How does one get a direct user support show off the ground though? Are sufficient numbers of people going to be willing to pay $1 an episode for a show they've never seen? I doubt it. Maybe it would work if you gave away the first few episodes for free, and then you start charging, but if you give it away for free how do you afford to produce it? The answer to that last question is, advertising.
Personally I very rarely actually watch adverts on live broadcast TV. I tend to use the time to do quick miscellaneous household chores like running the vacuum clear round or washing up. So to me the time the adverts are on doesn't cost me anything because I make productive use of the time. I live in the UK though where we never get more than 3 breaks in an hour long show or 1 break in a half hour show. So the breaks tend to run 4-5 minutes. From what I've heard of US TV I believe you tend to get a larger number breaks of shorter duration and that time would be harder to make use of in the way I do.
Silverlight is worse than Flash in that it's produced by a company that tends to openly discriminate against people who are not using one particular operating system. The last thing the world wide web needs is something that's basically Flash but only works properly on one operating system.
I was merely making an observation regarding how Apple are evidently keeping such tight control over the iPhone that there is no room for the networks to compete on pricing.
I'm aware of the alternative options of acquiring an iPhone, but my desire to own one is negligible. You can buy one with a PAYG SIM legitimately on Tesco Mobile.
The iPhone launched in the UK as exclusive to the O2 network. In the last few months it's become available on two of the other four biggest networks Vodafone and Orange (who have announced that they will merge with the other big four, T-Mobile). The pricing and plan are practically identical.
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace really isn't all that easy to hit. I accept that one shouldn't be able to kill X simply by holding the wrong three keys. However I think Ubuntu's decision to change the keys is much worse than openSUSE's solution which is to require you to press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace twice in quick succession in order to kill X. http://www.novell.com/linux/releasenotes/i586/openSUSE/11.0/#01
Don't call it 'Merry old England'. Seriously. There is a stereotype that of Americans being ignorant of anything outside their own country and who think that England is as portrayed in US TV shows such as the episodes of Friends and Bones which were set here. Using the phrase 'Merry old England' makes you sound like you conform to that and will not make you any friends here. If you're not already aware, spend ten minutes reading something like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uk so that you realise that England is not the same as the UK and that not all British people are English. People from Scotland are no more English than someone from New York state is a Texan.
I've no idea what you mean about wireless region codes. You don't need to change your power cord, just buy an adapter. (Look around a bit before buying, it's the sort of thing for which you can pay wildly varying amounts.) The place you're staying probably has wireless, though some places charge ridiculous amounts. There is no shortage of Starbucks.
Tipping people is not the norm.
The Tube will get you pretty much anywhere you need to go within London.
Make sure you look to the right then to the left when crossing roads.
If you're so annoyed with the number of times you have had to answer the fucking question then maybe in future you shouldn't just state that the problem exists but also type the eleven extra words that explain the reason the problem exists. Then people wouldn't ask you the fucking question.
(Change an Ubuntu screen to 640x480, and then try to change it back, without using secret hidden commands. Can't be done.)
So... How did you change the resolution to 640x480? Did you use 'secret hidden commands'? If so then you must presumably be able to change the resolution again using those same commands and you don't have a problem. If you didn't use 'secret hidden commands' then can you not use the non secret method you used to change the resolution to 640x480 to change it to something else? I don't have a machine running Ubuntu to hand to try.
They embedded their own borked web browser, then made the automatic update/patch processes only work with theirs, disallowing any 3rd party browser from being used to simplify fixing/patching their OS.
Having the user install updates to their operating system via the web browser is such terrible idea that I think it's actually a good thing you can only do it with Internet Explorer. Installing operating system updates via web browser means you have to give the web browser the ability to modify parts of the operating system. I'm sure I don't have to explain why that's not good. Also it trains users to expect things in their web browser to ask them for permission to install things on the machine and since a lot of users will simply click on pop up messages without reading them properly just to get rid of them, well, you can see where I'm going with that I'm sure.
I really don't think this is the big 'OMG this is why GM fail' deal you're trying to make it out to be. GM are by no means the first to offer a special edition of a vehicle where some will say that the extra cost cannot be justified by the extras that are included for the money. I can't be bothered trying to locate and link specific examples, but I do know that on at least a couple of occasions Top Gear (very popular UK car themed entertainment programme) have mentioned a special edition of some car or other and expressed their opinion that the value of the included extras is less than the premium being charged.
While I can't comment on KUbuntu , I doubt SuSE shipped with KDE 4 since SuSE is the distribution (Redhat is the same) you pay for support and as such would not or should not have beta (actually KDE 4 was IMHO alpha) software.
