linux (unbuntu 9.10) won't play a DVD out of the box. don't need to ramble on about why, it doesn't matter. that's the type of thing that absolutely must work out of the box for linux to be viable on the desktop.
it has more to do with not being sued by mcafee, norton, et al. than anything else. remember when microsoft tried to give you a browser for free? now they are being forced by law to implement a "browser chooser" that runs at OS install time.
MS is certainly not concerned about the quality of your computing experience unless it involves you not purchasing any more MS products.
surprise, but no company is concerned about you in any way at all other than whether you will buy and continue to buy more of their products.
if it was a simple as asking for a larger check from apple, nokia wouldn't have a leg to stand on and we wouldn't be hearing about this. the issue is the valuation of apple's patents and x-licensing. apple thinks the patents they license to nokia are worth more, and therefore, they should pay less to nokia for nokia's patents.
nokia owns p1. apple needs to license p1. apple offers their p2+p3 for p1. nokia asks for p2+p3+$1000 for p1. how much exactly are p2+p3 worth? that's the issue. one thing for sure, they aren't worth whatever apple says their are worth. it's in apple's best interest to overvalue their own patents. nokia's patent on the other hand has a set price and is licensed for that same set price from many, many other companies already.
the problem is that they aren't trading dollars for dollars. they are trading patents for patents and dollars. companies are licensing each others' patents, and they have to put a dollar figure on each of them. apple doesn't think it's getting a fair exchange for their patents.
it's like if apple had p1, and nokia holds p2. they both want to license each others' patents. so they trade. but nokia decides that p1 and p2 are not of equal value and demands that in addition to the license to use p1 from apple, they require $1000 from them.
the issue isn't that nokia is charging them more than anyone else, it's that they don't agree with apple on the value of apple's p1 patent.
i sort of think that it would be impossible these days for a new industry (in the USA) to unionize... at least one that isn't required to be local like service or health care. sure, they can't "fire" unionized workers (easily, without reason), but they sure can lay you off and move operations over seas.
hiring game devs from other countries isn't going to be great in the short term, but in time it could ramp up and easily replace the local outfits. i am sure there was a time when people thought that no other country could produce steel as well as the US either. regardless, big software would rather ship poor quality games than have to treat their employees well.
i wonder what germany has to protect against that (seriously, i am asking).
you need to cut down on your testosterone injections.
i'm curious, did you my OP? i said this is what holds linux back from being a mainstream desktop. you are right, most linux users can compile, but the other 99.9% of desktop users can't, and this is just one more reason why they won't choose linux. so yes, you proved my point well thanks.
regardless, maybe you have all the time the world sitting in your parents' basement without a job or girlfriend, but other people have lives and regardless of whether they *can* compile, they don't want to spend their precious free time compiling the apps and games they need.
why obviously? they generated a windows dist. that's the attitude that keeps linux from moving forward on the desktop... telling people they need to compile it from source before they can use it.
installed (version 1.9.1) on linux. constant crackling from my speakers. when i tried to quit, it hung. used the little "kill window" utility, and it left a process running that was burning up my CPU. all in all not a great experience.
yes in theory. in practice, this what i've seen. even in a corporate environment where people are paid to maintain and enhance the old code, the new developers never quite "get it". they are able to fix bugs and add features all right, but it's done with without a vision of the overall project. the result is the code slowly loses maintainability and eventually needs to be re-written (or tossed).
maybe this is poor engineering, but it could also just be physiological. developers are less interested in code when they do not feel ownership. coming in and learning someone else's methodology that you probably don't agree with or even like is just not fun. when developers are paid to do it, they get the job done but don't follow through with the care they would otherwise have if they wrote the code from scratch.
I can 'suspend' but none of that junk ever works properly on WinTel
every computer i've owned or used in the last 10 years has been able to hibernate or sleep. that includes macs, linux and win98 to win 7. if you buy a computer that can't reliably sleep, you should return it and get your $ back.
Computers have -always- tried to be energy-efficient in the portable sector. And quite honestly, its about the only sector that needs work on energy-efficiency to gain any benefit.
that couldn't be further from the truth. energy costs are just going up. for households it's mildly important as they can usually sleep their computers when not in use. for businesses, energy efficiency ranges from very important to critical when they have massive server rooms full of tens of thousands of CPUs powered and busy 24x7.
moreover, for developing countries, it's again critical. while the L in OLPC stands for laptop and therefore technically qualifies as mobile, it's more about having a battery to deal with locales where the electric grid is often shut down either on purpose to save energy or inadvertently because of a poor / out of date infrastructure.
when she (my wife) connects it to an external monitor, which is quite often. the netbook *is* her laptop. since it's also a real, functional computer in all respects, she doesn't need anything else. that can't be said for the ipad.
