I'm a US college student and all my books were paperback this year. It still ended up costing me aroun $400 this semester, even with buying as many of them used as I could. Of course, I couldn't for some because the edition changed for some miniscule reason.
In my opinion, it's the professors that are the problem. They're the ones that require a specific (new) edition instead of letting us buy used books.
"The only way to live and be proprietary is to have a niche and run on custom or embedded hardware."
Excuse me? Look at Microsoft. They're proprietory, but don't deal in hardware and don't have a "niche". Yet it's one of the most successful companies ever.
What I want to see are the storage units that look like pieces of plexiglass from Minority Report. Maybe when we've reacehd the maximum capactity of holographic storage we'll start embedding data into the actual atomic structure of the glass.
They're also lacking in the field that matters to me: price. Or is that overabundant in that field? Anyways, you pay a LOT more for that sexy box, when you're not getting that much performance.
The great thing about Opera is you can make it look however you want with skins and the like. But to do things like make your page bar (tabs) appear in different places, you have to jump through hoops. There must be ways Opera can make those sort of changes easier.
It's also the little things like one can't right click on a bookmark and say delete or rearrange them from the menu. You have to go through the bookmark manager.
Prediction: He splits off to form his own Unix-like operating system and after a few more years will be rehired by a failing Microsoft, when they'll adopt the better OS and change the world!
Get ready for the fragmentations! Here comes FreeJava, NetJava, OpenJava, JavaOne, FreeJavaOne, NetJavaOne, OpenJavaOne.. JavaFree, JavaOpen, JavaOpenFree, JavaFreeOpen..
Yes, one commercial distro. ONE. Here is the problem with Linux: it's become so fragmented that there is no one good solution. One distro might be good with multimedia, another with stability, another with hardware support, but none offer "all of the above". What's the count now? In the hundreds, I believe.
Linux needs to decide a couple of things. First, the fragmenting needs to stop. Choose some standards. Like the audio backbone, for instance. That too has so many options it's confusing and limits the developers. Why use aRts/aKode/etc when ALSA works just fine? When they start deciding these things and set a clear platform for developers, then the real progress will take place.
It was originally designed specifically as a monolithic kernel, but I wonder how willing the Linux developers are at changing such a fundamental aspect of the kernel. Perhaps for the 3.x kernel series the developers will switch to a micro structure. It seems the trend so far has been to make it more modular, so maybe a micro kernel will be the next step.
As for performance issues, that could be a major drawback considering how Linux has been run an myriad architechtures, large and small. Sure modern boxes can handle it, but with Linux now supporting so many older systems, will they just be forgotten if the lag it too much for them to handle? I doubt the development will move to leave behind current users, but at what point is enough enough?
Instead of mirroring Windows so people can "work" and "game" in Windows, doesn't Apple work towards improving/adding the software selection. While the office application front has seen this already for years, what about games? If Apple, with its infinite wisdom and funding would give an incentive for software developers to create Mac versions of their applications and games, wouldn't that be a better solution? This would be a direct competition with Microsoft et al, not a mirroring/merging.
So they decide Mozilla is too bloated with all the features, etc. So they split it up, creating a pure browser and a pure email client. And now they're just adding these features back into the purer versions? What's next? Adding page rendering to Thunderbird and an IRC client to boot?
Is Opera 9.0 released yet? I use Opera 8.51 myself and in the last week it has asked both my Windows box and linux box if I want to upgrade to 8.52. Nothing was mentioned about 9.0.
In my personal updatings, we never actually bought the newest Windows OS; we just bought a new box every few years with the latest bundled OS. First it was Mac OS (7), then Windows 95 a few years later (Gentooed recently, by the way), Windows ME, and then XP. My guess is a lot of people do the same, so the hardware issue isn't so major as long as the manufacturers put together modern hardware to go with their "modern" OS.
Personally, if I buy a new box, I'm staying with Linux or going the Apple way.
"Considering these circumstances, why do users continue to support OS/2?" Probably for the same reasons people insist on using ugly GUIs when there are myraid cleaner, more intuitive ones. Not necessarily a good one.
All these people are crazy about getting Windows or Linux running on Mac hardware, but I'd much rather see OS X running on my regular old Intel hardware. It's a shame to see something like OS X being replace with something KDE. (Much worse just a terminal, but that will no doubt progress).
I wonder if any "astonomers" used this same sort of argument when Copernicus established his concept that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. Just because people like Steven Hawking believe in something that wasn't previously accepted doesn't make them wrong. And I don't think one small equation is going to prove them wrong.
I used Debian prior to using Slackware (which I use still). Apt-get was what really impressed me. Any package I wanted automatically got its necessary dependancies fulfilled. What disappointed me was the age of the software. For example, I couldn't get XFCE 4.2 on Debian 3.1 simply because the software testing is SO rigorous. Works without any problems on Slackware; don't see what Debian's problem is.
Slashdot Mirror
So?
Spambob.org provides a similar service already.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
I'm a US college student and all my books were paperback this year. It still ended up costing me aroun $400 this semester, even with buying as many of them used as I could. Of course, I couldn't for some because the edition changed for some miniscule reason.
