like asking you to used automatic updates every time you try to manually update wasn't dumb enough now come this crap. What I would like to know is how come M$'s greed keeps growning more and more? How far do they really think that they can go before people say that enough is enough? As far as switching to Linux goes it is absolutelly not true that Linux is not ready for the desktop computer. I can't believe that there are still people that seem to believe one of the oldest lies about linux. Linux was designed for desktop use and has never been anything but a desktop OS. The only thing is that there actually is not distinction between Desktop OS and server OS anywhere but in M$'s world. It is true that linux is no drop in replacement for windows but noone needs another crappy OS anyway. If you ever choose to switch to a different OS you will always have to learn new things and should the case with linux be any different? So to those of you that are saying that linux is not ready for your parents or your grandparents I have only one thing to say "Neither is WindowsXP but they use it as much as they can."
After all noone needs a fast car that can do over 120mph but people buy them all the time.
xvid is not a file format and the person was asking about file formats. Xvid is a codec and as such creates mpeg4 files. Plus xvid is most deffinitely not the salt of the earth. It has promlems with certain transformations and it does not exactly create a very compatible file with the other mpeg decoders. However like I said the question was about file formats and wmv and quich time blow avi out of the way sizewise.
Oh yeah I almost forgot AOL's servers also block stuff like edu accounts and other very closelly monitored and well administered domains. Blacklisting and edu account must be the dumbest think that I have ever seen. First of all those accounts existly only for as long as you are part of the institution and I have never heard of any spammer using an edu account. Even if you hijack and edu account as soon as the admin sees that 500 emails and up on a given day from the same account the account will be blocked. So thanks AOL for providing the world and all the people that depend on your services with some more crap.
Spam has been a huge problem for quite some time and the way that AOL deals with it is just shameful for them. I can't send emails to aol users from my sendmail server because AOL recognizes it as junkmail and refuses to accep it. Come on what's next blocking all OSS mail server just because people that uses them pay no royalties? AOL needs to seriously adjust their filter or maybe their spam strategy.
Are seriously that dumb or you just know nothing about BT. BitTorrent was designed only for sharing legal files buy stuff like OSS projects and companies that distribute free LEGAL binaries. This exactly why there is absolutelly no privacy features in the protocol or any of the clients. And this is exactly why work is underway to create BT2 which addresses all the security problems and allows *safe* use of BT for sharing any files (legal or not). BT2 also addresses some other problem that BT has like the load it puts on you internet connection and the boat load of connections that it opens.
There have been several interviews with the creator of BT and he has asked more than once if he would implement privacy control and every time he said that BT was never designed to be used for illegal files and therefore he finds no reason to include the features.
Plus atomic energy is great but it also could be used to create a trully devastating weapons.
yeah only when the RIAA goes after the person that uploaded the torrent they will also go after the company because they are hosting the torrent and that is just as illegal as sharing the file. So the company is begging for some dumb user to get sued and drag them with him/her. Where the heck is the CEO's brain at?
let me get this straight. You are using windows xp and you are worried about security? Let me tell you something about security. What in the world could you possibly have on your computer that is damn valuable to require a dedicated hardware firewall and all the rest of the crap that you have installed? Not to mention the slowdown that you are experiencing because of all that crap. If you want better security change your OS. Then you should also know that even if you have an extremely secure system you still can't eliminate the human factor and after all that's the way most secure system get owned. Oh yeah and that 30 character pass that you are using is no different than say a 10 character one. You almost never see people trying to bruteforce passwords. Takes too damn long. Not to mention that you crapy home computer has nothing that a cracker would want to get so badly that they will have to work that hard on it.
Security paranoia was invented by a dumb sys admin so that he would know the name of his condition.
If Sun DID make Solaris 10 compatible with linux and say posix standarts there would be no problems. However, that is Sun and then that is IBM and they are compeating for the same bussines. Guess how much responce Open Solaris is going to get? I guess Linus was right when he said that it'll most likelly be a flop.
