The price for redhat includes support the price for XP does not. Not only that but it also comes with databasess (plural), directory services, compilers, office suite, and thousands of other pieces of software.
Office Suite [OpenOffice]-> Can download it for free and use it on Windows Databases [MySql, PostgreSQL] -> Can download it for free and use it on Windows Thousands of other pieces -> Can download it for free and use it on Windows Directory Services -> Can download it for free and use it on Windows
The author is cherry picking and presenting half truths in order to try to make a point. It's a weasily thing really. Someone said that the comparison of QT vs MS Visual Studio is unfair. I am SURE it is unfair, QT is just a library that would compare to Microsoft WinForms... to think that the library is more than 10 times more expensive that the VS IDE makes my head explode...
Anyway so QT costs a lot of money, why not use wxwindows, FOX, FLTK, or a dozen other perfectly fine open source toolkits.
Read the main post again, the company was looking for Open Source software with PAYED support. No, Mailing lists, Forums, Wikis and other nicey info-gadgets work, they need a company to back up their software.
So "one company" charges you a lot of money for real time linux why not go to a competitor?
Please, feel free to extend on this point, do you know othe companies that offer what this person was looking for?
I think this guys is thinking OSS is like windows and that there is only one vendor for anything. Most windows shops are shocked to find that they can shop around for vendors and negotiate contracts. They don't have to bend over for their vendors (strange concept huh?).
I think you have to read again the post, the main problem with today capitalism is the price of the services. The fine print is that some of the services he was looking for are cheaper from your hated Microsoft company. Either because there is more demand for their services or any other reason.
The other fact is that there are not enough companies that offer enterprise support for open source software. At least not enough to drive prices to a competitive level (competitive with closed source software). If X company chose to make buisness with OpenSource software and their prices are 10 times the prices of a similar closed source option, it means they are not being competitive, they MUST change their buisness model (only if they really want to become competitive).
I wish I had modpoints to mod you up. I have seen that all the replies to your post try to justify the use of the (word?) but I believe its use is worse than people may believe.
See, slashdot is a place where people *could* look at "the other side" of the coin about news, and at least read a bit of a more informed comments (in the sense of technology). But what other people will see when they look at google news is this. And from my point of view that does not seems very informative.
I can pass that the summary of the article has spelling or grammar horrors but really a wrong headline like this and on such news as important like this really hurts slashdot (and if you think about the "information wants to be free cause" a lot).
The Art of Computer Programming, by Donald E. Knuth
I highly recommend this book (all of its volumes). From what the original poster wrote I believe that is what he is looking for.
There is a limit of precooked data structures that you will find in books but reading Knuth works (anyone of them) will make allow you to develop a highly abstract thinking that will allow you to create the *right* structure for your work. I would also recommend his "Concrete Mathematics" book.
When I was on primary school I bought a NES (yep, I had to buy it with the money my parents gave each week). The "politics" in my house was that we could only play it on weekends (friday-sunday) and vacations.
Now, my parents where not at home in the afternoon for 4 or 5 hours and we (me and my brother) used to play it. I am sure they knew we played it but they trusted us. Anyway, on basic school I was lazy, very lazy and I had very bad grades (I almost repeated 4th grade) because I didnt do my homework.
But attributing THAT to games will be stupid at least. After I finished with junior high and entered to high school, I entered to a specialized high school where I chose a "electronics technician" career. It was very cool because they concentrated on maths/electronics/computing skills. THe first year I had to take some common subjects (chemistry, history, philosophy, etc...) and although I passed them, I got, for example, a 60% (the minimum to pass) on that one. And the reason for that was that I made an "amazing" end of year work (a document which I made with my "leet" computer skills and lots of interneting [back in 1993]) about greek philosophers).
But the main issue is that, as soon as I started the specialized courses I was one of the best in my class, I even got a 3rd place in a national maths competition (on Differential Calculus). Of course I have been programming since I was on 5th grade in primary school.
A very interesting point is that, even though my parents did not let us play, they let us use the computer. On those days we did not have a lot of games (I remember playing Prince of Persia, TDCGA [test drive] and a bunch of others) and because of that I spent the time programming or trying to hack the computer, exploring etc. I also helped my father with a bibliography program we made on BASIC (he is a researcher and had a database of more than 15000 references =oS).
But, back more on topic, one of the things I am certain computer games made me learn was English. My native language is Spanish and I remember playing Final Fantasy I and asking my parents for a dictionary. The first one I got was English/Spanish. I looked for lots of words and learnt. My father always pushed us to use an Engish/English dictionary (to find the definition of a word on english terms, it is thousand times better than a translation).
