Actually, the problem is that we haven't really been given an issue that's serious enough to kill or die for. Americans have really never experienced strife, not even in the worst of times, not since the civil war.
The "Great Depression" looks like a time of prosperity compared to Russia's Five Year Plan or China's Long March.
Before you turn reasonable, peaceable people into rebels willing to kill and die for some cause, that cause must be severe enough that they cannot live another day without fighting for change.
The scary thing about a society that gets to that point, is that if people are willing to accept revolution, they become willing to accept *ANY* new government. After that, there's really no floor.
So, yeah, the average American seems pathetic and complacent and ignorant of his own prosperity. Count your blessings. It's fun to imagine that something petty like the entertainment industry, or the war on drugs, or the war in Iraq, or any number of things that are meaningless on a historical scale, could be the divisive issue that finally breaks the back. But the truth is, nothing we've ever seen in our lifetime is important enough to cause a general widespread dissent and call to action.
When you DO see such an issue, don't expect the opposition to be a few old men in Idaho with rifles. When you have a truly divisive issue, it will affect EVERYONE, and that includes people with military command. Don't think of individuals against the government, think in terms of the very fabric of the whole goddamned machine turing against itself. Put your noble notions of militiamen standing down the modern army, or of the army command being reluctant to turn their arms against their own leadership.
No, it can't happen. Just because it's happened time and time again, in countries whose people thought their government and society were stable right up to the moment it disintegrated. Americans just aren't like that, right? It can't happen here.
If it did, it sure as hell won't be over the DMCA or whehter pot or abortion is legal.
Incontravertible, obvious proof that a political party blatantly rigged an election might just do it though. I can see whole States and military divisions refusing to follow orders from such a regime, or even turning their force against it, and I can easily see that being the point where you have "loyalists" and "rebels", where EACH side has naval, air, infantry, armor, and nuclear arsenal. Them grampas in Idaho don't enter into it, get it now?
Even people who never vote might get upset enough to fuck shit up.
>The number one factor in determining an election >was the amount of campaign dollars a canidate >used for advertising
I guess you could say that is a problem, but then, if the liberals are so smart and progressive, why can't they make enough money to use this system to turn the power structure on its head?
Conspiracy theories aside, doesn't this mean that those with the influence to gain money, are met with a logical and natural reward of political power?
I'm surprised that people who want reform bother with opposition parties at all. I think it might serve their purposes better to JOIN the party with the influence and money. No matter how radical your ideas really are, take a moderate stance, but the whole time making sure the party in power thinks you're one of them...
Enough people doing this at the local level could transform government in pretty short order.
I think it would be hilarious if a Republican senator would just come out and bluntly say that the party is spending too much on useless crap, religion doesn't belong in government, education needs finance, the war on drugs is a failure, etc.
Not in the hotheaded way an opposition party member would say it, but in THEIR OWN language.
Fuck the Libertarian and Green candidates. If they had any sense, they'd go moderate and run on the GOP ticket. Get elected and then start making new rules, instead of saying how you wish things would be if only you could get into power.
>Say person A approaches person B and offers >person B a sum of money if person B will vote a >certain way.
That's not actually as bad as the things that have really happened in the past to reinforce the need for a secret ballot. At least in your scenario, the person casting the vote benefits.
What's scary is when you get into something like a powerful labor party whose members have no compunction against making your life miserable or even killing you for your dissent. No, this isn't common in America, but it IS a demonstrated risk, one that the American system has a safeguard to prevent: The secret ballot.
I sure as hell woulndn't want to think that large numbers of working class people voted a certain way in an election, especially a LOCAL election, because they feared reprisals from their union or police or whatever.
Think of something like the logger, who really would like to vote for an environmental measure, but who knows that everybody in the town is going to know how he voted.... You think he's going to vote his conscience or do you think he's going to vote the way his peers expect him to?
>The flaw in this system is that it enables vote >selling
The problem with vote selling isn't that someone could sell their vote. It's that someone can be coerced. In small areas, that's enough to sway local politics. And often, local politics are what matters.
Don't think in terms of "getting paid for your vote." Consider that someone might be literally in fear for his or her life.