A lot of people seem to have believed the semi-true story that Real's CEO pitched in order toadvertize the 6 month old Real Player 10 that has barely any following in the Linux community. After all it was Real Player 8 for linux that was breaking way too many things and serious or othe goof-offs on Real's side that won them the not so good reputation in that same community. But that's totaly different story.
Mpeg development is somewhat done by a large community of people and not just one company as Real and Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia want you to believe. As such Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia does not own all the pattents and there are certain things that they cannot pattent because of the nature of the development process. However in the last 10 years Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia has focused on the audio side of mpeg development and they do own the pattent on ISO mp3 which means that you cannot use the ISO algorithms without paying for them. It is also uncertain how many other companies own patents regarding mp3 but no one other than Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia has ever asked for licence fees on mp3. The thing that Real is overlooking is that you can still have a legal decoded and encoder for mp3 as long as you do not use the code that was ISOed and also included in the patent. Hence there are GPL decoders like mpg321, MAD, and other that let you listen to mp3s for free without breaking laws. The problem with all these is that some patent may emerge in the future that kills all of them but that is the nasty nature of the stupid patents idea anyway so don't complain.
What Real did is they chose to pay Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia for their codec and the rights to never be on the defendant's chair as long as they pay their fees. Real could have just as easily chosen to use gstreamer or MAD or mpg321 but they wanted the kind of security that you pay for because it was the kind of bussines that they have always done. So don't believe everything you hear from a CEO and go check it out.
A good place to get info about mp3 would be
http://www.mp3-tech.org/ --> general site
http://www.mp3licensing.com/ --> Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia
Your link is broken but despite what you might have seen no you cannot legaly build mp3 playing software using the code that Real paid to licence. It is possible that Real has screwed up some of the GPL restrictions but in that case you still cannot use the code because Real does not own it but licences it from some Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia.
However, you can use mp3 decoders for free as long as they do not use any of the ISO code that was included in the patents and also use a different decoding algorithm. This exactly why decoders like mpg321 and MAD are compleatelly legal for now. If in the future some other patent pops up that concerns something used by those projects they might become some what of a pain to deal with and this is exatly why Real chose to pay the fees rather that deal with potential licence issues. Of cource don't expect a CEO to tell you the truth in a public anoucement...
Well guess what, Real is kinda scared that they might have to pay Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia or whoever else owns pattents on mp3 more licence fees in the future and this exactly why they are backing up an open source standart. After all if everything is GPLed then they are ensured that there will be no fees in the future. Hence their support for the codec. Don't get your hopes up as soon as Real decides that ogg does not fit their bussines scemes the support will be gone. This is not the long term commintment that companies like IBM and Novel are going for.
First of all the pattent on mp3 is valid mostly only in the US and the couple other countries in the world that actually the US manages to controll like puppets on strings. Also I highly doubt the fact that mp3 as as an encoding technique is protected and you have to pay royalties to some company if you use it. The only thing that RealOne has done is that they paid for the *official* commercial and also closed source codec. Big deal!!! Oh yeah and just so I get that CEO's story straight it's not mp3 that you have to pay for but mp3pro and they are quite different. So do I care about Real Prayer 10? Heck no not especially since it is a 1 to 1 coppy of helix player which is open source product with some minor adjustments.
Brag on RealOne it might save you from going under the way that changing your name did not...
