All we can really ask vendors to do is sell us PCs without an OS, and offer hardware configurations using devices known to work (or a least run off a well documented standard). Beyond that anything more we get out of them (pre-installing a wide variety of distros, for example) is probably more than they should logically offer from a business standpoint (as it starts the whole confusion of who's offering support for software and who's offering it for hardware).
*ahem* I mean.. uhh.. I can understand wanting some information about the machines running one's software, as it helps understand the market and improve upon current design. But SOME of this information seems a bit excessive. Unless one plans to start banning specific pieces of hardware, but that's just evil.
The FAA Reports several airlines have collided with pigs mid flight. Scientists are baffled yet too busy to find the cause, as they all have hot dates tonight.
Seriously though, the FAA switching would be a pretty big step..but I don't see it actually happening. At least, not till something post-vista.
Guess again. Radar can function quite well over the microwave band of frequencies. With the current high usage of cellular phones, absorbing too much of that band (ie: as current no-longer-quite-as-stealth fighers do) causes you to appear blatantly obvious. It's like using black paint on a white wall. There's so much background microwaves these days that a proper stealth fighter needs to absorb just the right amount (or damn close) to appear as invisible as they could 10 or 15 years ago.
You can't find the download for legal reasons, not because it doesn't exist.
Seriously, it's like asking why there's no links to mp3's in all the RIAA related articles that make it here.
Nobody seems confused to me. The algorithm in question finds mathematically valid keys. Weather or not Microsoft accepts or blocks said keys is a completely different story.
Does "They're violating our patents, sue them!" have the same mentality as "They're witches, burn them!" or "They're communists, arrest them!"
As has been mentioned before, without siting specific examples of where IP has been violated, this is nothing more than FUD...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fud may refer to:
* Fear, uncertainty and doubt, a marketing strategy
* FUD (food) a Mexican brand of cold cuts and hot dogs
* Fud, a Scottish colloquialism for vagina
* Elmer Fudd, a Warner Brothers cartoon character If you consider Elmer Fudd's poorly executed plans of trickery, then this is at least 3 out of the 4...
I wouldn't do it. The primary reason being they're trying to access MySpace. It would be one thing if something potentially useful were blocked, such as how Wikipedia was filtered out when I was in highschool, though even Wikipedia is pushing it as far as justification goes in my mind.
Also, depending on where the students are when trying to access MySpace. Please note that things like this could soon be a more common legal reason not to do it. Nobody likes being an accessory.
But mostly, it's my loathing of MySpace that would stop me from doing it..
If you're going to tax anything with the potential to store music, why not start an electricity tax while you're at it? Pirates need electricity to run their computers and download, why not charge every person in Canada who uses electricity an extra 30 or 40 a month and give it to the recording industry? I mean...seriously...
Thank goodness things are still semi-sane here in the US.
Actually, you don't NEED any books at all. The d20 and d20 modern System Reference Doccument is avaliable for free off the WotC site. There's also a html copy at http://www.d20srd.com/ which is pretty nice.
If you've got an even remotely creative DM, (s)he can fill in the few gaps the rules leave (ie: character stat generation, XP and $ rewards) pretty easily.
This said by a man who owns a "tub of books" that's half my body weight...
I for one firmly believe one should err on the side of...good? freedom? I don't know what to call it. But to suggest somebody lacks a right because it is described in negative terms is...well, evil. Look at the intent of the words, not every little technicality. It's like when people try to point out that "may" and "will" or "can" are not the same when in reference to a translated work. It's technically true, but...seriously! One of the first things this government did for its people was guarantee the rights to "life, liberty, and the right to own property" I believe it was phrased. By being so technical on the language, one could all but negate the liberty part if given enough time to search for loopholes. Nobody's rights should be denied because someone didn't foresee a minor technicality of language. That's like saying Shakespeare's work isn't beautiful because it's not written in perfect American English. The fact that anyone even suggests this makes me ashamed to be called an American, or even a human being.
Agreed, some tax reform ought to be done. However, national sales tax has a inherent flaw: it only applies to sales. Consider that 10% of the U.S. population has 80% of the wealth (and world wide it's far worse). If you make money faster than you can spend it, much of it is not taxed. Flat rate seems better for that reason, assuming there's some way to let people below the poverty line get a break somehow (food stamps, WORKING public housing, etc).
Buzz Water ramen, washed down with a bottle of Bawls. After washing off with some Shower Shock of course.
But none of that coffee crap, that stuff will kill you.
Even if you try OO in a large setting, and find it doesn't work, there's not a lot lost. Just reopen and save your stuff again in a M$ Office native format and switch back. OO may lack some of the 'features' of other office suites, but that doesn't mean said other suites can't open OOs exported files with little to no loss.