Also, my father bought a game called "where in time is Carmen San Diego" and he sat with us to play some weekends (it was that or not to play at all while he was playing Tetris =oP).
So, to finish my boring story, I believe the key is (as with almost every other parenting aspect) that parents should watch what their children play. And by watch I dont mean just to forbid X or Y game. Instead LEARN to play what your son is playing, take some time, UNDERSTAND why are they playing it. Then, after you spend some time, try to introduce some other game that has *certain* specific value for you , do not critizise (in a negative way as "that shit you play only pressing and pressing buttons" [what my father thought of RPG's before I showed him the english-learning side]).
There are lots of things in a game that can help kids learn constructive things. It is up to you as a parent to use them.
Well, your country seems very interesting. I for one will look to take some vacations there. I am from Mexico currently living in the UK. On about 2 years I will be looking for work and I am willing to relocate anywhere, and I have always wanted to visit the nordic countries ( watch the aurora borealis, visit finland, etc). If Sweden is as cool as it seems, who knows, maybe I will find some nice work there.
Is tehre any game developing company there (dont mind if it is small or medium)?
Apparently one of the difficulties US IT workers have is that US$50,000 is worth a lot more in India than in the United States. Therefore, an IT worker in India can be paid less money than a US worker and live better
Hey, I am the "living example" of that. See, when I was at my last year of undergrad (Software Engineering) I entered to a software company (ASP,.NET technology developing). I was paid $1,000 a month. It was not a big company of course but they had nice connections and contracts. The chief developer (the highest ranking in the company before de admins) earned $1,500 each month.
Now, you tell me if anyone of you would accept a $18,000 yr. salary to do a senior programmer team leader designer-analyst. Or moreover, just $12,000 yr for something very similar (which was what I did and btw, I know more than what this guy knew but hey, it was a cool job). I am sure any American will just laugh at such wages if someone proposed them with that job.
Well, but this was in Mexico and, here the $1,000 monthly salary is considered VERY good. Darn, to get that job BEFORE finishing Uni is almost a miracle. What happend was that this company was american, it was a small startup, some gringos wanting to make systems for car rental companies etc. Of course they payed wages in MX Pesos and sold the system in US Dollars, pure profit.
What Clinton did was lie while under oath in a case where he was identified as the serial sexual harassment predator he is. I thought after 'Clarence Thomas' that Sexual Harassment was a serious issue for the Democrats.
Hahahahahaha
So, let me guess, you are one of those guys who think that GTA San Andreas is TERRIBLY UNAEQUATE GAME because it is possible to unlock a sex scene? no mather killing people in the middle of the street etc etc etc...
Really, as a non american (Mexican if you care) I never really understood what was the problem with Clinton's Blowjob. Everybody wants a blowjob no?. What is the difference, it is a kind of sexual act. Nothing fancy. What, you said he "lied under oath"? okey, cool, just punish him because of that.
Really, how can you compare a blowjob to mmm lets see, a massive out of all proportion massacre of innocent people, both non-americans AND americans (yeah I consider the poor militar guys who enroll to get some money for their career as innocent) that the current president is backing up?.
Americans are hilarious. A woman shows a tit for 450 milliseconds on TV and everyone is so shocked that they even pass a "new law" while their consitution and basic rights are being abolished by your government...
Man... I have pitty for you. America is not even as cool as it used to be.
A very interesting piece about security on airports can be found here
Hey, that was a great read. Are you from the USA? if you are, then accept my pitty. Really, if all of what is written there is true then there is no doubt that you have already lost your "war on terror".
Really, when this kind of things happen:
On March 21, 2003, Cleveland Hopkins International Airport was placed under a 40-minute lockdown, prohibiting all passenger entries or exits and all plane departures. TSA agents hit the alarm when they spotted a little toy gun on a child's belt buckle in a carry-on bag. The TSA confiscated the child's belt buckle. Spokesman Rick DeChant announced, "Had Mom or Dad helped this kid pack, this [airport lockdown] could have been avoided."
Or this:
On March 8, 2003, a terminal at the Hartford, Connecticut, airport was evacuated after a screener was caught taking a late afternoon nap by an X-ray machine.
or this:
After the flight landed, the marshals nailed another terrorist suspect: a physician and retired U.S. Army major named Robert Rajcoomar. He was handcuffed and taken into custody because, as TSA spokesman David Steigman later explained it, he "had been observing too closely."