The first wrong presumption in the article is that a new piece of hardware is needed in order for Apple to start selling movies online. What is needed for any company to succeed in that bussines are a lot of customers with faster internet than what is currently available in most areas. Untill fiberoptic networks like the one that Verison was building become the norm there is no way that people are ever going to wait for 1-2 hours in order to download a movie and still pay for the service. When you want to watch a movie you want to do it now or at least in the next 30 minutes. So all this crap with selling legal copies of movies online is most likelly not going to fly for some more time and Jobs knows that very well. Also even if there was a way for Apple to start making money selling movies online why would they need a new computer to do that? What's wrong with the currently available ones. The answer is absolutelly nothing. Oh yeah and a G5 is pretty damn quiet so I really don't care if the fan on the miniMac is audible or not. The case with the iPod was that when it was released it filled a void that still no other company can fill as well as Apple does. Plus music files take close to no time to download so it is actually faster than going to the store. In the case of the miniMac you have no such factors. The only reason why the miniMac came out is because there are a lot of iPod users that are starting to consider buying a Mac but are turned off by the really high price tag. If you spent $400 on an iPod what is $600 for a computer that can do all that the iPod can plus some... And the reason why the miniMac has no monitore keyboard and mouse is because it was intender for use with a kvm switch. After all Jobs never even dreamed that Windows users are all of a sudden going to switch to full time Mac use. And who needs clutter arroud their desk anyway? All this was a careful study of the market and the reasons why people are reluctant to switch form Windows to say linux and how exactly they do that. The truth is that almost all linux users have a dual boot machine with windows also installed (just in case). Well you can't do that with a Mac so hence the miniMac with it's low price tag. After all the miniMac is only a steping stone towards a *real* Mac computer (say a G5).
eXeem uses BT as the underlining protocol so I have no idea what you're talking about. eXeem is a client that has adds features to BT because they don't like the current state of the protocol. If you ask me it's a pretty dumb idea because if they cared so much about doing good business they would have just contributed some man power to BT 2 and saved themselves the time to port their crappy little program later on. Oh well just another company that is after fast money in the computer industry. You'd think that people would learn from the dot com bubble.
This is hardly an extensive comparison and the guy's information is really outdated. For one he never mentioned anything of the 6bit gama chip that a lot of manufacturers have started using for lcds and this is actually the biggest problem when it comes to lcds. Not some imaginary responce time when the latest models easilly support 12ms and bellow.
Buddy, you are complaining that the 2 most unstable and still in very much beta stage extentions are not working? Are you nuts? There are tons of other things that ati has to focus on before they even think of adding support for eye candy. How about being happy that the opengl performance is better?
I have radeon 9600 and am also running gentoo 2.6.10 and have had no problems running 3d apps ever since I switched to this board. How well opengl works is another story however, my point is that instead of complaining how hard it is to get ati hardware to work maybe you should have looked at the gentoo forum or somewhere else on the web. The old driver required you to run a version of xorg below 6.8 or xfree86. The new driver no longer has that restriction and also the opengl performance has improved. ATI claims that applications using opengl no longer slow down or hang after long periots of running but I am not really sure if that is true. So if you can deal with that potential problem and most likelly slower performance than in windows there's nothing wrong with ati. Oh yeah also don't kind yourself the nvidia linux drivers are no giant leap over the ati ones. Especially when you have to patch them so that they work on kernel 2.6.10 and above.
This has nothing to do with an email client or a calendar application. First of all the port of evolution is a long time away and the 2nd thing is that Novel is trying to create and email client that works with their servers and you can use for groupwise. Groupwise is an extremely expensive software and it is one of the golden eggs for Novel and buy creating an OSS client for it they will attract more users and also lower the cost of ownership for a lot of big companies. Don't get your panties in a twist though, this has nothing to do with just some OSS calendar. Oh yeah and right now it is simply and experiment that may or maynot happen. What Novel is going to do in the process though is enhance Evolution and fix some of the problems that gtk+ has on windows. So ultimatelly they will do some good for everyone... thanks I guess.
Re:One reason why I'm still using Window Maker....
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Xfce 4.2.0 Released
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· Score: 1
Man you have a configuration problem on your computer with Gnome/XFCE4 or you are trying to run in on some really old and very underpowered computer. There is absolutelly no problem redrawing stuff in either one of them and I never use less than 6 virtual desktops. Now that doesn't mean that there arent other problems but the ones that you describe are deffinitelly not among them. For instance the biggest problem with Gnome right now is the menu and the the way you manage it but that is getting fixed in the upcomming released. As far as the feel of the GUI goes the only one that feels weird/funny is KDE. I have no idea what you have agains gtk+ but in my experience it feels just as good as MacOS X and MS Explorer. Plus in all GTK+ based desktop envs you can you themes and change almost everything that you see and make Gnome/XFCE4 look the way that you like it best. Oh yeah and Window Maker is still one of the ugliest desktop envs that just refuses to change.
