"the encyclopedia of everything that everyone can edit", and it pretty much was until a ruling clique formed!
I think they are trying to keep it from degenerating into a blog, or a chat space, or an encyclopedia of trivial things like the Star Wars universe. Some wikis, like Wookiepedia, started out because Wikipedia kept kicking out certain stuff, like exhaustive detail of the Star Wars universe.
This article makes the change in Wikipedia sound nefarious, like there is some elitist cabal that wants to accrue power. Sure that is true in part. But as the site has grown it is more important to keep things out than it is to add things. The alternative is that every article about a politician will include nasty, defamatory, and useless content and that vociferous fans of various fantasy genres and celebrities will take over all coverage of things related to their realms.
Wikipedia needs people who say "no", and if those people are a bunch of elitist editors, then fine.
Yes, thank you. Some of the other posts are talking about how powerful Word can be, but it is just awful. We use it at work to generate medium-sized documents (often around 100 single-spaced pages.) As far as I can tell, the people who actually set the documents up for distribution to the public (they aren't printed anymore, at least not by us) just take the Word documents that we work on, make a PDF, and post it to the Web site.
I've noticed all the bugs you point out and they drive me crazy. There are a couple others I can think of:
* collaboration features. Sometimes when using text boxes along with the comment boxes, the comment boxes pop up in the most bizarre places--nowhere near the text they are supposed to correspond to. Also, sometimes when using the "track changes" feature, some document editing features are stunted. Sometimes for example, pressing "Delete" while using track changes just does absolutely nothing. Move the cursor around, hit backspace, try again.
* References like footnotes can bounce around from one page to another. A footnote reference might be on one page, while the footnote text itself is on the next page. Then of course, my boss asks me to fix it! Sometimes I want to say that it is not my job to wrangle with the word processor.
I hit Word bugs literally each and every day. My first reaction is always "this program is way too expensive to be this buggy." For the big bucks that Word costs, it should be better. I don't think word processors are a great idea to begin with. I want to focus on what I am writing, not on formatting it. But maybe a word processor would be OK if it weren't the buggy mess that is Microsoft Word.
The intel atom cpu is 32 Bit. Shipping no 32 bit whatsoever would eliminate you from this very popular market.
Paul Thurott says Windows 7 will be the last 32-bit Windows although with the popularity of Atom I wonder if this will be true, even if the next Windows release takes another eight years.
that's quite a lot like the road fund licence or television licence in the UK which are both considered to be taxes even though they are not compulsory
There is a huge difference. The TV license and road fund license are levied by the British government. A Microsoft license fee is not levied by the government. In the UK if you want a TV, you must pay the license fee. If you want a computer, you do not have to pay Microsoft. It has NEVER been compulsory to pay Microsoft in order to own a computer. For example, Macs were sold even when MS did "CPU licensing." Today, you may buy a Mac or a PC without Windows on it.
Likening a MS license fee to a "tax" is not accurate now and was never, ever accurate in any possible sense. Using the ridiculous "MS tax" phrase makes those who use it look childish.
Forced, forced. I keep seeing that word in this thread.
Forced? Was it a gun or a knife? Was the state forcing you to buy Windows?
No, no, and no. You had a choice. There are vendors offering pre-installed Linux. There are vendors selling bare PCs. You may buy parts and build your own PC.
Instead, you chose to buy a PC with Windows on it. And now you are complaining that you were "forced" to buy Windows. Just because the particular hardware you wanted had Windows on it does not mean you were "forced" to buy it. Just because the marketplace does not offer the exact choices you want does not mean you were "forced" to buy something. You may buy something else, or you may choose to buy nothing at all. Or, you may pay a few extra dollars for something that includes software that you do not intend on using. That does not mean you were "forced" to buy it.
If you want to get a PC with no OS at all, why not buy a used machine on eBay that has no OS? There are typically dozens listed. I built my own desktop. No OS. You can even buy a new PC with only a barebones OS:
And the headline says something about a "Microsoft Tax." How ridiculous. Governments levy taxes. Software and hardware vendors that you do not like do not levy taxes, no matter how much you do not like the product. If you do not want Microsoft products, do not buy them.
If you are really just learning to "program," then practice alone first by working on a solo project. That's because working in a group requires lots of skills that aren't directly related to what is typically called "programming."
