It's possible interest in UDI went down with the Itanic (following your submerged theme). Since the Xeon and Core 2 (and other x86 derivatives) are by and large fairly low-margin products, it's no surprise that vendors have shown little interest in supporting such an effort.
However, with Microsoft's gradually losing market share -- even if it's a slight loss now, I expect it to grow exponentially when Vista hits the streets and Microsoft moves increasingly to the software-by-subscription model -- it is in vendors' best interest to support Linux. Preferably, by open sourcing drivers, but worst case, they can at least document the interface for open source developers.
After all, how much is really revealed by Intel saying "bit 4 at register 0xfe72 will enable US frequencies" or by ATI saying "to change channels up by one in the All-in-Wonder x872072, place value 0x01 in register c7347"
I mean, really! What *BLEEPING* competitive advantage is lost to AMD or to Nvidia (respectively) by publishing this information?
If you can't figure it out, let me tell you: None Whatsoever. Especially since their competitors already have Softice (or equivalents) in-house, huge engineering staffs where they can afford to cleanly reverse engineer their products, and electron microsopes which they can use to reverse engineer the circuitry itself. The ONLY ones they are ultimately hurting is themselves as their bedbuddies at Microsoft gradually alienate customers more and more and they seek Linux or BSD or OSX to escape the vendor lock situation.
Isn't it better for the thing to fire off the warning notification sound and to flash the taskbutton in the taskbar(|dock|dashboard|etc) rather than interrupt you mid-click as you're submitting that comment to slashdot, or hitting send on an email? I HATE it when applications forcefully take focus (or at least don't have an option to disable taking focus) when I have multiple applications open.
Well it's the same for me. For 99% of business needs, I run Linux. For playtime, nothing compares to Windows, given tuner compatibility, video driver optimization, and of course games availability.
However for my new home system, while I will have Windows installed out of sheer necessity (1% of my business needs), I will probably not boot it often; I disagree with the Microsoft EULA and I disagree with Activation (they MUST implement a De-activate feature for license transfers. Adobe is the ONLY major software company which implemented activation correctly). I can live without video games. On my current personal system I run Windows 98, for the SOLE reason of TV tuner capability (the card I have in that system will never be supported by Linux. Thanks for the support, ATI).
I find computers fun, but mainly as far as the way a stereo or a television is fun; it allows me to access the media I want to access.
Do I find tinkering with systems fun? Oh sure, but when you come down to it, when I'm at work and have to work on a system, or when a big client calls me at home at 6:30am because it's crunch time and one of their interns clicked the "free game" link on Joe H@xx0r's MySpace page and infected CAD workstations with spyware, making the workstations unusably slow, well, it's work.
Another problem, and I think this is the biggest one, is the lack of national pride in the U.S. If the country you live in is say no more important to you then $200 off a plasma TV at Wal-Mart, what are you to care if jobs go overseas? I'm just saying that economically speaking, there is no added value in the tag "made in U.S.A." anymore since it is no longer associated with quality or pride with the average consumer.
Aside from commodity personal hygiene and agricultural products, is there anything Made In USA any more?
"American" Cars? Made in Mexico or Canada, or "assembled in USA" (from parts made in Taiwan). If you want to buy a made-by-Americans carm buy a Toyota (no joke) Televisions? Are ANY CRTs or LCDs or Plasma screens manufactured here? Personal Computers? Not since Commodore got killed off. Oh sure, there are computers "assembled" here, but from parts made in either the orient or the Middle East. RAM? Japan killed off American chip manufacturers when they were "dumping" here in the '80s and early '90s CPUs? Middle east or the orient Hard drives? China or maybe Taiwan. Video cards? China or Canada (I'd buy made-in-Canada ATI if only ATI weren't so darn evil when it came to Linux support and customer service) Clothes? Oh sure, SOME clothes are made here, but do you really want to be seen wearing american-made jeans? What IS made here doesn't look very good. Durable goods like kitchen appliances? Some are made here, but few and far between. Furniture? Only high-ticket items. Affordable future is made - you guessed it - China or the poorer European countries.