Re:How lightweight, if it requires gtk+?
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Xfce 4.2.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
XFce4 has NO *external* dependancies (whatever that means). Every desktop env for *nix is standalone and you most deffinitelly do not need Gnome or KDE installed in order to run XFce4. However, you have the ability to load the load the esential libraries/services from either KDE or Gnome if you want to speed up the execution of KDE/Gnome software or if you want to add more functionality. XFce4 does not have a usable desktop i.e. you can only put a background and no shortcuts there and you will need to run parts of Gnome/KDE if you want a desktop with folders and shortcuts.
GMail is a beta as some of the other people mentioned and beta product even though they are not supposed to be buggy are still in testing stages and are not ready for production release. So is it surprising that there was another bug found in the system? Not at all. After all that's how all software gets developed. You test it to exhaustion and if it passes all the tests it's good to go. If not you fix the problems. And if you are using GMail you should know that you have already agreed to the possiblitly of having an unreliable service. After all this is why Google is gradually expanding the number of users.
That aside. I use GMail and Spymac since they were the first 2 free services to offer 1GB storage and google whips Spymacs butt in every aspect. So does that bug bother me? Not really. I use pop3/smtp access all the time and plus this bug will be fixed very soon just like all the other problems found so far.
If that's your idea of progress I am really sorry for you. All people should have equal right in a just society and it is up to the particular person's disgression to decide if he want to use those rights. Plus the american educational system is probably the worst one among all developed countries so give me a break.
Oh yeah and the slogan was " Correlation DOES NOT imply causation" and that means does not always not never. The other thing is that if that majority of decent paying jobs out there and college require some degree of computer literacy how are you going to get any one of those jobs if you have no idea what the internet is or that it even exists? Schools in poor areas are lucky if they have 5 computers in the whole school so I really doubt it that you will get any computer related experiences in there.
Last I checked Bell South used to be just another company and as such it is fully dependant on the good will of it's customers. If they are not willing to invest and satisfy the people why should you be forced to stay with them? This no communism so if this crap flies we are in serious trouble. Btw, I used to live in that city for an year 3 years ago and the broadband situation is really horrible. Most people do not use broadband and there are a lot of people who don't use even dial up at home. Back then we used to have Cox cable and internet as well however as everyone knows the price of cable internet is not cheap. It was fine for me since this was the 1st and only year I was going to be there so I could use the reduced price but once the price goes to the regular $40-something it is no easy price to swallow. Paying close to $50 for merely 1.5mbps is deffinitelly not my idea of broadband. So should the people build their own network with their own money on their own land? Sure! If the city can afford to pay for all this more power to them. After all it is time to put the corporations in their place and let them now that sometime enough is enough.
You want a cheap industial grade computer and from you have posted you seem to know absolutelly nothing about cooling and pretty much any computer physics (if that's even a term). So the bottom line is that you are either going to have to drop between $2,000 and $3,000 for the computer of just forget the project and do your computer stuff inside or away from all the dust and particles that come with a tool shed. First of all you will have to opt for a hard drive that is designed for extreme conditions ( mostly extreme heat but cold too) and those are more expensive than a decent scsi. The second thing is that you will probably have an extremely limited choice of cases. The only thing that I could think of (relatelly inexpensive) is Zalman's 0db case and it cost about $1,000. From there on you will probably have to go with a lower speed cpu or prefferably a mobile one due to the lower heat produced. And after you are done with all this you will have a heck of a time finding a sealed monitor that can withstand a very poluted environment. Those cost arround $1,000 too. Not to mention that you will need a special keyboard and a mouse. Oh yeah and the monitor is really not a choice. A regular monitor would probably last not more than an year in a worshop ( if it is a metal shop that time is a huge over-estemate).
So like a said, save yourself some money and lot's of trouble and keep your computer at home or some other cleaner place.
