I know you meant that as an off-colour pun, but seriously, the current administration appears hell-bent on eliminating liberty as our parents' generation knew it.
"uncrackable within the nearest 1000 years, even by governments"
That may be true when the work is done by contractors who want to milk every possible last cent from taxpayers, but not true of a community of engineers and geeks who are determined to crack the encryption (be it DRM or other purpose) using a massive P2P shared computing network. Besides, those "time to crack" estimates are a) fiction b) resume that the correct result will be the final possible permutation and not the first or somewhere between and c) presume a single computer plugging away at it using brute-force methods
1. It's implied 2. The Constitution Itself states that our rights are not limited to what are expressly stated in the document
Today's government seems to have flipped the coin and reversed it despite the document's self-stated intent: officials seem to believe our only rights are the ones which are enumerated, and all other things are disallowed.
I do. Government should only build roads, protect borders, and keep order by punishing evildoers. And by evildoers, By "evildoers" don't mean those who disagree with whoever the president is, or who is a communist, or who is a liberal or who is a conservative. By evildoers I mean burglars, murderers, crooks, etc.
. The republican party has a sure fire button to push with their electorate who are much more alarmed with homosexual "rights" then the size of the govt.
Marriage? Government should NOT have ANY say in marriage. If two men want to marry, and it's immoral, if there is a God, let "God" worry about punishing them for immorality. It's not up to us to force morality on everyone else. My view used to be different on this matter, but I've thought about it a great deal; and realize that Marriage is a religious concept. Government has no business in dictating religion, be it the judicial branch, the legislative branch, or the executive branch.
Want a moral society? Create one by being a good example lighting the way. Don't FORCE it on people. I will no longer vote for morality, but for small restrained government with limited spending and limited reach into private lives. Let they who dc "evil" (in "God's" eyes) do evil, and let they who do good, do good. If you want "morality" set an example by being a good example. Right now many "Christians" are good examples of bad examples, and no wonder many people hate Christians. Me? I've become cynical thanks to Bush's policies encroaching on our "inalienable" Constitutional rights.
I resent my tax dollars being extorted for me to subsidize people who don't want to work.
Now, there are people who can't work - but I can't give to them because Uncle Sam (and by uncle sam I mean ALl taxes combined, between Federal, State, excise, and sales taxes) already takes abnout half my pay by the time all taxes/fees/etc. are added up.
Social security should be eliminated. Why should we be forced to put more money into a retirement system than we will ever get back? Replace it with more proective tax benefits on 401(K) and other individual, private retirement plans. Or, let people squander their money if they choose; it's their choice.
If taxes are more resonable
Also our tax system is set up to benefit those who use the most resources. Why should I, a single woman with no kids, have to subsidize large families who get a tax break for every child they can make? They should pay MORE in taxes because they use FAR more resources. They should pay more property taxes.
and the war with iran (yes I said iran).
That won't happen under the Bush administration, or is at least very unlikely - even he has to realize that the military is stretched so thin that we could not win a war in Iran, and furthermore, invading Iran will only provoke the entire Arab world into attacking Israel, which will in turn initiate a world war. He can't possibly be so blind as to think that we could possibly win. Also, with most of our manufacturing base gone, if WWIII were to break out, we would see imports cease due to sanctions and ourselves in a war that cannot possibly be won. He has already alienated much of NATO so our allies cannot be counted on to come to our aid.
This is SOOO untrue. Linux is only as fat as you can make it.
Every time I see someone complaining "Linux is slow" or "Distribution Foo is bloated" I remind them that their system is bloated because they CHOSE to install unnecessary services (You're running MySQL, PostgreSQL, PostFix, Apache, Subversion, DHCPD, BIND. and everything else available in the distro? You have Composite enabled with KDE with ALL eye candy turned on and every SuperKaramba theme you could get your hands on? You're running a non-SMP kernel on that shiny dual core processor?
Let me tell you something: I still run dual Celeries and dual Pentium II Xeons at my office - and they're going to be wiped soon and be reinstalled with bare KDE installations for use as CSR workstations, probably with build server and 3D rendering daemons to take advantage of spare CPU cycles should we need it (those will be off by default of course). Even with full installations those machines are all mighty responsive. I don't turn on eye candy, Postfix, MySQL, apache, etc. remain turned off unless absolutely needed for testing a web or other application locally, and superkaramba is not installed.