They are clear signals that people in your country are completely terrorized. You have been terrorized by your own goverment. As other people already wrote, I avoid at all costs to pass have anything to do with USA. I travel from UK to Mexico quite often. The first time I went to UK was with KLM. I do not have an USA Visa and really I am not eager to get it. Next christmas I will flight to Mexico, I was looking at the prices and it is quite cheap to flight UK - Mexico via Chicago, but there is no way I will go trough all the hassle of getting a Visa to let the USA government get my profile.
Just as a side comment. Long ago, I believe it was between 1990 and 1995, an aunt went to USA for whatever reason, when was returning, they stopped her before boarding her plain because my grandmother, who had traveled to USA 10 years ago or something, appeared as if she had never left the USA. They were trying to make my aunt say were was my grandmother "hiding" in the USA. After several hours of questions I believe they let her go.
It turns out (after some famility talk) that when my grandmother flew to USA, she forgot to hand a paper she had to give to in the USA to mark her leave.
One of the things I learnt from that is the amount of information they DO have about you and me. I mean, we (our familiy) is in no way notable. We are middle class Mexicans. My grandmother was also a typical Juana Seis-Pack, nothing fancy. We were surprised to know how did they know my aunt was related to my grandmother (they did know before they started asking her).
It is because of that among lots of things that I dont want to put a foot in USA. If you see my comments I really have said harsh things against your government, and I am sure that if I put a foot in USA they will get me thinking I am some kind of terrorist for whatever reason and you know what? I wont give them that joy.
I dont know to what special type of keyboard you are reffering but a) It is possible to write (fast!) with one hand in a normal keyboard (see Dvorak one handed keyboard). I have seen someone in action with that key distribution and it is amazing.
Tablet PC
You defin Tablet PC as a loser, however I think there has been a lot of maket for this computers. I would like to buy one, however they are quite expensive (and I am quite poor), maybe you did not liked it, and saw it as a gadget because you are a software developer or something similar. The reason is that it is not aimed to your kind of job. It is aimed to secretaries or people in supply chain management for example that need to take quick notes and verify manufacturing processes in real time (someone I know works on that). And of course it would be useful even to people that makes inventory (if you have a small/medium shop you might find it handy).
OLED Keyboard
Having said that I am a bit skeptical on this one. One of the main uses I give to this diplaying keyboard is to remap the letters when changing the keyboard distribution, it would be nice to play a Whack-a-mole like game. But if you see the "special function" keys use has been decreasing in current times. say for example F2, F9, F12, etc. HOWEVER I believe the approach of making an "additional" keyboard similar to those numerical keyboards you can connect to a computer. They surely would be used for specific tasks.
I had to use one of these numerical pads in a program I made to my brother (veterinary) which he used to analyze some samples in the microscope and count some of the things there without looking outside the microscope. I used that and sound output. Neat uh? =o).
The problem with that would be that, people already *know* the distribution of the numerical keyboard (and normal keyboard, kind of...) so had I had one of those keyboards and mapped my functions, it would be more difficult for my brother to learn the which key does what AND the position, instead of just learning the number and what it does.
I personally just tried installing Dapper Drake the other day, and even though I have very new hardware (AMD 64 3000 and GeForce FX 5900; don't remember the motherboard), my system froze the moment the installer got to the GUI.
Dont know if this is your problem but, I also installed Ubuntu on my notebook, ATI 9100 IGP-P4 3.06 ghz, ATI chipset and I got a similar behaviour, the system got into the Login screen, after I logged in it froze completely.
What I did is install Kubuntu, personally I dont like Gnome. It is working now (i.e. I can log in) but as with every linux distribution I have tried, there are no drivers for my card (no 3D acceleration), the [broadcom] wifi does not works (it is detected but does not see any network even after I install the firmware), etc. So yeah, Linux is still not flawless.
That reminds me of a joke... it may not be the same in english (I heard it originally in spanish):
Why does married men get fat? ---
Because when you are single you get into your home, open the fridge and think "the same thing again" (pizza, hamburger, chinnese food, etc) and get to your bed.
And, when you are married, you get to your home go to your room "open" the bed sheets and think "the same thing again" and go to your fridge.
I have to agree with that. I am, as you waiting for the Wii, although this is going to be the first console I'll buy with great expectation since my father surprised me with the SNES... I owned an Xbox for like 6 months while in university but I got bored of the games (I preffer to make program myself).
Now I have a notebook (3.06 Ghz, 1GB ram) which is great for my PhD student needs (darn, a P3-800 would be ok for latex-pdf-opera-linux combo... but I use Eclipse/java to run MAS simulations) and I believe am expecting to buy a gamine machine to play games, just that.