Stereo equipment? Good stuff made in Japan or Taiwan. Sprawl*Mart crap, in Korea, China, and other poor Asian countries. Only VERY high end stuff is made here, and it's not very affordable. Given a choice between a $5,000 power amp + $3,000 preamp + $1,000 tuner vs. a $2100 Pioneer Elite receiver, I went with the Pioneer. I'd LOVE to buy components, but I have other things to spend money on. The Elite is "good enough" and there isn't any American alternative in that pricerange that I can think of.
I'd LIKE to buy Made In USA, but it's not easy to. I don't even check to see where items are made any more because 99% of the time there won't be a Made in USA option ANYHOW. Pretty sad, huh?
Is this going to be 50-state legal or is there going to be a separate model for Kalifornia and Taxachusetts? I don't want to break the law just to power a PDA.;)
22,050hz to be exact, although during the mastering process engineers will roll off the highs gradually starting somewhere between 18khz and 20khz to avoid the "harsh" cutoff that some people (who haven't destroyed their hearing with headphones) will be able to hear.
Good turntables do not introduce much rumble at all. $50 turntables did.
Usually when you buy a CD of something you had on vinyl, the CD is taken from the original master.
That is true now; it wasn't true in the mid-80s when CDs were still fairly new; the original CDs were sometimes mastered either with the phono EQ curve, and had a very "harsh" sound ("brighter" doesn't describe some early CDs, they were downright jarring) relative to the vinyl or cassette releases.
No it's not the "fucking HTML Standard"; it's a test to ensure that browsers implement it correctly, and implement proper error handling while they're at it.
It's funny how MSIE fanatics love to point out that Acid2 contains broken code; that is part of the test. If your browser is fairly compliant, it will render the face. Opera, Safari, and Konqueror all successfully pass the test. Firefox and MSIE both fail; in MSIE's case, the failure is catastrophic in that is displays a jumbled mess, but Firefox's rendering of it is not far off from passing.
Why any mention of using Acid2 as a quick acid test draws out the MSIE fanatics and trolls is quite beyond me. The fact of the matter is that MSIE is extremely broken, Firefox is somewhat broken, and coding complex standards-compliant layouts that work seamlessly in all browsers without resorting to hacks is near impossible, and implementing browser-specific hacks to make MSIE behave while achieving the look one wants is often very time consuming.
I feel bad for the honest engineers who work there, but I hope that Groklaw. etc. keep covering the story as indictments against Darl and his cronies are filed. This will be most amusimg to watch. Especially since very soon he will not be able to afford his personal bodyguards since I'm convinced that both Novell and IBM will be able to pierce the corporate veil by proving willful negligence and intent to deceive.
Caldera (the new SCO, what we now know as SCO) was once a great company (opened up DR Dos, offered Caldera Linux, an excellent distribution of the time, etc.) who claimed that OSes should be opened up for the purpose of interoperability and fair competition, but look at what has happened ever since Darl got involved.
Pop some popcorn folks, this is going to be fun to watch.
4. All of these reasons roll together nicely into one package - and nobody will sincerely mention that this is a tragedy, and people were needlessly killed. See items 1 - 3.
Sorry, but the defendant doesn't have to give a crap about the folks who were killed. They were not the ones responsible for or affected by the deaths, aside from this idiotic lawsuit. Yeah, it was a tragedy, but the fault lies in the hands of a 14-yr-old monster and that cretin's shitty, negligent, enabling parents.
Yeah right. I'm sure that it is the fault of a videogame maker rather than crappy parents. No, it couldn't possibly be due to poor parenting skills, especially considering that millions of other people play violent videogames every day and don't pull that crap.
Somehow I doubt Burt Rutan or Mike Melville would take the name "bobs666" especially considering how professional their posts to aviation mailing lists have been over the years.
I run Linux and I want an extremely fast card. What benefits gamers benefits folks who work with graphics, multimedia, and 3D apps. On my new system I'm going 7600 GT - phenomenal performance for its price point (I draw the line for video cards at $200, or $300 for a video card with integrated tuner). Since I want to learn Blender, 3D performance is extremely important to me.
More so now, in fact, since the advent of xgl. Since OpenGL acceleration is going to be used for conventional 2D operations, and 2D optimization is going the way of the dodo on pretty much every platform, give me an ultra-fast 3D video chipset regardless of whether I'm on a home machine, workstation at the office, or a laptop.
The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe (or was that Dec 2005? Can't remember)
Clerks II
However I've bought at least 50 movies on DVD so far this year. I've only had time to watch about half of them.