And as always...pointing out the whole "it's free" thing can go a long way.
Windows is around and will be for quite some time. I've talked to most (if not all) of my friends about their thoughts, and one of two things has happened. Either A: they said they don't like Windows but it's all they know, or B: Are now running some flavor of *nix.
I'll not touch Vista with a 10ft pole, but I can say it does appear to be a (albeit small) step in the right direction. MOST of the changes do seem to be nothing more than a rather attractive makeup to cover the face of Microsoft beneath. It may be a rewrite, but it's still Windows. And unlike the Linux, BSD and Mac communities, crusading Windows zealots seem to be few and far between.
Ask a starving person if they'd prefer bread or steak, they'll probably say steak. That doesn't mean there's anything inherently wrong with bread, but odds are pretty good that, if given the alternative of steak, many people will pick the steak. But raising cattle takes more effort than baking bread. And right now someone's baking a whole lot of bread.
And if you caught my steak -> GNU and my bread -> M$ Windows analogy on as many levels as there are, you probably need to get out more.
I've never had Vista installed on any of my machines, but a friend of mine has *somehow* had it for a very long time, so he's seen it go through most of the beta stages. Between his comments and the reviews I've read, I've come to a few conclusions:
Is it better than XP?: Yes Will it succeed?: Will the OEM's force it upon us? Then yes Is it really backwards compatible?: It has issues with the occasional obscure program, but for the most part everything works Will it run on old hardware?: I'd call it walking...or crawling... but yes, technically, with enough ram and patience, it'll run. Sort of. Is it worth switching?: This is by far the most subjective part. If you have a really good computer, then hands down Vista is a better choice than XP. But it's quite a bit more resource hungry than any previous version of Windows, so I myself would never consider running it over XP unless there was an extremely significant 'killer app' that forced me to switch.
That being said, in reality I'd never switch because I run Kubuntu.
Sometime during late 2000, I started my gradual switch to the free unixes. I began with Zipslack, a part of the Slackware project, because I could install it on my fat32 partition without needing to repartition. At the time, working off of a 7GB harddrive, I wanted to avoid splitting the partition, as I had so little to work with.
Over the years, I've distro hopped probably two dozen times, both linuxes and bsds, but ultimately it's all come down to two things: efficiency and ease of use. That being said, Gentoo wins in my book by a wide margin when it comes to efficiency. It's _ALMOST_ as good as Linus From Scratch, but the sheer amount of work saved by using portage (for me at least) wins over the slightly even more optimized results from Linux From Scratch. That being said, I don't use Gentoo on my desktop. Portage (gentoo's package manager) downloads source and compiles it--a rather time consuming process for one who doesn't have distcc installed on several networked computers to speed things up. Because of this, I'm currently working off of Kubuntu (though any Ubuntu version is more than adequate in my opinion) because it is the fastest of the easily updateable distributions I have used. I'm honestly not just jumping on the ubuntu train here--I honestly disliked the distribution until about Knot 6 of the testing stage for Dapper, where I came to realize that it was approaching the speed my gentoo install had achieved at the time, but without the need for long compilations every update.
In summary: I would have to say Ubuntu is best if you're new to things, don't know every minute detail of your machine inside and out, or want things to be mindless to maintain. If you're a performance junky, Gentoo is best IMHO because of how easily you can create a highly optimized system--and in the long run this may be better for what you're describing, particularly if the software you'll be using or writing need not update more than once a week or so and involves a lot of number crunching.
Gentoo is however quite a bit more difficult to install on it's own right, I would suggest starting off using one of the derivative distributions, such as Vida Linux or Sabayon. I myself prefer Sabayon out of the two, once the ridiculous amounts of orange and red are taken out of the theme. Much like Ubuntu in it's default install, Sabayon is almost painful to look at if you don't absolutely love orange and red.
As far as virtualization goes, I would say this: virtualization is a great thing, but I myself think it's nowhere NEAR at a state that it can even attempt to replace a native install. There's just too much of a performance handicap with so much overhead still, in my opinion, to warrant regular use. It's a great way to test out a distro before deciding to burn a cd/dvd of it and install, or running the occasional application which only works on Windows, cannot run through Wine, and doesn't warrant a full install.
Slashdot Mirror
All we can really ask vendors to do is sell us PCs without an OS, and offer hardware configurations using devices known to work (or a least run off a well documented standard). Beyond that anything more we get out of them (pre-installing a wide variety of distros, for example) is probably more than they should logically offer from a business standpoint (as it starts the whole confusion of who's offering support for software and who's offering it for hardware).
does it run cygwin?