People seem to be in a mindset where they think the only election in the US is the presidential race every four years. But despite the importance that seems to have, local elections often have a more significant impact on your life. Sherrif, judge, county commissioner, appraisal district chairman, school board, mayor, state legislature,etc. The decisions made by these people might actually have a direct influence on your life, and, they actually might be in a more down-to-earth situation where it makes a difference when the constituents correspond with them.
Where do you think national politicians come from, anyway? They aren't hatched in DC, you know. They move up a chain starting in local politics. And THAT is the time to get their ear.
> it's cheaper to build a RAID 5 array than buy a >tape drive.
And you backup that array, exactly how?
And how do you archive this backup? How do you transport it offsite?
Yes, it's true that for consumer use, tape backup is usually more costly than the risks, and most personal data that is truly important can be stored on a single CDR. Most of the huge data stores that individuals must deal with, consist of entertainment media. There won't be any billion dollar lawsuits or losing your license to practice medicine or having a bank go out of business, if you don't backup that data.
The industry has not given us much of an alternative. I wouldn't be surprised to see tape systems becoming "phased out" anyway, with nothing to replace them -- that just makes them even more expensive for the people who still need to use them, it doesn't make them go away.
The people who are still mounting 9track tapes on a routine basis will confirm that.
Meanwhile, there won't be a reasonable backup system for the home user, and there really hasn't *EVER* been one. Sure installation instructions have always said "make a backup before installing our product."
Those instructions are never followed, but it's not because of negligence, it's because the means do not typically exist.
I cannot afford any sort of tape backup system for my home computers. But I'd really like to be able to simulate one using cdr's. Mondo looked promising, but it is too buggy and just "feels too risky" to me.
I just make a determination of which files have legal implications, which ones are part of my livelihood, what am I obligated to keep, what would be very inconvenient if I lost it. So *that* kind of backup takes a couple of seconds, and I just do it on a new CD every time, tar it up and copy to another partition every so often, that sort of thing. I'm afraid the difficulty and cost of doing a *FULL* backup actually stops a lot of people from making a minimal copy of the important stuff.
"Why should Joe Schmoe, who is sharing a bunch of Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit MP3s, spend time in PRISON for doing so?"
Of course, they *won't*. But in keeping with my view that, if things got a hell of a lot worse for the average person vis-a-vis his government, he might finally realize there is cause to take action.
I firmly believe that minor changes to the status quo will never call the average, reasonable person to take desperate action, or organize, or do ANYTHING towards change.
What we need, is for the oppression of government to become SO UNSPEAKABLY HARSH, that it will no longer be POSSIBLE for the average, reasonable person to pretend or assume that everything is fine, or that life for another day under the current government is *possible*.
See, if we could start seeing the average ordinary reasonable peaceable person being routinely hauled away by soldiers, maybe all this talk of the need for reform will start to take on meaning for the average, reasonable person.
But even this issue isn't the one that's going to cause the back to break. I don't think any issue that primarily affects *entertainment* is going to be perceived as having the importance needed to cause someone to choose to sacrifice his life rather than suffer under tyranny.
Hell, it won't even get him to vote in the regular elections, it won't get him to make his personal inputs when the prevailing political party is outlining their platform, it won't make him run for office himself. So I think we're pretty safe from outright blood flowing in the streets, burned-down capitol buildings, and widespread assassinations just yet.
"The CBDTPA was a bill that would ban the manufacture of computers "
Only in the USA. I don't really care if the USA turns itself into a 3rd world country. That would be a fitting end, natural consequences, etc.
Other countries wouldn't feel the need to shackle themselves, and, you think the US economy is bad NOW, wait until there is *real* strife.
Maybe then at least, people will go back to making meaninguful music.
If you want to know what I mean by strife, consider Russia's 5 Year Plan, and consider China's Long March. They make the "Great Depression" look like a time of wealth and prosperity.
I know you're joking, but a 55 gallon aquarium is a heavy mass of water. Tempered glass under stress can shatter under low frequency waves.
