Is Linux Out of Touch With the Average User? I'd have to say yes.
I got Ubuntu 7.04 running on my new box with spanky new parts only because I had Linux knowledge and a second machine to look up problems on. Unknown to me, there was an issue with the nvidia 8800 series of cards and some driver incompatibility. Upon installing the nvidia driver shipped with Ubuntu my x-server crashed and could get nothing but a command line. Luckily I knew what to search for and had a second machine to do it on and I was working in no time. The average user isn't even going to know what might be wrong, let alone what to look for or how to fix it. The also will most likely not have a second machine to help.
To top it off, once Ubuntu was up and running I got to see a few games crash when trying to run in WINE. After that my only statement was "OK, now what?" then I went back to my windows OS side of the dual boot and commenced to play Half Life 2 for a while.
yes, Linux will surf and I can do email and general office tasks. It won't play my games easily, that's the deal breaker right there.
I'd say that releases like Ubuntu are equivalent to early windows 95 at this point. If Linux had been at this level when windows 95 was the peak of MS's game, then there might be some competition today.
The last time the P.I. people called I told them I'd subscribe if I could get it without the "paper" part. The guy thought I was crazy. I'd definitely like to get in on the test group for this device.
I get my beans from Sweet Maria's http://www.sweetmarias.com/ I roast it myself with a table top roaster that does about one pot worth of beans. Once the beans have cooled down I grind them to a nice fine powder Then I put the powder and about 8 cups of water in a sauce pan Bring it to a boil while stirring continuously. Shut off as soon as a boil starts, if not slightly before it starts to boil. let is settle a bit
Some people like to pour it through a filter to get the sediment out. I prefer it straight into the cup from here.
I've lost more jobs to L-1B visa workers over the years than I have H-1B. L-1B workers are paid far lower wages even though they are doing the same work as their H-1B counterparts. To my knowledge there is also no cap on the number of L-1B visas like there is on H-1B.
Personally, I don't really worry about it either way. I survived before IT, I've survived a few outsourcing layoffs, and I'll survive if IT completely goes away.
Ah, well then... I suppose they've had enough time to work out the kinks then. That's good to know. I've worked around steam turbines but not directly with them so I wasn't aware how efficient they currently were.
It would still be nice to see a technology implemented with fewer moving parts in the long run.
One thing I don't think many people realize is that everything leading up to and including fusion are just heat sources for boilers that power steam turbines. Wood, Coal, Fission, Fusion... all just big old steam engines. Has the efficiency of steam turbines progressed much in the last 50 years? After fusion would it be better to focus on Steam turbines or the removal of the steam cycle from the power generating equation? Thermocouple technology would probably be better in the long run than steam technology moving turbines around.
It seems to me that just one thing didn't kill off the dinosaurs. It was a series of unfortunate events.
Besides, they didn't really die, the just evolved into those giant south American super-birds, then into smaller birds once the habitat couldn't support them.
I found out an interesting thing on the slow response times from a comcast tech.
It seems that the only remote button that is locally processed is the power button.
All other clicks get relayed to a central server and are then directed back to your box.
This really explain why, after not responding for 30 seconds, my cable box goes nuts and spams through every command I've been pumping in while it was locked up.
Whoever approved the design... and whoever designed it... are really lacking in the smarts department.
Am I the only one that had no trouble with the camera? There is one mode that lets it run very similar to NWN1. I just popped it into that and had no trouble at all.
My beef is with the linearity of the game. There seem to be two paths, Good or Evil. There also aren't more than a smattering of side quests. Bauldur's Gate and Planescape Torment are my two favorite in the D&D rules genre. fallout tops the list if you take out the D&D restriction.
My top characters are, Minsk and Boo, Mort, and the Tiefling from PT. Shandra from NWN2 comes close to making the list, but doesn't due to spoilers which won't be mentioned here.
This could make for practical geothermal electricity production. Generators dropped down a few miles into the crust where the temperature is right could revolutionize large scale power production.
so, for $800 I get a dual tuner box with better functionality than the comcast POS that I put up with to tune the upper range "digital" channels (non-hd) and on-demand.
If the price came down to $400 or so I could see getting one of these IF the cable card lets you access on-demand.
I know Cable Card technology lets you store subscription information and lets you tune the high band digital cable channels.
Does anyone knonw if cable card devices support on-demand?
Needs a random evolution "non interference" mode.
on
Spore Is EA's New Ace
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· Score: 0
I'd like to see them put in a "fishtank" or "ant farm" mode to this game. Non-interference from the watcher with randomly chosen mutations. Once they hit sentience, let them choose their own upgrades.... and so on...
Many sim games have had nice concepts, but all requre far too much intervention for my taste.
swear, there should be a law that if a MMORPG closes its servers, they open the source to the playerbase so people can create and host their own servers off of it.
