... if it weren't riddled with fanboyism and aggressive language.
In contrast, although far from superior, Windows provides [...] Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.
Wrong. Fail. Abort. Windows is swallowing up another market because Linux doesn't belong on the average user's netbook, for the same reasons it doesn't belong on the average user's desktop. It is a usability nightmare, you need to be a network engineer AND programmer to fix it when it breaks, and perhaps most importantly the Linux community is hostile and unhelpful toward non-techies.
I am a network geek and programmer, and I still get pissed off at Linux on a daily basis because things that should just work, do not.
I think you're completely wrong ; the netbook indeed, and specifically linux based netbooks totally belong to the average user, because (s)he's unlikely to severly push the enveloppe.
The problem is you, as a category, the so-called power users, high priests of a low cult, as some have put it.
A real computer geek is a new product first adopter ; he knows what to expect, and is not surprised nor set back by minor difficulties. A true average user wouldn't be upset either : the dumbed down, tab based interface has nothing different from his cell phone, and he doesn't expects to use his netbook more than his desktop or laptop anyway.
The real problem is the intermediate population of people knowing in fact nothing about computers that's not Windows based, and unwilling to learn a couple of new tricks. They are the one force feeding windows upon their unwilling famillies, coworkers and friends, because they bluffed their way to be seen as last resort authority about everything computer related, while all they truly master is image / Format / reinstall / image back.
This is how we happen to have a full thread about photoshop, when, truly, WTF ? Photoshop on a 9 inches wide screen ? Are you sir serious ? Oracle ? On a freakin' netbook ? C'mon !!
If power users could have more sense than money, netbooks would all be powered by linux, and Acer, Asus and the likes would really feel a desserved market pressure to streamline the quirks in their systems.
But as long as they feel with reason that power users are buying prescriptors for the masses, we're going to be showered under countless Windows-running clones, because Windows is a flattering system for those seeking cheap fame and admiration. It's good enough for doing some work at the expense of constant tinkering, and it offers countless opportunities to some people to hang on a "political" power, one that doesn't require actual knowledge but a toolbox of dirty tricks to help clean a mess they created in the place by favouring the wide deployment of windows solutions.
This power users are heinous of unix because there's no way on earth they can hide their shortcomings in front of a unix box. If you have no true knowledge of the system, no kitchen recipe will ever help you out. As such, unix (or linux) undermines already filled positions of authority and power over the average crowd.
That's why mainstream linux must die : it makes some infatuated people, full of themselves, redundant. And that's not acceptable for them.
I second that, although after a while I realised that xandros somehow grew on me to the point I'm doing my things mostly with it. I reserve Xubuntu for those rare cases I need somthing I can't run with stock xandros (GNUstep, for instance).
"Apple, since MacOS X 1.5, for what I know, is in the process of ripping the balls off its Nextstep / OpenStep / YellowBox / Cocoa tools (reduction of Objective-C visibility"
In what way has Apple been reducing the visibility of Objective-C? The bulk of their MacOS X Cocoa programming documentation contains nothing except Objective-C examples, including the newer Leopard-specific stuff, and it's the only officially supported language for all iPhone / iPod Touch development. They were also publicly trumpeting the fact that Leopard developers had a new, enhanced version of Objective-C (Objective-C 2), so I completely fail to see how they can be accused of reducing its visibility.
I'm happy they got their sense back, last I looked they were on a very slippy, muddy path, but honestly I can't care less, personnaly, about Apple ; other may have different feelings, and that's totaly fine by me. So, well alleluia. But you won't deny that objective-c++ is more than neuteured, it's Frankenstein's creature roaming freely, an oxymoron in itself.
"{GnuStep} is perfect to dictate good conduct practices to the usual programmer."
Because programmers are famed for their love of being dictated to by people who aren't paying them for the privilege of doing so.
Programmers are famed for being lazy, and objective-c, Xcode, IB/PB or Gorm/Project manager are specifically appealing at the lazy guy inside everyone of us.
Every OS has educational value. That's beside the point. The big question is whether the OS will ever get big enough to create a self-sustaining ecosystems of providers, developers, and users. For GNUStep, that train left the station a long time ago.
Funny, that's what everybody used to say of Unix before 1995 when linux began to gain traction and a couple of years before Apple switched to a unix ecosystem.
If you want to work with GNUStep because you enjoy it, or because it seems to you that it's the best fit for what you're doing, that's fine. But if you want to learn about OS X concepts, you should be using OS X, not some precursor OS. And if you want to promote an OS as a viable alternative the leading OSs (which is what people mean when they say "the effort that's going into Haiku would be better spent on GNUStep") then your keyword should be viable.