On a slightly related side note, an Asus GEforce 7600 (named in the article) is £137 on CQOut on UK. This CQOut can be a good EBay replacement, they accept Paypal (some of the sellers) and they have their own online payment system (charges 1% of transactions to the sellers). I think this might be of interest to someone of slashdot. It is available for USA, canada, UK and other countries.
Sorry for the plug but I myself have been looking for a replacement site for ebay/paypal. I got scammed recently, fortunately paypal returned me £148 of the £160 I paid for a ticket to see the Killers... (yeah I was that stupid... the worst thing is that I dont even like that band but my girlfriend loves them and I gave her the GREAAAAAAT idea of buying them on ebay... you can punch me in the face).
No, people does not know what DRM means, but what they do know is that they cant copy their music freely from their iPod as they could with the tape recorder. They also know they cant backup that game/app DVD as they could do 10 years ago, or that movie DVD as they could with their VHS movie.
What happens is that they do not relate those annoyances they have everyday with technology with the Bad(tm) DRM. They just think it is "more difficult". Back in the times of the VHS you just inserted the original and the blank and presseed REC+PLAY and voila.
It is your task as "computer expert" to let them know that it is not a consequence of advanced tech that it is more difficult or impossible to do that but it is a consequence of the restrictions that these corporations are adding to their content (wheter that is or not legal is another story)
1. Denial and isolation - The "No, not me" stage.: "This is not happening to me." 2. Anger - The "Why me?" stage.: "How dare you do this to me?!" (either referring to a god, the late person, or themselves) 3. Bargaining - The "If I do this, you'll do that" stage.: "Just let me live to see my son graduate." 4. Depression - The "It's really happened" stage.: "I can't bear to face going through this, putting my family through this." 5. Acceptance - The "This is going to happen" stage.: "I'm ready, I don't want to struggle anymore."
Dont worry, you will get to acceptance someday =o)
Good idea, in principle, you just have some lower-level drivers manage the basic ports (USB, Serial, Network, etc.)
One thing I have thought for about 5 years related to this "basic ports" is why they are not handled by the BIOS like the keyboard and screen? serial port is, USB is quite universal same as network. Also, wireless could be the same, they are now in every motherboard. Why cant the BIOS provide the low level management?
I mean, BIOS is in charge of the "Basic input/output" of the computer, these days, USB, Ethernet and Wifi are basic IO.
I have had this problem on Linux, when trying to install some program it said it needed "glibc == 3" or something like that, I had a version greater than that (say 6) but the program did not like it, I proceeded to install the glib 5 but then I got a nasty warning listing several installed apps that *required* glibc 6... after I installed the new library not caring about the warning, several of those apps stopped working.
I upgraded to version 6 again and they started working but of course the other app did not worked... I tried making a symlink for the glibcxxx.3.so to the.6.so without success.
I would preffer statically linked libraries instead of the dynamic ones, I have read about these "easy security hole update" advantage but in my opinion it would be just a matter of patching a file (just a diff a.bin b.bin would do it), it is no big deal.
We will sue this guy until his pants drop down, we got all the patents for anything related to the Spore game and it seems this game is balantly infringing our patents and the author hasn't paid royalties.
Sincerely,
EA
p.s. Mmmm. we may better wait until the game makes some cash and then go for him.
Cool! I have always wanted to be immersed in a virtual environment ala Therteen floor or having my own slave robot (to get money from my ATM machine;) similar to bicentenial man, although I would prefer the femenine line =o).
In all seriousness, I believe the "present" has become as scifi movies. When I woke up in 9/11/2001 the TV woke me up (tv alarm) when it turned on on certain channel, when I started listenting the program and I was watching the scenes my first thought was "what movie is this?", I guessed it was a "Die Hard" movie, but then I saw the News program marks and the rest is history...
I've just seen this movie, its hilarious. I was laughing really loud after the things they said. I aknowledge what you said. After the end of the movie my feelings were basically two, first I thought the movie *as is* was terrible, with the flying equations and the 3D computer room (in the bank).
On the other side, I stoped to think that, the movie was released in 1995, back then, I was 13 years old and I know that, had I seen that movie at that time it would have been awesome and I would have loved it. Similarly to the Sneakers movie, which I saw back then and until now thing is the BEST technology/hacker movie.
Just as a comment, one of the lines that made me laugh harder is the 28.8 modem script lines, where some of the guys asked if it had an "active matrix" and other properties that had NOTHING to do with a modem. Oh, and the laptop with PCI oh god... it is completely hilarious.