For instance, lots of open source projects are concerned with portability, meaning they need to use something like Automake and Autoconf. Working with these systems requires some knowledge, and although it is "programming" it's probably not what you had in mind. When you write something for yourself, all you have to know is that it works on your system.
Collaborating may also require that you use a version control system like SVN, CVS or git. These tools are not easy enough to learn in five minutes. They can be handy when working alone, but when working alone you don't have to mess with them.
1) The person who bought the game new gets some money back when he sells it used, thus giving him more money to go buy another new game.
2) People are more likely to buy a new game if they know they can sell it used when they get tired of it. If they know they will be stuck with it, they will be less likely to buy. In the aggregate, lower new prices would be necessary if there were no resales. (This might end up happening if all the draconian DRM makes the "purchase" into a true rental because the game can't be transferred and might fail to "activate" in the future. Such games would be worth less.)
I looked at the Clear Pass program. It's a waste of money as far as I can tell. Basically, as I understand it, you get to pay $200/yr for....wait for it.....a special line where you can go through the exact same security procedures as the other non clear pass lines.
Especially when most of the people who would be interested in Clear and who would pony up $200 for it are already flying first class, business class, or have some sort of "elite" frequent flyer status...meaning that they can already go to the special lane that jumps them to the front of the security line. When I first heard of Clear, I thought it would qualify you for a reduced amount of screening (maybe keep your shoes on?) When I heard that you get the same screening as everybody else, I knew there was no way it would last long because it's completely pointless.
Scalpers add value for ticket owners. If I own a ticket, and decide I don't want to go to the event anymore, I can sell it to a scalper. Without a scalper, I'd have to sell it myself. This ready secondary market benefits the ticket holder.
Scalpers also add value for ticket purchasers who are willing to pay the price. Assume the box office is selling tickets to an event for $35. But people are willing to pay $100 for the event. Scalpers allocate the tickets to those who are willing to pay $100 for the ticket. Then the $100 buyer need not wait in line all night and sleep in the rain to get a ticket. The scalper also benefits the person who decides to go to the event at the last minute, and is willing to pay the price. (All this of course comes at the expense of those who are willing to wait all night for the $35 ticket, but will not or cannot pay $100 for the ticket.)
Domain squatters are similar. They help allocate the good domains to those who are willing to pay for them. Just this weekend I heard of ancestry.com. I instantly knew what it was. That great name saved the business from having to build a brand. If it had been "avalea.com" instead, I would have said "what's that?" This domain should be allocated to someone who is willing to put the capital into building a good business with it.
Furthermore, nobody has ever suggested a good system that would eliminate squatters. You want registrars deciding who has a "legitimate" business and who is just squatting? Or do you want to just jack up the price of domains so squatting is economical--but then, registering domains becomes uneconomical for many individuals or small businesses? Besides, if you don't want to buy from a squatter, go get a made up word that nobody has registered. They are easy to find. But then you have to work harder to build a brand.
A few hundred to a few thousand dollars is nothing to pay if a person really wants to build a business. I fully support squatters and do not understand the hatred for them.
People say it's "nostalgia." I don't think so. Those old video games were simpler.
Controllers now are like Space Shuttle controllers or something. Too many buttons, too complicated. I must have given up on the modern console games around the time of Madden for the Nintendo 64. The N64 controller had a whole bunch of buttons (maybe 15?!) and Madden used them all. I could not keep them all straight.
Now these games try to be so realistic that all they end up doing is reminding you how pathetic you are that you are sitting in front of a TV, controlling these little virtual men, rather than going out in a field and tossing a ball or coaching some kids or something.
These high-end console games have just gotten too complicated. Some people have figured this out, though, and are cashing in:
* Wii. People on Slashdot love to make fun of it. I guess they're the same type of folks who thought iPod was lame compared to some junk from Creative Labs. But Wii is simple. You don't have to sit around for hours just learning how to work the thing.
* iPhone apps. Simple, simple games. Cheap to develop, they sell for cheap, and I heard a story about how a guy who wrote one of those things cashed in big. Similarly my girlfriend was sitting around for hours playing Brick Breaker on the BlackBerry.
* Online games. No I do not mean WoW kind of stuff. I mean Yahoo Games kind of stuff, like Text Twist. Simple games.
So really I would say that the old 2D games are still around. They are just a lot cheaper and more plentiful now. Now they are cell phones, iPhones, and Yahoo Games and the like. I am willing to bet that between Wii, iPhone apps, and simple online games, there is cumulatively much more time spent on simple games than on this hyped up console stuff that takes hours worth of training to get anywhere on.