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like asking you to used automatic updates every time you try to manually update wasn't dumb enough now come this crap. What I would like to know is how come M$'s greed keeps growning more and more? How far do they really think that they can go before people say that enough is enough? As far as switching to Linux goes it is absolutelly not true that Linux is not ready for the desktop computer. I can't believe that there are still people that seem to believe one of the oldest lies about linux. Linux was designed for desktop use and has never been anything but a desktop OS. The only thing is that there actually is not distinction between Desktop OS and server OS anywhere but in M$'s world. It is true that linux is no drop in replacement for windows but noone needs another crappy OS anyway. If you ever choose to switch to a different OS you will always have to learn new things and should the case with linux be any different? So to those of you that are saying that linux is not ready for your parents or your grandparents I have only one thing to say "Neither is WindowsXP but they use it as much as they can." After all noone needs a fast car that can do over 120mph but people buy them all the time.
xvid is not a file format and the person was asking about file formats. Xvid is a codec and as such creates mpeg4 files. Plus xvid is most deffinitely not the salt of the earth. It has promlems with certain transformations and it does not exactly create a very compatible file with the other mpeg decoders. However like I said the question was about file formats and wmv and quich time blow avi out of the way sizewise.
Oh yeah I almost forgot AOL's servers also block stuff like edu accounts and other very closelly monitored and well administered domains. Blacklisting and edu account must be the dumbest think that I have ever seen. First of all those accounts existly only for as long as you are part of the institution and I have never heard of any spammer using an edu account. Even if you hijack and edu account as soon as the admin sees that 500 emails and up on a given day from the same account the account will be blocked. So thanks AOL for providing the world and all the people that depend on your services with some more crap.
Spam has been a huge problem for quite some time and the way that AOL deals with it is just shameful for them. I can't send emails to aol users from my sendmail server because AOL recognizes it as junkmail and refuses to accep it. Come on what's next blocking all OSS mail server just because people that uses them pay no royalties? AOL needs to seriously adjust their filter or maybe their spam strategy.
Are seriously that dumb or you just know nothing about BT. BitTorrent was designed only for sharing legal files buy stuff like OSS projects and companies that distribute free LEGAL binaries. This exactly why there is absolutelly no privacy features in the protocol or any of the clients. And this is exactly why work is underway to create BT2 which addresses all the security problems and allows *safe* use of BT for sharing any files (legal or not). BT2 also addresses some other problem that BT has like the load it puts on you internet connection and the boat load of connections that it opens. There have been several interviews with the creator of BT and he has asked more than once if he would implement privacy control and every time he said that BT was never designed to be used for illegal files and therefore he finds no reason to include the features. Plus atomic energy is great but it also could be used to create a trully devastating weapons.
yeah only when the RIAA goes after the person that uploaded the torrent they will also go after the company because they are hosting the torrent and that is just as illegal as sharing the file. So the company is begging for some dumb user to get sued and drag them with him/her. Where the heck is the CEO's brain at?
Now this is some cool stuff. The only problem is that who is going to pay for a phone line if they can use this p2p?
let me get this straight. You are using windows xp and you are worried about security? Let me tell you something about security. What in the world could you possibly have on your computer that is damn valuable to require a dedicated hardware firewall and all the rest of the crap that you have installed? Not to mention the slowdown that you are experiencing because of all that crap. If you want better security change your OS. Then you should also know that even if you have an extremely secure system you still can't eliminate the human factor and after all that's the way most secure system get owned. Oh yeah and that 30 character pass that you are using is no different than say a 10 character one. You almost never see people trying to bruteforce passwords. Takes too damn long. Not to mention that you crapy home computer has nothing that a cracker would want to get so badly that they will have to work that hard on it. Security paranoia was invented by a dumb sys admin so that he would know the name of his condition.
If Sun DID make Solaris 10 compatible with linux and say posix standarts there would be no problems. However, that is Sun and then that is IBM and they are compeating for the same bussines. Guess how much responce Open Solaris is going to get? I guess Linus was right when he said that it'll most likelly be a flop.