But again, I think the movie, for 1995 kids shurely had a lot of impact.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi, I live in the UK too, could you please elaborate?
Have a look at the offers on ebay for NEW PCs being sold at less than £200 with 512MB of ram. None of them has a monitor... bollocks!
The price for redhat includes support the price for XP does not. Not only that but it also comes with databasess (plural), directory services, compilers, office suite, and thousands of other pieces of software.
Office Suite [OpenOffice]-> Can download it for free and use it on Windows
Databases [MySql, PostgreSQL] -> Can download it for free and use it on Windows
Thousands of other pieces -> Can download it for free and use it on Windows
Directory Services -> Can download it for free and use it on Windows
The author is cherry picking and presenting half truths in order to try to make a point. It's a weasily thing really.
Someone said that the comparison of QT vs MS Visual Studio is unfair. I am SURE it is unfair, QT is just a library that would compare to Microsoft WinForms... to think that the library is more than 10 times more expensive that the VS IDE makes my head explode...
Anyway so QT costs a lot of money, why not use wxwindows, FOX, FLTK, or a dozen other perfectly fine open source toolkits.
Read the main post again, the company was looking for Open Source software with PAYED support. No, Mailing lists, Forums, Wikis and other nicey info-gadgets work, they need a company to back up their software.
So "one company" charges you a lot of money for real time linux why not go to a competitor?
Please, feel free to extend on this point, do you know othe companies that offer what this person was looking for?
I think this guys is thinking OSS is like windows and that there is only one vendor for anything. Most windows shops are shocked to find that they can shop around for vendors and negotiate contracts. They don't have to bend over for their vendors (strange concept huh?).
I think you have to read again the post, the main problem with today capitalism is the price of the services. The fine print is that some of the services he was looking for are cheaper from your hated Microsoft company. Either because there is more demand for their services or any other reason.
The other fact is that there are not enough companies that offer enterprise support for open source software. At least not enough to drive prices to a competitive level (competitive with closed source software). If X company chose to make buisness with OpenSource software and their prices are 10 times the prices of a similar closed source option, it means they are not being competitive, they MUST change their buisness model (only if they really want to become competitive).
They surely are in the UK...
You would only buy a microwave oven (excluding VAT) with your $400 over here...
How the hell did Bush manage to pull this off? Everyone knows only dirty American Republicans (is that redundant?) would use such evil machines!
No, it is called a Semantic Pleonasm.
Yur güelcom =oP
I wish I had modpoints to mod you up. I have seen that all the replies to your post try to justify the use of the (word?) but I believe its use is worse than people may believe.
See, slashdot is a place where people *could* look at "the other side" of the coin about news, and at least read a bit of a more informed comments (in the sense of technology). But what other people will see when they look at google news is this. And from my point of view that does not seems very informative.
I can pass that the summary of the article has spelling or grammar horrors but really a wrong headline like this and on such news as important like this really hurts slashdot (and if you think about the "information wants to be free cause" a lot).
This Might be useful sometime in your life =o).
The Art of Computer Programming, by Donald E. Knuth
I highly recommend this book (all of its volumes). From what the original poster wrote I believe that is what he is looking for.
There is a limit of precooked data structures that you will find in books but reading Knuth works (anyone of them) will make allow you to develop a highly abstract thinking that will allow you to create the *right* structure for your work. I would also recommend his "Concrete Mathematics" book.
When I was on primary school I bought a NES (yep, I had to buy it with the money my parents gave each week). The "politics" in my house was that we could only play it on weekends (friday-sunday) and vacations.
Now, my parents where not at home in the afternoon for 4 or 5 hours and we (me and my brother) used to play it. I am sure they knew we played it but they trusted us. Anyway, on basic school I was lazy, very lazy and I had very bad grades (I almost repeated 4th grade) because I didnt do my homework.
But attributing THAT to games will be stupid at least. After I finished with junior high and entered to high school, I entered to a specialized high school where I chose a "electronics technician" career. It was very cool because they concentrated on maths/electronics/computing skills. THe first year I had to take some common subjects (chemistry, history, philosophy, etc...) and although I passed them, I got, for example, a 60% (the minimum to pass) on that one. And the reason for that was that I made an "amazing" end of year work (a document which I made with my "leet" computer skills and lots of interneting [back in 1993]) about greek philosophers).
But the main issue is that, as soon as I started the specialized courses I was one of the best in my class, I even got a 3rd place in a national maths competition (on Differential Calculus). Of course I have been programming since I was on 5th grade in primary school.