Apple, since MacOS X 1.5, for what I know, is in the process of ripping the balls off its Nextstep / OpenStep / YellowBox / Cocoa tools (reduction of Objective-C visibility, promotion of Java [Yerk !] and other neuteured languages like objective-c++ [Bleeeeech !!!]). I have no interest whatsoever to follow that road, I don't like Apple hardware, never did, certainly never will, thankyouverymuch.
What I like about Apple (but it's more about Steve Jobs, really), is the dedication to provide every user with tools, and not flashy applications nobody can make sense off. I wish this attitude would enter the mainstream perception of free software developpers, and I think GNUStep set of features (face it, GNUStep is essentially a RAD at the moment, between gorm and project manager) is perfect to dictate good conduct practices to the usual programmer.
The real intuitivness of programming GNUStep is really a major incentive, and I think once the them engine chameleon is ready enough to provide cutting edge look'n'feel to applications, there is a chance for GNUStep to start rising again.
In the background ? (tongue-in-cheek);-)
Seriously, WindowMaker is a standalone, light windowmanager that happens to be themed like Nextstep / OPENSTEP ; GNUStep is a collection of libraries that intend to bring desktop manager like capabilities to most windowmanagers, as well as OPENSTEP 4.2 / Cocoa source compatibility to FOSS systems. Both fit quite well, but GNUStep is equally at ease on AfterStep or XFCE and can be used along Gnome or KDE.
WindowMaker doesn't itself depend on GNUStep, but relies on the WING library of widgets ; WING is just about look'n feel, really, as the name suggests (Wing Is Not Gnustep).
Note that WindowMaker (like all current X windowmanagers) lacks some concepts needed to complete GNUStep implementation (there's no depth levels or z-planes in X), therefore the windowmanager of choice for GNUStep is not WindowMaker anymore (even if it still sort of works) but étoilé. See étoilé.
You're wrong about GNUStep ; GNUStep today is a fine entry point into Apple / Xcode concepts. True, GNUStep is a real PITA to properly install, and there are a lot of bugs, but some nice apps already prove the basis of the work are sound. The time one invests in GNUStep isn't wasted if you consider you're at the same time learning the foundations to MacOS X and iPhone programming.
This said, I happen to run NS3.3/Risc on a SS10 on a regular basis, so I may be a bit partial toward the concept of this OS.
I'm sorry dude, but you are wrong. What was wrong with Vista? Well there were some hardware incompatibility issues that were resolved within the first four months, and for the most part that was strictly NVIDIA, who behaved like a child and got a few other vendors to tell MS "NO! We're NOT going to correct our drivers for the changes you made!" Granted, it was bullshit that MS made those kinds of changes that late in development, but really all they did was boost Intel and ATI sales slightly since OEMs needed "Vista Capable" hardware to go with the new OS they had to use.
Which brings us to the biggest issues with Vista: the hardware requirements. Oh no, it requires a whole 2G of RAM to XP's 1G. Given the price of RAM, this is REALLY a non-issue for people who build their own systems. All it did was irritate OEMs, and you just know it was a marketing guy at MS not one of the engineers who told the OEMs to use the 512 and it'll all be fine. I'll let the class action lawsuit settle that dispute. It was a non issue for myself and the people I know that built a Vista system were gamers, and for the most part the benchmarks for games while using Vista Ultimate x64 and XP SP2 were the pretty much the same.
What's wrong with vista ? Just a story : I laid my hands on a vista sp1 computer just yesterday. Actually, it's my mother's new computer, freshly setup at home by a professionnal (the one doing setups for my father's business). The machine is a core2 2600 Mhz something with 4Gb Ram, NVidia 9xxx video, sh*tloads of disk space, etc. ad nauseam, blue ray reader included (while I'm still faithful to my athlon 900 Mhz, 512 Mb Ram, running adequatly Fedora 9 with all bells and whistles).
Before even trying the computer, I notice in the big cardboard box where the old dell has been dumped the scanner. So I ask, what's wrong with it ? Answer : not vista compatible. A silly, USB, scanner, not compatible ? Oh, better still : it's a HP scanner and the new computer is, well HP. And what's that tiny thing at the bottom ? Oh. The usb webcam. Not compatible ; I should have guessed. I know, those are not expensive when compared to the price of the whole thing. Still, it tastes sour.
Let's try the beast. Well, okay, it's adequate ; nothing really surprising for a compiz user, until you realise you do it with a computer 1/6 the processing power (when only using the bogus MHz metric to compare cpus), and 1/8 the ram.