A Slashdot fallacy I see all the time is conflating "gaming" with "several hundred dollar consoles" and "fifty-dollar games," which is why people say "there aren't any games on Linux." There are plenty of simple games on Linux, and there are plenty of old 2D style games still being played now. It's only a relative few people who are obsessed with these expensive, all-consuming games.
How do you suggest Panera Bread handle it when their seats start getting filled-up by people using the Wi-Fi?
Indeed. I used to live near a Panera Bread. When I go out to eat, I want to consume my food in the restaurant, not take the food back home to eat it.
Most nights when I would pass Panera, all the seating was occupied by people using laptop computers. So I would go elsewhere to eat. It did not seem that the laptop users were consuming food, either. Maybe they get occasional drink refills.
As one who frequents it...frequently...the Washington Post comment section really is a cesspit.
Agreed. The Post comments are a total waste of time to read. I have stopped looking at them.
Nearly always, the threads degenerate into a pile of worthless partisan, hate-filled garbage. No matter what the story is (war? Gun control? Floods? I mean, ANYTHING) the thread turns into "It's all Obama's fault" or "It's all Bush's fault" or "liberals suck" or "conservatives are evil" or "Bush is an idiot" or "Obama is a monkey." Other unmoderated comment threads, like on Politico, are similar. The posts have no thought whatsoever. It is all two-sentence nonsense. Since they are not threaded, you can't even see what the two sentences are retorting to.
This kind of crap is not worth reading. The author of this article thinks journalists need to take these comments seriously? So, where in the story is the journalist supposed to account for racist garbage directed at Obama, or mindless hatred for conservatives? And journalists are supposed to spend their time sifting through this garbage, rather than developing stories?
NYTimes comments are worth reading, for the same reason Slashdot comments can be worth reading: readers can catch total garbage in stories and call it out. NYTimes moderates the comments so they don't slide into utter garbage. Some of the Times bloggers respond to the comments.
I doubt anyone at the Washington Post reads the worthless vitriol that is in their pathetic comment threads.
Lots of these reviews for portables talk about power. I couldn't care less about power. I have a three-year-old Pentium M with 512 MB of RAM (shared with the graphics!) that was OVER-powered. All I used was the browser, some console apps, and occasionally a media player. I replaced the laptop, but only because the hinges were shot. I didn't even use half of the memory on the thing.
No, for me battery life is more important than power. "The biggest mistake Dell made with this system, by far, was the inclusion of Intel's GMA X4500HD GPU." Then there is a graph of FPS. I'll take battery life over FPS. (Unfortunately it looks like this Dell is good at neither of those.)
Re:Let me be the first critic
on
Linux Needs Critics
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The reality, though, is that it is a barrier to entry, and therefore it is their problem.
Nope. The people who work on MythTV do it for free, on their own time. They do it because they get pleasure out of it, and because it works for them.
Most free software exists either because someone is making money off of it (e.g. Red Hat, IBM) or because someone gets pleasure out of developing it (e.g. MythTV.)
What I do not understand is freeloaders who complain that things do not work and, moreover, complain that nobody will take their "criticism." Somebody gave this software to you. For free. Feel free to offer your criticism. Maybe the developers will fix it, because maybe they are just nice people. Or, maybe the developers want to see more people using their software. On the other hand, maybe the developers don't see it as worthwhile to fix your problem. They gave you the software--now you are claiming it is their problem?
People are a bunch of crybabies. They expect people to give them things, for free, and then they expect them to fix them for free too! Well, grow up. So your ATI card does not work. You have several choices: use Windows MCE, since that works; fix MythTV yourself; pay someone to fix MythTV for you; or buy an NVidia or Intel card. It's just fine if you go use Windows! It's no problem for the Myth developer if you go use Windows! Use what works for you.
And, to the people who say "this attitude needs to change before there will be Linux on the desktop": so what. So developers who are doing something for free are supposed to start listening to crybabies who are mad because developers won't do exactly what the crybaby wants, for free? Ridiculous. Crybabies need to grow up. If they want software drawn up to their specifications, they will need to pay for it. Pay a Linux developer, or pay a Linux company (e.g. Red Hat) who will help you fix things, or go pay Apple for the proprietary software they have worked so hard to tweak. But stop whining that people will not do exactly what you want them to do, for free.