A very interesting point is that, even though my parents did not let us play, they let us use the computer. On those days we did not have a lot of games (I remember playing Prince of Persia, TDCGA [test drive] and a bunch of others) and because of that I spent the time programming or trying to hack the computer, exploring etc. I also helped my father with a bibliography program we made on BASIC (he is a researcher and had a database of more than 15000 references =oS).
But, back more on topic, one of the things I am certain computer games made me learn was English. My native language is Spanish and I remember playing Final Fantasy I and asking my parents for a dictionary. The first one I got was English/Spanish. I looked for lots of words and learnt. My father always pushed us to use an Engish/English dictionary (to find the definition of a word on english terms, it is thousand times better than a translation).
Also, my father bought a game called "where in time is Carmen San Diego" and he sat with us to play some weekends (it was that or not to play at all while he was playing Tetris =oP).
So, to finish my boring story, I believe the key is (as with almost every other parenting aspect) that parents should watch what their children play. And by watch I dont mean just to forbid X or Y game. Instead LEARN to play what your son is playing, take some time, UNDERSTAND why are they playing it. Then, after you spend some time, try to introduce some other game that has *certain* specific value for you , do not critizise (in a negative way as "that shit you play only pressing and pressing buttons" [what my father thought of RPG's before I showed him the english-learning side]).
There are lots of things in a game that can help kids learn constructive things. It is up to you as a parent to use them.
Well, your country seems very interesting. I for one will look to take some vacations there. I am from Mexico currently living in the UK. On about 2 years I will be looking for work and I am willing to relocate anywhere, and I have always wanted to visit the nordic countries ( watch the aurora borealis, visit finland, etc). If Sweden is as cool as it seems, who knows, maybe I will find some nice work there.
Is tehre any game developing company there (dont mind if it is small or medium)?
Apparently one of the difficulties US IT workers have is that US$50,000 is worth a lot more in India than in the United States. Therefore, an IT worker in India can be paid less money than a US worker and live better
.NET technology developing). I was paid $1,000 a month. It was not a big company of course but they had nice connections and contracts. The chief developer (the highest ranking in the company before de admins) earned $1,500 each month.
Hey, I am the "living example" of that. See, when I was at my last year of undergrad (Software Engineering) I entered to a software company (ASP,
Now, you tell me if anyone of you would accept a $18,000 yr. salary to do a senior programmer team leader designer-analyst. Or moreover, just $12,000 yr for something very similar (which was what I did and btw, I know more than what this guy knew but hey, it was a cool job). I am sure any American will just laugh at such wages if someone proposed them with that job.
Well, but this was in Mexico and, here the $1,000 monthly salary is considered VERY good. Darn, to get that job BEFORE finishing Uni is almost a miracle. What happend was that this company was american, it was a small startup, some gringos wanting to make systems for car rental companies etc. Of course they payed wages in MX Pesos and sold the system in US Dollars, pure profit.
He is protecting your ass and thats the thanks you give him
He is protecting you from what?
Weapons of mass destruction?
The Boogey Man?
Terrorism? [A terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.]
Cool!, I feel really really good to know that my government does not "protect my ass" the way Bush is doing it with you =o)
What Clinton did was lie while under oath in a case where he was identified as the serial sexual harassment predator he is. I thought after 'Clarence Thomas' that Sexual Harassment was a serious issue for the Democrats.
Hahahahahaha
So, let me guess, you are one of those guys who think that GTA San Andreas is TERRIBLY UNAEQUATE GAME because it is possible to unlock a sex scene? no mather killing people in the middle of the street etc etc etc...
Really, as a non american (Mexican if you care) I never really understood what was the problem with Clinton's Blowjob. Everybody wants a blowjob no?. What is the difference, it is a kind of sexual act. Nothing fancy. What, you said he "lied under oath"? okey, cool, just punish him because of that.
Really, how can you compare a blowjob to mmm lets see, a massive out of all proportion massacre of innocent people, both non-americans AND americans (yeah I consider the poor militar guys who enroll to get some money for their career as innocent) that the current president is backing up?.
Americans are hilarious. A woman shows a tit for 450 milliseconds on TV and everyone is so shocked that they even pass a "new law" while their consitution and basic rights are being abolished by your government...
Man... I have pitty for you. America is not even as cool as it used to be.
Hey, that was a great read. Are you from the USA? if you are, then accept my pitty. Really, if all of what is written there is true then there is no doubt that you have already lost your "war on terror".