Now, I've tried complete installations (installing EVERYTHING on Mandriva, SuSE, and other distributions) one weekend out of morbid curiousity and yes, it gets piggish, and composite made it absolutely unbearable, but I wanted to see just how much those boxes could take before Linux became unstable -- plus I wanted to have easy access to all apps because there are many, MANY Linux apps I've never even tried. And wouldn't you know it, the systems did not become unstable, but just painfully slow. That's an extreme case, but obviously it wasn't the fault of Linux that I chose to do something that many newbies do because they think it might be convenient.
Linux isn't bloated in and of itself. It's used in many embedded devices where CPU cycles, memory, and storage are all scarce. When designing embedded systems the engineers select only the bare essentials to get the job done - check out Snapgear (now Cyberguard SG) routers, some of LinkSys' routers, and Zaurus PDAs. Check out any number of the latest-generation cellular telephones, most notably Nokia's and Motorola's. Check out Tivo.
Not a lot of CPU power in many of those, and yet they do their jobs very, VERY well.
My own desktop is a little slow due to the ATI video card (video is a big bottleneck on ATI with Xinerama - I keep sticking with the AiW card in the hope that X.org's integrated Gato drivers will eventually work) but the other desktop boxes in the office are NVidia and they absolutely fly (in terms of responsiveness), despite having more toys enabled than my box, and all having slower CPUs than my system. Heck, even the dual Pentium II Xeon with NVidia card is more responsive than my system. When I switch to a single-head configuration my system is plenty fast. Even with Xinerama, Linux is more responsive than Windows is on my box.
Linux isn't bloated. It all comes down to configuration, user error, and to a lesser extent, hardware choices (imho, ATI cards should be avoided if you run a dual-head system).
By your argument, Windows bloated if you base your judgement on an OEM who installed a ton of eye candy, or if you installed something like WinFX, Desktop Sidebar, SpyderBar, or other CPU-sucking toys. Windows by itself with unnecessary services disabled is not bloated, and on the same token neither is Linux.
Want a nice responsive system? Install what you need, and either disable or don't install what you don't need. Forget about eye candy. SuperKaramba isn't a necessity. Install the right kernel for your processor (in the case of dual core systems, the SMP kernel is the right choice - or for a single-core processor with hyperthreading, an SMT-aware SMP kernel is the right choice).
The Web Developer tool bar can do this as well. Click the Resize button ant notice that you can configure your own custom sizes.
Now, for resizing the search box: I hate hard-coded sizes, and I've hated the search box from day 1. There is an extension called Resize Search Box which can avoid the need change the size by hard-coding a different size into the skin. Resize Search Box adds a handle to the Search Box element so that you can resize the field at whim as needed.
A lot of conservatives feel let down by Bush, for any number of reasons - growth of government, spending increases, liberalization of handling of illegal aliens, Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the whole Gitmo thing, not practicing actual forensic science and using profiling in airport security checks out of fear of 'offending' political correctness people, limiting of peaceful protests to alloted "free speech" zones, pledging tax dollars to "economic development" abroad (effectively boosting up our own competitors), not promoting energy independence, and many other reasons.
The Republican party no longer stands for what it once did, but appears (at least at face value) be a form of liberalism of a different sort, bordering on fascism, either that or leading toward the mythical "new world order" which I used to read up on for kicks, but now after watching the Bush administration in action, now think that there may be at least some element of truth to those conspiracy theories which don't seem so crazy any more.
Thankfully some Republicans have awoken and have realized that the GOP is not what it once was.
In the next election whom do we vote for though? A big-government Democrat, or a big-government Republican, both of which seem to want to institute an Orwellian society?
Apparantly the n00b with mod points isn't aware that BugMeNot is an extension which automatically logs one into sites such as the New York Times which require registration. Oh well.
I am surprised that you bothered to try gnome at all. Why do all this research when KDE works so well?
My distribution of choice is SuSE, because the time from booting from the install disc to having a full functional environment with everything we need is the quickest. The primary environment we use is KDE, but we keep Gnome installed alongside and any time anyone logs in they can choose whatever desktop they wish (disk space is cheap!).
However, every few months I reevaluate distributions and environments. The fact that KDE seems to be better today doesn't mean that the next Gnome release won't be superior for our needs. And, as more releases of Mandriva, Ubuntu, Fedora, and others come out, if they somehow leapfrog ahead in an area which is important, doesn't it make sense to not wear fanboy blinders?
That statement reminds me of how (some) Apple users always think that Apple can do no wrong, and no matter how good or how bad a particular Apple product is, it's better than anything else simply because it carries the Apple brand. (I'm not attacking Apple here, I just know people who love anything Apple comes out with regardless of quality, just because it's Apple, and freely admit it). Now Apple has some damn fine products, but they've also had some duds over the years) but because Apple has worked so well for someone up to now, does that mutually exclude the possibility that someone, somewhere, someday might offer a better product?
