I laughed heartily at the fact that a common user scenario includes how to torrent a Spice Girls album. Not that I think that's not the case; it was just pretty refreshing to see how blatant this guy is about it.
The people arguing that RISC was inherently better than CISC weren't wrong; the people building the CISC architectures simply had orders of magnitude more R&D money to throw at the problem. IBM is not exactly a poor underdog, though I understand RISC purists don't like the PPC either.
Omg how clever. That is in fact what you should always be doing, even with Britannica. I'm amazed that they don't teach this very basic method in universities these days.
That is, for some applications (i.e., archival), a plus. In my opionion, the biggest danger of using HDDs as backup, is not EM, platter failure or anyting else, it's some dunce just going there and erasing it. Happens more often than you think. Not a problem with WORM, if you can afford it.
Won't quote the article text for phat karmaz here (because it's pretty unreadable), but this is what happened, in a nutshell:
1. Someone makes stuff up on Wikipedia
2. Some ostensibly reputable source acts not all that reputable, takes that information, and oublishes without saying where they got it from (in short, without doing their homework).
3. Said publicatin is then used to reference the made up information in Wikipedia.
4. ???
5. There is no step 5.
The latest sound cards and "unusual" video cards (from Best Buy?) are not a good test of hardware support. They only test market share. Uh huh. So you recommend measuring market share in the way that makes your choice of OS looks best, not in terms of how much it "benefits" (as in, perceived usability) the general public? Yeah, I bet telling people that they can run Linux on old Sun or Alpha workstations will certainly make them flock to it in droves, after all, it's so compatible with everything.
Face it, geek cred is just not the same as street cred.
Standard equipment that would cause a riot if it wasn't supported. Yes, even the iPod. Even though Apple deliberately try to break support with every version they release? It's BECAUSE Apple breaks compatibility. Nothing gets Linux coders to code faster than being locked out of desirable hardware for no good reason. They will make it work just to spite Apple.
P.S. This is mostly joking but there IS some grain of truth in it if you think about it.
Hardcore Mac users will expect to buy hardware that is certified to work and pay a premium for it. And they say "everything just works on a Mac".
Hardcore Linux users will expect to buy Hardware they heard good things about on the internet, tweak the configurations a bit, download a few packages and patches, maybe compile a kernel or two, and fiddle about until they're satisfied. And they say "everything just works on Linux".
Hardcore Windows users will expect to buy just about anything, maybe install a driver, and then have it more or less working. And they say "everything just works on Windows".
The bottom line is: Never ask "hardcore" people about usability. And this being/., everyone is hardcore.
The Eee is certainly one of the more (most) usable Linux systems out there, which is of course helped by its limited hardware expansion capabilities. But I thought we were talking about Linux usability/hardware compatibility in general now.
>two keyboards, wireless mice, an ipod
Standard equipment that would cause a riot if it wasn't supported. Yes, even the iPod.
>an external DVD drive, a pocket USB hard drive, an SD card, a USB memory stick, and my camera
All the same class of equipment, USB mass storage devices. They likely even use the same driver. Well, maybe not the DVD if it's burner.
But still, try something more challenging, like a sound card or an unusual video card.
I'm not that familiar with Multitouch, and maybe it's a bad example, but I stick to my point. I was more commenting on the fact that this is, basically nothing new. The best example would be, in my opinion, OS X itself. I think few people would disagree with the opinion that it's the most Joe Sixpack-compatible *nix out there.
This is what Apple does a lot - take something reasonably old and obvious, make it look spiffy and actually usable for someone without a CS degree, then sell (and market) it as the Hot New Thing.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Especially the "making it actually usable" part. There's lots of k3wl shit out there in the FOSS community, but Apple is one of the few companies that actually manages to sell it to your semi-usual consumers, even if they sometimes scale it down a bit and use marketing that causes geeks to flinch in pain.
That's not funny, since this is exactly how it will go. Only on/. people would automatically think "Linux" when they hear "secure OS". In fact, it wouldn't be surprised at all if they just brush off Linux as an "insecure" system jut to save the them the hassle of thinking about a niche for a second.
Not commenting on whether this is a good idea to begin with (as a million others have already pointed out, even the optical system might not be one), but theis bit of news basically boils down to "new tech is more expensive than old tech".
You don't. For 1.2k bucks you get a LAPTOP that can run games decently - something that's completely out of the reach of consoles (disregarding mobile consoles which are something else entirely and compare more to PDAs).
PC FPS controls are completely unrealistic in terms of movement, aim, etc.
FPSs have their own history, to the point where "completely unrealistic" behaviour is so entrneched that anything "more realistic" seems completely unnatural. Well, maybe not to non-hradcore gamers (Wii target demographic), but let's face it, FPSs are probably the genre that target hardcore gamers the most. If I were to be flamebaiting, I'd say FPSs are exclusively for graphics whores and hardcore gaming geeks - which would be wrong, but not that much.
Well, okay, it isn't the most exciting rumor, but I've seen laptops with a 13.3" screen and it's a really nice size - the interesting bit isn't that smaller Intel Mac laptops are coming, the interesting bit is that it's a new size, a semi-new line of laptops, and that it bumps down the iBook down the Apple food chain quite a bit (I guess they're keeping the iBook brand name though, or they would've killed the iMac brand as well).
