Last I checked, the US doesn't have 3G service.
So, I think this would work for almost anyone NOT in the US.
Thanks to our WONDERFUL government sponsored telecom monopolies, the US is generally way behind the rest of the western world in terms of cell phone technologies.
What we need is a version of linux that installs as simply as Windows does, and has all the important features you need in order to get your computer to work, and doesn't require ANY command line knowledge or programming on your own. And especially, remeber, PLEASE don't make the end-user search online to get the drivers for his or her network card. I can't even begin to explain how stupid it is that drivers for common network cards can't be found on base installations of most linux discs. You're lucky if the end-user HAS a computer. Don't push it and assume that they have their own home network, including a fully-working linux box that they can use as a reference.
1998 called. They want their Linux Distro back.
Seriously, most Linux distros now CAN do most of what you're ranting about. I've been playing around with a few different distros lately, mainly with live CDs, on all kinds of different computers and hardware. The only networking hardware that didn't work right off was wireless stuff.
Also, I think a lot of people here are forgetting what it really takes to get Windows installed on a blank system. In some ways, depending on the distro, installing Linux is easier than Windows.
The basic functions that most people use computers for, besides games, internet, email, word processing, maybe a power point here and there. These can easily be done with a properly configured Linux system.
No, that many people have not already upgraded to PCI-E.
That's what's bugging me right now. It looks like the hardware manufacturers are trying to force an upgrade to PCI-E.
Most new OEM computers often have integrated crap for video, so a budget card would let them be able to game.
Now, how likely are they to come across this review, well that is kinda doubtful.
While it's true that most OEM computers DO come with integrated video, how many will also come with a PCI-E slot? Most of the time you'd be lucky to get an AGP slot, let alone a PCI-E slot.
If there were some fairly new AGP budget cards, that would seem to be more useful than a budget PCI-E card.
I don't think it's that useful to most users either though.
These are all PCI-E cards. Most people that have upgraded from AGP to PCI-E aren't going to be getting a budget card.
Maybe if someone is rebuilding their PC and switching to a new motherboard with PCI-E, they might pick up one of these as an interim card because they spent everything on the new board and a dual core Athlon 64.
That's really the only market I could see for these. "I spent everything on my motherboard and CPU and can't afford a faster video card for awhile, so I'll get the cheapest PCI-E card I can find."
Maybe it's just me, but I don't see a HUGE market for a budget PCI-E card.
That is a very good point. So muchy of these posts are addressing "Joe User" installing Linux himself. Most "Joe Users" don't really know how to install Windows from scratch either.
Linux can be very useful for relatives that really only want to "surf the net and chack email." It's fairly easy to set up a Linux distro to do that. It would include the added bonus of NOT having to reinstall Windows for them every month when they get it so infected with spyware and viruses that it's unusable.
Linux can be very useful for many people. Instead of looking for the person it WON'T work for and then jumping to the conclusion that it's not usable AT ALL, try looking for people that it WOULD be useful for.
Linux isn't for everyone. OS X isn't for everyone. Windows isn't for everyone.
Perhaps instead of assuming that it's too hard for everyone and so not showing it to ANYONE, we could try educating the people that would greatly benefit from it.
It's not as much that they're over selling the pipe. It's more that they haven't bothered to upgrade their infrastructure as much as they promised the last time they got all those government subsidies.
Anyone else remember "fiber to the curb"?
They've been getting money to make upgrades to handle more traffic like this, but instead used it for all the execs to get the latest model of Mercedes.
Does anyone really think that if they manage to extort money like this that it'll actually go to upgrading infrastructure? If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Did anyone else notice how ridiculously stupid that person was?
"When we had a bunch of sensitive data stolen, I realized there aren't very strict identity theft laws so I pushed for more annoying and lame laws"
Even though stealing computer hardware is already a crime and that didn't stop them from doing it, somehow more identity theft laws would have stopped the thieves?
Which serves to illustrate the problems with EULAs currently. It's gotten absurd that these things have gotten so out of hand that you agree to not make derrogatory comments about the company or its products. I guess I violated that one with SOE multiple times.
Isn't there something in contract law about agreements that force you to give up certain rights are not binding?
Yet, a company can draft a ridiculous EULA and it's taken as gospel truth and the law.
That really needs to change.
First, the whole if the backbone is functioning thing... It's NOT a binary thing. There are cases often where most things are working but others may not be. It's not an all or nothing thing.
Also, to say that if the system is functioning that any upgrades or other tinkering is just "egotistical masturbation" is retarded. If you don't want your IT staff to do any upgrading or preventative tasks until something fais, then you're a complete moron. There's a lot of upgrade or modification planning that happens to prevent a major failure.