Why go to the theater to see an out-of-focus movie with sound quality that cannot match my component system at home while jackasses chat on their cellphones? Sure, I have a standard-definition television, but since the projectionist can rarely focus the projector worth a damn at the theater, there is very little that I have any interest to go to the theater to see.
Try focusing the projector and actually throwing out the noisy jerks then I might pay #12.00 to see more movies in the theater. Instead, I'll wait five months for the DVD to be released, then chances are I'll be able to OWN it and watch in the comfort of my own home on a kickass stereo for the same price. Oh, and noisy patrons? Not a problem at home. Sure, I've got the equivalent of 480i at home, but at least my television is focused sharply and the picture won't be scratched to hell from mishandling.
I don't buy CDs any more (not many anyway) for a similar reason that I'm punting Windows from my personal systems and my place of business:
I disagree with the RIAA's practices, both how they treat the consumer and how they treat their own artists. I don't mind the $12.00 to $17.00 price per CD, and if something really good comes out (such as On An Island I'll buy it. Otherwise, I avoid listening to pop stations. I listen mainly to classical, classic rock, and talk radio stations. Why? Because if I avoid exposing myself to new material, I won't know what is out there. If I don't know what's out there, I won't be tempted to buy, beg, borrow, or steal the music. FUCK THE RIAA. I am not your customer. I was buying CDs like mad during the reign of Napster. Why? Because I was randomly downloading lots of tracks, listening to it, thinking "I like this" then going out to buy it. No more. Ever since you killed off Napster and started suing your own customers, I QUIT buying CDs. Oh wait, I take that back - I did buy a CD last month - from an independent band. I previously had ALL of their music for free (pre-mastered tracks, some unmixed instrumental-only tracks, and so forth) but I insisted on paying for the final CD like everyone else. They put a lot of work into the production and they deserve to be paid for their work.
I bought a lot of CDs while Napster was at its peak, due DIRECTLY to p2p file sharing. I discovered some current pop I wasn't hearing on local stations, I discovered I actually not only do not hate Jazz, but actually LIKE it (bought Tijuana Brass' Whipped Cream and Other Delights). During that time (12 to 18 months) I bought MORE CDS than I bought in the previous 13 years I owned CD players. I was buying on average a CD every day to every other day during that time.
Now, when it comes to movies: the MPAA hasn't been quite so evil. I've been buying anywhere from 5 to 15 DVDs a month - sometimes more. I download movies on occasion - such as THX1138 a few months ago. I do that when I catch bits and pieces of a movie on cable and it's not rescheduled again in the near future, and think I might be interested in owning it. So I download, watch a bit of it, and if I like it, I buy it. That was the case with THX1138 - I saw small clips of it on cable, but it wasn't being run for a long time so I downloaded it, watched maybe half of it, then went out and bought it a few days later. The MPAA member lost NOTHING due to that download - in fact they made a sale as a direct result of the existence of thepiratebay. Now, when the MPAA starts behaving more like the RIAA and becomes more aggressive, I will simply stop buying DVDs. Instead, I will exercise fair use and simply timeshift off of cable. If I miss a movie and catch it partway through, I'll wait for it to come back into Skinemax', HBOs's, showtimes, etc. rotations and timeshift it then. Until then, I try before I buy on occasion and I spend a lot of money on movies. This month I think I bought maybe five DVDs - last month I bought nearly 20. Next month I'll probably buy 8 or 9 DVDs.
RIAA, these are my entertainment dollars speaking. Instead of splitting up my budget between movies and music (I love good music. I paid a lot of money for a very high-end receiver and speakers so I can hear all the details in the music) I'm spending all of my home entertainment media budget on movies. I do realize your members get a small piece of that due to soundtrack royalties, etc. but it in no way matches what you would be receiving were I to go back to buying CDs. You have alienated me, and the only way for your members to win me back is:
1. Forget about DRM 2. Acknowledge FAIR USE 3. Acknowledge that when I buy a CD. I OWN IT, including the CONTENT. I am simply barred from infringing on copyright law (FAIR USE exceptions aside) by distributing it (again, aside from FAIR USE exclusions) 4. STOP TREATING PAYING CUSTOMERS LIKE CRIMINALS (See point #1, above). 5. To the point: Stop being assholes. Treat your customers like customers.