Oh, and if my message is an example of what is wrong with the "Linux community," then good. I don't really care about "getting Linux on the desktop," and users should go use Windows or Mac if those platforms are working for them.
kdawson does nothing positive for slashdot. He should be removed. His entries sound like the worst kind of hellraising politics.
Please, please mod this up. kdawson always, always posts absolute garbage. I didn't even look at Slashdot for months due to all the total garbage posted by kdawson. Now I have come back, and I have no idea why.
I understand users posting dumb comments, and I can even understand dumb comments getting modded up...but dumb summaries of total crap articles? I might as well read Digg for that. Maybe I'll start ignoring Slashdot for a few months again, or until they get rid of this absolute garbage that kdawson always posts.
We're loaded with dark fiber at the moment (laid during the DotCom bubble) that, if it were actually lit up, would give us more than enough capacity to be competitive on the world scene.
That dark fiber is not running to your house. Lighting some intercity cable isn't going to give you a speed boost.
I have fiber to the house with 100/10 service available.
What do you do with all that bandwidth? I'm just curious.
I'm happy with DSL. Something like 3 megabits down, 768 kbits up. Yes, the geeks will pillory me. But we watch streaming TV and movies, and it looks fine. I downloaded an Ubuntu ISO last night, which took awhile, but I don't need an instant ISO.
I just wonder what people do with all their high bandwidth. Without some benefit what's the point in paying for it?
/usr/share/doc/popularity-contest/FAQ points out that the popcon uses atimes to determine when software was last used (indeed, what could work for this other than atimes?) It won't report usage stats if/usr is mounted noatime. This could skew usage statistics quite a bit.
he CD is irrelevant, it just hods your hand through putting a username and password onto the DSL modem(something that the DSL modem's dinky browser based configuration interface also supports) and installs an RNDIS driver to allow you to use the DSL modem as a USB device.
OK, I do agree that the CD is configuring the router with the PPPOE login information.
But what is communicating with Verizon to establish the PPPOE account in the first place? Putting the login information into the router isn't going to magically establish the account with Verizon.
Maybe Verizon has already sent the login and password to the subscriber? I imagine she could call and get the info. But none of this would be apparent to a non-technical computer user. It probably wouldn't even be apparent to a proficient user who knows nothing about PPPOE.
Why is it a fight, or a battle? Both projects benefit from a great deal of volunteer labor, and they're not doing it primarily to beat someone else. Others use Gnome and KDE for commercial purposes but they, too, don't come at this from a zero-sum "fight" or "battle" perspective. Companies building stuff for gtk+ or Qt (or for GNOME or KDE) are doing it so that they can release useful applications, not so that they can beat the other GUI toolkit.
GNOME and KDE both existed because they both served different purposes. Just because people have different objectives doesn't make them people who "fight" or are in a "battle." If the two desktops still need to exist, then they will; if not, they will merge or one will fold, or one (or both) will change and adapt. Any change will be to the betterment of all, not because someone "fought" and "won".
Free software is about cooperation and practicality, and I just don't think this "fight" language that people like to employ when discussing free software really fits.
I have used both KDE and GNOME for extended periods (total, over a year for each) and I just can't claim to have a strong preference for either. I like how KDE is configurable, but sometimes it is too cluttered. I like that GNOME looks cleaner, but it can be irritating when I want to change something but can't. I like KDE's ioslaves, but GNOME also integrates things like ssh into Nautilus fairly well. GNOME's defaults are good; by default KDE 3.5 makes a bunch of irritating sound effects.
I have gone back and forth between them but have now settled on KDE just because I know how to make it do what I want, not because I have a strong preference. Before I used GNOME, not because I had a strong preference but because I used Ubuntu.
Overall it seems to me the two desktops are somewhat different so it is good to have them both. I don't know why folks like to swear one of them is "better" because, if it were better, it would be the only one in existence. Tools fall into disuse when there is an obviously superior alternative.
Since this is (was?) a place for programmers it would be more interesting if these wars talked about the differences of programming for KDE versus GNOME.
Slashdot Mirror
"the encyclopedia of everything that everyone can edit", and it pretty much was until a ruling clique formed!
I think they are trying to keep it from degenerating into a blog, or a chat space, or an encyclopedia of trivial things like the Star Wars universe. Some wikis, like Wookiepedia, started out because Wikipedia kept kicking out certain stuff, like exhaustive detail of the Star Wars universe.