This is a great illustration of how most management doesn't have a CLUE about what the IT staff does. If an IT staff were to actually work the way you seem to think they should, at least someone would be out of a job. Most decent IT geeks have to get things done by working around managers like that.
I was thinking about this kind of thing earlier today after reading that article about unionizing IT geeks.
There's a few issues to consider.
First, I agree that generally the IT guys are treated like crap. We really are expected to just wave our hand over the monitor and everything magically works. However, this is NOT expected of most other types of equipment. If you call in a copier tech to fix your copier, most people will let them do their job and not harass them. Why then are the IT guys picked on to do everything 5 minutes ago?
I think part of the reason is our own fault. Well, it's a combination of our fault and other's stupidity. When the idiot from accounting can't figure out why no sound is coming out and you go down and turn on the speakers, it leaves the impression that we can ALWAYS fix problems that fast.
This gives people the impression that all we do is walk in and flip a switch to fix problems. As a result, the unwashed masses think that we really don't do anything around the office. They begin to resent us in a subtle or subconscious way. So, when something really goes wrong, they think we should get it done NOW since we're not really doing anything anyway.
Sometimes we make our jobs look too easy to people who don't have a clue. When the morons have a ridiculously easy thing to fix, "How do I start this function?" The window on the screen says "To start function click HERE!" we fix it within about 5 seconds and that leaves the impression that everything is that easy.
This also leaves the impression that we're just slackers getting paid to do nothing.
So, I'd say the root of the problem is how clueless the unwashed masses are. That is what really leads to us making everything look easy and makes us look like slackers so that others resent us in some way.
Indeed, the idea isn't new. I'd hope that there would be more motivation to get this out with all the stuff going on about current broadband providers. Adding another choice through power lines would be a welcome change.
However, it may be less welcome to people who have huge corporations for power companies. Where I live, we have a small co-op association for power so I'm not worried about them providing broadband.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a shift in many Democrats soon. With Republicans going so far to the left and much more in favor of Federal government control of EVERYTHING, that is starting to leave a void in major political parties.
If democrats would start coming out opposing some of this big government crap and focusing on limiting federal government, I wouldn't be surprised to see many long-time republicans voting democrat.
I've seen many problems with Linksys routers yet so many people continue to swear by them. I've mostly used D-Link for about the last 5 or 6 years. The only problem I had was a REALLY old router would need to be reset about every month or so. I think that problem went away when I upgraded the firmware, but I upgraded to a new spiffy 802.11b wireless router shortly after.
I'm using a DI-614 router now and haven't had any problems.
I work in a public school district. MySpace has been blocked forever. A couple weeks ago, someone cranked up the filtering on the firewall. I can't access games.slashdot.org now. Almost any website relating to games is already blocked. This includes many educational games that the kids liked to play. The fact that there are educational games that kids want to play is something. Now it's blocked.
The school districts already block a ton of the stuff the morons in Congress(the opposite of Progress) are trying to outlaw. Yet another example of something we DON'T need a FEDERAL LAW for.
People who are that non-technical would have the same problems with Windows as Linux. Where I'm at right now is entirely Windows and nearly everyone here can barely figure it out. However, if I were to set up a machine with Linux and OOo, it wouldn't really be much more difficult for them. They might not be able to install whatever they want, but how is that a bad thing?
For the vast majority of business uses, Linux would do what they need with little changes or training for the users.
Earlier this year, I installed Firefox on all the machines and got everyone to start using it instead of IE. That's a bulk of the retraining that would be required with a decent Linux setup. "Click on this now instead of the thing you used to click on"
I can see where people would jump to thinking that Linux would be too difficult for most people, and that would be true if they had to install it or other apps. If you have a halfway decent IT dept that can get the machines set up properly with what is needed, there shouldn't be any real issues for most users to use it instead of Windows.
Re:Obligatory Star Wars Reference...
on
Vonage going IPO
·
· Score: 1
The proper quote is, "I find your lack of faith disturbing"
My impression was that the way it works is stupid and doesn't solve any problems.
It seems that whenever you try to do something you don't have permissions for, it bugs you to authenticate with permissions. This defeats the purpose of permissions.
What it should do is that when you have permissions, for sensitive system changes it makes you verify those permissions.
That's a big difference between the two.
The current way that operates will only frustrate people and Joe Sixpack will just look for a way to turn it off.
Here's a news flash for you. YOUR situation is the exception, not the rule.
For millions of people, they're lucky to have a choice between the phone company and the cable company. Many people can only get one of those. I don't know where you live to have that many options for broadband, but it's really unusual.
