I don't see what's the point of building a dedicated distro for MythTV. Why reinvent the wheel? Why not use a well-known, established distribution, and just create a software repository with MythTV?
Because MythTV isntallation is a pain in the ass. Even with all the packages in a repository. After messing around with your proposed method for a weekend, I downloaded MythDora on a whim, popped in the disk, and was off and running in an hour. Not that I particularly like Fedora, but automated installation of the trickier bits is what did it for me.
What does average user even mean? For the average Windows user, I'd say Ubuntu would be the best for them without hesitation. For the average Linux user, the question becomes trickier. I don't know that there is a well-defined "average Linux user".
Suppose you made an extremely urgent phone call to your doctor or your lawyer's office, who for the sake of argument you're not able to reach by email. The receptionist happens to take your message, and realizes how urgently you need to get it through. So he moves it to the bottom of a stack of unimportant messages, and then calls you up and says: pay me $1,000 to bring it to the recipient's attention, or they'll never see it.
Does the receptionist have the right to do that? If not, why not?
Perhaps you'd say that Receptionist X's 1/4-penny-per-message is reasonable, but $1,000 for one message is too much. But then who decides what is "too much"? The marketplace? Then isn't the receptionist just another player in the market, and $1,000 is what they want to charge? If you don't like it, you can go somewh... oh, wait, you can't, because there's no other way to get through to the recipient. If you ever get through to your doctor or lawyer, they might switch receptionists after they hear what happened, but should that be your only recourse?
The problem with the receptionist charging $1,000 to deliver your message is not that $1,000 is "too much", but that they're charging for a service that has already been paid for. If your doctor or lawyer pays for a receptionist, they're doing so with the understanding that their receptionist will make a reasonable effort to deliver the important messages that people try to leave them. If their receptionist then turns around and asks you for $1,000 to deliver the message then they're trying to double-bill for the same service, and if they block the message because you don't pay the $1,000, then the receptionist is cheating the recipient out of a service that they've already purchased. And it's not just the recipient being cheated; if the recipient has an arrangement with you, as your doctor or lawyer would, then the receptionist is interfering in their business relationship with you.
Actually, parent isn't that far off (in the U.S. at least). The ratings for the finals have been record lows (http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/playoffs2007/news/s tory?id=2894490). The sport televises well in Canada though.
I'm betting this is almost entirely due to the terrible ratings the NHL has been getting in the U.S. recently. Game 3 of the finals had a record low for NBC (lower than reruns of their crappy dramas!)
You laugh, but while I was in undergrad in Tuscaloosa, they had a few traffic signal cameras around town and displayed the feeds on a cable channel (so you could monitor traffic conditions, what not). Some state trooper from out of town was in the office controlling the cameras and was zooming in on college girls on the sidewalks, following them around with the cameras completely oblivious to the fact that these cameras were broadcasting.
Here's the writeup in the school paper: http://www.cw.ua.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/09/1 2/3f629e6e6a1fd?template=pda
First, what they mapped was not the "structure" of the Lie group E_8 -- the structure of the group has been known for a long time. What they mapped is what are called the "representations" of the group E_8, which is part of Vogan's program to understand the "unitary dual" (=list of representations) for all (reductive) Lie groups.
I'd hardly call what they did "mapping" by any means. They wrote down the character table of the group.
I would agree the article is terrible. They've somehow managed to make it unreadable by both layman and mathematician alike.
What problem did he have with it, besides the "experimental" status?
I don't know about him, but it tries to convince me every once in a while that a package needs an update when it doesn't. For example, it thinkgs gnupg is at 1.4.4 and needs to be at 1.4.5-r2 when it's actually at 1.9.21. I haven't ruled out the possibility of pilot error, but it's certainly possible that he had similar issues.
I'd also think that the more gratification you could get later would make it more painful to fork over the cash for something else now. Doesn't seem to me that their two comparisons are unrelated at all.
Along the same lines, why not just put a link to a page of retailers? Let anyone who wants pay a small fee to have their link added to an alphabetized list of retialers. E.g., you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP, and anyone who sells XP can pay for a link to their store to be put on a separate page of windows resellers.
I believe webspiders, and search engines built around data they collected, were the killer app that made the Web truly useful.
I don't know about that. I know that the pages I visit on a regular basis were all suggested by a friend, referenced in an article, found through advertsing, etc. That's not to say Google isn't a great tool, and I certainly use it; but the vast majority of my time on the internet is spent on pages not found through search engines.
Any math department worth anything will have a set of Linux computers in the lab. I know we have at least 4 or 5. If you just want to tinker or use tex, it's easy enough to use SSH or VNC for that, so that's a good way to get exposure without the chance of rendering your computer temporarily unusable.
I also think you need to clarify the question: Do you want to use Linux or do you want to learn Linux? If you just want to use Linux, go with everyone's favorite suggestion of Ubuntu. If you don't need to tweak it much, it's easy to use, and can set up a dual boot for you in something like 5 steps and 30 minutes. If you really want to learn Linux and understand what's going on, go with Slack or Gentoo.
How about because it actually works? I'm no Fedora fan, but when I tried Knoppmyth my machine wouldn't boot after I installed it. MythDora worked virtually instantly. It even took care of the TV-out on my PVR-350 card, something I'd never been able to get to work when I tried Myth under Gentoo.
Parent is modded funny, but I think it's really insightful. Face it, in any large project, a competent programmer will have to go back cleaning up after the morons who worked on it before and/or concurrently with him. What better way to learn how to do this than working with 20 students of varying competencies? It might even be beneficial to work off of the last semester's code as well, as you rarely start from scratch with a project.
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully they'll be less tasty than USB2 cables. My cats have destroyed 3 of them...