But, hey, what's that ? Oh, UAE, I heard about you nice to meet you !... 500th UAE moment : right, now I'm pissed. Why does that thing blows in my face ? Can't it signal himself only in the taskbar by a "!" icon ? Interrupting my job is silly. Especially when what I'm doing has nothing to see with the application requesting the privileges. MS had it totally backward on this one. Why can't they do a su / sudo copy, that works perfectly since day 1 ?
UAE had me so pissed I decided to shutdown the thing after an half hour. Should be easy, no ? Well, the shutdown process hanged and left me watching the desktop background for minutes. I couldn't believe the thing broke ! It's new, there's nothing but office on it ! I left it while having supper, hoping for the process to somehow recover. Nope. When I came back, 1 hr later, the silly thing was still hanged.
Vista, it's as bad as it's been depicted. Maybe worse.
I totaly agree ; mine was a Tangerine Oric 1. I had the dubious chance to try many of the mid-80's computers at friends' homes, and the Oric came only 2nd to the Spectrum wrt keyboard crappiness. But all those computers really sucked in the keyboard department. Even the much famed Apple ][ had to be insanely hammered to produce something useful. A real carpal tunnel syndrom enhancer.
Those were the days. I finally managed to put my hands on a decent M68K based cp/m computer (I salvaged a supposedly dead kit, I wouldn't have dreamed to have the cash), and never looked back toward toys again. There was no middle ground ; the Sord M68 keyboard was of exceptional quality, far better than anything I can lay my hands on today.
... I'm like totaly addicted to scummvm since... can't remember.
Worse, I already played many of those games when they got out circa 1990. It went to the point I spent as much time playing as I spent studying ; factor in the occasional parties, and I still wonder how I managed to make it in the end.
Scummvm has allowed me since to play the few I missed in those times. I dedicated a whole Ubuntu on Usb to play scummvm on my Asus 900A while commuting. For all their shortcomings, netbooks are perfect portable retrogaming systems.
GBA and PSP ? pah ! Gimme a break... Those machines are designed to milk the player dry ; today games are not as much mind challenging as they used to. Their life is way too short. They look good for sure, at the expense of a deep story. No wonder so many people are on WoW. I would just save the GTA serie from the modern productions (and Rockstar games in general) ; they're the only one to provide games designed to entertain the player for hours on end without assuming he's the IQ of a hamster, with a challenging puzzle and a growing level of difficulty geared toward the solution of a rich storyline.
However bitter and dryly saracastic parent may sound, it sure rings a bell. I personaly would have added that "new" corporations still have customers in a way : they bend to their shareholders much like oldstyle corps. used to with their customer base. It certainly goes along with capital dilution into the general public. While oldstyle corps had fewer shareholders, management had to treat customers well to generate profit. With capital dilution, managers are more or less selling corporate image to the market, they have much less risk to be fired over real performance. But they are judged on perceived value. Due to the late hour, I hope this garbage makes sense at all;-)
Is there some inherent advantage to SoundBlaster cards over the AC97 audio bundled with most motherboards nowadays?
As far as I know, ac'97 has only one wired sample rate, around 48 kHz. Every other rate must be achieved by a software downsampling, so it steals cpu cycles. SBs have at least the good idea to have wired the usual rates corresponding to CD quality (44.1 kHz) and some divisions of it (22 kHz, 11 kHz maybe some others). All in all, it makes for a slightly better quality playback in games, radio streaming and such.
A long time ago, I bought an isa SB16 and CDROM reader to upgrade my (then) 486. Much later, I was building it back up, and couldn't get hold of my drivers, so I borrowed a set of floppies from a friend, to make a copy. Believe it or else, the disks were copy protected. Some stupid drivers, copy protected ! Like you could use them without the associated hardware !
It's a pitty they swallowed ensoniq and not the other way round. Ensoniq was doing a pretty good job at making good budget sound cards.
DB13W3 - always wondered why this wasn't universally used for VGA
Just a wild guess, but it looks like the 13W3 is much more difficult to solder than the db15 connector. As industry is shaving off every cent they can, even at the expense of quality, it looks like a good reason. I heard it was the same with SCART (we call it péritel in France) outside of the EU where regulations made it mandatory. It never took off because soldering the female connector is really tricky (so was I told).
Similarly, I can use my right to drive on the highway (conferred upon me by my driver's license) Stop right there.
As soon as some sort of licensing (and, by implication, some procedure to get that license) is required, it's not a right any more, it's a privilege.
It's still a right if anyone can apply for the license without discrimination...
A privilege which can and should be taken away if you demonstrate that you can't be trusted with it.
... which is exactly the case with guns, because a convicted felon, as far as I know, loses the right to have a gun, in the USA.