There's no distro called SuSE any more. There's openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) which is the paid for version new versions of which have thus far come out at intervals of three years. Contrary to your doubt, SLED 11 shipped a couple of months ago with KDE 4.1.3 and no option of KDE 3.5. Crazy, yet true.
Novell sent out this horribly broken version of KDE in their community opensuse product and destroyed their own credibility and that of KDE.
KDE in openSUSE 11.1 really isn't that bad. openSUSE 11.1 is available at no cost to the user and will be superseded within a year by 11.2, also at no cost. Although KDE 4.1.3 is offered along with GNOME as the two prominent choices during install, it also offers KDE 3.5 as an option. In addition, I saw a lot of talk about how openSUSE offered the best packing of KDE 4. It was, in my experience, certainly a lot better than Kubuntu's handling of it.
Where Novell have really messed up very, very, badly with regards to KDE is in their handling of KDE in SLED 11. SLED 11 does not offer KDE 3.5 and offers the same version of KDE 4 (4.1.3) that is in openSUSE 11.1. Unlike openSUSE SLED 11 is something Novell expect Enterprises to pay for and it probably won't be superseded by SLED 12 until 2012. So with SLED 11 a KDE user is stuck with 4.1.3 for three years unless they decide to try and modify their install beyond what Novell have provided and will support. Not only that, they have paid money for this. It should have been glaringly obvious to Novell that KDE 4.1.3 was not suitable for inclusion as the only KDE option in SLED 11, but that's what they've done and they've screwed KDE users by doing so.
The original article is just an oh-so-typical piece of American thinking...
Cory Doctorow is Canadian. Though I guess that doesn't mean he's not capable of typical American thinking. And perhaps you meant American as in 'North American'.
There are a lot of reviews on Amazon and other retail sites written by people who clearly do not own the product. A lot of reviews are written by people who don't understand the concept of a review. You can find reviews for things which aren't even available to buy yet but Amazon have created a product page for.
Seems to me there's a very easy to get rid of reviews people are being paid to write or are just idiots - sites should only allow people to post reviews for products which they have actually bought from that site. It would be easy enough to implement, just check against the would be reviewer's order history. Sure there would be a lot less reviews, but the ones that do get posted will worth something. Quality, not quantity.
Obviously launch has several meanings depending upon it's context. I fail to see how your comment relates to the comment of mine you posted it in reply to since the word launch does not appear anywhere in it or the comment I was replying to.
The http://www.opensuse.org/ says openSUSE 11.1 is "Available for Download on Dec 18".
You call them a troll, but the only part of their comment that you can be sure is inaccurate is the GTK version number which could just be an error. Substitute in 2.10 for 7.x and it's totally believable. What they did (trying to update the included GTK and all the dependencies) wasn't sensible, but it's totally believable that someone who didn't know better tried to do it.
GTK 7.x? Are you from the future? Firefox 3 needs GTK 2.10 or newer.
If you tried to update the GTK that comes with SLES 10 they you're doing it wrong. You need to build the newer GTK and install it completely separate from the GTK included with SLES 10. Try reading
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/mikewillis/entry/of_firefox_3/
It's the first hit on Google for "Firefox 3 SLES 10"
Incidentally SLES 10 SP 1 is out of support. You should be on SP 2 by now.
OK, so I now see the problem no longer exists with Firefox 3. I was trying with Firefox 2 before because I support people using SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 which is stuck(*) with Firefox 2 until SLED 11 comes out sometime next year.
(*) Unless you're willing to mess around building a newer GTK to run it against and manually keeping it up to date.
If Linux is now "an Equal Flash Player" then why do Flash elements STILL get rendered above other elements when this problem doesn't exist in Flash 9 for Mac/Windows? Install Flash 10 for Linux, go to the Flash homepage http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ and hover the mouse over the Home Solutions Products etc menus. See how they are not fully usable because the Flash movie is rendered on top.
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How does one get a direct user support show off the ground though? Are sufficient numbers of people going to be willing to pay $1 an episode for a show they've never seen? I doubt it. Maybe it would work if you gave away the first few episodes for free, and then you start charging, but if you give it away for free how do you afford to produce it? The answer to that last question is, advertising.
Personally I very rarely actually watch adverts on live broadcast TV. I tend to use the time to do quick miscellaneous household chores like running the vacuum clear round or washing up. So to me the time the adverts are on doesn't cost me anything because I make productive use of the time. I live in the UK though where we never get more than 3 breaks in an hour long show or 1 break in a half hour show. So the breaks tend to run 4-5 minutes. From what I've heard of US TV I believe you tend to get a larger number breaks of shorter duration and that time would be harder to make use of in the way I do.