*In his best E.T. voice*
P.C. Phone Home
*ahem* I mean.. uhh.. I can understand wanting some information about the machines running one's software, as it helps understand the market and improve upon current design. But SOME of this information seems a bit excessive. Unless one plans to start banning specific pieces of hardware, but that's just evil.
P.C. Phone Home
The FAA Reports several airlines have collided with pigs mid flight. Scientists are baffled yet too busy to find the cause, as they all have hot dates tonight.
Seriously though, the FAA switching would be a pretty big step..but I don't see it actually happening. At least, not till something post-vista.
"Last Updated: Friday, November 10, 2000 | 11:57 PM ET"
Yes, this is a dupe. Likely of a dupe of a dupe.
Guess again. Radar can function quite well over the microwave band of frequencies. With the current high usage of cellular phones, absorbing too much of that band (ie: as current no-longer-quite-as-stealth fighers do) causes you to appear blatantly obvious. It's like using black paint on a white wall. There's so much background microwaves these days that a proper stealth fighter needs to absorb just the right amount (or damn close) to appear as invisible as they could 10 or 15 years ago.
You can't find the download for legal reasons, not because it doesn't exist.
Seriously, it's like asking why there's no links to mp3's in all the RIAA related articles that make it here.
Nobody seems confused to me. The algorithm in question finds mathematically valid keys. Weather or not Microsoft accepts or blocks said keys is a completely different story.
If servers were dominoes, slashdot must be that big and slightly smelly kid who kicks down all your hard work just as you're about to show it off.
As has been mentioned before, without siting specific examples of where IP has been violated, this is nothing more than FUD... From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fud may refer to:
* Fear, uncertainty and doubt, a marketing strategy
* FUD (food) a Mexican brand of cold cuts and hot dogs
* Fud, a Scottish colloquialism for vagina
* Elmer Fudd, a Warner Brothers cartoon character If you consider Elmer Fudd's poorly executed plans of trickery, then this is at least 3 out of the 4...
I wouldn't do it. The primary reason being they're trying to access MySpace. It would be one thing if something potentially useful were blocked, such as how Wikipedia was filtered out when I was in highschool, though even Wikipedia is pushing it as far as justification goes in my mind.
Also, depending on where the students are when trying to access MySpace. Please note that things like this could soon be a more common legal reason not to do it. Nobody likes being an accessory.
But mostly, it's my loathing of MySpace that would stop me from doing it..
If race is purely cosmetic, then no. If it changes the character's abilities, then yes.
And either way, everybody loves to kill kobolds.
If you're going to tax anything with the potential to store music, why not start an electricity tax while you're at it? Pirates need electricity to run their computers and download, why not charge every person in Canada who uses electricity an extra 30 or 40 a month and give it to the recording industry? I mean...seriously...
Thank goodness things are still semi-sane here in the US.
Actually, you don't NEED any books at all. The d20 and d20 modern System Reference Doccument is avaliable for free off the WotC site. There's also a html copy at http://www.d20srd.com/ which is pretty nice.
If you've got an even remotely creative DM, (s)he can fill in the few gaps the rules leave (ie: character stat generation, XP and $ rewards) pretty easily.
This said by a man who owns a "tub of books" that's half my body weight...
Two words: Fast Healing
And kudos for the quick correction. At least the editors are only half asleep :P
"What It Writing for Games is Really Like" very intelligent title... kudos to the editor
I for one firmly believe one should err on the side of...good? freedom? I don't know what to call it. But to suggest somebody lacks a right because it is described in negative terms is...well, evil. Look at the intent of the words, not every little technicality. It's like when people try to point out that "may" and "will" or "can" are not the same when in reference to a translated work. It's technically true, but...seriously!
One of the first things this government did for its people was guarantee the rights to "life, liberty, and the right to own property" I believe it was phrased. By being so technical on the language, one could all but negate the liberty part if given enough time to search for loopholes. Nobody's rights should be denied because someone didn't foresee a minor technicality of language. That's like saying Shakespeare's work isn't beautiful because it's not written in perfect American English.
The fact that anyone even suggests this makes me ashamed to be called an American, or even a human being.
There can be only one.
Agreed, some tax reform ought to be done. However, national sales tax has a inherent flaw: it only applies to sales. Consider that 10% of the U.S. population has 80% of the wealth (and world wide it's far worse). If you make money faster than you can spend it, much of it is not taxed. Flat rate seems better for that reason, assuming there's some way to let people below the poverty line get a break somehow (food stamps, WORKING public housing, etc).