I have a lot of time and money invested in my fish. I'd be more than a little upset if they were killed by the subsonics from a military jet, and this *DOES* happen.
I don't know whether I would be more upset about my fish or about the mess. But I'm pretty sure insurance would take care of the mess, minus a $250 deductible. I don't know if you'd want to clean up 60 gallons of live water dumped in your house.
I could not simply go to a pet store and replace my fish. Sure I guess I could get baby fish, but these are mature, somewhat rare, creatures with a 25 year lifespan.
>Cost analysis, like every other decision making >process is subject to interpitation.
I interpret this as a strategy for the State of Massachussetts to acquire deep discounts on Microsoft products. If a heavy player starts making noise about switching, that's just so that Ballmer will get on his jet and come do the grovelling thing.
"I'd at least make sure that all the hardware I'm using is properly supported under linux."
That's not easy. The best you can do if you're spec'ing hardware sometimes is to guess.
For a server, it's not that hard, provided you stick to the basics. For a laptop, there's hardly anything that works 100%. My new Toshiba comes close, but, has a couple of failings; no ACPI suspend, and no support for the SD Flash socket.
The SD socket is understandable I guess. But I don't understand how something as fundamental as ACPI suspend on a laptop can be a problem.
This probably means that even I, a die-hard linux afficianado since the beginning, will choose to run XP more often than not on my laptop.
Fortunately for me and Microsoft I guess, cygwin isn't that bad.
"Well, I've noticed some things mentioned about WLAN cards in the newer kernels, though I won't make any promises about supported hardware."
You're being a bit too kind and genteel here.
I'd go as far as to say that you might not be able to find a current WLAN product that works, and you might need to scour for a discontinued card, if you want anything at all.
"NTFS support"
I'd like to know, in detail, what the problem is with NTFS, that's behind the dire warnings in the kernel config option.
What I really want is a new filesystem that can be used to replace NTFS in windows.
Fine with me. It's been an interesting few years since I started with an ASR model 33 teletype, and watching this whole brief chapter about the microprocessor's adoption.
I don't care if my computing machine can't be used to copy pop music or videos. If that's what it's all about to you, then I guess it's an issue for you.
I've never heard before that Broadcom's reason was due to Government pressure.
I'd say that *raises* the likelihood of open source drivers. But it also makes it a certainty that the development will be in a place where the FCC has no authority (and where Broadcom has no venue for litigation.)
I think the OP slightly misunderstands the problem, but I don't think that makes it any less of a showstopper.
My guess is that there's some 802.11 hardware in these laptops for which there is NO POSSIBILITY of linux support. At least not until some smart person in some free country decides it's important to create support.
I'm guessing the root of this problem is not the Centrino processor, but in the Broadcom 802.11g chipset.
I wish the linux-wlan compatability list didn't misrepresent the situation. We should admit that linux is being left behind in this important area.
While people seem concerned about the desktop, they've been blinded to a de-facto loss of *mobile*.
Yes of course there are supported wlan options. I could kiss Toshiba's boots for putting a Prism2 chip on the built-in 802.11 of my notebook! But does that help the OP, or his entire campus full of Dells?
You seem to think "obscure" hardware is a big part of the problem. To me, it's often quite the opposite: when certain manufactures dominate the market for a type of product, alternative OS's are shut out, completely.
There's nothing "obscure" or uncommon about Broadcom 802.11 cards. To the contrary, it is almost impossible right now to purchase such a card that is not based on a broadcom chip. Even some manufacturers who previously had a compatable chipset, have changed the product.
There are very few, if any, 802.11b PCI cards in the *current* market that will work with Linux. So it becomes a challenge to find specific discontinued products, in quest of something like a Prism2 board. I was unable to find *ANY* 802.11g cards that would work.
The hardware compatability list does not paint an accurate picture of the situation. Sure there are cards that can work, but that means nothing without a vendor who can provide the specific hardware. And if you throw Linksys or D-Link into the equation, you can't even be assured of compatability even if you order the right part number! (I've been burned twice, once on a Linksys WMP-11, and again on a DLink DWL-520.)