Examine the problem, examine possible solutions, and then arrive at your decision. In six months, if you encounter a similar problem, the best choice may not be the same one you settled on for that problem today. Perhaps with today's solution you had to make some compromises or put a little more work in terms of spending many hours to tweak some code, but six months from now there may be two additional options, one of which might be plug&play?
In six months KDE might suck, and our Indian friend here might be inclined to go with a Gnome-heavy distribution. Right now KDE seems to be a better option for him. What of it? Just as you have your opinion that Gnome is the best thing since sliced bread, he finds KDE to be superior. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with his choice, but for different reasons; the over-simplification of Gnome.
Nice troll, but what the heck does that have to do with a business plan?
Let's run through it:
- We used to run asp.net - it is slower/less reponsive and more memory intensive than LAMP
- Licensing - we spent money on exchange and SQL server but will be saving the money on upgrades. We develop solutions for SQL Server for clients who want Windows, but since we've removed SQL Server from production and now use it only for development, future upgrades (MySQL and Postgres) will be - yep, the cost of a download and CD-R or DVD-R. If clients are so inclined to pay thousands for SQL Server licensing, let them. It's THEIR choice. We will be saving money, lowering our overhead. As we need upgrades for development, that will be covered by MSDN subscriptions.
- Exchange - in order to maintain it properly, "Maintenance windows" must be scheduled to bring down the information store (EVEN if we were to cluster it). Not so with Postfix (which is email-only), Zimbra, Open-Xchange, or Scalix. So, very soon we will be punting Exchange, and while an investment was made future upgrades for other solutions will be either free (Postfix, Open-Xchange, or Zimbra) or inexpensive - PLUS all maintenance can be automated. Not only that, the user experience is transparent since Outlook or Thunderbird can still be used by Windows users, and any number of clients may be used by Linux users.
In other words, what impact does this have on our business plan? None. It does affect our bottom line in a positive way, however, and our uptime is steadily increasing as we move more services off of Windows and on to Linux.
Again, nice attempt at a troll though. Isn't AC a nice feature?;)
Speak for yourself. Many of us DO want to read Microsoft news. I may choose Linux for my personal computers (unless hardware is an issue such as ATI tuner/AiW cards) and more and more so for the office, but I don't deny that Microsoft does produce some great products.
I run Linux for four primary reasons:
1. I disagree with Microsoft's anti-customer policies as of late, including no de-activation, their suing of customers, and their DRM-infested media player 2. I believe Microsoft has been abusing their monopoly status, especially since SmartSuite and WordPerfect have been rendered impotent in the marketplace 3. because I like the KDE desktop far more than I like Explorer (tabbed file browsing is great. *nix shell scripting is undeniably superior to scripting on Windows and konsole is a wonderful console manager) 4. Everything, and I mean everything can be automated on Linux/Unix/UNIX where maintenance is concerned. and nearly all maintenance can be performed live. Unix doesn't have to play the "let's redefine the term 'downtime'" game
With that said, I'm interested in what Microsoft is doing with their Linux lab. I'd be interested to see whether they release Visual Studio (Kdevelop is great, but it's no comparison to Microsoft's IDE) and Microsoft Office for Linux. I'm interested in watching the price of Microsoft Office now that OpenOffice is nipping at Microsoft Office's heels in terms of usability/functionality. I'm interested in whether or not Microsoft adjusts their marketing to indicate true TCO of each environment. I'm interested in what Monad has to offer. I'm interested in whether or not I'll be able to watch HD-DVD and Blu-Ray media at FULL resolution on my 2048x1536 CRT displays, or if I will have to downgrade to lower-resolution LCD screens.
Believe me, although some of us hate Microsoft's current actions, we actually view software products as tools, and Linux is not the BFH that is right for all problems.
I'd buy OS X for the PC. In fact that is the only way I will ever run OS X at home. At the office we'll likely buy two x86 Macs, but begrudgingly. I'd rather build my own PC using higher-quality motherboards and power supplies. Will it be as nice looking as an actual Apple computer? Not likely - they do have (IMHO) the best-looking cases. They tend to skimp on quality whether motherboards and power supplies are concerned though (look at G3 motherboards, and G5 tower power supplies), and somewhat limit expansion capability. Also, I'd never buy an Apple laptop, because their failure rate, according to surveys, is worse than even low-end HP and Dell hardware. And the iMac line? Ugh.