Cyan/Ubisoft did this with Their online Myst debacle last year.
They created installable binaries and a DB install to create a sigle box server version of Uru onilne and called it Until Uru.
The server software is freely available and you may still be able to obtain a login.
Cyan gave the go-ahead to work on player created content as long as people steer clear of their IP and stay away from certian story lines they might want to use in the future.
This was supposed to roll out by the 2005 holiday season. Neat technology, HDTV support, all sorts of bells and whistles (including DRM) however thank the wonderful world of crappy 3rd party vendors for getting so far behind schedule that it won't be seen until 2006.
What if I dig said single use item out of someone else's garbage? I never agreed to the license since I never broke the seal. Can scavengers be prosecuted for re-use of things found in the dumpster?
This technology is already in the latest version of windows media center that runs on Windows XP. You'd never know it though. All it does is downsample the content, it doesn't prevent playback. There isn't much content out there that is flagged to trigger this stuff. There are no HD DVDs on the market yet. (I think the rollout of HD DVD is this winter) Almost no broadcast content is flagged to use this. The average person really can't tell on a computer monitor if somethign is downsampled. The only people that will be impacted by this are the enthusiast crowd, and they shell out for the latest and greatest anyway.
I'd say "yay for him". I'd sue too... but. there's absolutley nothing keeping them from moving the job I complain about offshore.
The way I see it. You can complain, win your court case, lose your job, ask people if they'd like fries with that. or You can work your long hours and take every ounce of free time for yourself during the day, just making sure to do a bit of a better job than everyone else.
What about those of us that prefer to use the slide-rule? where are our apps? What about my old crank start car? where are all of the neat things for that? What about Morse code applications? where's the TCP/IP over Morse code spec?
What we need are neighborhood power plants and home backup units. If not just home units. the newest home units are quite efficient. but then we'll have to worry about natural gas outages. what we need are power plants that run on household and human waste.
these are interesting times indeed
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 1
these are interesting times indeed. may we live to tomorrow.
Slashdot Mirror
I took a look around and they have a few songs by the bands I like but not the specific songs I want and no whole albums.
That's too bad.
so ...
Would a 100% efficient solar cell be black, non reflective, and cold to the touch in full sunlight?
If all the light went in the front and the only energy leaving were through wires in the back it would have to be, wouldn't it?
Is Linux Out of Touch With the Average User?
I'd have to say yes.
I got Ubuntu 7.04 running on my new box with spanky new parts only because I had Linux knowledge and a second machine to look up problems on. Unknown to me, there was an issue with the nvidia 8800 series of cards and some driver incompatibility. Upon installing the nvidia driver shipped with Ubuntu my x-server crashed and could get nothing but a command line. Luckily I knew what to search for and had a second machine to do it on and I was working in no time. The average user isn't even going to know what might be wrong, let alone what to look for or how to fix it. The also will most likely not have a second machine to help.
To top it off, once Ubuntu was up and running I got to see a few games crash when trying to run in WINE. After that my only statement was "OK, now what?" then I went back to my windows OS side of the dual boot and commenced to play Half Life 2 for a while.
yes, Linux will surf and I can do email and general office tasks. It won't play my games easily, that's the deal breaker right there.
I'd say that releases like Ubuntu are equivalent to early windows 95 at this point. If Linux had been at this level when windows 95 was the peak of MS's game, then there might be some competition today.
The last time the P.I. people called I told them I'd subscribe if I could get it without the "paper" part. The guy thought I was crazy.
I'd definitely like to get in on the test group for this device.
I get my beans from Sweet Maria's http://www.sweetmarias.com/
I roast it myself with a table top roaster that does about one pot worth of beans.
Once the beans have cooled down I grind them to a nice fine powder
Then I put the powder and about 8 cups of water in a sauce pan
Bring it to a boil while stirring continuously.
Shut off as soon as a boil starts, if not slightly before it starts to boil.
let is settle a bit
Some people like to pour it through a filter to get the sediment out.
I prefer it straight into the cup from here.
I've lost more jobs to L-1B visa workers over the years than I have H-1B.
L-1B workers are paid far lower wages even though they are doing the same work as their H-1B counterparts.
To my knowledge there is also no cap on the number of L-1B visas like there is on H-1B.
Personally, I don't really worry about it either way. I survived before IT, I've survived a few outsourcing layoffs, and I'll survive if IT completely goes away.
Ah, well then ... I suppose they've had enough time to work out the kinks then.
That's good to know. I've worked around steam turbines but not directly with them so I wasn't aware how efficient they currently were.
It would still be nice to see a technology implemented with fewer moving parts in the long run.