This article makes the change in Wikipedia sound nefarious, like there is some elitist cabal that wants to accrue power. Sure that is true in part. But as the site has grown it is more important to keep things out than it is to add things. The alternative is that every article about a politician will include nasty, defamatory, and useless content and that vociferous fans of various fantasy genres and celebrities will take over all coverage of things related to their realms.
Wikipedia needs people who say "no", and if those people are a bunch of elitist editors, then fine.
Yes, thank you. Some of the other posts are talking about how powerful Word can be, but it is just awful. We use it at work to generate medium-sized documents (often around 100 single-spaced pages.) As far as I can tell, the people who actually set the documents up for distribution to the public (they aren't printed anymore, at least not by us) just take the Word documents that we work on, make a PDF, and post it to the Web site.
I've noticed all the bugs you point out and they drive me crazy. There are a couple others I can think of:
* collaboration features. Sometimes when using text boxes along with the comment boxes, the comment boxes pop up in the most bizarre places--nowhere near the text they are supposed to correspond to. Also, sometimes when using the "track changes" feature, some document editing features are stunted. Sometimes for example, pressing "Delete" while using track changes just does absolutely nothing. Move the cursor around, hit backspace, try again.
* References like footnotes can bounce around from one page to another. A footnote reference might be on one page, while the footnote text itself is on the next page. Then of course, my boss asks me to fix it! Sometimes I want to say that it is not my job to wrangle with the word processor.
I hit Word bugs literally each and every day. My first reaction is always "this program is way too expensive to be this buggy." For the big bucks that Word costs, it should be better. I don't think word processors are a great idea to begin with. I want to focus on what I am writing, not on formatting it. But maybe a word processor would be OK if it weren't the buggy mess that is Microsoft Word.
The intel atom cpu is 32 Bit. Shipping no 32 bit whatsoever would eliminate you from this very popular market.
Paul Thurott says Windows 7 will be the last 32-bit Windows although with the popularity of Atom I wonder if this will be true, even if the next Windows release takes another eight years.
that's quite a lot like the road fund licence or television licence in the UK which are both considered to be taxes even though they are not compulsory
There is a huge difference. The TV license and road fund license are levied by the British government. A Microsoft license fee is not levied by the government. In the UK if you want a TV, you must pay the license fee. If you want a computer, you do not have to pay Microsoft. It has NEVER been compulsory to pay Microsoft in order to own a computer. For example, Macs were sold even when MS did "CPU licensing." Today, you may buy a Mac or a PC without Windows on it.
Likening a MS license fee to a "tax" is not accurate now and was never, ever accurate in any possible sense. Using the ridiculous "MS tax" phrase makes those who use it look childish.
forced
Forced, forced. I keep seeing that word in this thread.
Forced? Was it a gun or a knife? Was the state forcing you to buy Windows?
No, no, and no. You had a choice. There are vendors offering pre-installed Linux. There are vendors selling bare PCs. You may buy parts and build your own PC.
Instead, you chose to buy a PC with Windows on it. And now you are complaining that you were "forced" to buy Windows. Just because the particular hardware you wanted had Windows on it does not mean you were "forced" to buy it. Just because the marketplace does not offer the exact choices you want does not mean you were "forced" to buy something. You may buy something else, or you may choose to buy nothing at all. Or, you may pay a few extra dollars for something that includes software that you do not intend on using. That does not mean you were "forced" to buy it.
What point is it that people hope to make when they do things like this? If you want to support preloaded Linux, why not buy preloaded Linux?
http://www.zareason.com/shop/home.php
If you want to get a PC with no OS at all, why not buy a used machine on eBay that has no OS? There are typically dozens listed. I built my own desktop. No OS. You can even buy a new PC with only a barebones OS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_n_Series
And the headline says something about a "Microsoft Tax." How ridiculous. Governments levy taxes. Software and hardware vendors that you do not like do not levy taxes, no matter how much you do not like the product. If you do not want Microsoft products, do not buy them.
If you are really just learning to "program," then practice alone first by working on a solo project. That's because working in a group requires lots of skills that aren't directly related to what is typically called "programming."
For instance, lots of open source projects are concerned with portability, meaning they need to use something like Automake and Autoconf. Working with these systems requires some knowledge, and although it is "programming" it's probably not what you had in mind. When you write something for yourself, all you have to know is that it works on your system.