Because MythTV isntallation is a pain in the ass. Even with all the packages in a repository. After messing around with your proposed method for a weekend, I downloaded MythDora on a whim, popped in the disk, and was off and running in an hour. Not that I particularly like Fedora, but automated installation of the trickier bits is what did it for me.
So what, the ugly ones don't use math?
What does average user even mean? For the average Windows user, I'd say Ubuntu would be the best for them without hesitation. For the average Linux user, the question becomes trickier. I don't know that there is a well-defined "average Linux user".
Suppose you made an extremely urgent phone call to your doctor or your lawyer's office, who for the sake of argument you're not able to reach by email. The receptionist happens to take your message, and realizes how urgently you need to get it through. So he moves it to the bottom of a stack of unimportant messages, and then calls you up and says: pay me $1,000 to bring it to the recipient's attention, or they'll never see it. Does the receptionist have the right to do that? If not, why not? Perhaps you'd say that Receptionist X's 1/4-penny-per-message is reasonable, but $1,000 for one message is too much. But then who decides what is "too much"? The marketplace? Then isn't the receptionist just another player in the market, and $1,000 is what they want to charge? If you don't like it, you can go somewh... oh, wait, you can't, because there's no other way to get through to the recipient. If you ever get through to your doctor or lawyer, they might switch receptionists after they hear what happened, but should that be your only recourse? The problem with the receptionist charging $1,000 to deliver your message is not that $1,000 is "too much", but that they're charging for a service that has already been paid for. If your doctor or lawyer pays for a receptionist, they're doing so with the understanding that their receptionist will make a reasonable effort to deliver the important messages that people try to leave them. If their receptionist then turns around and asks you for $1,000 to deliver the message then they're trying to double-bill for the same service, and if they block the message because you don't pay the $1,000, then the receptionist is cheating the recipient out of a service that they've already purchased. And it's not just the recipient being cheated; if the recipient has an arrangement with you, as your doctor or lawyer would, then the receptionist is interfering in their business relationship with you.
True. Here in St. Louis they preempted several Saturday afternoon playoff games to show Cardinals games that noone will ever remember being played.
Actually, parent isn't that far off (in the U.S. at least). The ratings for the finals have been record lows (http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/playoffs2007/news/s tory?id=2894490). The sport televises well in Canada though.
I'm betting this is almost entirely due to the terrible ratings the NHL has been getting in the U.S. recently. Game 3 of the finals had a record low for NBC (lower than reruns of their crappy dramas!)
Seems the NYT have it (registration required) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/us/politics/16re pubs-text.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Seconded, especially with the way he went to town on Giuliani in the second debate.
LaTeX isn't going anywhere. It is the standard among mathematical journals for good reason.
The FreeDOS boxes don't come with a monitor. I'd imagine the Ubuntu ones they're selling do.
You laugh, but while I was in undergrad in Tuscaloosa, they had a few traffic signal cameras around town and displayed the feeds on a cable channel (so you could monitor traffic conditions, what not). Some state trooper from out of town was in the office controlling the cameras and was zooming in on college girls on the sidewalks, following them around with the cameras completely oblivious to the fact that these cameras were broadcasting. Here's the writeup in the school paper: http://www.cw.ua.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/09/1 2/3f629e6e6a1fd?template=pda
I'd hardly call what they did "mapping" by any means. They wrote down the character table of the group.
I would agree the article is terrible. They've somehow managed to make it unreadable by both layman and mathematician alike.
66' wide when it hit the ground, or 66' wide before it entered the atmosphere?
Taxation is just another way to transfer wealth from Group A to Group B. It is always a scam. I reccomend always avoiding it whenever possible.
They say the same thing with Google Calendar, even though you can ignore it and it runs fine in Opera.
Bollocks. Are you going to go out and buy something NVidia claims to be Vista ready now? I sure won't.
I don't know about him, but it tries to convince me every once in a while that a package needs an update when it doesn't. For example, it thinkgs gnupg is at 1.4.4 and needs to be at 1.4.5-r2 when it's actually at 1.9.21. I haven't ruled out the possibility of pilot error, but it's certainly possible that he had similar issues.
I'd also think that the more gratification you could get later would make it more painful to fork over the cash for something else now. Doesn't seem to me that their two comparisons are unrelated at all.
Along the same lines, why not just put a link to a page of retailers? Let anyone who wants pay a small fee to have their link added to an alphabetized list of retialers. E.g., you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP, and anyone who sells XP can pay for a link to their store to be put on a separate page of windows resellers.
I don't know about that. I know that the pages I visit on a regular basis were all suggested by a friend, referenced in an article, found through advertsing, etc. That's not to say Google isn't a great tool, and I certainly use it; but the vast majority of my time on the internet is spent on pages not found through search engines.
I also think you need to clarify the question: Do you want to use Linux or do you want to learn Linux? If you just want to use Linux, go with everyone's favorite suggestion of Ubuntu. If you don't need to tweak it much, it's easy to use, and can set up a dual boot for you in something like 5 steps and 30 minutes. If you really want to learn Linux and understand what's going on, go with Slack or Gentoo.
How about because it actually works? I'm no Fedora fan, but when I tried Knoppmyth my machine wouldn't boot after I installed it. MythDora worked virtually instantly. It even took care of the TV-out on my PVR-350 card, something I'd never been able to get to work when I tried Myth under Gentoo.
Parent is modded funny, but I think it's really insightful. Face it, in any large project, a competent programmer will have to go back cleaning up after the morons who worked on it before and/or concurrently with him. What better way to learn how to do this than working with 20 students of varying competencies? It might even be beneficial to work off of the last semester's code as well, as you rarely start from scratch with a project.