A lot of people seem to have believed the semi-true story that Real's CEO pitched in order toadvertize the 6 month old Real Player 10 that has barely any following in the Linux community. After all it was Real Player 8 for linux that was breaking way too many things and serious or othe goof-offs on Real's side that won them the not so good reputation in that same community. But that's totaly different story. Mpeg development is somewhat done by a large community of people and not just one company as Real and Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia want you to believe. As such Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia does not own all the pattents and there are certain things that they cannot pattent because of the nature of the development process. However in the last 10 years Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia has focused on the audio side of mpeg development and they do own the pattent on ISO mp3 which means that you cannot use the ISO algorithms without paying for them. It is also uncertain how many other companies own patents regarding mp3 but no one other than Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia has ever asked for licence fees on mp3. The thing that Real is overlooking is that you can still have a legal decoded and encoder for mp3 as long as you do not use the code that was ISOed and also included in the patent. Hence there are GPL decoders like mpg321, MAD, and other that let you listen to mp3s for free without breaking laws. The problem with all these is that some patent may emerge in the future that kills all of them but that is the nasty nature of the stupid patents idea anyway so don't complain. What Real did is they chose to pay Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia for their codec and the rights to never be on the defendant's chair as long as they pay their fees. Real could have just as easily chosen to use gstreamer or MAD or mpg321 but they wanted the kind of security that you pay for because it was the kind of bussines that they have always done. So don't believe everything you hear from a CEO and go check it out. A good place to get info about mp3 would be http://www.mp3-tech.org/ --> general site http://www.mp3licensing.com/ --> Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia
Your link is broken but despite what you might have seen no you cannot legaly build mp3 playing software using the code that Real paid to licence. It is possible that Real has screwed up some of the GPL restrictions but in that case you still cannot use the code because Real does not own it but licences it from some Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia. However, you can use mp3 decoders for free as long as they do not use any of the ISO code that was included in the patents and also use a different decoding algorithm. This exactly why decoders like mpg321 and MAD are compleatelly legal for now. If in the future some other patent pops up that concerns something used by those projects they might become some what of a pain to deal with and this is exatly why Real chose to pay the fees rather that deal with potential licence issues. Of cource don't expect a CEO to tell you the truth in a public anoucement ...
Well guess what, Real is kinda scared that they might have to pay Fraunhofer/Thomson Multimedia or whoever else owns pattents on mp3 more licence fees in the future and this exactly why they are backing up an open source standart. After all if everything is GPLed then they are ensured that there will be no fees in the future. Hence their support for the codec. Don't get your hopes up as soon as Real decides that ogg does not fit their bussines scemes the support will be gone. This is not the long term commintment that companies like IBM and Novel are going for.
First of all the pattent on mp3 is valid mostly only in the US and the couple other countries in the world that actually the US manages to controll like puppets on strings. Also I highly doubt the fact that mp3 as as an encoding technique is protected and you have to pay royalties to some company if you use it. The only thing that RealOne has done is that they paid for the *official* commercial and also closed source codec. Big deal!!! Oh yeah and just so I get that CEO's story straight it's not mp3 that you have to pay for but mp3pro and they are quite different. So do I care about Real Prayer 10? Heck no not especially since it is a 1 to 1 coppy of helix player which is open source product with some minor adjustments.
...