My grandmother won't get a netbook. She will get an iPad.
grandmothers are not their target demo. grandmothers aren't going out and buying trendy unproven devices that cost $600. they are on fixed incomes and come from a time period where spending that type of money on a "toy" is unthinkable. yes, she thinks of it as a toy not a necessity. she grew up without a cell phone or computer and did just fine. her mindset is different. she doesn't care about being trendy.
the target demo is the 20-40 year old crowd. they are working. they have money. being trendy is important. and here's where you should pay attention: they grew up with computers. they are comfortable with them, unlike your grandma. they expect multitasking and use keyboards to type. my wife fits that demo. on scale of 1-10 she's about a 2.5 in terms of computer savviness. here are some of her questions about the ipad:
* there's no keyboard how do i type an email? * but it looks just like the iphone (she has one of those) * does it run excel?
the problem is that many of the things you are listing as features are things that have been available on netbooks since they were first released and are simply assumed to be there on any portable computer...
* 3g and unlocked? any computer is 3g and unlocked if you buy the 3g service from AT&T * iwork? openoffice is available on any computer and almost every platform * low price compared to what? it's 2x that of a netbook * larger screen than iphone / itouch? netbooks have had 10" screen standard since they were released. also, their screens are 16x9, the aspect ratio of ever modern view device * can use bluetooth keyboard? many netbooks don't have bluetooth, but they have USB which is much more versatile and obviously can be used to connect wireless keyboards and mice along with anything else you can imagine * all netbooks have VGA out and can drive an external monitor. ours can go to 1600x1200 beating the ipad's 1024x768 * modern netbooks have 8+ hours battery life (ours quotes 10 hours)
i agree with your points above... i just don't think manned space missions are the way to go, and i resent bush jr. throwing it out there with no plan of how to get there or how to pay for it.
and to answer your question, yes of course we could do it. is america ready to make the necessary budget sacrifices considering there is no (fake) commie threat breathing down our necks? i doubt it.
how about we spend 20 years getting our budget in check and then revisit the problem? the problem will be simpler then anyway assuming we don't fall into a dark age in that time (if we did we aren't going to sending up spacecraft anyway).
mars is roughly 200x farther away than the moon. a fast trip to mars would take 4 months, and that's the hard way planning for high-speed transfer orbits. other estimates put it as high as 7 months, one way. it took 5 days to get to the moon.
so 4 months there and 4 months back... plus however long you stay there to do research / take samples, plan landings and takeoffs, etc. maybe your total travel time is 9 months. that's a very serious logistical problem that was not present with our trip to the moon. that means you have to feed, water, exercise, and otherwise keep 2+ humans from killing each other in a space that is severely limited by the amount of fuel you must carry to propel the craft.
not to mention, simply getting there is much harder. with the moon, you could almost look out the viewport and line up on the earth, fire your booster and then let gravity do the rest. not so with mars... especially since a direct shot isn't possible considering you need probably need to use a gravity slingshot to get there with the amount of fuel you are able to carry.
don't blame obama. the incredible, astounding debt that this country has racked up under the leadership of the people *we* elected is to blame. obama might end up being a terrible president, but you can't blame him for things that happened before he was in office.
at least he's realistic, unlike bush jr. that made wild claims about sending a man to mars in a completely unrealistic time frame unless of course you were willing to throw money at it like the future of the human race depended upon its success. manned spaceflight is really a silly idea. it serves no scientific purpose at this point in our development and costs hundreds of times more than robotic spaceflight.
Make a declaration that the US will land on Mars before this decade is out, provide the funding, and it can be done.
of course. history is full of amazing progress that was achieved when everything depended on success and therefore societies were willing to throw unlimited amounts of money and resources at the problem.
the problem is that nothing depends on putting a man on mars. everything that we can achieve through that can be done faster and cheaper with robotic missions. it servers no scientific purpose. it also doesn't really serve a national pride purpose. it'd be nice, but no other country is close to accomplishing a man on mars either.
couple that with skyrocketing debt, and a man on mars is just out of the question. the only reason we are even talking about a man on mars is because bush jr. in all his wisdom proclaimed it as a goal in order to focus people's attention away from his failures on earth.
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i guess you'd have to trust that i have better things to do than go around lying about the specs and performance of my wife's netbook.
linux (unbuntu 9.10) won't play a DVD out of the box. don't need to ramble on about why, it doesn't matter. that's the type of thing that absolutely must work out of the box for linux to be viable on the desktop.
also, linux doesn't run IE6, 7, or 8 under wine. the best (most supported) version, according to the wine app DB is IE7 with silver support,
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=4195
from that page, i think this sums it up: "What works: Nothing"
Why do they make you download it?
it has more to do with not being sued by mcafee, norton, et al. than anything else. remember when microsoft tried to give you a browser for free? now they are being forced by law to implement a "browser chooser" that runs at OS install time.