I've really tried to use Evolution. And I mean really. I gave every version a chance, but I'm totally pissed that in the end (after a couple of months), this POS will crash my Inbox beyond repair. Always. Don't get me wrong, I'm a long time linux advocate. I used it (dual boot) since 1996, and switched completely since ~1998. I've been extremely patient with a lot of softwares, waiting for a level of stability that allowed me to actually work, meanwhile kludging around with whatever could produce satisfying interim results. But Evolution happens to be one of those rare case of promising software that never delivered something useful. This thing is still some kind of übercrap, FU beyond any hope of repair. As a result, I'm still stuck with Kmail at home, and Sylpheed Claws at work, which both miss a lot of useful functions, but *at least* show consideration to my data.
The only part of Evolution that never let me down was the RSS aggregator of the version 1.4. Know what ? They dropped it later. The only working part ! I don't have enough english rough words in my vocabulary to fully express how much I despise Evolution.
I live in continental Europe and I have an ID card. I know that exactly the same style of ID cards exists in at least Belgium and Germany. Why is it a problem? Ask the Jews... well, the ones the German government didn't murder, anyway.
In France, the situation was totaly opposite. During WWII, under the authority of René Carmille, the SSN was invented to help resistance rise an army if/when the allies would arrive. The germans and french "collaborateurs" never managed to lay their hands on the resulting files, thus had to resort to use many separate police files to hunt after the jews. IDs are only "useful" to nefarious purpose if they link to sensitive data. Name, DOB and gender are not sensitive. But if the governement can then tap into financial records, religion practice, race, sexual orientation, political affiliations, then, it's sure to become a liability.
The ID is not a problem as long as the records kept are accessed on a real "need to know" basis, enforced through a very harsh legislation.
... the evil is in the linking of databases. In most european countries I know of, public databases are declared to an authority and must be used within a given scope. Linking is prohibited as a general rule. So you can have an ID, and be kind of privacy safe because your ID is supposed to only prove you are yourself. From what I read, in the US, as soon as someone collects data, public or private, it ends in databases that can be linked to others with very little oversight. This can lead in effect to massive privacy leaks. To top it, there's no limit to which data can be gathered (gender, race, religion, you name it). In europe, you're not allowed to gather much besides name, DOB, and address.
If I was a US citizen, I think I'd be a little worried too.
So by contradicting the teachings of the Pope, he was committing treason?
He wasn't contradicting the teachings of a Pope, he was contradicting every single book written for the past 1500 years (except copernicus, keppler and a couple of others). This wasn't a little treason, this was a total anihilation of the very basis of the society.
And when respectfully asked to give proofs of his opinions, he basically answered : "because I'm brighter than you, that's why".
Putting someone in jail for expressing an opinion, or misquoting it as fact, does not justify being condemned and "fatwa"'ed as a heretic.
Please keep things in historical context. For all people knew at the time, the universal form of power was inherited from a king, flowing toward the base of the pyramid in a feudal system. As the power of the king was supposedly coming from God himself, there was a difference between opinion and fact. An opinion, or hypothesis, was accepted ; even some fathers of the church were working with copernicus model. A fact, on the other hand, by directly undermining what was widely beleived to be the seat of god, the heavens, would have directly undermined the power of kings and of the pope. Those were no light matters.
Let's suppose for instance that our concept of "free will" is a mere illusion. Don't smile, I've read fairly recent research papers on that very subject. If this hypothesis is true, then it will be a direct blow to democracy. Why bother giving a choice to the people, if in fact people are not freely "choosing" ? This might give the chinese some scientific arguments to justify their way of doing politics. Well, the fuss Galileo made in his time was about this big.
Of course, I'm as much a proponent of freedom of speech as you are, but this is a modern concept, totaly alien to the men of the XVIth century.
At worst, he should have been publicly humiliated and gotten the crap sued out of him for slander.
With regards to the customs of the time, that's exactly what he got : a nice slap on the wrist.
The tidal argument is a straw man, as it is neither central to the Heliocentric argument and also ignores the fact that, prior to Newtonian mechanics, there was no concrete understanding of the mechanics of either water, centrifugal forces or the tides, and so the matter was, and remained for some time, an open question.
You're distorting history. This theory [tidal theory] was so important to Galileo that he originally intended to entitle his "Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems" the "Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow of the Sea" [Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press., p. 354, n. 52]. We know that tidal motion has nothing to do with heliocentrism, but obviously, Galileo wasn't of that opinion : in the dialogue, he himslef shows jupiter's moons and venus phases as unconclusive to distinguish between tycho's and copernicus' systems, then proceeds to develop the tidal theory.