They really ought to consider licensing the OS to OEMs again - they can do what Microsoft did with Windows NT: have a hardware compatibility list and refuse customer support if you stray from that list; that would limit their support costs and keep compatibility very high. Leave it up to the user to decide whether or not to stray from that list, or leave it up to the OEM to provide the support on Apple-unsupported hardware. Apple hardware would of course always be stable running OS X.
OS X? Great stuff, high quality, very stable. Apple hardware? Meh. They've had too many lemons. Heck, with the warranty claims, they may be far better off focusing on the software (where they really shine) and leave the hardware up to others.
The Slashdot smart asses usually crap all over Linspire's quality, security, morality, business model, and so on
Of course, because:
"All software wants to be free" (in which case you end up with The Gimp instead of Photoshop. The Gimp is nice, unless you've actually bothered trying Photoshop)
"morality" (e.g., charging for Linux) - OK, so who is going to keep a roof over your head, food on your table, and pay for yor next shiny? A welfare check? There is certainly room for commercial software. Exhibit a: Adobe CS2; were it to be released for Linux, I'd buy it. Also, the GPL specifically allows charging for GPL-licensed software. What is immoral, unethical, or illegal about it? Answer (for those who don't get it): Not a thing.
"Linspire's Security" - if they have indeed removed the "default user is root" factor, then Linspire is probably just as secure as any other distribution
"business model" see morality, all software wants to be free, etc.
Would I personally use Linspire? Not bloody likely.
Would I recommend it to novices who just want to surf the web, watch DVDs, play a few games, and instant message friends? Absolutely.
Same here, nor will you see me mix tenses in writing because there is no going back to edit what I wrote and forgetting to change everything else to match; once it's written, it's written.
I can still draw; not as well as I used to but I'm getting better at it (I started drawing on paper again BECAUSE of this reason). My penmanship though? HA! Utter hen scratch. My penmanship has been getting progressively worse, and has been ever since my first Commodore computer. I write very, very little and without practice my penmanship will only get even worse.
He's never taken a flight to see that the "overpopulation" perception exists only because people tend to congregate and live close to one another. The US is under-populated with vast empty spaces, especially the from the Missippi River and points west. The majority of the I-95 corridor is fairly well populated (too densely, IMHO) but as soon as you get away from the highways and major cities this nation is sparsely populated. Heck, even parts of eastern Massachusetts are sparsely populated.
If you grew up in Atlanta, New York City, Boston, Miami, or (insert other large city here) and think the Earth is over-populated, you need to do one thing: get out of the city for once in your life, Fly or drive across the country. You will see just how over-populated the nation ISN'T.
Or hell, if you're too damn lazy to leave town for once in your life, check out Google Maps. It won't have the same impact as seeing it in the flesh, but it will still give you some idea. Not only that, you can visit the two more populous nations in the world (India, China) and see that even those nations are very sparsely populated, and land is under-utilized, and that the vast, vast majority of it is virgin wilderness. Even in Japan, which is supposedly overcrowded, the land is largely under-utilized, with people congregated into a few areas. It's a herd mentality, and obviously based in practicality (Do you really want to live 120 miles from the nearest market? Heck, most people won't want to commute more than 15 minutes to get to work or 5 minutes to get to a market)
Here is a solution for junk faxes. No, it is not a perfect one but it is a multi-pronged approach. Item #2 applies to email spam as well (I've done it and successfully stopped companies from spamming)
1. Use asterisk or faxworks pro as your fax machine, and do not have it print faxes by default. It won't stop incoming junk faxes (blocking by CID won't help since CID is easily spoofed) but at least it'll save on toner/ink and trees.
2. Call the 800-line on the junk fax (or spam) off-hours repeatedly, filling up the voice mail. Let them know every few voicemails that "what you are experiencing right now is not harassment, but a response to the unsolicited invitation to call, and that having to wade through these voicemails is exactly what receipients of you junk/spam has to do, and would you even consider doing business with me now? Now flip that and put me in your place, why the hell will I ever consider buying your product or services?" - now that I have asterisk in place I am developing a script that I can fire off and run for a few hours to completely fill their voicemail systems - up to now I've been doing it manually. This method has caused at least two major spam customers to stop spamming. It must have sucked being them, having to wade through 100 or so voicemail messages, some of which might be loud music, some which might be sound from a seinfeld episode, and some being the reminder that wading through these voicemails is not fun, and so forth. The best ones are the companies which will record voicemail for as long as the phone is off-hook, then you can just put your phone in front of a TV or radio and fill their voicemail without effort, interrupting their normal course of business. I also remind them that they're paying for the phone calls, not me, and thank you for the convenience.