Brag on RealOne it might save you from going under the way that changing your name did not
The first wrong presumption in the article is that a new piece of hardware is needed in order for Apple to start selling movies online. What is needed for any company to succeed in that bussines are a lot of customers with faster internet than what is currently available in most areas. Untill fiberoptic networks like the one that Verison was building become the norm there is no way that people are ever going to wait for 1-2 hours in order to download a movie and still pay for the service. When you want to watch a movie you want to do it now or at least in the next 30 minutes. So all this crap with selling legal copies of movies online is most likelly not going to fly for some more time and Jobs knows that very well. Also even if there was a way for Apple to start making money selling movies online why would they need a new computer to do that? What's wrong with the currently available ones. The answer is absolutelly nothing. Oh yeah and a G5 is pretty damn quiet so I really don't care if the fan on the miniMac is audible or not. The case with the iPod was that when it was released it filled a void that still no other company can fill as well as Apple does. Plus music files take close to no time to download so it is actually faster than going to the store. In the case of the miniMac you have no such factors. The only reason why the miniMac came out is because there are a lot of iPod users that are starting to consider buying a Mac but are turned off by the really high price tag. If you spent $400 on an iPod what is $600 for a computer that can do all that the iPod can plus some ... And the reason why the miniMac has no monitore keyboard and mouse is because it was intender for use with a kvm switch. After all Jobs never even dreamed that Windows users are all of a sudden going to switch to full time Mac use. And who needs clutter arroud their desk anyway?
All this was a careful study of the market and the reasons why people are reluctant to switch form Windows to say linux and how exactly they do that. The truth is that almost all linux users have a dual boot machine with windows also installed (just in case). Well you can't do that with a Mac so hence the miniMac with it's low price tag. After all the miniMac is only a steping stone towards a *real* Mac computer (say a G5).
eXeem uses BT as the underlining protocol so I have no idea what you're talking about. eXeem is a client that has adds features to BT because they don't like the current state of the protocol. If you ask me it's a pretty dumb idea because if they cared so much about doing good business they would have just contributed some man power to BT 2 and saved themselves the time to port their crappy little program later on. Oh well just another company that is after fast money in the computer industry. You'd think that people would learn from the dot com bubble.
This is hardly an extensive comparison and the guy's information is really outdated. For one he never mentioned anything of the 6bit gama chip that a lot of manufacturers have started using for lcds and this is actually the biggest problem when it comes to lcds. Not some imaginary responce time when the latest models easilly support 12ms and bellow.
Buddy, you are complaining that the 2 most unstable and still in very much beta stage extentions are not working? Are you nuts? There are tons of other things that ati has to focus on before they even think of adding support for eye candy. How about being happy that the opengl performance is better?
I have radeon 9600 and am also running gentoo 2.6.10 and have had no problems running 3d apps ever since I switched to this board. How well opengl works is another story however, my point is that instead of complaining how hard it is to get ati hardware to work maybe you should have looked at the gentoo forum or somewhere else on the web. The old driver required you to run a version of xorg below 6.8 or xfree86. The new driver no longer has that restriction and also the opengl performance has improved. ATI claims that applications using opengl no longer slow down or hang after long periots of running but I am not really sure if that is true. So if you can deal with that potential problem and most likelly slower performance than in windows there's nothing wrong with ati. Oh yeah also don't kind yourself the nvidia linux drivers are no giant leap over the ati ones. Especially when you have to patch them so that they work on kernel 2.6.10 and above.
This has nothing to do with an email client or a calendar application. First of all the port of evolution is a long time away and the 2nd thing is that Novel is trying to create and email client that works with their servers and you can use for groupwise. Groupwise is an extremely expensive software and it is one of the golden eggs for Novel and buy creating an OSS client for it they will attract more users and also lower the cost of ownership for a lot of big companies. Don't get your panties in a twist though, this has nothing to do with just some OSS calendar. Oh yeah and right now it is simply and experiment that may or maynot happen. ... thanks I guess.
What Novel is going to do in the process though is enhance Evolution and fix some of the problems that gtk+ has on windows. So ultimatelly they will do some good for everyone
Man you have a configuration problem on your computer with Gnome/XFCE4 or you are trying to run in on some really old and very underpowered computer. There is absolutelly no problem redrawing stuff in either one of them and I never use less than 6 virtual desktops. Now that doesn't mean that there arent other problems but the ones that you describe are deffinitelly not among them. For instance the biggest problem with Gnome right now is the menu and the the way you manage it but that is getting fixed in the upcomming released. As far as the feel of the GUI goes the only one that feels weird/funny is KDE. I have no idea what you have agains gtk+ but in my experience it feels just as good as MacOS X and MS Explorer. Plus in all GTK+ based desktop envs you can you themes and change almost everything that you see and make Gnome/XFCE4 look the way that you like it best. Oh yeah and Window Maker is still one of the ugliest desktop envs that just refuses to change.