It's strange that the early multi-coloured iMac laptops are not on the list.
Given that you use laptop both in the title and body of your post, I assume you're refering to the first generation iBook.
Silverlight is worse than Flash in that it's produced by a company that tends to openly discriminate against people who are not using one particular operating system. The last thing the world wide web needs is something that's basically Flash but only works properly on one operating system.
I was merely making an observation regarding how Apple are evidently keeping such tight control over the iPhone that there is no room for the networks to compete on pricing.
I'm aware of the alternative options of acquiring an iPhone, but my desire to own one is negligible. You can buy one with a PAYG SIM legitimately on Tesco Mobile.
The iPhone launched in the UK as exclusive to the O2 network. In the last few months it's become available on two of the other four biggest networks Vodafone and Orange (who have announced that they will merge with the other big four, T-Mobile). The pricing and plan are practically identical.
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace really isn't all that easy to hit. I accept that one shouldn't be able to kill X simply by holding the wrong three keys. However I think Ubuntu's decision to change the keys is much worse than openSUSE's solution which is to require you to press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace twice in quick succession in order to kill X. http://www.novell.com/linux/releasenotes/i586/openSUSE/11.0/#01
Don't call it 'Merry old England'. Seriously. There is a stereotype that of Americans being ignorant of anything outside their own country and who think that England is as portrayed in US TV shows such as the episodes of Friends and Bones which were set here. Using the phrase 'Merry old England' makes you sound like you conform to that and will not make you any friends here. If you're not already aware, spend ten minutes reading something like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uk so that you realise that England is not the same as the UK and that not all British people are English. People from Scotland are no more English than someone from New York state is a Texan.
I've no idea what you mean about wireless region codes. You don't need to change your power cord, just buy an adapter. (Look around a bit before buying, it's the sort of thing for which you can pay wildly varying amounts.) The place you're staying probably has wireless, though some places charge ridiculous amounts. There is no shortage of Starbucks.
Tipping people is not the norm.
The Tube will get you pretty much anywhere you need to go within London.
Make sure you look to the right then to the left when crossing roads.
Make sure you check out the Lloyds building and the Gherkin
If you're so annoyed with the number of times you have had to answer the fucking question then maybe in future you shouldn't just state that the problem exists but also type the eleven extra words that explain the reason the problem exists. Then people wouldn't ask you the fucking question.
(Change an Ubuntu screen to 640x480, and then try to change it back, without using secret hidden commands. Can't be done.)
So... How did you change the resolution to 640x480? Did you use 'secret hidden commands'? If so then you must presumably be able to change the resolution again using those same commands and you don't have a problem. If you didn't use 'secret hidden commands' then can you not use the non secret method you used to change the resolution to 640x480 to change it to something else? I don't have a machine running Ubuntu to hand to try.
For $700 I'd expect at least one FW800 port on the front.
Considering most large enterprise distros (RHEL, SUSE, etc) ship with KDE as the main DE
Both SUSE's Enterprise offering (SLED) and RHEL default to GNOME. I don't know about etc.
They embedded their own borked web browser, then made the automatic update/patch processes only work with theirs, disallowing any 3rd party browser from being used to simplify fixing/patching their OS.
Having the user install updates to their operating system via the web browser is such terrible idea that I think it's actually a good thing you can only do it with Internet Explorer.
Installing operating system updates via web browser means you have to give the web browser the ability to modify parts of the operating system. I'm sure I don't have to explain why that's not good. Also it trains users to expect things in their web browser to ask them for permission to install things on the machine and since a lot of users will simply click on pop up messages without reading them properly just to get rid of them, well, you can see where I'm going with that I'm sure.
I really don't think this is the big 'OMG this is why GM fail' deal you're trying to make it out to be. GM are by no means the first to offer a special edition of a vehicle where some will say that the extra cost cannot be justified by the extras that are included for the money. I can't be bothered trying to locate and link specific examples, but I do know that on at least a couple of occasions Top Gear (very popular UK car themed entertainment programme) have mentioned a special edition of some car or other and expressed their opinion that the value of the included extras is less than the premium being charged.
While I can't comment on KUbuntu , I doubt SuSE shipped with KDE 4 since SuSE is the distribution (Redhat is the same) you pay for support and as such would not or should not have beta (actually KDE 4 was IMHO alpha) software.
