It's not a market failure. It's a market success. Despite what the rest of the world drives, here in the US we can afford to purchase and operate mid- and full-size vehicles.
At one time I had a new Corolla I was getting 40+ mpg with but the cost of new car financing plus new car insurance wasn't justified after I moved in with my fiance and lived 2-1/2 miles from work. At that point, I sold the car and went back to driving my 87 Silverado that gets 8 mpg.
I'd love to see cheaper gas. I'd love to see lower taxes. Neither should be influenced by government policy. Current CAFE or whatever nonsense fleet economy standards exist need to be forgotten. It is not important that the government mandate anything regarding fuel efficiency. What is important is that in our free country, we are left free to choose whatever we like to drive.
It works great other than having lower FPS than XP. Going from 1024x768 on the original 19" monitor to 1680x1050 on a 22" LCD really made the 6800 show its age.
Losing performance is why I won't switch to Windows 7 on my desktop. It's a Dell from 2003 with an AGP slot. I have an nVidia 6800 that ran most everything up through Left 4 Dead just fine. It would be silly to throw any more money into this ancient system. I have tested Windows 7 and could never get comparable frame rates with it when gaming so I went back to XP. It got hit with a virus and I went to Linux Mint 11. I'm still not gaming but if I ever go back to a MS OS on this box, it would be XP. Most likely I'd just run the same nLited derivative I made for my Eee 701.
A Droid X. It's replaced all of those devices for me. On rare occasions I will tether my old Eee 701 to the X but the vast majority of the time, the 4.3" screen is just fine. I had to wait until such a product existed to make the move, however. Big fingers and smaller phones just don't work. I use Swiftkey X which gives me a slightly larger keyboard and I would love to have an even bigger screen but the X has done the trick for me for a year or so now.
Did I need all that stuff? Probably not, but I've certainly enjoyed it.
There are already laws that address motor vehicle accidents, proper operation, etc. If there's a wreck, it shouldn't matter why. We're past the point of splitting hairs over what's safe enough to do on the road. More laws are just about more revenue: it gives the cops yet another mundane thing they can stop and ticket you for.
Your gripes might have had a legitimate basis 10 years ago but streaming works on a variety of hardware now and it's simpler than ever to hook a computer to your TV.
I understand the importance of running a fully-patched OS but I'm a Linux user and a Slashdot reader. What I'm saying is the odds are so greatly in our favor to never have problems anyway that it's likely never necessary to be OCD about patching a Linux box for personal use. Yes, things are different in the commercial world. Storing personal information or processing credit cards on an Amazon server is a totally different scenario than the average user playing Farmville at home. That's not what I'm talking about at all.
Do you really think every XP box you have out there is properly maintained? Regular users boot their computers and ignore the update messages for Windows and Norton/McAfee updates. They don't know what the updates do, why they're needed or what to do if something goes wrong. Ignoring them is the safe choice. They don't have to update their TVs and they treat their computers the same way. Take into account there are still over 3 million AOL subscribers and that Wal-Mart sells a shit-load of computers. These are the people with the systems I'm talking about. (Likely you cater to a higher class of end user but that doesn't suit my half of the argument so I will pretend it's not the case. Heh heh.)
Windows PCs and Windows-based code are where the real security concerns are. Concern for an unpatched Linux box is like working as a manager in a bank that's being held up and being concerned that the robbers will take the postage stamps from you happen to have in your desk. The target for digital miscreants is huge and glaring and it isn't our private Linux boxen.
I love Mint but 11 is as far as I can go right now. I'm aware of the work of bimsebasse and esteban1uy but myself and many other users aren't interested in manually editing one XML file after another and installing myriad extensions in a special order. I'm actually hoping they'll get things sorted out in the current version of Mint. If not, I'm sure it will be ready for 13.
KDE 3 was better than Gnome 2. KDE 4 is so bad, it made Gnome 2 better. Now we have Gnome 3, which seems poised to put Gnome at a new disadvantage to KDE.