It has gotten to a point where I'd go back to using Windows if only it supported a few features that linux has and windows lacks (Virtual consoles on a high res framebuffer is #1 on my list, and even that is broken for my card in 2.6.)
But even better than hardware compatability lists, would be hardware *recommendations*.
I don't necessarily care for a list of all the compatable hardware. Sometimes I want to know which of the current options is the best supported for my application. Yes, that means I want to hear value judgements, but the people who do hw compatability lists don't do that.
For instance, instead of seeing "don't get a broadcom 802.11 card", how about a list of which 802.11g card works *best*. (I think the problem with this example is that the answer right now is "none of them.").
I've tried and failed so many times that I've given up on this:
I have a windows 2000 box in the room with my entertainment center, that has a printer attached.
I want to print to that printer, a Samsung ML-1210, from debian, via SMB.
It's not easy. And the more I try, the less it even seems *possible*. So now I scp whatever file to a windows box and print from there. If I want a hardcopy of a web page, I actually end up using a web browser on windows.
I've desperately looked for a way to fix this problem, but find none.
"Hardware should be documented. Ever heard of data sheets?"
So many people in decision-making positions have lost the ability to say "No."
And so few people who understand these issues, have found themselves in positions of authority.
I wonder why that is? If we're so smart, why are we working night shift for hourly rates, instead of sitting on the board already?
Re:Salt Lake City 2002
on
Watching You
·
· Score: 1
You admit to be the sort of person who thinks it is appropriate to take guns to public events, yet you want us to sympathize with you because you are also the sort of person who gets a lot of attention from the authorities?
Slashdot Mirror
" the one of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with the Iraqi leader. "
The what? I want a TShirt of that.
Actually, the problem is that we haven't really been given an issue that's serious enough to kill or die for. Americans have really never experienced strife, not even in the worst of times, not since the civil war.
The "Great Depression" looks like a time of prosperity compared to Russia's Five Year Plan or China's Long March.
Before you turn reasonable, peaceable people into rebels willing to kill and die for some cause, that cause must be severe enough that they cannot live another day without fighting for change.
The scary thing about a society that gets to that point, is that if people are willing to accept revolution, they become willing to accept *ANY* new government. After that, there's really no floor.
So, yeah, the average American seems pathetic and complacent and ignorant of his own prosperity. Count your blessings. It's fun to imagine that something petty like the entertainment industry, or the war on drugs, or the war in Iraq, or any number of things that are meaningless on a historical scale, could be the divisive issue that finally breaks the back. But the truth is, nothing we've ever seen in our lifetime is important enough to cause a general widespread dissent and call to action.
When you DO see such an issue, don't expect the opposition to be a few old men in Idaho with rifles. When you have a truly divisive issue, it will affect EVERYONE, and that includes people with military command. Don't think of individuals against the government, think in terms of the very fabric of the whole goddamned machine turing against itself. Put your noble notions of militiamen standing down the modern army, or of the army command being reluctant to turn their arms against their own leadership.
No, it can't happen. Just because it's happened time and time again, in countries whose people thought their government and society were stable right up to the moment it disintegrated. Americans just aren't like that, right? It can't happen here.
If it did, it sure as hell won't be over the DMCA or whehter pot or abortion is legal.
Incontravertible, obvious proof that a political party blatantly rigged an election might just do it though. I can see whole States and military divisions refusing to follow orders from such a regime, or even turning their force against it, and I can easily see that being the point where you have "loyalists" and "rebels", where EACH side has naval, air, infantry, armor, and nuclear arsenal. Them grampas in Idaho don't enter into it, get it now?
Even people who never vote might get upset enough to fuck shit up.
>The number one factor in determining an election
>was the amount of campaign dollars a canidate
>used for advertising
I guess you could say that is a problem, but then, if the liberals are so smart and progressive, why can't they make enough money to use this system to turn the power structure on its head?
Conspiracy theories aside, doesn't this mean that those with the influence to gain money, are met with a logical and natural reward of political power?
I'm surprised that people who want reform bother with opposition parties at all. I think it might serve their purposes better to JOIN the party with the influence and money. No matter how radical your ideas really are, take a moderate stance, but the whole time making sure the party in power thinks you're one of them...