Yes, Linux can usually be fixed, but if the "fix" involves running vi in a console then it's not really an option for Joe Public.
I agree with that. This is why editors such as pico, nano, etc. exist and is why howtos for novices should reference "how do I edit files" and cover those user-friendly editors.
- SuSE 9.1 or later
- Mandriva (formerly Mandrake)
- Linspire
FWIW, it's not a single CD. It's either several CDs or a single DVD, but yes, it is doable. Boot off the DVD, follow the install wizard, you now have a dual-boot (depending on distro your NTFS partition can be resized automagically), and you have to reboot only once during the process, unlike Windows' cryptic install screens, wiping out your MBR to prevent other OSes from loading, and having to reboot 4,281 times during the install process.
Also when I log on the first time to KDE in my SUSE I get a shitload of screens that popup. (Well, two or so)
If you classify two as a "shitload" then you're right, and NO graphical operating environment will please you.
Linux needs to be made more user-friendly for people to use. Now that it's there with KDE and Gnome people bitch about it because they have to uncheck a "show this screen at every startup" on initial login, just like Windows and other consumer-targeted operating systems?
It's not a huge inconvenience. It's not as though those screens CANNOT be disabled, and it's not as though the startup sound CANNOT be disabled or changed, unlike certain other operating systems.
. Note to studios: please hire someone with at least the education of a 12 year old to make sure that a discusssion is SOMEWHAT reasonable.
If they were to do that you'd see "ZOMG! LOGIN SUCCESSFUL! U R0XX0RZ!!!" and the GUI would feature the most gaudy, hideous theme ever. Think of it as "OMG Ponies!!!" cubed.
It'd be even more insulting to viewers' intelligence.
I watched Hackers (om cable). I wasn't expecting it to be realistic in any sense of the word, but it was enjoyable to watch in the "Oh my god this movie sucks" way, much like Starship Troopers and Battlefield Earth are. The Net was slightly better, but only very slightly. The redeeming quality of those movies is that you can't decide whether to hang yourself out of remorse for watching such a stupid flick, enjoy the whimsy of some writer's alternate universe and sit there fascinated at the effects of LSD on movie writing, or to lampoon it MST3K style with your friends.
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It's possible interest in UDI went down with the Itanic (following your submerged theme). Since the Xeon and Core 2 (and other x86 derivatives) are by and large fairly low-margin products, it's no surprise that vendors have shown little interest in supporting such an effort.
However, with Microsoft's gradually losing market share -- even if it's a slight loss now, I expect it to grow exponentially when Vista hits the streets and Microsoft moves increasingly to the software-by-subscription model -- it is in vendors' best interest to support Linux. Preferably, by open sourcing drivers, but worst case, they can at least document the interface for open source developers.
After all, how much is really revealed by Intel saying "bit 4 at register 0xfe72 will enable US frequencies" or by ATI saying "to change channels up by one in the All-in-Wonder x872072, place value 0x01 in register c7347"
I mean, really! What *BLEEPING* competitive advantage is lost to AMD or to Nvidia (respectively) by publishing this information?
If you can't figure it out, let me tell you: None Whatsoever. Especially since their competitors already have Softice (or equivalents) in-house, huge engineering staffs where they can afford to cleanly reverse engineer their products, and electron microsopes which they can use to reverse engineer the circuitry itself. The ONLY ones they are ultimately hurting is themselves as their bedbuddies at Microsoft gradually alienate customers more and more and they seek Linux or BSD or OSX to escape the vendor lock situation.
Isn't it better for the thing to fire off the warning notification sound and to flash the taskbutton in the taskbar(|dock|dashboard|etc) rather than interrupt you mid-click as you're submitting that comment to slashdot, or hitting send on an email? I HATE it when applications forcefully take focus (or at least don't have an option to disable taking focus) when I have multiple applications open.
Well it's the same for me. For 99% of business needs, I run Linux. For playtime, nothing compares to Windows, given tuner compatibility, video driver optimization, and of course games availability.
However for my new home system, while I will have Windows installed out of sheer necessity (1% of my business needs), I will probably not boot it often; I disagree with the Microsoft EULA and I disagree with Activation (they MUST implement a De-activate feature for license transfers. Adobe is the ONLY major software company which implemented activation correctly). I can live without video games. On my current personal system I run Windows 98, for the SOLE reason of TV tuner capability (the card I have in that system will never be supported by Linux. Thanks for the support, ATI).