While upgrades are something that you've displayed that Linux may be weak on, I still don't think that's a reason not to run a Linux box. There's also no hard and fast rule that Linux operating systems need to be upgraded. If it works NOW and you don't fool with it, it will still work 3 years from now. We're not talking about Windows here, we're talking about an OS with a lot of security already built in. Since 3 years worth of updates hose the systems you build, why update?
that viewership habits are regressing? Instead of the whole family having their own TVs in separate rooms, maybe more households probably have one TV for everything and that more people are watching together.
More likely it's the fact that TV isn't just on TV anymore. It's possible to download or transfer from DVR shows nearly just as soon as they've aired. They can then be watched on any myriad device from a netbook to a smartphone.
I'm very much a Linux noob but I have extensive DOS and Windows experience. Playing with apt-get in terminal, to me, is much faster and makes more sense than clicking through Synaptic.
I don't really think Linux has waned in importance. I think that for many years, computers have had casual users that made use of desktops for trivial functions because that's what they had. These same users have followed along for netbooks, smartphones and tablets, causing a rise and fall in popularity for each device. In other words, to those whom Linux ever mattered, it still does.
Right now we have the most powerful, affordable computers ever but the biggest efforts out there are to limit these machines to average performance through bloated or crippled software. Gnome 3 and KDE 4 are prime examples, as is the eye candy that was introduced with Vista. What cracks me up consistently is that Microsoft's big leap forward with Windows 8 and Windows-based smartphones is big monochrome buttons with text on them. At this rate, the Windows 9 interface will go back to being a batch file that draws boxes around words with ASCII pipes while defrag and a virus scanner run simultaneously in the background "to optimize performance" while actually keeping performance below average.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a market failure. It's a market success. Despite what the rest of the world drives, here in the US we can afford to purchase and operate mid- and full-size vehicles.
At one time I had a new Corolla I was getting 40+ mpg with but the cost of new car financing plus new car insurance wasn't justified after I moved in with my fiance and lived 2-1/2 miles from work. At that point, I sold the car and went back to driving my 87 Silverado that gets 8 mpg.
I'd love to see cheaper gas. I'd love to see lower taxes. Neither should be influenced by government policy. Current CAFE or whatever nonsense fleet economy standards exist need to be forgotten. It is not important that the government mandate anything regarding fuel efficiency. What is important is that in our free country, we are left free to choose whatever we like to drive.
It works great other than having lower FPS than XP. Going from 1024x768 on the original 19" monitor to 1680x1050 on a 22" LCD really made the 6800 show its age.
Losing performance is why I won't switch to Windows 7 on my desktop. It's a Dell from 2003 with an AGP slot. I have an nVidia 6800 that ran most everything up through Left 4 Dead just fine. It would be silly to throw any more money into this ancient system. I have tested Windows 7 and could never get comparable frame rates with it when gaming so I went back to XP. It got hit with a virus and I went to Linux Mint 11. I'm still not gaming but if I ever go back to a MS OS on this box, it would be XP. Most likely I'd just run the same nLited derivative I made for my Eee 701.
that use Google Plus will have to worry about this PC nonsense. Linus Torvalds, be careful!
I didn't really read what you wrote but 6 for one, half a dozen the other.
A Droid X. It's replaced all of those devices for me. On rare occasions I will tether my old Eee 701 to the X but the vast majority of the time, the 4.3" screen is just fine. I had to wait until such a product existed to make the move, however. Big fingers and smaller phones just don't work. I use Swiftkey X which gives me a slightly larger keyboard and I would love to have an even bigger screen but the X has done the trick for me for a year or so now.
Did I need all that stuff? Probably not, but I've certainly enjoyed it.
Morons with no actual understanding of the language say "could care less." It's just that there's a lot of them.
There's a number of users making it do what they want but they're running up against nonsense, like having to edit files in a specific order.
There are already laws that address motor vehicle accidents, proper operation, etc. If there's a wreck, it shouldn't matter why. We're past the point of splitting hairs over what's safe enough to do on the road. More laws are just about more revenue: it gives the cops yet another mundane thing they can stop and ticket you for.
Your gripes might have had a legitimate basis 10 years ago but streaming works on a variety of hardware now and it's simpler than ever to hook a computer to your TV.