Most people really have the phone company and/or the cable company to provide broadband access. Personally, I can only use Comcast for broadband. The phone company DSL service stops a block away. No one else can provide copper wire or coax to me for other options.
All this talk agains this kind of regulation is well and good if people had choices for broadband providers, but the reality is that most people have few to no choices.
From TFA: Tracks sold over the Internet usually go for about 99 cents. About 70 cents of the sale price goes to Sony. The bands are getting about 4 1/2 cents per song, according to the suit, rather than the approximately 30 cents they claim is rightfully theirs.
70 cents goes to Sony. The other 29 cents goes to cover Apple's costs for bandwidth, etc. What costs does Sony have at that point? I can't think of anything. Remember, it's just data that is copied from a server. There's minimal costs to Apple on a per-download basis. Apple probably absorbs any "breakage" costs in that 29 cents per download.
I still can't think of any costs that Sony would incur. So, we're back to Sony profiting 70 cents and then only giving the artists 4.5 cents.
Slashdot Mirror
So, I think this would work for almost anyone NOT in the US.
Thanks to our WONDERFUL government sponsored telecom monopolies, the US is generally way behind the rest of the western world in terms of cell phone technologies.
1998 called. They want their Linux Distro back.
Seriously, most Linux distros now CAN do most of what you're ranting about. I've been playing around with a few different distros lately, mainly with live CDs, on all kinds of different computers and hardware. The only networking hardware that didn't work right off was wireless stuff.
Also, I think a lot of people here are forgetting what it really takes to get Windows installed on a blank system. In some ways, depending on the distro, installing Linux is easier than Windows.
The basic functions that most people use computers for, besides games, internet, email, word processing, maybe a power point here and there. These can easily be done with a properly configured Linux system.
No, that many people have not already upgraded to PCI-E.
That's what's bugging me right now. It looks like the hardware manufacturers are trying to force an upgrade to PCI-E.
How else could this company stay in business?
While it's true that most OEM computers DO come with integrated video, how many will also come with a PCI-E slot? Most of the time you'd be lucky to get an AGP slot, let alone a PCI-E slot.
If there were some fairly new AGP budget cards, that would seem to be more useful than a budget PCI-E card.
These are all PCI-E cards. Most people that have upgraded from AGP to PCI-E aren't going to be getting a budget card.
Maybe if someone is rebuilding their PC and switching to a new motherboard with PCI-E, they might pick up one of these as an interim card because they spent everything on the new board and a dual core Athlon 64.
That's really the only market I could see for these. "I spent everything on my motherboard and CPU and can't afford a faster video card for awhile, so I'll get the cheapest PCI-E card I can find."
Maybe it's just me, but I don't see a HUGE market for a budget PCI-E card.
Linux can be very useful for many people. Instead of looking for the person it WON'T work for and then jumping to the conclusion that it's not usable AT ALL, try looking for people that it WOULD be useful for.
Linux isn't for everyone. OS X isn't for everyone. Windows isn't for everyone. Perhaps instead of assuming that it's too hard for everyone and so not showing it to ANYONE, we could try educating the people that would greatly benefit from it.
Anyone else remember "fiber to the curb"?
They've been getting money to make upgrades to handle more traffic like this, but instead used it for all the execs to get the latest model of Mercedes.
Does anyone really think that if they manage to extort money like this that it'll actually go to upgrading infrastructure? If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
"When we had a bunch of sensitive data stolen, I realized there aren't very strict identity theft laws so I pushed for more annoying and lame laws"
Even though stealing computer hardware is already a crime and that didn't stop them from doing it, somehow more identity theft laws would have stopped the thieves?
Isn't there something in contract law about agreements that force you to give up certain rights are not binding?
Yet, a company can draft a ridiculous EULA and it's taken as gospel truth and the law.
That really needs to change.
There's so much truth in that it may end up in a sig sometime soon.
First, the whole if the backbone is functioning thing... It's NOT a binary thing. There are cases often where most things are working but others may not be. It's not an all or nothing thing.
Also, to say that if the system is functioning that any upgrades or other tinkering is just "egotistical masturbation" is retarded. If you don't want your IT staff to do any upgrading or preventative tasks until something fais, then you're a complete moron. There's a lot of upgrade or modification planning that happens to prevent a major failure.
This is a great illustration of how most management doesn't have a CLUE about what the IT staff does. If an IT staff were to actually work the way you seem to think they should, at least someone would be out of a job. Most decent IT geeks have to get things done by working around managers like that.
There's a few issues to consider.