You should also check your facts about the tidal theory. Keppler, by observation, had already found a correct theory, and computed enough data to show that seas were submitted both to the influence of the moon and the sun, which again Galileo knew about but dismissed out of hand.
Slashdot Mirror
... if it weren't riddled with fanboyism and aggressive language.
In contrast, although far from superior, Windows provides [...] Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.
Wrong. Fail. Abort. Windows is swallowing up another market because Linux doesn't belong on the average user's netbook, for the same reasons it doesn't belong on the average user's desktop. It is a usability nightmare, you need to be a network engineer AND programmer to fix it when it breaks, and perhaps most importantly the Linux community is hostile and unhelpful toward non-techies.
I am a network geek and programmer, and I still get pissed off at Linux on a daily basis because things that should just work, do not.
I think you're completely wrong ; the netbook indeed, and specifically linux based netbooks totally belong to the average user, because (s)he's unlikely to severly push the enveloppe.
The problem is you, as a category, the so-called power users, high priests of a low cult, as some have put it.
A real computer geek is a new product first adopter ; he knows what to expect, and is not surprised nor set back by minor difficulties. A true average user wouldn't be upset either : the dumbed down, tab based interface has nothing different from his cell phone, and he doesn't expects to use his netbook more than his desktop or laptop anyway.
The real problem is the intermediate population of people knowing in fact nothing about computers that's not Windows based, and unwilling to learn a couple of new tricks. They are the one force feeding windows upon their unwilling famillies, coworkers and friends, because they bluffed their way to be seen as last resort authority about everything computer related, while all they truly master is image / Format / reinstall / image back.
This is how we happen to have a full thread about photoshop, when, truly, WTF ? Photoshop on a 9 inches wide screen ? Are you sir serious ? Oracle ? On a freakin' netbook ? C'mon !!
If power users could have more sense than money, netbooks would all be powered by linux, and Acer, Asus and the likes would really feel a desserved market pressure to streamline the quirks in their systems.
But as long as they feel with reason that power users are buying prescriptors for the masses, we're going to be showered under countless Windows-running clones, because Windows is a flattering system for those seeking cheap fame and admiration. It's good enough for doing some work at the expense of constant tinkering, and it offers countless opportunities to some people to hang on a "political" power, one that doesn't require actual knowledge but a toolbox of dirty tricks to help clean a mess they created in the place by favouring the wide deployment of windows solutions.
This power users are heinous of unix because there's no way on earth they can hide their shortcomings in front of a unix box. If you have no true knowledge of the system, no kitchen recipe will ever help you out. As such, unix (or linux) undermines already filled positions of authority and power over the average crowd.
That's why mainstream linux must die : it makes some infatuated people, full of themselves, redundant. And that's not acceptable for them.
I second that, although after a while I realised that xandros somehow grew on me to the point I'm doing my things mostly with it. I reserve Xubuntu for those rare cases I need somthing I can't run with stock xandros (GNUstep, for instance).
"Apple, since MacOS X 1.5, for what I know, is in the process of ripping the balls off its Nextstep / OpenStep / YellowBox / Cocoa tools (reduction of Objective-C visibility"
In what way has Apple been reducing the visibility of Objective-C? The bulk of their MacOS X Cocoa programming documentation contains nothing except Objective-C examples, including the newer Leopard-specific stuff, and it's the only officially supported language for all iPhone / iPod Touch development. They were also publicly trumpeting the fact that Leopard developers had a new, enhanced version of Objective-C (Objective-C 2), so I completely fail to see how they can be accused of reducing its visibility.
I'm happy they got their sense back, last I looked they were on a very slippy, muddy path, but honestly I can't care less, personnaly, about Apple ; other may have different feelings, and that's totaly fine by me. So, well alleluia. But you won't deny that objective-c++ is more than neuteured, it's Frankenstein's creature roaming freely, an oxymoron in itself.
"{GnuStep} is perfect to dictate good conduct practices to the usual programmer."
Because programmers are famed for their love of being dictated to by people who aren't paying them for the privilege of doing so.
Programmers are famed for being lazy, and objective-c, Xcode, IB/PB or Gorm/Project manager are specifically appealing at the lazy guy inside everyone of us.
Every OS has educational value. That's beside the point. The big question is whether the OS will ever get big enough to create a self-sustaining ecosystems of providers, developers, and users. For GNUStep, that train left the station a long time ago.
Funny, that's what everybody used to say of Unix before 1995 when linux began to gain traction and a couple of years before Apple switched to a unix ecosystem.