Since my own blurb for this was rejected (no blame on the editors, they were probably flooded with stories on this), I'll state an observation here: The 17" PowerBook G4 is now gone, but the 12" model stll hasn't been updated yet. Is that an indication that the rumors about a 13.3" MacBook to replace the 12" PowerBook and the 14" iBook are true?
Slashdot Mirror
I laughed heartily at the fact that a common user scenario includes how to torrent a Spice Girls album. Not that I think that's not the case; it was just pretty refreshing to see how blatant this guy is about it.
Somehow the fact that this was modded "redundant" got a huge laugh out of me.
Omg how clever. That is in fact what you should always be doing, even with Britannica. I'm amazed that they don't teach this very basic method in universities these days.
That is, for some applications (i.e., archival), a plus. In my opionion, the biggest danger of using HDDs as backup, is not EM, platter failure or anyting else, it's some dunce just going there and erasing it. Happens more often than you think. Not a problem with WORM, if you can afford it.
Won't quote the article text for phat karmaz here (because it's pretty unreadable), but this is what happened, in a nutshell: 1. Someone makes stuff up on Wikipedia 2. Some ostensibly reputable source acts not all that reputable, takes that information, and oublishes without saying where they got it from (in short, without doing their homework). 3. Said publicatin is then used to reference the made up information in Wikipedia. 4. ??? 5. There is no step 5.
From TFA:
>A recent post on SlashDot quotes an IT professor saying
I hope this isnt a circular reference to THIS post.
P.S. This is mostly joking but there IS some grain of truth in it if you think about it.
It's all a matter of expectations.
/., everyone is hardcore.
Hardcore Mac users will expect to buy hardware that is certified to work and pay a premium for it. And they say "everything just works on a Mac".
Hardcore Linux users will expect to buy Hardware they heard good things about on the internet, tweak the configurations a bit, download a few packages and patches, maybe compile a kernel or two, and fiddle about until they're satisfied. And they say "everything just works on Linux".
Hardcore Windows users will expect to buy just about anything, maybe install a driver, and then have it more or less working. And they say "everything just works on Windows".
The bottom line is: Never ask "hardcore" people about usability. And this being
The Eee is certainly one of the more (most) usable Linux systems out there, which is of course helped by its limited hardware expansion capabilities. But I thought we were talking about Linux usability/hardware compatibility in general now.
Well...
>two keyboards, wireless mice, an ipod
Standard equipment that would cause a riot if it wasn't supported. Yes, even the iPod.
>an external DVD drive, a pocket USB hard drive, an SD card, a USB memory stick, and my camera
All the same class of equipment, USB mass storage devices. They likely even use the same driver. Well, maybe not the DVD if it's burner.
But still, try something more challenging, like a sound card or an unusual video card.
I'm not that familiar with Multitouch, and maybe it's a bad example, but I stick to my point. I was more commenting on the fact that this is, basically nothing new. The best example would be, in my opinion, OS X itself. I think few people would disagree with the opinion that it's the most Joe Sixpack-compatible *nix out there.
If someone implements "pinching" on a trackpoint, that will add a completely new layer to the ubiquitous nipple jokes.
This is what Apple does a lot - take something reasonably old and obvious, make it look spiffy and actually usable for someone without a CS degree, then sell (and market) it as the Hot New Thing.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Especially the "making it actually usable" part. There's lots of k3wl shit out there in the FOSS community, but Apple is one of the few companies that actually manages to sell it to your semi-usual consumers, even if they sometimes scale it down a bit and use marketing that causes geeks to flinch in pain.
That's not funny, since this is exactly how it will go. Only on /. people would automatically think "Linux" when they hear "secure OS". In fact, it wouldn't be surprised at all if they just brush off Linux as an "insecure" system jut to save the them the hassle of thinking about a niche for a second.
Not commenting on whether this is a good idea to begin with (as a million others have already pointed out, even the optical system might not be one), but theis bit of news basically boils down to "new tech is more expensive than old tech".
I think I'll wait until 11. For the film.
>How long until google is indexing my underwear drawer?
You can already ask them to. It's called Google Desktop Search.
You don't. For 1.2k bucks you get a LAPTOP that can run games decently - something that's completely out of the reach of consoles (disregarding mobile consoles which are something else entirely and compare more to PDAs).
Well, okay, it isn't the most exciting rumor, but I've seen laptops with a 13.3" screen and it's a really nice size - the interesting bit isn't that smaller Intel Mac laptops are coming, the interesting bit is that it's a new size, a semi-new line of laptops, and that it bumps down the iBook down the Apple food chain quite a bit (I guess they're keeping the iBook brand name though, or they would've killed the iMac brand as well).
Since my own blurb for this was rejected (no blame on the editors, they were probably flooded with stories on this), I'll state an observation here: The 17" PowerBook G4 is now gone, but the 12" model stll hasn't been updated yet. Is that an indication that the rumors about a 13.3" MacBook to replace the 12" PowerBook and the 14" iBook are true?
The "Big Mac" is something else entirely ;)