I find computers fun, but mainly as far as the way a stereo or a television is fun; it allows me to access the media I want to access.
Do I find tinkering with systems fun? Oh sure, but when you come down to it, when I'm at work and have to work on a system, or when a big client calls me at home at 6:30am because it's crunch time and one of their interns clicked the "free game" link on Joe H@xx0r's MySpace page and infected CAD workstations with spyware, making the workstations unusably slow, well, it's work.
Aside from commodity personal hygiene and agricultural products, is there anything Made In USA any more?
"American" Cars? Made in Mexico or Canada, or "assembled in USA" (from parts made in Taiwan). If you want to buy a made-by-Americans carm buy a Toyota (no joke)
Televisions? Are ANY CRTs or LCDs or Plasma screens manufactured here?
Personal Computers? Not since Commodore got killed off. Oh sure, there are computers "assembled" here, but from parts made in either the orient or the Middle East.
RAM? Japan killed off American chip manufacturers when they were "dumping" here in the '80s and early '90s
CPUs? Middle east or the orient
Hard drives? China or maybe Taiwan.
Video cards? China or Canada (I'd buy made-in-Canada ATI if only ATI weren't so darn evil when it came to Linux support and customer service)
Clothes? Oh sure, SOME clothes are made here, but do you really want to be seen wearing american-made jeans? What IS made here doesn't look very good.
Durable goods like kitchen appliances? Some are made here, but few and far between.
Furniture? Only high-ticket items. Affordable future is made - you guessed it - China or the poorer European countries.
Stereo equipment? Good stuff made in Japan or Taiwan. Sprawl*Mart crap, in Korea, China, and other poor Asian countries. Only VERY high end stuff is made here, and it's not very affordable. Given a choice between a $5,000 power amp + $3,000 preamp + $1,000 tuner vs. a $2100 Pioneer Elite receiver, I went with the Pioneer. I'd LOVE to buy components, but I have other things to spend money on. The Elite is "good enough" and there isn't any American alternative in that pricerange that I can think of.
I'd LIKE to buy Made In USA, but it's not easy to. I don't even check to see where items are made any more because 99% of the time there won't be a Made in USA option ANYHOW. Pretty sad, huh?
Gee, why is our economy heading for a disaster?
Is this going to be 50-state legal or is there going to be a separate model for Kalifornia and Taxachusetts? I don't want to break the law just to power a PDA. ;)
22,050hz to be exact, although during the mastering process engineers will roll off the highs gradually starting somewhere between 18khz and 20khz to avoid the "harsh" cutoff that some people (who haven't destroyed their hearing with headphones) will be able to hear.
That is true now; it wasn't true in the mid-80s when CDs were still fairly new; the original CDs were sometimes mastered either with the phono EQ curve, and had a very "harsh" sound ("brighter" doesn't describe some early CDs, they were downright jarring) relative to the vinyl or cassette releases.
No it's not the "fucking HTML Standard"; it's a test to ensure that browsers implement it correctly, and implement proper error handling while they're at it.
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/guide/
It's funny how MSIE fanatics love to point out that Acid2 contains broken code; that is part of the test. If your browser is fairly compliant, it will render the face. Opera, Safari, and Konqueror all successfully pass the test. Firefox and MSIE both fail; in MSIE's case, the failure is catastrophic in that is displays a jumbled mess, but Firefox's rendering of it is not far off from passing.
Why any mention of using Acid2 as a quick acid test draws out the MSIE fanatics and trolls is quite beyond me. The fact of the matter is that MSIE is extremely broken, Firefox is somewhat broken, and coding complex standards-compliant layouts that work seamlessly in all browsers without resorting to hacks is near impossible, and implementing browser-specific hacks to make MSIE behave while achieving the look one wants is often very time consuming.
I feel bad for the honest engineers who work there, but I hope that Groklaw. etc. keep covering the story as indictments against Darl and his cronies are filed. This will be most amusimg to watch. Especially since very soon he will not be able to afford his personal bodyguards since I'm convinced that both Novell and IBM will be able to pierce the corporate veil by proving willful negligence and intent to deceive.