If you want to work with GNUStep because you enjoy it, or because it seems to you that it's the best fit for what you're doing, that's fine. But if you want to learn about OS X concepts, you should be using OS X, not some precursor OS. And if you want to promote an OS as a viable alternative the leading OSs (which is what people mean when they say "the effort that's going into Haiku would be better spent on GNUStep") then your keyword should be viable.
Apple, since MacOS X 1.5, for what I know, is in the process of ripping the balls off its Nextstep / OpenStep / YellowBox / Cocoa tools (reduction of Objective-C visibility, promotion of Java [Yerk !] and other neuteured languages like objective-c++ [Bleeeeech !!!]). I have no interest whatsoever to follow that road, I don't like Apple hardware, never did, certainly never will, thankyouverymuch.
What I like about Apple (but it's more about Steve Jobs, really), is the dedication to provide every user with tools, and not flashy applications nobody can make sense off. I wish this attitude would enter the mainstream perception of free software developpers, and I think GNUStep set of features (face it, GNUStep is essentially a RAD at the moment, between gorm and project manager) is perfect to dictate good conduct practices to the usual programmer.
The real intuitivness of programming GNUStep is really a major incentive, and I think once the them engine chameleon is ready enough to provide cutting edge look'n'feel to applications, there is a chance for GNUStep to start rising again.
In the background ? (tongue-in-cheek) ;-)
Seriously, WindowMaker is a standalone, light windowmanager that happens to be themed like Nextstep / OPENSTEP ; GNUStep is a collection of libraries that intend to bring desktop manager like capabilities to most windowmanagers, as well as OPENSTEP 4.2 / Cocoa source compatibility to FOSS systems. Both fit quite well, but GNUStep is equally at ease on AfterStep or XFCE and can be used along Gnome or KDE.
WindowMaker doesn't itself depend on GNUStep, but relies on the WING library of widgets ; WING is just about look'n feel, really, as the name suggests (Wing Is Not Gnustep).
Note that WindowMaker (like all current X windowmanagers) lacks some concepts needed to complete GNUStep implementation (there's no depth levels or z-planes in X), therefore the windowmanager of choice for GNUStep is not WindowMaker anymore (even if it still sort of works) but étoilé. See étoilé.
You're wrong about GNUStep ; GNUStep today is a fine entry point into Apple / Xcode concepts. True, GNUStep is a real PITA to properly install, and there are a lot of bugs, but some nice apps already prove the basis of the work are sound. The time one invests in GNUStep isn't wasted if you consider you're at the same time learning the foundations to MacOS X and iPhone programming.
This said, I happen to run NS3.3/Risc on a SS10 on a regular basis, so I may be a bit partial toward the concept of this OS.
I'm sorry dude, but you are wrong. What was wrong with Vista? Well there were some hardware incompatibility issues that were resolved within the first four months, and for the most part that was strictly NVIDIA, who behaved like a child and got a few other vendors to tell MS "NO! We're NOT going to correct our drivers for the changes you made!" Granted, it was bullshit that MS made those kinds of changes that late in development, but really all they did was boost Intel and ATI sales slightly since OEMs needed "Vista Capable" hardware to go with the new OS they had to use.
Which brings us to the biggest issues with Vista: the hardware requirements. Oh no, it requires a whole 2G of RAM to XP's 1G. Given the price of RAM, this is REALLY a non-issue for people who build their own systems. All it did was irritate OEMs, and you just know it was a marketing guy at MS not one of the engineers who told the OEMs to use the 512 and it'll all be fine. I'll let the class action lawsuit settle that dispute. It was a non issue for myself and the people I know that built a Vista system were gamers, and for the most part the benchmarks for games while using Vista Ultimate x64 and XP SP2 were the pretty much the same.
What's wrong with vista ? Just a story : I laid my hands on a vista sp1 computer just yesterday. Actually, it's my mother's new computer, freshly setup at home by a professionnal (the one doing setups for my father's business). The machine is a core2 2600 Mhz something with 4Gb Ram, NVidia 9xxx video, sh*tloads of disk space, etc. ad nauseam, blue ray reader included (while I'm still faithful to my athlon 900 Mhz, 512 Mb Ram, running adequatly Fedora 9 with all bells and whistles).
Before even trying the computer, I notice in the big cardboard box where the old dell has been dumped the scanner. So I ask, what's wrong with it ? Answer : not vista compatible. A silly, USB, scanner, not compatible ? Oh, better still : it's a HP scanner and the new computer is, well HP. And what's that tiny thing at the bottom ? Oh. The usb webcam. Not compatible ; I should have guessed. I know, those are not expensive when compared to the price of the whole thing. Still, it tastes sour.