MS is certainly not concerned about the quality of your computing experience unless it involves you not purchasing any more MS products.
surprise, but no company is concerned about you in any way at all other than whether you will buy and continue to buy more of their products.
my netbook w/ 1GB, wndows 7, and norton AV installed runs pretty smoothly.
if it was a simple as asking for a larger check from apple, nokia wouldn't have a leg to stand on and we wouldn't be hearing about this. the issue is the valuation of apple's patents and x-licensing. apple thinks the patents they license to nokia are worth more, and therefore, they should pay less to nokia for nokia's patents.
nokia owns p1. apple needs to license p1. apple offers their p2+p3 for p1. nokia asks for p2+p3+$1000 for p1. how much exactly are p2+p3 worth? that's the issue. one thing for sure, they aren't worth whatever apple says their are worth. it's in apple's best interest to overvalue their own patents. nokia's patent on the other hand has a set price and is licensed for that same set price from many, many other companies already.
the problem is that they aren't trading dollars for dollars. they are trading patents for patents and dollars. companies are licensing each others' patents, and they have to put a dollar figure on each of them. apple doesn't think it's getting a fair exchange for their patents.
it's like if apple had p1, and nokia holds p2. they both want to license each others' patents. so they trade. but nokia decides that p1 and p2 are not of equal value and demands that in addition to the license to use p1 from apple, they require $1000 from them.
the issue isn't that nokia is charging them more than anyone else, it's that they don't agree with apple on the value of apple's p1 patent.
I think personally software patents are stupid
nokia's patents are technology patents ... apple is counter sueing with their software patents.
They want to pay what other people pay. Nokia is not allowed to charge more to whoever it chooses.
there's a limit on what someone is allowed to charge?
i sort of think that it would be impossible these days for a new industry (in the USA) to unionize ... at least one that isn't required to be local like service or health care. sure, they can't "fire" unionized workers (easily, without reason), but they sure can lay you off and move operations over seas.
hiring game devs from other countries isn't going to be great in the short term, but in time it could ramp up and easily replace the local outfits. i am sure there was a time when people thought that no other country could produce steel as well as the US either. regardless, big software would rather ship poor quality games than have to treat their employees well.
i wonder what germany has to protect against that (seriously, i am asking).
you need to cut down on your testosterone injections.
i'm curious, did you my OP? i said this is what holds linux back from being a mainstream desktop. you are right, most linux users can compile, but the other 99.9% of desktop users can't, and this is just one more reason why they won't choose linux. so yes, you proved my point well thanks.
regardless, maybe you have all the time the world sitting in your parents' basement without a job or girlfriend, but other people have lives and regardless of whether they *can* compile, they don't want to spend their precious free time compiling the apps and games they need.
why obviously? they generated a windows dist. that's the attitude that keeps linux from moving forward on the desktop ... telling people they need to compile it from source before they can use it.
installed (version 1.9.1) on linux. constant crackling from my speakers. when i tried to quit, it hung. used the little "kill window" utility, and it left a process running that was burning up my CPU. all in all not a great experience.
and they forget to mention, version 2.0 is only available for windows. the linux and mac versions are still at 1.9.x.
yes in theory. in practice, this what i've seen. even in a corporate environment where people are paid to maintain and enhance the old code, the new developers never quite "get it". they are able to fix bugs and add features all right, but it's done with without a vision of the overall project. the result is the code slowly loses maintainability and eventually needs to be re-written (or tossed).
maybe this is poor engineering, but it could also just be physiological. developers are less interested in code when they do not feel ownership. coming in and learning someone else's methodology that you probably don't agree with or even like is just not fun. when developers are paid to do it, they get the job done but don't follow through with the care they would otherwise have if they wrote the code from scratch.
I can 'suspend' but none of that junk ever works properly on WinTel
every computer i've owned or used in the last 10 years has been able to hibernate or sleep. that includes macs, linux and win98 to win 7. if you buy a computer that can't reliably sleep, you should return it and get your $ back.
Computers have -always- tried to be energy-efficient in the portable sector. And quite honestly, its about the only sector that needs work on energy-efficiency to gain any benefit.
that couldn't be further from the truth. energy costs are just going up. for households it's mildly important as they can usually sleep their computers when not in use. for businesses, energy efficiency ranges from very important to critical when they have massive server rooms full of tens of thousands of CPUs powered and busy 24x7.
moreover, for developing countries, it's again critical. while the L in OLPC stands for laptop and therefore technically qualifies as mobile, it's more about having a battery to deal with locales where the electric grid is often shut down either on purpose to save energy or inadvertently because of a poor / out of date infrastructure.