I understand the importance of running a fully-patched OS but I'm a Linux user and a Slashdot reader. What I'm saying is the odds are so greatly in our favor to never have problems anyway that it's likely never necessary to be OCD about patching a Linux box for personal use. Yes, things are different in the commercial world. Storing personal information or processing credit cards on an Amazon server is a totally different scenario than the average user playing Farmville at home. That's not what I'm talking about at all.
Do you really think every XP box you have out there is properly maintained? Regular users boot their computers and ignore the update messages for Windows and Norton/McAfee updates. They don't know what the updates do, why they're needed or what to do if something goes wrong. Ignoring them is the safe choice. They don't have to update their TVs and they treat their computers the same way. Take into account there are still over 3 million AOL subscribers and that Wal-Mart sells a shit-load of computers. These are the people with the systems I'm talking about. (Likely you cater to a higher class of end user but that doesn't suit my half of the argument so I will pretend it's not the case. Heh heh.)
Windows PCs and Windows-based code are where the real security concerns are. Concern for an unpatched Linux box is like working as a manager in a bank that's being held up and being concerned that the robbers will take the postage stamps from you happen to have in your desk. The target for digital miscreants is huge and glaring and it isn't our private Linux boxen.
I love Mint but 11 is as far as I can go right now. I'm aware of the work of bimsebasse and esteban1uy but myself and many other users aren't interested in manually editing one XML file after another and installing myriad extensions in a special order. I'm actually hoping they'll get things sorted out in the current version of Mint. If not, I'm sure it will be ready for 13.
Mate does not conflict with Gnome 3. The whole point of Mate is to create a Gnome 2 fork that can be run alongside Gnome 3.
KDE 3 was better than Gnome 2. KDE 4 is so bad, it made Gnome 2 better. Now we have Gnome 3, which seems poised to put Gnome at a new disadvantage to KDE.
While upgrades are something that you've displayed that Linux may be weak on, I still don't think that's a reason not to run a Linux box. There's also no hard and fast rule that Linux operating systems need to be upgraded. If it works NOW and you don't fool with it, it will still work 3 years from now. We're not talking about Windows here, we're talking about an OS with a lot of security already built in. Since 3 years worth of updates hose the systems you build, why update?
Rumors on the Mint forum are that Gnome-Fallback is to lead a short life.
that viewership habits are regressing? Instead of the whole family having their own TVs in separate rooms, maybe more households probably have one TV for everything and that more people are watching together.
More likely it's the fact that TV isn't just on TV anymore. It's possible to download or transfer from DVR shows nearly just as soon as they've aired. They can then be watched on any myriad device from a netbook to a smartphone.
I just made some cupcakes.
I see where you're going with this...
1. Build Tablet
2. Install crappy new Ubuntu
3. Profit!
It's a Ubuntu/Compiz bug. It bites me frequently in Mint 11 running Gnome. The command to reload the decorations is
I'm very much a Linux noob but I have extensive DOS and Windows experience. Playing with apt-get in terminal, to me, is much faster and makes more sense than clicking through Synaptic.
There's an effort to make Mint 12 look more like the previous iterations but it's a lot of work. Get classic Mint desktop in Gnome shell
I don't really think Linux has waned in importance. I think that for many years, computers have had casual users that made use of desktops for trivial functions because that's what they had. These same users have followed along for netbooks, smartphones and tablets, causing a rise and fall in popularity for each device. In other words, to those whom Linux ever mattered, it still does.
Right now we have the most powerful, affordable computers ever but the biggest efforts out there are to limit these machines to average performance through bloated or crippled software. Gnome 3 and KDE 4 are prime examples, as is the eye candy that was introduced with Vista. What cracks me up consistently is that Microsoft's big leap forward with Windows 8 and Windows-based smartphones is big monochrome buttons with text on them. At this rate, the Windows 9 interface will go back to being a batch file that draws boxes around words with ASCII pipes while defrag and a virus scanner run simultaneously in the background "to optimize performance" while actually keeping performance below average.
At first I thought you were smart but then I realized you were just a dick. Cut an infrequent Linux user although now full-on convert a little slack.
0. Why make everything in lists?
1. Then why does MATE look like shit compared to Gnome?
2. Yes, but you know what I mean.