In my opinion, it's the professors that are the problem. They're the ones that require a specific (new) edition instead of letting us buy used books.
"The only way to live and be proprietary is to have a niche and run on custom or embedded hardware."
Excuse me? Look at Microsoft. They're proprietory, but don't deal in hardware and don't have a "niche". Yet it's one of the most successful companies ever.
What I want to see are the storage units that look like pieces of plexiglass from Minority Report. Maybe when we've reacehd the maximum capactity of holographic storage we'll start embedding data into the actual atomic structure of the glass.
They're also lacking in the field that matters to me: price. Or is that overabundant in that field? Anyways, you pay a LOT more for that sexy box, when you're not getting that much performance.
The great thing about Opera is you can make it look however you want with skins and the like. But to do things like make your page bar (tabs) appear in different places, you have to jump through hoops. There must be ways Opera can make those sort of changes easier.
It's also the little things like one can't right click on a bookmark and say delete or rearrange them from the menu. You have to go through the bookmark manager.
Prediction:
He splits off to form his own Unix-like operating system and after a few more years will be rehired by a failing Microsoft, when they'll adopt the better OS and change the world!
Oh wait, wrong multibillionare.
Get ready for the fragmentations! Here comes FreeJava, NetJava, OpenJava, JavaOne, FreeJavaOne, NetJavaOne, OpenJavaOne.. JavaFree, JavaOpen, JavaOpenFree, JavaFreeOpen..
Yes, one commercial distro. ONE. Here is the problem with Linux: it's become so fragmented that there is no one good solution. One distro might be good with multimedia, another with stability, another with hardware support, but none offer "all of the above". What's the count now? In the hundreds, I believe.
Linux needs to decide a couple of things. First, the fragmenting needs to stop. Choose some standards. Like the audio backbone, for instance. That too has so many options it's confusing and limits the developers. Why use aRts/aKode/etc when ALSA works just fine? When they start deciding these things and set a clear platform for developers, then the real progress will take place.
If it doesn't form at the nano scale, how does it form on the larger scale?
It was originally designed specifically as a monolithic kernel, but I wonder how willing the Linux developers are at changing such a fundamental aspect of the kernel. Perhaps for the 3.x kernel series the developers will switch to a micro structure. It seems the trend so far has been to make it more modular, so maybe a micro kernel will be the next step.
As for performance issues, that could be a major drawback considering how Linux has been run an myriad architechtures, large and small. Sure modern boxes can handle it, but with Linux now supporting so many older systems, will they just be forgotten if the lag it too much for them to handle? I doubt the development will move to leave behind current users, but at what point is enough enough?
I thought this was the
Year of the Dog.
Instead of mirroring Windows so people can "work" and "game" in Windows, doesn't Apple work towards improving/adding the software selection. While the office application front has seen this already for years, what about games? If Apple, with its infinite wisdom and funding would give an incentive for software developers to create Mac versions of their applications and games, wouldn't that be a better solution? This would be a direct competition with Microsoft et al, not a mirroring/merging.
Question is: is the average home user going to need GCC?
So they decide Mozilla is too bloated with all the features, etc. So they split it up, creating a pure browser and a pure email client. And now they're just adding these features back into the purer versions? What's next? Adding page rendering to Thunderbird and an IRC client to boot?
Is Opera 9.0 released yet? I use Opera 8.51 myself and in the last week it has asked both my Windows box and linux box if I want to upgrade to 8.52. Nothing was mentioned about 9.0.
In my personal updatings, we never actually bought the newest Windows OS; we just bought a new box every few years with the latest bundled OS. First it was Mac OS (7), then Windows 95 a few years later (Gentooed recently, by the way), Windows ME, and then XP. My guess is a lot of people do the same, so the hardware issue isn't so major as long as the manufacturers put together modern hardware to go with their "modern" OS.
Personally, if I buy a new box, I'm staying with Linux or going the Apple way.
"Considering these circumstances, why do users continue to support OS/2?"
Probably for the same reasons people insist on using ugly GUIs when there are myraid cleaner, more intuitive ones. Not necessarily a good one.
All these people are crazy about getting Windows or Linux running on Mac hardware, but I'd much rather see OS X running on my regular old Intel hardware. It's a shame to see something like OS X being replace with something KDE. (Much worse just a terminal, but that will no doubt progress).
I wonder if any "astonomers" used this same sort of argument when Copernicus established his concept that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. Just because people like Steven Hawking believe in something that wasn't previously accepted doesn't make them wrong. And I don't think one small equation is going to prove them wrong.
Why are the people complaining about DVD prices the same ones with the $2000 52-inch plasma HDTV?
I thought they already had a good solution for the horizontal mouse! In fact, I using one right now!
I used Debian prior to using Slackware (which I use still). Apt-get was what really impressed me. Any package I wanted automatically got its necessary dependancies fulfilled. What disappointed me was the age of the software. For example, I couldn't get XFCE 4.2 on Debian 3.1 simply because the software testing is SO rigorous. Works without any problems on Slackware; don't see what Debian's problem is.