Let's try the beast. Well, okay, it's adequate ; nothing really surprising for a compiz user, until you realise you do it with a computer 1/6 the processing power (when only using the bogus MHz metric to compare cpus), and 1/8 the ram.
But, hey, what's that ? Oh, UAE, I heard about you nice to meet you ! ... 500th UAE moment : right, now I'm pissed. Why does that thing blows in my face ? Can't it signal himself only in the taskbar by a "!" icon ? Interrupting my job is silly. Especially when what I'm doing has nothing to see with the application requesting the privileges. MS had it totally backward on this one. Why can't they do a su / sudo copy, that works perfectly since day 1 ?
UAE had me so pissed I decided to shutdown the thing after an half hour. Should be easy, no ? Well, the shutdown process hanged and left me watching the desktop background for minutes. I couldn't believe the thing broke ! It's new, there's nothing but office on it ! I left it while having supper, hoping for the process to somehow recover. Nope. When I came back, 1 hr later, the silly thing was still hanged.
Vista, it's as bad as it's been depicted. Maybe worse.
This is hardly true now. My 701 used to suck his battery while off, but my new 900A (atom based) is completely cold when off. No drain anymore.
I totaly agree ; mine was a Tangerine Oric 1. I had the dubious chance to try many of the mid-80's computers at friends' homes, and the Oric came only 2nd to the Spectrum wrt keyboard crappiness. But all those computers really sucked in the keyboard department. Even the much famed Apple ][ had to be insanely hammered to produce something useful. A real carpal tunnel syndrom enhancer.
Those were the days. I finally managed to put my hands on a decent M68K based cp/m computer (I salvaged a supposedly dead kit, I wouldn't have dreamed to have the cash), and never looked back toward toys again. There was no middle ground ; the Sord M68 keyboard was of exceptional quality, far better than anything I can lay my hands on today.
... I'm like totaly addicted to scummvm since ... can't remember.
Worse, I already played many of those games when they got out circa 1990. It went to the point I spent as much time playing as I spent studying ; factor in the occasional parties, and I still wonder how I managed to make it in the end.
Scummvm has allowed me since to play the few I missed in those times. I dedicated a whole Ubuntu on Usb to play scummvm on my Asus 900A while commuting. For all their shortcomings, netbooks are perfect portable retrogaming systems.
GBA and PSP ? pah ! Gimme a break... Those machines are designed to milk the player dry ; today games are not as much mind challenging as they used to. Their life is way too short. They look good for sure, at the expense of a deep story. No wonder so many people are on WoW. I would just save the GTA serie from the modern productions (and Rockstar games in general) ; they're the only one to provide games designed to entertain the player for hours on end without assuming he's the IQ of a hamster, with a challenging puzzle and a growing level of difficulty geared toward the solution of a rich storyline.
Because most computers have noisy fans, that's why. Why would you buy an expensive card just to have the sound overlaid by a persistent "whizzzz" ?
However bitter and dryly saracastic parent may sound, it sure rings a bell. I personaly would have added that "new" corporations still have customers in a way : they bend to their shareholders much like oldstyle corps. used to with their customer base. It certainly goes along with capital dilution into the general public. While oldstyle corps had fewer shareholders, management had to treat customers well to generate profit. With capital dilution, managers are more or less selling corporate image to the market, they have much less risk to be fired over real performance. But they are judged on perceived value. Due to the late hour, I hope this garbage makes sense at all ;-)
As far as I know, ac'97 has only one wired sample rate, around 48 kHz. Every other rate must be achieved by a software downsampling, so it steals cpu cycles. SBs have at least the good idea to have wired the usual rates corresponding to CD quality (44.1 kHz) and some divisions of it (22 kHz, 11 kHz maybe some others). All in all, it makes for a slightly better quality playback in games, radio streaming and such.
A long time ago, I bought an isa SB16 and CDROM reader to upgrade my (then) 486. Much later, I was building it back up, and couldn't get hold of my drivers, so I borrowed a set of floppies from a friend, to make a copy. Believe it or else, the disks were copy protected. Some stupid drivers, copy protected ! Like you could use them without the associated hardware !
It's a pitty they swallowed ensoniq and not the other way round. Ensoniq was doing a pretty good job at making good budget sound cards.
Just a wild guess, but it looks like the 13W3 is much more difficult to solder than the db15 connector. As industry is shaving off every cent they can, even at the expense of quality, it looks like a good reason. I heard it was the same with SCART (we call it péritel in France) outside of the EU where regulations made it mandatory. It never took off because soldering the female connector is really tricky (so was I told).