Enough people doing this at the local level could transform government in pretty short order.
I think it would be hilarious if a Republican senator would just come out and bluntly say that the party is spending too much on useless crap, religion doesn't belong in government, education needs finance, the war on drugs is a failure, etc.
Not in the hotheaded way an opposition party member would say it, but in THEIR OWN language.
Fuck the Libertarian and Green candidates. If they had any sense, they'd go moderate and run on the GOP ticket. Get elected and then start making new rules, instead of saying how you wish things would be if only you could get into power.
>Say person A approaches person B and offers
>person B a sum of money if person B will vote a
>certain way.
That's not actually as bad as the things that have really happened in the past to reinforce the need for a secret ballot. At least in your scenario, the person casting the vote benefits.
What's scary is when you get into something like a powerful labor party whose members have no compunction against making your life miserable or even killing you for your dissent. No, this isn't common in America, but it IS a demonstrated risk, one that the American system has a safeguard to prevent: The secret ballot.
I sure as hell woulndn't want to think that large numbers of working class people voted a certain way in an election, especially a LOCAL election, because they feared reprisals from their union or police or whatever.
Think of something like the logger, who really would like to vote for an environmental measure, but who knows that everybody in the town is going to know how he voted.... You think he's going to vote his conscience or do you think he's going to vote the way his peers expect him to?
>The flaw in this system is that it enables vote
>selling
The problem with vote selling isn't that someone could sell their vote. It's that someone can be coerced. In small areas, that's enough to sway local politics. And often, local politics are what matters.
Don't think in terms of "getting paid for your vote." Consider that someone might be literally in fear for his or her life.
People seem to be in a mindset where they think the only election in the US is the presidential race every four years. But despite the importance that seems to have, local elections often have a more significant impact on your life. Sherrif, judge, county commissioner, appraisal district chairman, school board, mayor, state legislature,etc. The decisions made by these people might actually have a direct influence on your life, and, they actually might be in a more down-to-earth situation where it makes a difference when the constituents correspond with them.
Where do you think national politicians come from, anyway? They aren't hatched in DC, you know. They move up a chain starting in local politics. And THAT is the time to get their ear.
The founding fathers mostly lived comfortably to ripe old ages. Where did you get the idea that they died (DIED!), defending freedom?
It doesn't really have to be "cheap", but your tape drive is 120% of the price point for the whole rest of the system.
> it's cheaper to build a RAID 5 array than buy a
>tape drive.
And you backup that array, exactly how?
And how do you archive this backup? How do you transport it offsite?
Yes, it's true that for consumer use, tape backup is usually more costly than the risks, and most personal data that is truly important can be stored on a single CDR. Most of the huge data stores that individuals must deal with, consist of entertainment media. There won't be any billion dollar lawsuits or losing your license to practice medicine or having a bank go out of business, if you don't backup that data.
The industry has not given us much of an alternative. I wouldn't be surprised to see tape systems becoming "phased out" anyway, with nothing to replace them -- that just makes them even more expensive for the people who still need to use them, it doesn't make them go away.
The people who are still mounting 9track tapes on a routine basis will confirm that.
Meanwhile, there won't be a reasonable backup system for the home user, and there really hasn't *EVER* been one. Sure installation instructions have always said "make a backup before installing our product."
Those instructions are never followed, but it's not because of negligence, it's because the means do not typically exist.
I cannot afford any sort of tape backup system for my home computers. But I'd really like to be able to simulate one using cdr's. Mondo looked promising, but it is too buggy and just "feels too risky" to me.
I just make a determination of which files have legal implications, which ones are part of my livelihood, what am I obligated to keep, what would be very inconvenient if I lost it. So *that* kind of backup takes a couple of seconds, and I just do it on a new CD every time, tar it up and copy to another partition every so often, that sort of thing. I'm afraid the difficulty and cost of doing a *FULL* backup actually stops a lot of people from making a minimal copy of the important stuff.
The problem with Zip wasn't so much the cost of the drive, it was the way they kept control on the media.