Really, when this kind of things happen:
Or this:
or this:
They are clear signals that people in your country are completely terrorized. You have been terrorized by your own goverment. As other people already wrote, I avoid at all costs to pass have anything to do with USA. I travel from UK to Mexico quite often. The first time I went to UK was with KLM. I do not have an USA Visa and really I am not eager to get it. Next christmas I will flight to Mexico, I was looking at the prices and it is quite cheap to flight UK - Mexico via Chicago, but there is no way I will go trough all the hassle of getting a Visa to let the USA government get my profile.
Just as a side comment. Long ago, I believe it was between 1990 and 1995, an aunt went to USA for whatever reason, when was returning, they stopped her before boarding her plain because my grandmother, who had traveled to USA 10 years ago or something, appeared as if she had never left the USA. They were trying to make my aunt say were was my grandmother "hiding" in the USA. After several hours of questions I believe they let her go.
It turns out (after some famility talk) that when my grandmother flew to USA, she forgot to hand a paper she had to give to in the USA to mark her leave.
One of the things I learnt from that is the amount of information they DO have about you and me. I mean, we (our familiy) is in no way notable. We are middle class Mexicans. My grandmother was also a typical Juana Seis-Pack, nothing fancy. We were surprised to know how did they know my aunt was related to my grandmother (they did know before they started asking her).
It is because of that among lots of things that I dont want to put a foot in USA. If you see my comments I really have said harsh things against your government, and I am sure that if I put a foot in USA they will get me thinking I am some kind of terrorist for whatever reason and you know what? I wont give them that joy.
One-handed Keyboard
I dont know to what special type of keyboard you are reffering but a) It is possible to write (fast!) with one hand in a normal keyboard (see Dvorak one handed keyboard). I have seen someone in action with that key distribution and it is amazing.
Tablet PC
You defin Tablet PC as a loser, however I think there has been a lot of maket for this computers. I would like to buy one, however they are quite expensive (and I am quite poor), maybe you did not liked it, and saw it as a gadget because you are a software developer or something similar. The reason is that it is not aimed to your kind of job. It is aimed to secretaries or people in supply chain management for example that need to take quick notes and verify manufacturing processes in real time (someone I know works on that). And of course it would be useful even to people that makes inventory (if you have a small/medium shop you might find it handy).
OLED Keyboard
Having said that I am a bit skeptical on this one. One of the main uses I give to this diplaying keyboard is to remap the letters when changing the keyboard distribution, it would be nice to play a Whack-a-mole like game. But if you see the "special function" keys use has been decreasing in current times. say for example F2, F9, F12, etc. HOWEVER I believe the approach of making an "additional" keyboard similar to those numerical keyboards you can connect to a computer. They surely would be used for specific tasks.
I had to use one of these numerical pads in a program I made to my brother (veterinary) which he used to analyze some samples in the microscope and count some of the things there without looking outside the microscope. I used that and sound output. Neat uh? =o).
The problem with that would be that, people already *know* the distribution of the numerical keyboard (and normal keyboard, kind of...) so had I had one of those keyboards and mapped my functions, it would be more difficult for my brother to learn the which key does what AND the position, instead of just learning the number and what it does.
It seems you are 4 jokes late :)
I personally just tried installing Dapper Drake the other day, and even though I have very new hardware (AMD 64 3000 and GeForce FX 5900; don't remember the motherboard), my system froze the moment the installer got to the GUI.
Dont know if this is your problem but, I also installed Ubuntu on my notebook, ATI 9100 IGP-P4 3.06 ghz, ATI chipset and I got a similar behaviour, the system got into the Login screen, after I logged in it froze completely.
What I did is install Kubuntu, personally I dont like Gnome. It is working now (i.e. I can log in) but as with every linux distribution I have tried, there are no drivers for my card (no 3D acceleration), the [broadcom] wifi does not works (it is detected but does not see any network even after I install the firmware), etc. So yeah, Linux is still not flawless.
That reminds me of a joke... it may not be the same in english (I heard it originally in spanish):
Why does married men get fat?
---
Because when you are single you get into your home, open the fridge and think "the same thing again" (pizza, hamburger, chinnese food, etc) and get to your bed.
And, when you are married, you get to your home go to your room "open" the bed sheets and think "the same thing again" and go to your fridge.
I have to agree with that. I am, as you waiting for the Wii, although this is going to be the first console I'll buy with great expectation since my father surprised me with the SNES... I owned an Xbox for like 6 months while in university but I got bored of the games (I preffer to make program myself).