There's no distro called SuSE any more. There's openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) which is the paid for version new versions of which have thus far come out at intervals of three years. Contrary to your doubt, SLED 11 shipped a couple of months ago with KDE 4.1.3 and no option of KDE 3.5. Crazy, yet true.
Novell sent out this horribly broken version of KDE in their community opensuse product and destroyed their own credibility and that of KDE.
KDE in openSUSE 11.1 really isn't that bad.
openSUSE 11.1 is available at no cost to the user and will be superseded within a year by 11.2, also at no cost. Although KDE 4.1.3 is offered along with GNOME as the two prominent choices during install, it also offers KDE 3.5 as an option. In addition, I saw a lot of talk about how openSUSE offered the best packing of KDE 4. It was, in my experience, certainly a lot better than Kubuntu's handling of it.
Where Novell have really messed up very, very, badly with regards to KDE is in their handling of KDE in SLED 11. SLED 11 does not offer KDE 3.5 and offers the same version of KDE 4 (4.1.3) that is in openSUSE 11.1. Unlike openSUSE SLED 11 is something Novell expect Enterprises to pay for and it probably won't be superseded by SLED 12 until 2012. So with SLED 11 a KDE user is stuck with 4.1.3 for three years unless they decide to try and modify their install beyond what Novell have provided and will support. Not only that, they have paid money for this. It should have been glaringly obvious to Novell that KDE 4.1.3 was not suitable for inclusion as the only KDE option in SLED 11, but that's what they've done and they've screwed KDE users by doing so.
The original article is just an oh-so-typical piece of American thinking...
Cory Doctorow is Canadian. Though I guess that doesn't mean he's not capable of typical American thinking. And perhaps you meant American as in 'North American'.
There are a lot of reviews on Amazon and other retail sites written by people who clearly do not own the product. A lot of reviews are written by people who don't understand the concept of a review. You can find reviews for things which aren't even available to buy yet but Amazon have created a product page for. Seems to me there's a very easy to get rid of reviews people are being paid to write or are just idiots - sites should only allow people to post reviews for products which they have actually bought from that site. It would be easy enough to implement, just check against the would be reviewer's order history. Sure there would be a lot less reviews, but the ones that do get posted will worth something. Quality, not quantity.
Obviously launch has several meanings depending upon it's context. I fail to see how your comment relates to the comment of mine you posted it in reply to since the word launch does not appear anywhere in it or the comment I was replying to.
The http://www.opensuse.org/ says openSUSE 11.1 is "Available for Download on Dec 18".
I can only assume the parent was modded to +5 informative by people who didn't read the very first line of TFA:
openSUSE 11.1, the next major version of the company's community-driven Linux distribution, is scheduled for release on December 18.
Copy/paste! How did you get 17, parent?
You call them a troll, but the only part of their comment that you can be sure is inaccurate is the GTK version number which could just be an error. Substitute in 2.10 for 7.x and it's totally believable. What they did (trying to update the included GTK and all the dependencies) wasn't sensible, but it's totally believable that someone who didn't know better tried to do it.
GTK 7.x? Are you from the future? Firefox 3 needs GTK 2.10 or newer. If you tried to update the GTK that comes with SLES 10 they you're doing it wrong. You need to build the newer GTK and install it completely separate from the GTK included with SLES 10. Try reading http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/mikewillis/entry/of_firefox_3/ It's the first hit on Google for "Firefox 3 SLES 10" Incidentally SLES 10 SP 1 is out of support. You should be on SP 2 by now.
It's not that easy. You can download it and unzip it, but if your distro has a version of GTK older than 2.10 then Firefox 3 will not run.
According to a thread on Novell's forums, they and Red Hat will be back porting security updates to Firefox 2 until they release new versions of their Enterprise Linux products. http://forums.novell.com/novell-product-support-forums/suse-linux-enterprise-desktop-sled/sled-updates/336654-firefox-support-2-x-ends-december-what-then.html The thread also contains a link to a guide to getting Firefox 3 running on SLES/SLED 10.
OK, so I now see the problem no longer exists with Firefox 3. I was trying with Firefox 2 before because I support people using SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 which is stuck(*) with Firefox 2 until SLED 11 comes out sometime next year. (*) Unless you're willing to mess around building a newer GTK to run it against and manually keeping it up to date.
If Linux is now "an Equal Flash Player" then why do Flash elements STILL get rendered above other elements when this problem doesn't exist in Flash 9 for Mac/Windows? Install Flash 10 for Linux, go to the Flash homepage http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ and hover the mouse over the Home Solutions Products etc menus. See how they are not fully usable because the Flash movie is rendered on top.