Collaborating may also require that you use a version control system like SVN, CVS or git. These tools are not easy enough to learn in five minutes. They can be handy when working alone, but when working alone you don't have to mess with them.
1) The person who bought the game new gets some money back when he sells it used, thus giving him more money to go buy another new game.
2) People are more likely to buy a new game if they know they can sell it used when they get tired of it. If they know they will be stuck with it, they will be less likely to buy. In the aggregate, lower new prices would be necessary if there were no resales. (This might end up happening if all the draconian DRM makes the "purchase" into a true rental because the game can't be transferred and might fail to "activate" in the future. Such games would be worth less.)
I looked at the Clear Pass program. It's a waste of money as far as I can tell. Basically, as I understand it, you get to pay $200/yr for....wait for it.....a special line where you can go through the exact same security procedures as the other non clear pass lines.
Especially when most of the people who would be interested in Clear and who would pony up $200 for it are already flying first class, business class, or have some sort of "elite" frequent flyer status...meaning that they can already go to the special lane that jumps them to the front of the security line. When I first heard of Clear, I thought it would qualify you for a reduced amount of screening (maybe keep your shoes on?) When I heard that you get the same screening as everybody else, I knew there was no way it would last long because it's completely pointless.
Both scalpers and squatters add value.
Scalpers add value for ticket owners. If I own a ticket, and decide I don't want to go to the event anymore, I can sell it to a scalper. Without a scalper, I'd have to sell it myself. This ready secondary market benefits the ticket holder.
Scalpers also add value for ticket purchasers who are willing to pay the price. Assume the box office is selling tickets to an event for $35. But people are willing to pay $100 for the event. Scalpers allocate the tickets to those who are willing to pay $100 for the ticket. Then the $100 buyer need not wait in line all night and sleep in the rain to get a ticket. The scalper also benefits the person who decides to go to the event at the last minute, and is willing to pay the price. (All this of course comes at the expense of those who are willing to wait all night for the $35 ticket, but will not or cannot pay $100 for the ticket.)
Domain squatters are similar. They help allocate the good domains to those who are willing to pay for them. Just this weekend I heard of ancestry.com. I instantly knew what it was. That great name saved the business from having to build a brand. If it had been "avalea.com" instead, I would have said "what's that?" This domain should be allocated to someone who is willing to put the capital into building a good business with it.
Furthermore, nobody has ever suggested a good system that would eliminate squatters. You want registrars deciding who has a "legitimate" business and who is just squatting? Or do you want to just jack up the price of domains so squatting is economical--but then, registering domains becomes uneconomical for many individuals or small businesses? Besides, if you don't want to buy from a squatter, go get a made up word that nobody has registered. They are easy to find. But then you have to work harder to build a brand.
A few hundred to a few thousand dollars is nothing to pay if a person really wants to build a business. I fully support squatters and do not understand the hatred for them.
People say it's "nostalgia." I don't think so. Those old video games were simpler.
Controllers now are like Space Shuttle controllers or something. Too many buttons, too complicated. I must have given up on the modern console games around the time of Madden for the Nintendo 64. The N64 controller had a whole bunch of buttons (maybe 15?!) and Madden used them all. I could not keep them all straight.
Now these games try to be so realistic that all they end up doing is reminding you how pathetic you are that you are sitting in front of a TV, controlling these little virtual men, rather than going out in a field and tossing a ball or coaching some kids or something.
These high-end console games have just gotten too complicated. Some people have figured this out, though, and are cashing in:
* Wii. People on Slashdot love to make fun of it. I guess they're the same type of folks who thought iPod was lame compared to some junk from Creative Labs. But Wii is simple. You don't have to sit around for hours just learning how to work the thing.
* iPhone apps. Simple, simple games. Cheap to develop, they sell for cheap, and I heard a story about how a guy who wrote one of those things cashed in big. Similarly my girlfriend was sitting around for hours playing Brick Breaker on the BlackBerry.
* Online games. No I do not mean WoW kind of stuff. I mean Yahoo Games kind of stuff, like Text Twist. Simple games.
So really I would say that the old 2D games are still around. They are just a lot cheaper and more plentiful now. Now they are cell phones, iPhones, and Yahoo Games and the like. I am willing to bet that between Wii, iPhone apps, and simple online games, there is cumulatively much more time spent on simple games than on this hyped up console stuff that takes hours worth of training to get anywhere on.