Now I have a notebook (3.06 Ghz, 1GB ram) which is great for my PhD student needs (darn, a P3-800 would be ok for latex-pdf-opera-linux combo... but I use Eclipse/java to run MAS simulations) and I believe am expecting to buy a gamine machine to play games, just that.
On a slightly related side note, an Asus GEforce 7600 (named in the article) is £137 on CQOut on UK. This CQOut can be a good EBay replacement, they accept Paypal (some of the sellers) and they have their own online payment system (charges 1% of transactions to the sellers). I think this might be of interest to someone of slashdot. It is available for USA, canada, UK and other countries.
Sorry for the plug but I myself have been looking for a replacement site for ebay/paypal. I got scammed recently, fortunately paypal returned me £148 of the £160 I paid for a ticket to see the Killers... (yeah I was that stupid... the worst thing is that I dont even like that band but my girlfriend loves them and I gave her the GREAAAAAAT idea of buying them on ebay... you can punch me in the face).
"Name and conquer"
No, people does not know what DRM means, but what they do know is that they cant copy their music freely from their iPod as they could with the tape recorder. They also know they cant backup that game/app DVD as they could do 10 years ago, or that movie DVD as they could with their VHS movie.
What happens is that they do not relate those annoyances they have everyday with technology with the Bad(tm) DRM. They just think it is "more difficult". Back in the times of the VHS you just inserted the original and the blank and presseed REC+PLAY and voila.
It is your task as "computer expert" to let them know that it is not a consequence of advanced tech that it is more difficult or impossible to do that but it is a consequence of the restrictions that these corporations are adding to their content (wheter that is or not legal is another story)
My diarrhea is your shampoo.
Yeah, you are between the step 1 and 2 of the Kübler-Ross model.
Dont worry, you will get to acceptance someday =o)
Good idea, in principle, you just have some lower-level drivers manage the basic ports (USB, Serial, Network, etc.)
One thing I have thought for about 5 years related to this "basic ports" is why they are not handled by the BIOS like the keyboard and screen? serial port is, USB is quite universal same as network. Also, wireless could be the same, they are now in every motherboard. Why cant the BIOS provide the low level management?
I mean, BIOS is in charge of the "Basic input/output" of the computer, these days, USB, Ethernet and Wifi are basic IO.
I have had this problem on Linux, when trying to install some program it said it needed "glibc == 3" or something like that, I had a version greater than that (say 6) but the program did not like it, I proceeded to install the glib 5 but then I got a nasty warning listing several installed apps that *required* glibc 6 ... after I installed the new library not caring about the warning, several of those apps stopped working.
.6.so without success.
I upgraded to version 6 again and they started working but of course the other app did not worked... I tried making a symlink for the glibcxxx.3.so to the
I would preffer statically linked libraries instead of the dynamic ones, I have read about these "easy security hole update" advantage but in my opinion it would be just a matter of patching a file (just a diff a.bin b.bin would do it), it is no big deal.
Enough!
We will sue this guy until his pants drop down, we got all the patents for anything related to the Spore game and it seems this game is balantly infringing our patents and the author hasn't paid royalties.
Sincerely,
EA
p.s. Mmmm. we may better wait until the game makes some cash and then go for him.
Cool! I have always wanted to be immersed in a virtual environment ala Therteen floor or having my own slave robot (to get money from my ATM machine ;) similar to bicentenial man, although I would prefer the femenine line =o).
In all seriousness, I believe the "present" has become as scifi movies. When I woke up in 9/11/2001 the TV woke me up (tv alarm) when it turned on on certain channel, when I started listenting the program and I was watching the scenes my first thought was "what movie is this?", I guessed it was a "Die Hard" movie, but then I saw the News program marks and the rest is history...
I've just seen this movie, its hilarious. I was laughing really loud after the things they said. I aknowledge what you said. After the end of the movie my feelings were basically two, first I thought the movie *as is* was terrible, with the flying equations and the 3D computer room (in the bank).
On the other side, I stoped to think that, the movie was released in 1995, back then, I was 13 years old and I know that, had I seen that movie at that time it would have been awesome and I would have loved it. Similarly to the Sneakers movie, which I saw back then and until now thing is the BEST technology/hacker movie.
Just as a comment, one of the lines that made me laugh harder is the 28.8 modem script lines, where some of the guys asked if it had an "active matrix" and other properties that had NOTHING to do with a modem. Oh, and the laptop with PCI oh god... it is completely hilarious.
But again, I think the movie, for 1995 kids shurely had a lot of impact.