Caldera (the new SCO, what we now know as SCO) was once a great company (opened up DR Dos, offered Caldera Linux, an excellent distribution of the time, etc.) who claimed that OSes should be opened up for the purpose of interoperability and fair competition, but look at what has happened ever since Darl got involved.
Pop some popcorn folks, this is going to be fun to watch.
Sorry, but the defendant doesn't have to give a crap about the folks who were killed. They were not the ones responsible for or affected by the deaths, aside from this idiotic lawsuit. Yeah, it was a tragedy, but the fault lies in the hands of a 14-yr-old monster and that cretin's shitty, negligent, enabling parents.
Yeah right. I'm sure that it is the fault of a videogame maker rather than crappy parents. No, it couldn't possibly be due to poor parenting skills, especially considering that millions of other people play violent videogames every day and don't pull that crap.
Whitebox != crappy unless you're using Bill & Ted's cheap motherboard of the week.
Don't give HP any ideas. It's bad enough that the implement expiration dates.
Somehow I doubt Burt Rutan or Mike Melville would take the name "bobs666" especially considering how professional their posts to aviation mailing lists have been over the years.
I run Linux and I want an extremely fast card. What benefits gamers benefits folks who work with graphics, multimedia, and 3D apps. On my new system I'm going 7600 GT - phenomenal performance for its price point (I draw the line for video cards at $200, or $300 for a video card with integrated tuner). Since I want to learn Blender, 3D performance is extremely important to me.
More so now, in fact, since the advent of xgl. Since OpenGL acceleration is going to be used for conventional 2D operations, and 2D optimization is going the way of the dodo on pretty much every platform, give me an ultra-fast 3D video chipset regardless of whether I'm on a home machine, workstation at the office, or a laptop.
Movies I've paid to see this year:
The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe (or was that Dec 2005? Can't remember)
Clerks II
However I've bought at least 50 movies on DVD so far this year. I've only had time to watch about half of them.
Why go to the theater to see an out-of-focus movie with sound quality that cannot match my component system at home while jackasses chat on their cellphones? Sure, I have a standard-definition television, but since the projectionist can rarely focus the projector worth a damn at the theater, there is very little that I have any interest to go to the theater to see.
Try focusing the projector and actually throwing out the noisy jerks then I might pay #12.00 to see more movies in the theater. Instead, I'll wait five months for the DVD to be released, then chances are I'll be able to OWN it and watch in the comfort of my own home on a kickass stereo for the same price. Oh, and noisy patrons? Not a problem at home. Sure, I've got the equivalent of 480i at home, but at least my television is focused sharply and the picture won't be scratched to hell from mishandling.
I don't buy CDs any more (not many anyway) for a similar reason that I'm punting Windows from my personal systems and my place of business:
I disagree with the RIAA's practices, both how they treat the consumer and how they treat their own artists. I don't mind the $12.00 to $17.00 price per CD, and if something really good comes out (such as On An Island I'll buy it. Otherwise, I avoid listening to pop stations. I listen mainly to classical, classic rock, and talk radio stations. Why? Because if I avoid exposing myself to new material, I won't know what is out there. If I don't know what's out there, I won't be tempted to buy, beg, borrow, or steal the music. FUCK THE RIAA. I am not your customer. I was buying CDs like mad during the reign of Napster. Why? Because I was randomly downloading lots of tracks, listening to it, thinking "I like this" then going out to buy it. No more. Ever since you killed off Napster and started suing your own customers, I QUIT buying CDs. Oh wait, I take that back - I did buy a CD last month - from an independent band. I previously had ALL of their music for free (pre-mastered tracks, some unmixed instrumental-only tracks, and so forth) but I insisted on paying for the final CD like everyone else. They put a lot of work into the production and they deserve to be paid for their work.
I bought a lot of CDs while Napster was at its peak, due DIRECTLY to p2p file sharing. I discovered some current pop I wasn't hearing on local stations, I discovered I actually not only do not hate Jazz, but actually LIKE it (bought Tijuana Brass' Whipped Cream and Other Delights). During that time (12 to 18 months) I bought MORE CDS than I bought in the previous 13 years I owned CD players. I was buying on average a CD every day to every other day during that time.