First, I agree that generally the IT guys are treated like crap. We really are expected to just wave our hand over the monitor and everything magically works. However, this is NOT expected of most other types of equipment. If you call in a copier tech to fix your copier, most people will let them do their job and not harass them. Why then are the IT guys picked on to do everything 5 minutes ago?
I think part of the reason is our own fault. Well, it's a combination of our fault and other's stupidity. When the idiot from accounting can't figure out why no sound is coming out and you go down and turn on the speakers, it leaves the impression that we can ALWAYS fix problems that fast.
This gives people the impression that all we do is walk in and flip a switch to fix problems. As a result, the unwashed masses think that we really don't do anything around the office. They begin to resent us in a subtle or subconscious way. So, when something really goes wrong, they think we should get it done NOW since we're not really doing anything anyway.
Sometimes we make our jobs look too easy to people who don't have a clue. When the morons have a ridiculously easy thing to fix, "How do I start this function?" The window on the screen says "To start function click HERE!" we fix it within about 5 seconds and that leaves the impression that everything is that easy.
This also leaves the impression that we're just slackers getting paid to do nothing.
So, I'd say the root of the problem is how clueless the unwashed masses are. That is what really leads to us making everything look easy and makes us look like slackers so that others resent us in some way.
Indeed, the idea isn't new. I'd hope that there would be more motivation to get this out with all the stuff going on about current broadband providers. Adding another choice through power lines would be a welcome change.
However, it may be less welcome to people who have huge corporations for power companies. Where I live, we have a small co-op association for power so I'm not worried about them providing broadband.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a shift in many Democrats soon. With Republicans going so far to the left and much more in favor of Federal government control of EVERYTHING, that is starting to leave a void in major political parties.
If democrats would start coming out opposing some of this big government crap and focusing on limiting federal government, I wouldn't be surprised to see many long-time republicans voting democrat.
I've seen many problems with Linksys routers yet so many people continue to swear by them. I've mostly used D-Link for about the last 5 or 6 years. The only problem I had was a REALLY old router would need to be reset about every month or so. I think that problem went away when I upgraded the firmware, but I upgraded to a new spiffy 802.11b wireless router shortly after.
I'm using a DI-614 router now and haven't had any problems.
I work in a public school district. MySpace has been blocked forever. A couple weeks ago, someone cranked up the filtering on the firewall. I can't access games.slashdot.org now. Almost any website relating to games is already blocked. This includes many educational games that the kids liked to play. The fact that there are educational games that kids want to play is something. Now it's blocked. The school districts already block a ton of the stuff the morons in Congress(the opposite of Progress) are trying to outlaw. Yet another example of something we DON'T need a FEDERAL LAW for.
Earlier this year, I installed Firefox on all the machines and got everyone to start using it instead of IE. That's a bulk of the retraining that would be required with a decent Linux setup. "Click on this now instead of the thing you used to click on"
I can see where people would jump to thinking that Linux would be too difficult for most people, and that would be true if they had to install it or other apps. If you have a halfway decent IT dept that can get the machines set up properly with what is needed, there shouldn't be any real issues for most users to use it instead of Windows.
Yes, I'm a geek, read my username
MOD PARENT UP!
Not according to the RIAA...
Yes.
My impression was that the way it works is stupid and doesn't solve any problems.
It seems that whenever you try to do something you don't have permissions for, it bugs you to authenticate with permissions. This defeats the purpose of permissions.
What it should do is that when you have permissions, for sensitive system changes it makes you verify those permissions.
That's a big difference between the two.
The current way that operates will only frustrate people and Joe Sixpack will just look for a way to turn it off.
Most people really have the phone company and/or the cable company to provide broadband access. Personally, I can only use Comcast for broadband. The phone company DSL service stops a block away. No one else can provide copper wire or coax to me for other options.
All this talk agains this kind of regulation is well and good if people had choices for broadband providers, but the reality is that most people have few to no choices.
From TFA: Tracks sold over the Internet usually go for about 99 cents. About 70 cents of the sale price goes to Sony. The bands are getting about 4 1/2 cents per song, according to the suit, rather than the approximately 30 cents they claim is rightfully theirs.
70 cents goes to Sony. The other 29 cents goes to cover Apple's costs for bandwidth, etc. What costs does Sony have at that point? I can't think of anything. Remember, it's just data that is copied from a server. There's minimal costs to Apple on a per-download basis. Apple probably absorbs any "breakage" costs in that 29 cents per download.
I still can't think of any costs that Sony would incur. So, we're back to Sony profiting 70 cents and then only giving the artists 4.5 cents.