I would be scared about lying on such a black thing. You know, one moment you are counting sheeps, one moment later everything goes trippy and you are sucked into a transhuman dimension where nothing makes sense ad you witness all your ages up to your death bed and reincarnate as a space-floating fetus. No, thanks!
"Also to have end users suddenly using a new browser right before the holiday shopping season could magnify the cost any bugs that might create a bad user experience on sites."
Unless, of course, the browser is not really "new" but a hacked old one with tabs tacked on. This way, the company can brag about "unmatched backward compatibility" as the main selling point. Not that they need a selling point, anyway...
I was trying to joke about your "54 bit" system. Mine has 10 bits more. Not a great joke, I admit, but not the smug "10 _times_ better than yours" attitude you are attributing me.
AMD54? Bah, my Gentoo box is worth 10 more than yours.
Besides this, I installed Firefox from source, so it's a 64 bit binary (10 better than yours, I'd like to remark) and the Flash plugin doesn't work. But, for the rare occurrences when I actually _want_ to see Flash content, Opera works smoothly. Maybe it integrates the Flash engine instead of relying on external plugins.
Instead of the oxymoron "smallest giant", they should have said "smallest member of a family of dinosaurs whose other members are known to be giants, like the Brachiosaurus".
What "NSA wiretapping debacle" are you talking about? A debacle is when you are defeated. In the case of US Government spying on millions of its citizens, what happended is just that the news got out. Were they forced by public outcry to stop such activities, you could call it a debacle. But, for what I know (I'm not American, so maybe missed something) they didn't stop. US citizens lost, not the Government.
When scandals explode, it's too easy to think "Aha, they got caught! Now they HAVE to stop this!", but it's not always what actually happens. The fact that many Americans put so much faith in the power of free information speaks very well about the level of freedom and democracy they enjoyed until recently.
Anything that helps to prevent human losses is welcome. That said, some methods are more efficient than others. Sending sophisticated robots to defuse explosive traps aimed at American soldiers looks way less efficient than keeping those soldiers at home, preventing both the loss of their lives and that of uncounted civilians, the destruction of a country and the wave of terrorism that is spawned by such violence.
This kind of "solution" makes me think of a billion-dollar electronic, intelligent cork put into the hole (opened at a price of a billion dollar) into a billion dollar dam that shouldn't have been built in the first place. Weird analogy, I know, but American politics is no less weird.
Linux Mandriva 2006 _is_ my home PC main operating system, i.e. the one that gets booted by default. That said, if this is one of the supposedly most "desktop friendly" distributions, i can't be very optimistic. For starters, 3D acceleration does not work. It's an ATI card, ok, but you can't dismiss what nearly half PCs use just by saying "buy supported hardware". You can blame ATI more than Mandriva, but it's a fact that the same hardware under SuSe worked with ATI drivers (other minor things didn't work, like booting reliably and not freezing). Then there's the myriad of little (and not so little) annoyances, like the KDE Control Center becoming suddenly empty. What would you say about Windows if the Control Panel icons randomly disappeared for no apparent reason? And how do you explain to your non-geek (but not illiterate) relatives that in order to download and install software it's not sufficient for the site to say "RPM - for Linux", but it must be pulled "automagically" from some repository holding just the right kind of RPM for the specific Mandriva release?
IMHO, these are the kind of things that keep lots of people from using Linux on their home PCs, where things either "just work" or they are not worth fiddling in order to make them work.
Let's shift to the next user interface paradigm: make the screen touch-sensitive! I can't wait to be able to control my wearable computer by poking into my eyes with a pointy stylus!
In addition to having been the first browser to let you scale images together with text, Opera lets you apply "high quality" scaling to true-color images, that is bicubic interpolation. I love high density LCDs, and on my 128 dpi laptop monitor (15.4" at 1680x1050 pixels, do the math) Opera is perfect for letting me choose between "lots of tiny text and stuff" and "reasonable amount of detailed text and stuff". Of course, enlarging bitmaps with interpolation doesn't make them more detailed, but it's much better than nearest-neighbour scaling. Just Ctrl-scroll wheel and set the page to the desired level of magnification/detail.
Self-reckless-driving cars are coming to Italy! Actually, they came many years ago, as they don't need particularly sophisticated technology. You just remove your hands from the steering wheel.
I am aware of Ati Linux drivers' poor quality. That's why on my Gentoo box I sticked with the kernel/drivers combination that works. I hoped for this Gentoo-based liveCD to work as smoothly on the same machine, since you can't change drivers in it (short of rebuilding the LiveCD). It must be said that on my home Athlon XP with an AGP Ati Radeon card, Kororaa puts up quite a show! Maybe the problem on the laptop is due to the PCI-E bus.
I just tried the LiveCD on my laptop. It works very smoothly for a random interval, then it totally locks up the machine. The Ati Mobile Radeon x700 works perfectly with the fglrx driver under "proper" Gentoo. I tried passing to the kernel ACPI=OFF NOACPI NODETECT NODHCP, but the result is always a lockup, sometimes even before the GUI startup ends. Maybe the chipset (Ati, again) is at fault, or maybe the specific version of the fglrx driver, or some obscure kernel option. Rather than seeing a brief (usually a minute or two) glimpse of what is possible, I would prefer an early stop with a big red sign "THIS WILL TEACH YOU BUYING ATI CARDS! AHAHAHAH!!!".
Slashdot Mirror
I would be scared about lying on such a black thing. You know, one moment you are counting sheeps, one moment later everything goes trippy and you are sucked into a transhuman dimension where nothing makes sense ad you witness all your ages up to your death bed and reincarnate as a space-floating fetus. No, thanks!