One thing I don't think many people realize is that everything leading up to and including fusion are just heat sources for boilers that power steam turbines. ... all just big old steam engines.
Wood, Coal, Fission, Fusion
Has the efficiency of steam turbines progressed much in the last 50 years?
After fusion would it be better to focus on Steam turbines or the removal of the steam cycle from the power generating equation?
Thermocouple technology would probably be better in the long run than steam technology moving turbines around.
It seems to me that just one thing didn't kill off the dinosaurs.
It was a series of unfortunate events.
Besides, they didn't really die, the just evolved into those giant south American super-birds, then into smaller birds once the habitat couldn't support them.
I found out an interesting thing on the slow response times from a comcast tech. ... and whoever designed it ... are really lacking in the smarts department.
It seems that the only remote button that is locally processed is the power button.
All other clicks get relayed to a central server and are then directed back to your box.
This really explain why, after not responding for 30 seconds, my cable box goes nuts and spams through every command I've been pumping in while it was locked up.
Whoever approved the design
Am I the only one that had no trouble with the camera?
There is one mode that lets it run very similar to NWN1. I just popped it into that and had no trouble at all.
My beef is with the linearity of the game.
There seem to be two paths, Good or Evil.
There also aren't more than a smattering of side quests.
Bauldur's Gate and Planescape Torment are my two favorite in the D&D rules genre. fallout tops the list if you take out the D&D restriction.
My top characters are, Minsk and Boo, Mort, and the Tiefling from PT. Shandra from NWN2 comes close to making the list, but doesn't due to spoilers which won't be mentioned here.
This could make for practical geothermal electricity production.
Generators dropped down a few miles into the crust where the temperature is right could revolutionize large scale power production.
How dows this differ form the laser DLP that Mitsubishi announced back in April?
http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6482184.html
so, for $800 I get a dual tuner box with better functionality than the comcast POS that I put up with to tune the upper range "digital" channels (non-hd) and on-demand.
If the price came down to $400 or so I could see getting one of these IF the cable card lets you access on-demand.
I know Cable Card technology lets you store subscription information and lets you tune the high band digital cable channels.
Does anyone knonw if cable card devices support on-demand?
I'd like to see them put in a "fishtank" or "ant farm" mode to this game. ... and so on ...
Non-interference from the watcher with randomly chosen mutations.
Once they hit sentience, let them choose their own upgrades.
Many sim games have had nice concepts, but all requre far too much intervention for my taste.
swear, there should be a law that if a MMORPG closes its servers, they open the source to the playerbase so people can create and host their own servers off of it.
Cyan/Ubisoft did this with Their online Myst debacle last year.
They created installable binaries and a DB install to create a sigle box server version of Uru onilne and called it Until Uru.
The server software is freely available and you may still be able to obtain a login.
Cyan gave the go-ahead to work on player created content as long as people steer clear of their IP and stay away from certian story lines they might want to use in the future.
This was supposed to roll out by the 2005 holiday season.
Neat technology, HDTV support, all sorts of bells and whistles (including DRM)
however
thank the wonderful world of crappy 3rd party vendors for getting so far behind schedule that it won't be seen until 2006.
What if I dig said single use item out of someone else's garbage?
I never agreed to the license since I never broke the seal.
Can scavengers be prosecuted for re-use of things found in the dumpster?
This technology is already in the latest version of windows media center that runs on Windows XP.
You'd never know it though.
All it does is downsample the content, it doesn't prevent playback.
There isn't much content out there that is flagged to trigger this stuff.
There are no HD DVDs on the market yet. (I think the rollout of HD DVD is this winter)
Almost no broadcast content is flagged to use this.
The average person really can't tell on a computer monitor if somethign is downsampled.
The only people that will be impacted by this are the enthusiast crowd, and they shell out for the latest and greatest anyway.
I'd say "yay for him". I'd sue too ... but.
there's absolutley nothing keeping them from moving the job I complain about offshore.
The way I see it. You can complain, win your court case, lose your job, ask people if they'd like fries with that.
or
You can work your long hours and take every ounce of free time for yourself during the day, just making sure to do a bit of a better job than everyone else.
What about those of us that prefer to use the slide-rule? where are our apps?
What about my old crank start car? where are all of the neat things for that?
What about Morse code applications? where's the TCP/IP over Morse code spec?
I feel that a sales tax should be paid by the retailer in their home location.
You should pay the tax of wherever you buy a product from.
so what, as long as the story is good they can do all the product placement they like.
Life is product placement.
What we need are neighborhood power plants and home backup units. If not just home units. the newest home units are quite efficient. but then we'll have to worry about natural gas outages. what we need are power plants that run on household and human waste.
these are interesting times indeed.
may we live to tomorrow.