While I was waiting for aftermarket ZIP disks to come down in price like floppies, cheap, fast and reliable, CDR/W happened.
Now that I have 8cm cdr's and CF, I don't need any other removable media at all.
I even bought laptops without floppy drives finally.
Yeah, I've considered that. I don't like plexi though, not just for aesthetic reasons, but also for fish health.
My fish would cost about five grand to replace, FYI, if they were replacable, which they aren't ($300-500 to replace them as babies though).
"Why should Joe Schmoe, who is sharing a bunch of Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit MP3s, spend time in PRISON for doing so?"
Of course, they *won't*. But in keeping with my view that, if things got a hell of a lot worse for the average person vis-a-vis his government, he might finally realize there is cause to take action.
I firmly believe that minor changes to the status quo will never call the average, reasonable person to take desperate action, or organize, or do ANYTHING towards change.
What we need, is for the oppression of government to become SO UNSPEAKABLY HARSH, that it will no longer be POSSIBLE for the average, reasonable person to pretend or assume that everything is fine, or that life for another day under the current government is *possible*.
See, if we could start seeing the average ordinary reasonable peaceable person being routinely hauled away by soldiers, maybe all this talk of the need for reform will start to take on meaning for the average, reasonable person.
But even this issue isn't the one that's going to cause the back to break. I don't think any issue that primarily affects *entertainment* is going to be perceived as having the importance needed to cause someone to choose to sacrifice his life rather than suffer under tyranny.
Hell, it won't even get him to vote in the regular elections, it won't get him to make his personal inputs when the prevailing political party is outlining their platform, it won't make him run for office himself. So I think we're pretty safe from outright blood flowing in the streets, burned-down capitol buildings, and widespread assassinations just yet.
"The CBDTPA was a bill that would ban the manufacture of computers "
Only in the USA. I don't really care if the USA turns itself into a 3rd world country. That would be a fitting end, natural consequences, etc.
Other countries wouldn't feel the need to shackle themselves, and, you think the US economy is bad NOW, wait until there is *real* strife.
Maybe then at least, people will go back to making meaninguful music.
If you want to know what I mean by strife, consider Russia's 5 Year Plan, and consider China's Long March. They make the "Great Depression" look like a time of wealth and prosperity.
I know you're joking, but a 55 gallon aquarium is a heavy mass of water. Tempered glass under stress can shatter under low frequency waves.
I have a lot of time and money invested in my fish. I'd be more than a little upset if they were killed by the subsonics from a military jet, and this *DOES* happen.
I don't know whether I would be more upset about my fish or about the mess. But I'm pretty sure insurance would take care of the mess, minus a $250 deductible. I don't know if you'd want to clean up 60 gallons of live water dumped in your house.
I could not simply go to a pet store and replace my fish. Sure I guess I could get baby fish, but these are mature, somewhat rare, creatures with a 25 year lifespan.
I'd rather have a SST fly over once in a while, than the A-10 warthogs that buzz my roof every hour or so.
I'm scared they are going to kill my tropical fish.
>Cost analysis, like every other decision making
>process is subject to interpitation.
I interpret this as a strategy for the State of Massachussetts to acquire deep discounts on Microsoft products. If a heavy player starts making noise about switching, that's just so that Ballmer will get on his jet and come do the grovelling thing.
"I'd at least make sure that all the hardware I'm using is properly supported under linux."
That's not easy. The best you can do if you're spec'ing hardware sometimes is to guess.
For a server, it's not that hard, provided you stick to the basics. For a laptop, there's hardly anything that works 100%. My new Toshiba comes close, but, has a couple of failings; no ACPI suspend, and no support for the SD Flash socket.
The SD socket is understandable I guess. But I don't understand how something as fundamental as ACPI suspend on a laptop can be a problem.
This probably means that even I, a die-hard linux afficianado since the beginning, will choose to run XP more often than not on my laptop.
Fortunately for me and Microsoft I guess, cygwin isn't that bad.
"Well, I've noticed some things mentioned about WLAN cards in the newer kernels, though I won't make any promises about supported hardware."
You're being a bit too kind and genteel here.