A Slashdot fallacy I see all the time is conflating "gaming" with "several hundred dollar consoles" and "fifty-dollar games," which is why people say "there aren't any games on Linux." There are plenty of simple games on Linux, and there are plenty of old 2D style games still being played now. It's only a relative few people who are obsessed with these expensive, all-consuming games.
It's getting hard to buy a new machine that ISN'T 64 bit,
Netbook Atom chips are 32-bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Atom_microprocessors
There's a lot of life left in 32-bit.
How do you suggest Panera Bread handle it when their seats start getting filled-up by people using the Wi-Fi?
Indeed. I used to live near a Panera Bread. When I go out to eat, I want to consume my food in the restaurant, not take the food back home to eat it.
Most nights when I would pass Panera, all the seating was occupied by people using laptop computers. So I would go elsewhere to eat. It did not seem that the laptop users were consuming food, either. Maybe they get occasional drink refills.
I have a good idea of what the costs and limitations of Cable and DSL service,
So you are...considering getting something even more expensive, even slower, and with even tighter caps than the worse cable caps?
???
As one who frequents it...frequently...the Washington Post comment section really is a cesspit.
Agreed. The Post comments are a total waste of time to read. I have stopped looking at them.
Nearly always, the threads degenerate into a pile of worthless partisan, hate-filled garbage. No matter what the story is (war? Gun control? Floods? I mean, ANYTHING) the thread turns into "It's all Obama's fault" or "It's all Bush's fault" or "liberals suck" or "conservatives are evil" or "Bush is an idiot" or "Obama is a monkey." Other unmoderated comment threads, like on Politico, are similar. The posts have no thought whatsoever. It is all two-sentence nonsense. Since they are not threaded, you can't even see what the two sentences are retorting to.
This kind of crap is not worth reading. The author of this article thinks journalists need to take these comments seriously? So, where in the story is the journalist supposed to account for racist garbage directed at Obama, or mindless hatred for conservatives? And journalists are supposed to spend their time sifting through this garbage, rather than developing stories?
NYTimes comments are worth reading, for the same reason Slashdot comments can be worth reading: readers can catch total garbage in stories and call it out. NYTimes moderates the comments so they don't slide into utter garbage. Some of the Times bloggers respond to the comments.
I doubt anyone at the Washington Post reads the worthless vitriol that is in their pathetic comment threads.
Lots of these reviews for portables talk about power. I couldn't care less about power. I have a three-year-old Pentium M with 512 MB of RAM (shared with the graphics!) that was OVER-powered. All I used was the browser, some console apps, and occasionally a media player. I replaced the laptop, but only because the hinges were shot. I didn't even use half of the memory on the thing.
No, for me battery life is more important than power. "The biggest mistake Dell made with this system, by far, was the inclusion of Intel's GMA X4500HD GPU." Then there is a graph of FPS. I'll take battery life over FPS. (Unfortunately it looks like this Dell is good at neither of those.)
The reality, though, is that it is a barrier to entry, and therefore it is their problem.
Nope. The people who work on MythTV do it for free, on their own time. They do it because they get pleasure out of it, and because it works for them.
Most free software exists either because someone is making money off of it (e.g. Red Hat, IBM) or because someone gets pleasure out of developing it (e.g. MythTV.)
What I do not understand is freeloaders who complain that things do not work and, moreover, complain that nobody will take their "criticism." Somebody gave this software to you. For free. Feel free to offer your criticism. Maybe the developers will fix it, because maybe they are just nice people. Or, maybe the developers want to see more people using their software. On the other hand, maybe the developers don't see it as worthwhile to fix your problem. They gave you the software--now you are claiming it is their problem?
People are a bunch of crybabies. They expect people to give them things, for free, and then they expect them to fix them for free too! Well, grow up. So your ATI card does not work. You have several choices: use Windows MCE, since that works; fix MythTV yourself; pay someone to fix MythTV for you; or buy an NVidia or Intel card. It's just fine if you go use Windows! It's no problem for the Myth developer if you go use Windows! Use what works for you.
And, to the people who say "this attitude needs to change before there will be Linux on the desktop": so what. So developers who are doing something for free are supposed to start listening to crybabies who are mad because developers won't do exactly what the crybaby wants, for free? Ridiculous. Crybabies need to grow up. If they want software drawn up to their specifications, they will need to pay for it. Pay a Linux developer, or pay a Linux company (e.g. Red Hat) who will help you fix things, or go pay Apple for the proprietary software they have worked so hard to tweak. But stop whining that people will not do exactly what you want them to do, for free.
