneously use any power management features
of your hardware.
as several features, notably any APM or ACPI power management at all, don't work with Xen at the moment.
> That would take care of the motivation to have children so you can get them aborted and get something out of it.
Unless you're motivated by wanting to save lives by donating embryonic stem cells. I'm not female, but if I was you'd better
believe I'd be doing everything I could to provide tissue for embryonic stem cell research. I'm a cancer survivor, so this
is NOT an issue I take lightly.