As soon as some sort of licensing (and, by implication, some procedure to get that license) is required, it's not a right any more, it's a privilege.
It's still a right if anyone can apply for the license without discrimination...
A privilege which can and should be taken away if you demonstrate that you can't be trusted with it.... which is exactly the case with guns, because a convicted felon, as far as I know, loses the right to have a gun, in the USA.
I've really tried to use Evolution. And I mean really. I gave every version a chance, but I'm totally pissed that in the end (after a couple of months), this POS will crash my Inbox beyond repair. Always. Don't get me wrong, I'm a long time linux advocate. I used it (dual boot) since 1996, and switched completely since ~1998. I've been extremely patient with a lot of softwares, waiting for a level of stability that allowed me to actually work, meanwhile kludging around with whatever could produce satisfying interim results. But Evolution happens to be one of those rare case of promising software that never delivered something useful. This thing is still some kind of übercrap, FU beyond any hope of repair. As a result, I'm still stuck with Kmail at home, and Sylpheed Claws at work, which both miss a lot of useful functions, but *at least* show consideration to my data.
The only part of Evolution that never let me down was the RSS aggregator of the version 1.4. Know what ? They dropped it later. The only working part ! I don't have enough english rough words in my vocabulary to fully express how much I despise Evolution.
http://aboutscotland.co.uk/harmony/prop.html
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
In France, the situation was totaly opposite. During WWII, under the authority of René Carmille, the SSN was invented to help resistance rise an army if/when the allies would arrive. The germans and french "collaborateurs" never managed to lay their hands on the resulting files, thus had to resort to use many separate police files to hunt after the jews. IDs are only "useful" to nefarious purpose if they link to sensitive data. Name, DOB and gender are not sensitive. But if the governement can then tap into financial records, religion practice, race, sexual orientation, political affiliations, then, it's sure to become a liability.
The ID is not a problem as long as the records kept are accessed on a real "need to know" basis, enforced through a very harsh legislation.
Errr... Greed ?
... the evil is in the linking of databases. In most european countries I know of, public databases are declared to an authority and must be used within a given scope. Linking is prohibited as a general rule. So you can have an ID, and be kind of privacy safe because your ID is supposed to only prove you are yourself. From what I read, in the US, as soon as someone collects data, public or private, it ends in databases that can be linked to others with very little oversight. This can lead in effect to massive privacy leaks. To top it, there's no limit to which data can be gathered (gender, race, religion, you name it). In europe, you're not allowed to gather much besides name, DOB, and address.
If I was a US citizen, I think I'd be a little worried too.
He wasn't contradicting the teachings of a Pope, he was contradicting every single book written for the past 1500 years (except copernicus, keppler and a couple of others). This wasn't a little treason, this was a total anihilation of the very basis of the society.
And when respectfully asked to give proofs of his opinions, he basically answered : "because I'm brighter than you, that's why".
Please keep things in historical context. For all people knew at the time, the universal form of power was inherited from a king, flowing toward the base of the pyramid in a feudal system. As the power of the king was supposedly coming from God himself, there was a difference between opinion and fact. An opinion, or hypothesis, was accepted ; even some fathers of the church were working with copernicus model. A fact, on the other hand, by directly undermining what was widely beleived to be the seat of god, the heavens, would have directly undermined the power of kings and of the pope. Those were no light matters.
Let's suppose for instance that our concept of "free will" is a mere illusion. Don't smile, I've read fairly recent research papers on that very subject. If this hypothesis is true, then it will be a direct blow to democracy. Why bother giving a choice to the people, if in fact people are not freely "choosing" ? This might give the chinese some scientific arguments to justify their way of doing politics. Well, the fuss Galileo made in his time was about this big.
Of course, I'm as much a proponent of freedom of speech as you are, but this is a modern concept, totaly alien to the men of the XVIth century.
At worst, he should have been publicly humiliated and gotten the crap sued out of him for slander.With regards to the customs of the time, that's exactly what he got : a nice slap on the wrist.
You're distorting history. This theory [tidal theory] was so important to Galileo that he originally intended to entitle his "Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems" the "Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow of the Sea" [Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press., p. 354, n. 52]. We know that tidal motion has nothing to do with heliocentrism, but obviously, Galileo wasn't of that opinion : in the dialogue, he himslef shows jupiter's moons and venus phases as unconclusive to distinguish between tycho's and copernicus' systems, then proceeds to develop the tidal theory.
You should also check your facts about the tidal theory. Keppler, by observation, had already found a correct theory, and computed enough data to show that seas were submitted both to the influence of the moon and the sun, which again Galileo knew about but dismissed out of hand.