XFce4 has NO *external* dependancies (whatever that means). Every desktop env for *nix is standalone and you most deffinitelly do not need Gnome or KDE installed in order to run XFce4. However, you have the ability to load the load the esential libraries/services from either KDE or Gnome if you want to speed up the execution of KDE/Gnome software or if you want to add more functionality. XFce4 does not have a usable desktop i.e. you can only put a background and no shortcuts there and you will need to run parts of Gnome/KDE if you want a desktop with folders and shortcuts.
GMail is a beta as some of the other people mentioned and beta product even though they are not supposed to be buggy are still in testing stages and are not ready for production release. So is it surprising that there was another bug found in the system? Not at all. After all that's how all software gets developed. You test it to exhaustion and if it passes all the tests it's good to go. If not you fix the problems. And if you are using GMail you should know that you have already agreed to the possiblitly of having an unreliable service. After all this is why Google is gradually expanding the number of users.
That aside. I use GMail and Spymac since they were the first 2 free services to offer 1GB storage and google whips Spymacs butt in every aspect. So does that bug bother me? Not really. I use pop3/smtp access all the time and plus this bug will be fixed very soon just like all the other problems found so far.
If that's your idea of progress I am really sorry for you. All people should have equal right in a just society and it is up to the particular person's disgression to decide if he want to use those rights. Plus the american educational system is probably the worst one among all developed countries so give me a break. Oh yeah and the slogan was " Correlation DOES NOT imply causation" and that means does not always not never. The other thing is that if that majority of decent paying jobs out there and college require some degree of computer literacy how are you going to get any one of those jobs if you have no idea what the internet is or that it even exists? Schools in poor areas are lucky if they have 5 computers in the whole school so I really doubt it that you will get any computer related experiences in there.
Last I checked Bell South used to be just another company and as such it is fully dependant on the good will of it's customers. If they are not willing to invest and satisfy the people why should you be forced to stay with them? This no communism so if this crap flies we are in serious trouble.
Btw, I used to live in that city for an year 3 years ago and the broadband situation is really horrible. Most people do not use broadband and there are a lot of people who don't use even dial up at home. Back then we used to have Cox cable and internet as well however as everyone knows the price of cable internet is not cheap. It was fine for me since this was the 1st and only year I was going to be there so I could use the reduced price but once the price goes to the regular $40-something it is no easy price to swallow. Paying close to $50 for merely 1.5mbps is deffinitelly not my idea of broadband.
So should the people build their own network with their own money on their own land? Sure! If the city can afford to pay for all this more power to them. After all it is time to put the corporations in their place and let them now that sometime enough is enough.
You want a cheap industial grade computer and from you have posted you seem to know absolutelly nothing about cooling and pretty much any computer physics (if that's even a term). So the bottom line is that you are either going to have to drop between $2,000 and $3,000 for the computer of just forget the project and do your computer stuff inside or away from all the dust and particles that come with a tool shed. First of all you will have to opt for a hard drive that is designed for extreme conditions ( mostly extreme heat but cold too) and those are more expensive than a decent scsi. The second thing is that you will probably have an extremely limited choice of cases. The only thing that I could think of (relatelly inexpensive) is Zalman's 0db case and it cost about $1,000. From there on you will probably have to go with a lower speed cpu or prefferably a mobile one due to the lower heat produced. And after you are done with all this you will have a heck of a time finding a sealed monitor that can withstand a very poluted environment. Those cost arround $1,000 too. Not to mention that you will need a special keyboard and a mouse. Oh yeah and the monitor is really not a choice. A regular monitor would probably last not more than an year in a worshop ( if it is a metal shop that time is a huge over-estemate).
So like a said, save yourself some money and lot's of trouble and keep your computer at home or some other cleaner place.