Now, when it comes to movies: the MPAA hasn't been quite so evil. I've been buying anywhere from 5 to 15 DVDs a month - sometimes more. I download movies on occasion - such as THX1138 a few months ago. I do that when I catch bits and pieces of a movie on cable and it's not rescheduled again in the near future, and think I might be interested in owning it. So I download, watch a bit of it, and if I like it, I buy it. That was the case with THX1138 - I saw small clips of it on cable, but it wasn't being run for a long time so I downloaded it, watched maybe half of it, then went out and bought it a few days later. The MPAA member lost NOTHING due to that download - in fact they made a sale as a direct result of the existence of thepiratebay. Now, when the MPAA starts behaving more like the RIAA and becomes more aggressive, I will simply stop buying DVDs. Instead, I will exercise fair use and simply timeshift off of cable. If I miss a movie and catch it partway through, I'll wait for it to come back into Skinemax', HBOs's, showtimes, etc. rotations and timeshift it then. Until then, I try before I buy on occasion and I spend a lot of money on movies. This month I think I bought maybe five DVDs - last month I bought nearly 20. Next month I'll probably buy 8 or 9 DVDs.
RIAA, these are my entertainment dollars speaking. Instead of splitting up my budget between movies and music (I love good music. I paid a lot of money for a very high-end receiver and speakers so I can hear all the details in the music) I'm spending all of my home entertainment media budget on movies. I do realize your members get a small piece of that due to soundtrack royalties, etc. but it in no way matches what you would be receiving were I to go back to buying CDs. You have alienated me, and the only way for your members to win me back is:
1. Forget about DRM
2. Acknowledge FAIR USE
3. Acknowledge that when I buy a CD. I OWN IT, including the CONTENT. I am simply barred from infringing on copyright law (FAIR USE exceptions aside) by distributing it (again, aside from FAIR USE exclusions)
4. STOP TREATING PAYING CUSTOMERS LIKE CRIMINALS (See point #1, above).
5. To the point: Stop being assholes. Treat your customers like customers.
No, it's not prone to corruption. Just rampant growth and fragmentation. No big deal. Really. ;)
FWIW, I run kcalc on Linux all the time, even often when I have multiple OOo Calc windows open.
Don't knock simple single-purpose utilities.
hyperbole /-list/ noun
Pronunciation: hI-'p&r-b&-(")lE
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from Greek hyperbolE excess, hyperbole, hyperbola, from hyperballein to exceed, from hyper- + ballein to throw -- more at DEVIL
: extravagant exaggeration (as "mile-high ice-cream cones")
- hyperbolist
(HTH)
I agree with that. This is why editors such as pico, nano, etc. exist and is why howtos for novices should reference "how do I edit files" and cover those user-friendly editors.
You haven't seen:
- SuSE 9.1 or later
- Mandriva (formerly Mandrake)
- Linspire
FWIW, it's not a single CD. It's either several CDs or a single DVD, but yes, it is doable. Boot off the DVD, follow the install wizard, you now have a dual-boot (depending on distro your NTFS partition can be resized automagically), and you have to reboot only once during the process, unlike Windows' cryptic install screens, wiping out your MBR to prevent other OSes from loading, and having to reboot 4,281 times during the install process.
I would have to guess that the virus was written in Java for seamless cross-platform compatibility.
If you classify two as a "shitload" then you're right, and NO graphical operating environment will please you.
Linux needs to be made more user-friendly for people to use. Now that it's there with KDE and Gnome people bitch about it because they have to uncheck a "show this screen at every startup" on initial login, just like Windows and other consumer-targeted operating systems?
It's not a huge inconvenience. It's not as though those screens CANNOT be disabled, and it's not as though the startup sound CANNOT be disabled or changed, unlike certain other operating systems.
If they were to do that you'd see "ZOMG! LOGIN SUCCESSFUL! U R0XX0RZ!!!" and the GUI would feature the most gaudy, hideous theme ever. Think of it as "OMG Ponies!!!" cubed.
It'd be even more insulting to viewers' intelligence.
I watched Hackers (om cable). I wasn't expecting it to be realistic in any sense of the word, but it was enjoyable to watch in the "Oh my god this movie sucks" way, much like Starship Troopers and Battlefield Earth are. The Net was slightly better, but only very slightly. The redeeming quality of those movies is that you can't decide whether to hang yourself out of remorse for watching such a stupid flick, enjoy the whimsy of some writer's alternate universe and sit there fascinated at the effects of LSD on movie writing, or to lampoon it MST3K style with your friends.