I'd go as far as to say that you might not be able to find a current WLAN product that works, and you might need to scour for a discontinued card, if you want anything at all.
"NTFS support"
I'd like to know, in detail, what the problem is with NTFS, that's behind the dire warnings in the kernel config option.
What I really want is a new filesystem that can be used to replace NTFS in windows.
What's over?
The home computer as an entertainment device?
Fine with me. It's been an interesting few years since I started with an ASR model 33 teletype, and watching this whole brief chapter about the microprocessor's adoption.
I don't care if my computing machine can't be used to copy pop music or videos. If that's what it's all about to you, then I guess it's an issue for you.
I really don't see the problem.
I've never heard before that Broadcom's reason was due to Government pressure.
I'd say that *raises* the likelihood of open source drivers. But it also makes it a certainty that the development will be in a place where the FCC has no authority (and where Broadcom has no venue for litigation.)
I think the OP slightly misunderstands the problem, but I don't think that makes it any less of a showstopper.
My guess is that there's some 802.11 hardware in these laptops for which there is NO POSSIBILITY of linux support. At least not until some smart person in some free country decides it's important to create support.
I'm guessing the root of this problem is not the Centrino processor, but in the Broadcom 802.11g chipset.
I wish the linux-wlan compatability list didn't misrepresent the situation. We should admit that linux is being left behind in this important area.
While people seem concerned about the desktop, they've been blinded to a de-facto loss of *mobile*.
Yes of course there are supported wlan options. I could kiss Toshiba's boots for putting a Prism2 chip on the built-in 802.11 of my notebook! But does that help the OP, or his entire campus full of Dells?
You seem to think "obscure" hardware is a big part of the problem. To me, it's often quite the opposite: when certain manufactures dominate the market for a type of product, alternative OS's are shut out, completely.
There's nothing "obscure" or uncommon about Broadcom 802.11 cards. To the contrary, it is almost impossible right now to purchase such a card that is not based on a broadcom chip. Even some manufacturers who previously had a compatable chipset, have changed the product.
There are very few, if any, 802.11b PCI cards in the *current* market that will work with Linux. So it becomes a challenge to find specific discontinued products, in quest of something like a Prism2 board. I was unable to find *ANY* 802.11g cards that would work.
The hardware compatability list does not paint an accurate picture of the situation. Sure there are cards that can work, but that means nothing without a vendor who can provide the specific hardware. And if you throw Linksys or D-Link into the equation, you can't even be assured of compatability even if you order the right part number! (I've been burned twice, once on a Linksys WMP-11, and again on a DLink DWL-520.)
It has gotten to a point where I'd go back to using Windows if only it supported a few features that linux has and windows lacks (Virtual consoles on a high res framebuffer is #1 on my list, and even that is broken for my card in 2.6.)
Amen.
But even better than hardware compatability lists, would be hardware *recommendations*.
I don't necessarily care for a list of all the compatable hardware. Sometimes I want to know
which of the current options is the best supported for my application. Yes, that means I want to hear value judgements, but the people who do hw compatability lists don't do that.
For instance, instead of seeing "don't get a broadcom 802.11 card", how about a list of which 802.11g card works *best*. (I think the problem with this example is that the answer right now is "none of them.").
I've tried and failed so many times that I've given up on this:
I have a windows 2000 box in the room with my entertainment center, that has a printer attached.
I want to print to that printer, a Samsung ML-1210, from debian, via SMB.
It's not easy. And the more I try, the less it even seems *possible*. So now I scp whatever file to a windows box and print from there. If I want a hardcopy of a web page, I actually end up using a web browser on windows.
I've desperately looked for a way to fix this problem, but find none.
"Hardware should be documented. Ever heard of data sheets?"
So many people in decision-making positions have lost the ability to say "No."
And so few people who understand these issues, have found themselves in positions of authority.
I wonder why that is? If we're so smart, why are we working night shift for hourly rates, instead of sitting on the board already?
You admit to be the sort of person who thinks it is appropriate to take guns to public events, yet you want us to sympathize with you because you are also the sort of person who gets a lot of attention from the authorities?
This just doesn't add up.