Buzz Water ramen, washed down with a bottle of Bawls. After washing off with some Shower Shock of course. But none of that coffee crap, that stuff will kill you.
Even if you try OO in a large setting, and find it doesn't work, there's not a lot lost. Just reopen and save your stuff again in a M$ Office native format and switch back. OO may lack some of the 'features' of other office suites, but that doesn't mean said other suites can't open OOs exported files with little to no loss. And as always...pointing out the whole "it's free" thing can go a long way.
Windows is around and will be for quite some time. I've talked to most (if not all) of my friends about their thoughts, and one of two things has happened. Either A: they said they don't like Windows but it's all they know, or B: Are now running some flavor of *nix.
I'll not touch Vista with a 10ft pole, but I can say it does appear to be a (albeit small) step in the right direction. MOST of the changes do seem to be nothing more than a rather attractive makeup to cover the face of Microsoft beneath. It may be a rewrite, but it's still Windows. And unlike the Linux, BSD and Mac communities, crusading Windows zealots seem to be few and far between.
Ask a starving person if they'd prefer bread or steak, they'll probably say steak. That doesn't mean there's anything inherently wrong with bread, but odds are pretty good that, if given the alternative of steak, many people will pick the steak. But raising cattle takes more effort than baking bread. And right now someone's baking a whole lot of bread.
And if you caught my steak -> GNU and my bread -> M$ Windows analogy on as many levels as there are, you probably need to get out more.
I've never had Vista installed on any of my machines, but a friend of mine has *somehow* had it for a very long time, so he's seen it go through most of the beta stages. Between his comments and the reviews I've read, I've come to a few conclusions:
Is it better than XP?: Yes
Will it succeed?: Will the OEM's force it upon us? Then yes
Is it really backwards compatible?: It has issues with the occasional obscure program, but for the most part everything works
Will it run on old hardware?: I'd call it walking...or crawling... but yes, technically, with enough ram and patience, it'll run. Sort of.
Is it worth switching?: This is by far the most subjective part. If you have a really good computer, then hands down Vista is a better choice than XP. But it's quite a bit more resource hungry than any previous version of Windows, so I myself would never consider running it over XP unless there was an extremely significant 'killer app' that forced me to switch.
That being said, in reality I'd never switch because I run Kubuntu.
Sometime during late 2000, I started my gradual switch to the free unixes. I began with Zipslack, a part of the Slackware project, because I could install it on my fat32 partition without needing to repartition. At the time, working off of a 7GB harddrive, I wanted to avoid splitting the partition, as I had so little to work with.
Over the years, I've distro hopped probably two dozen times, both linuxes and bsds, but ultimately it's all come down to two things: efficiency and ease of use. That being said, Gentoo wins in my book by a wide margin when it comes to efficiency. It's _ALMOST_ as good as Linus From Scratch, but the sheer amount of work saved by using portage (for me at least) wins over the slightly even more optimized results from Linux From Scratch. That being said, I don't use Gentoo on my desktop. Portage (gentoo's package manager) downloads source and compiles it--a rather time consuming process for one who doesn't have distcc installed on several networked computers to speed things up. Because of this, I'm currently working off of Kubuntu (though any Ubuntu version is more than adequate in my opinion) because it is the fastest of the easily updateable distributions I have used. I'm honestly not just jumping on the ubuntu train here--I honestly disliked the distribution until about Knot 6 of the testing stage for Dapper, where I came to realize that it was approaching the speed my gentoo install had achieved at the time, but without the need for long compilations every update.
In summary: I would have to say Ubuntu is best if you're new to things, don't know every minute detail of your machine inside and out, or want things to be mindless to maintain. If you're a performance junky, Gentoo is best IMHO because of how easily you can create a highly optimized system--and in the long run this may be better for what you're describing, particularly if the software you'll be using or writing need not update more than once a week or so and involves a lot of number crunching.
Gentoo is however quite a bit more difficult to install on it's own right, I would suggest starting off using one of the derivative distributions, such as Vida Linux or Sabayon. I myself prefer Sabayon out of the two, once the ridiculous amounts of orange and red are taken out of the theme. Much like Ubuntu in it's default install, Sabayon is almost painful to look at if you don't absolutely love orange and red.
As far as virtualization goes, I would say this: virtualization is a great thing, but I myself think it's nowhere NEAR at a state that it can even attempt to replace a native install. There's just too much of a performance handicap with so much overhead still, in my opinion, to warrant regular use. It's a great way to test out a distro before deciding to burn a cd/dvd of it and install, or running the occasional application which only works on Windows, cannot run through Wine, and doesn't warrant a full install.