"Phoenix", eh? They probably hope that it will rise from the ashes after atmospheric entry...
Why did it take so long? A folder named AUDIO_TS has always been present and empty on every DVD.
"Also to have end users suddenly using a new browser right before the holiday shopping season could magnify the cost any bugs that might create a bad user experience on sites."
Unless, of course, the browser is not really "new" but a hacked old one with tabs tacked on. This way, the company can brag about "unmatched backward compatibility" as the main selling point. Not that they need a selling point, anyway...
...did the server run Windows?
What about buying a dishwasher machine? They are much cheaper than $2500.
Pleeease! I'm victim of a cruel lameness filter!
/ \ / \
___ ___
| O | | O |
\__/ \__/
May be connected to a slowdown of the Gulf Stream?
I was trying to joke about your "54 bit" system. Mine has 10 bits more. Not a great joke, I admit, but not the smug "10 _times_ better than yours" attitude you are attributing me.
AMD54? Bah, my Gentoo box is worth 10 more than yours. Besides this, I installed Firefox from source, so it's a 64 bit binary (10 better than yours, I'd like to remark) and the Flash plugin doesn't work. But, for the rare occurrences when I actually _want_ to see Flash content, Opera works smoothly. Maybe it integrates the Flash engine instead of relying on external plugins.
Thank you. I always strive to excel.
Instead of the oxymoron "smallest giant", they should have said "smallest member of a family of dinosaurs whose other members are known to be giants, like the Brachiosaurus".
When scandals explode, it's too easy to think "Aha, they got caught! Now they HAVE to stop this!", but it's not always what actually happens. The fact that many Americans put so much faith in the power of free information speaks very well about the level of freedom and democracy they enjoyed until recently.
Anything that helps to prevent human losses is welcome. That said, some methods are more efficient than others. Sending sophisticated robots to defuse explosive traps aimed at American soldiers looks way less efficient than keeping those soldiers at home, preventing both the loss of their lives and that of uncounted civilians, the destruction of a country and the wave of terrorism that is spawned by such violence. This kind of "solution" makes me think of a billion-dollar electronic, intelligent cork put into the hole (opened at a price of a billion dollar) into a billion dollar dam that shouldn't have been built in the first place. Weird analogy, I know, but American politics is no less weird.
Oh, no! This means that the Bush Administration will soon outlaw owning a heart! At least, one funded by taxpayers.
I wonder how far these insects can fly when not burdened with an electronic tag. Or a coconut. African dragonflies, I mean.
Linux Mandriva 2006 _is_ my home PC main operating system, i.e. the one that gets booted by default. That said, if this is one of the supposedly most "desktop friendly" distributions, i can't be very optimistic. For starters, 3D acceleration does not work. It's an ATI card, ok, but you can't dismiss what nearly half PCs use just by saying "buy supported hardware". You can blame ATI more than Mandriva, but it's a fact that the same hardware under SuSe worked with ATI drivers (other minor things didn't work, like booting reliably and not freezing). Then there's the myriad of little (and not so little) annoyances, like the KDE Control Center becoming suddenly empty. What would you say about Windows if the Control Panel icons randomly disappeared for no apparent reason? And how do you explain to your non-geek (but not illiterate) relatives that in order to download and install software it's not sufficient for the site to say "RPM - for Linux", but it must be pulled "automagically" from some repository holding just the right kind of RPM for the specific Mandriva release? IMHO, these are the kind of things that keep lots of people from using Linux on their home PCs, where things either "just work" or they are not worth fiddling in order to make them work.
Let's shift to the next user interface paradigm: make the screen touch-sensitive! I can't wait to be able to control my wearable computer by poking into my eyes with a pointy stylus!
All this mixed italicized text would you please stop this stupid game? is making me dizzy.
In addition to having been the first browser to let you scale images together with text, Opera lets you apply "high quality" scaling to true-color images, that is bicubic interpolation. I love high density LCDs, and on my 128 dpi laptop monitor (15.4" at 1680x1050 pixels, do the math) Opera is perfect for letting me choose between "lots of tiny text and stuff" and "reasonable amount of detailed text and stuff". Of course, enlarging bitmaps with interpolation doesn't make them more detailed, but it's much better than nearest-neighbour scaling. Just Ctrl-scroll wheel and set the page to the desired level of magnification/detail.
Self-reckless-driving cars are coming to Italy! Actually, they came many years ago, as they don't need particularly sophisticated technology. You just remove your hands from the steering wheel.
I zoomed all the way in, expecting to see a uniform plain of chocolate snacks. Judging by the colors, the truth is much less palatable.
I am aware of Ati Linux drivers' poor quality. That's why on my Gentoo box I sticked with the kernel/drivers combination that works. I hoped for this Gentoo-based liveCD to work as smoothly on the same machine, since you can't change drivers in it (short of rebuilding the LiveCD). It must be said that on my home Athlon XP with an AGP Ati Radeon card, Kororaa puts up quite a show! Maybe the problem on the laptop is due to the PCI-E bus.
I just tried the LiveCD on my laptop. It works very smoothly for a random interval, then it totally locks up the machine. The Ati Mobile Radeon x700 works perfectly with the fglrx driver under "proper" Gentoo. I tried passing to the kernel ACPI=OFF NOACPI NODETECT NODHCP, but the result is always a lockup, sometimes even before the GUI startup ends. Maybe the chipset (Ati, again) is at fault, or maybe the specific version of the fglrx driver, or some obscure kernel option. Rather than seeing a brief (usually a minute or two) glimpse of what is possible, I would prefer an early stop with a big red sign "THIS WILL TEACH YOU BUYING ATI CARDS! AHAHAHAH!!!".