Oh, and if my message is an example of what is wrong with the "Linux community," then good. I don't really care about "getting Linux on the desktop," and users should go use Windows or Mac if those platforms are working for them.
Google for "windows directory encryption" would lead you to the answer anyway.
Indeed. It would be nice if this Ask Slashdot feature had truly interesting questions, rather than "I was too lazy to use a search engine" questions.
kdawson does nothing positive for slashdot. He should be removed. His entries sound like the worst kind of hellraising politics.
Please, please mod this up. kdawson always, always posts absolute garbage. I didn't even look at Slashdot for months due to all the total garbage posted by kdawson. Now I have come back, and I have no idea why.
I understand users posting dumb comments, and I can even understand dumb comments getting modded up...but dumb summaries of total crap articles? I might as well read Digg for that. Maybe I'll start ignoring Slashdot for a few months again, or until they get rid of this absolute garbage that kdawson always posts.
We're loaded with dark fiber at the moment (laid during the DotCom bubble) that, if it were actually lit up, would give us more than enough capacity to be competitive on the world scene.
That dark fiber is not running to your house. Lighting some intercity cable isn't going to give you a speed boost.
I have fiber to the house with 100/10 service available.
What do you do with all that bandwidth? I'm just curious.
I'm happy with DSL. Something like 3 megabits down, 768 kbits up. Yes, the geeks will pillory me. But we watch streaming TV and movies, and it looks fine. I downloaded an Ubuntu ISO last night, which took awhile, but I don't need an instant ISO.
I just wonder what people do with all their high bandwidth. Without some benefit what's the point in paying for it?
/usr/share/doc/popularity-contest/FAQ points out that the popcon uses atimes to determine when software was last used (indeed, what could work for this other than atimes?) It won't report usage stats if /usr is mounted noatime. This could skew usage statistics quite a bit.
he CD is irrelevant, it just hods your hand through putting a username and password onto the DSL modem(something that the DSL modem's dinky browser based configuration interface also supports) and installs an RNDIS driver to allow you to use the DSL modem as a USB device.
OK, I do agree that the CD is configuring the router with the PPPOE login information.
But what is communicating with Verizon to establish the PPPOE account in the first place? Putting the login information into the router isn't going to magically establish the account with Verizon.
Maybe Verizon has already sent the login and password to the subscriber? I imagine she could call and get the info. But none of this would be apparent to a non-technical computer user. It probably wouldn't even be apparent to a proficient user who knows nothing about PPPOE.
fight between Gnome and KDE
Why is it a fight, or a battle? Both projects benefit from a great deal of volunteer labor, and they're not doing it primarily to beat someone else. Others use Gnome and KDE for commercial purposes but they, too, don't come at this from a zero-sum "fight" or "battle" perspective. Companies building stuff for gtk+ or Qt (or for GNOME or KDE) are doing it so that they can release useful applications, not so that they can beat the other GUI toolkit.
GNOME and KDE both existed because they both served different purposes. Just because people have different objectives doesn't make them people who "fight" or are in a "battle." If the two desktops still need to exist, then they will; if not, they will merge or one will fold, or one (or both) will change and adapt. Any change will be to the betterment of all, not because someone "fought" and "won".
Free software is about cooperation and practicality, and I just don't think this "fight" language that people like to employ when discussing free software really fits.
I have used both KDE and GNOME for extended periods (total, over a year for each) and I just can't claim to have a strong preference for either. I like how KDE is configurable, but sometimes it is too cluttered. I like that GNOME looks cleaner, but it can be irritating when I want to change something but can't. I like KDE's ioslaves, but GNOME also integrates things like ssh into Nautilus fairly well. GNOME's defaults are good; by default KDE 3.5 makes a bunch of irritating sound effects.
I have gone back and forth between them but have now settled on KDE just because I know how to make it do what I want, not because I have a strong preference. Before I used GNOME, not because I had a strong preference but because I used Ubuntu.
Overall it seems to me the two desktops are somewhat different so it is good to have them both. I don't know why folks like to swear one of them is "better" because, if it were better, it would be the only one in existence. Tools fall into disuse when there is an obviously superior alternative.
Since this is (was?) a place for programmers it would be more interesting if these wars talked about the differences of programming for KDE versus GNOME.