How often do you run your netbook at 1600x1200?
when she (my wife) connects it to an external monitor, which is quite often. the netbook *is* her laptop. since it's also a real, functional computer in all respects, she doesn't need anything else. that can't be said for the ipad.
well, since you brought it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
under bush #1, national debt grew by ~12% (in one term!)
under bush #2, national debt grew by ~12%
under clinton, national debt was *reduced* by ~7%
next time keep your mouth shut. that will do more to further your cause.
My grandmother won't get a netbook. She will get an iPad.
grandmothers are not their target demo. grandmothers aren't going out and buying trendy unproven devices that cost $600. they are on fixed incomes and come from a time period where spending that type of money on a "toy" is unthinkable. yes, she thinks of it as a toy not a necessity. she grew up without a cell phone or computer and did just fine. her mindset is different. she doesn't care about being trendy.
the target demo is the 20-40 year old crowd. they are working. they have money. being trendy is important. and here's where you should pay attention: they grew up with computers. they are comfortable with them, unlike your grandma. they expect multitasking and use keyboards to type. my wife fits that demo. on scale of 1-10 she's about a 2.5 in terms of computer savviness. here are some of her questions about the ipad:
* there's no keyboard how do i type an email?
* but it looks just like the iphone (she has one of those)
* does it run excel?
all valid, and typical questions.
the problem is that many of the things you are listing as features are things that have been available on netbooks since they were first released and are simply assumed to be there on any portable computer ...
* 3g and unlocked? any computer is 3g and unlocked if you buy the 3g service from AT&T
* iwork? openoffice is available on any computer and almost every platform
* low price compared to what? it's 2x that of a netbook
* larger screen than iphone / itouch? netbooks have had 10" screen standard since they were released. also, their screens are 16x9, the aspect ratio of ever modern view device
* can use bluetooth keyboard? many netbooks don't have bluetooth, but they have USB which is much more versatile and obviously can be used to connect wireless keyboards and mice along with anything else you can imagine
* all netbooks have VGA out and can drive an external monitor. ours can go to 1600x1200 beating the ipad's 1024x768
* modern netbooks have 8+ hours battery life (ours quotes 10 hours)
i agree with your points above ... i just don't think manned space missions are the way to go, and i resent bush jr. throwing it out there with no plan of how to get there or how to pay for it.
and to answer your question, yes of course we could do it. is america ready to make the necessary budget sacrifices considering there is no (fake) commie threat breathing down our necks? i doubt it.
how about we spend 20 years getting our budget in check and then revisit the problem? the problem will be simpler then anyway assuming we don't fall into a dark age in that time (if we did we aren't going to sending up spacecraft anyway).
mars is roughly 200x farther away than the moon. a fast trip to mars would take 4 months, and that's the hard way planning for high-speed transfer orbits. other estimates put it as high as 7 months, one way. it took 5 days to get to the moon.
so 4 months there and 4 months back ... plus however long you stay there to do research / take samples, plan landings and takeoffs, etc. maybe your total travel time is 9 months. that's a very serious logistical problem that was not present with our trip to the moon. that means you have to feed, water, exercise, and otherwise keep 2+ humans from killing each other in a space that is severely limited by the amount of fuel you must carry to propel the craft.
not to mention, simply getting there is much harder. with the moon, you could almost look out the viewport and line up on the earth, fire your booster and then let gravity do the rest. not so with mars ... especially since a direct shot isn't possible considering you need probably need to use a gravity slingshot to get there with the amount of fuel you are able to carry.
don't blame obama. the incredible, astounding debt that this country has racked up under the leadership of the people *we* elected is to blame. obama might end up being a terrible president, but you can't blame him for things that happened before he was in office.
at least he's realistic, unlike bush jr. that made wild claims about sending a man to mars in a completely unrealistic time frame unless of course you were willing to throw money at it like the future of the human race depended upon its success. manned spaceflight is really a silly idea. it serves no scientific purpose at this point in our development and costs hundreds of times more than robotic spaceflight.
Make a declaration that the US will land on Mars before this decade is out, provide the funding, and it can be done.
of course. history is full of amazing progress that was achieved when everything depended on success and therefore societies were willing to throw unlimited amounts of money and resources at the problem.
the problem is that nothing depends on putting a man on mars. everything that we can achieve through that can be done faster and cheaper with robotic missions. it servers no scientific purpose. it also doesn't really serve a national pride purpose. it'd be nice, but no other country is close to accomplishing a man on mars either.
couple that with skyrocketing debt, and a man on mars is just out of the question. the only reason we are even talking about a man on mars is because bush jr. in all his wisdom proclaimed it as a goal in order to focus people's attention away from his failures on earth.