It may seem like a juvenile response, and were it the first attempt it would be. I try calling them and politely ask them to stop spamming, but never give them my email address (it would only confirm a valid email address and make it more valuable to spammers), and then if they continue I resort to the above methods. I give them only ONE chance to stop spamming, because if they're spamming me, they're also spamming millions of other people, and it takes brute force to get these companies to stop. They know they're doing wrong, and yet they go forward with these unethical advertising practices because it's such a low overhead, and having just one sale in response to a spam campaign is normally worthwhile, but not if they have to pay their CSRs to wade through voicemail for hours every day PLUS pay for the "toll-free" calls that aren't generating sales every day.
More people should use this approach, because it works. Congress won't help stop spam, law enforcement won't, and the spammers haven't even heeded death threats from the irresponsible anti-spam activists, so the logical course of action is to severely disrupt their normal course of business and hit them where it hurts most: by giving them a taste of their own medicine.
They are only interested in stuffing their own pockets rather than listening to their constituents. I live in Taxachusetts and I wonder in amazement at who the hell is voting for Mr. Drunk Kennedy - I do not know anyone who votes for him, but obviously a lot of people do. He doesn't do a damn thing for this state.
Ditto for John Kerry, who is infamous for missing 1/2 to 2/3 of his meetings. But, given what damage Bush has done to this country, having the President miss 2/3 of his meetings would not be an entirely bad thing; it'd significantly limit the amount of damage one man can do to this once-great nation.
He said the situation left him feeling drained of energy, and that he let himself go and no longer lifted weights to keep fit.
Keeping fit would imply he didn't let himself go and was actually fit at the time of filming. I call shenanigans! At the time of the incident he was already a fatty. What does this fatty look like today now that he, in his own words, has since let himself go?
Slashdot Mirror
I know you meant that as an off-colour pun, but seriously, the current administration appears hell-bent on eliminating liberty as our parents' generation knew it.
"uncrackable within the nearest 1000 years, even by governments"
That may be true when the work is done by contractors who want to milk every possible last cent from taxpayers, but not true of a community of engineers and geeks who are determined to crack the encryption (be it DRM or other purpose) using a massive P2P shared computing network. Besides, those "time to crack" estimates are a) fiction b) resume that the correct result will be the final possible permutation and not the first or somewhere between and c) presume a single computer plugging away at it using brute-force methods
1. It's implied
2. The Constitution Itself states that our rights are not limited to what are expressly stated in the document
Today's government seems to have flipped the coin and reversed it despite the document's self-stated intent: officials seem to believe our only rights are the ones which are enumerated, and all other things are disallowed.
And yet, you posted using the AC option. Bravo!
I doubt it'll ever happen.
I do. Government should only build roads, protect borders, and keep order by punishing evildoers. And by evildoers, By "evildoers" don't mean those who disagree with whoever the president is, or who is a communist, or who is a liberal or who is a conservative. By evildoers I mean burglars, murderers, crooks, etc.
Marriage? Government should NOT have ANY say in marriage. If two men want to marry, and it's immoral, if there is a God, let "God" worry about punishing them for immorality. It's not up to us to force morality on everyone else. My view used to be different on this matter, but I've thought about it a great deal; and realize that Marriage is a religious concept. Government has no business in dictating religion, be it the judicial branch, the legislative branch, or the executive branch.
Want a moral society? Create one by being a good example lighting the way. Don't FORCE it on people. I will no longer vote for morality, but for small restrained government with limited spending and limited reach into private lives. Let they who dc "evil" (in "God's" eyes) do evil, and let they who do good, do good. If you want "morality" set an example by being a good example. Right now many "Christians" are good examples of bad examples, and no wonder many people hate Christians. Me? I've become cynical thanks to Bush's policies encroaching on our "inalienable" Constitutional rights.
I resent my tax dollars being extorted for me to subsidize people who don't want to work.
Now, there are people who can't work - but I can't give to them because Uncle Sam (and by uncle sam I mean ALl taxes combined, between Federal, State, excise, and sales taxes) already takes abnout half my pay by the time all taxes/fees/etc. are added up.
Social security should be eliminated. Why should we be forced to put more money into a retirement system than we will ever get back? Replace it with more proective tax benefits on 401(K) and other individual, private retirement plans. Or, let people squander their money if they choose; it's their choice.
If taxes are more resonable
Also our tax system is set up to benefit those who use the most resources. Why should I, a single woman with no kids, have to subsidize large families who get a tax break for every child they can make? They should pay MORE in taxes because they use FAR more resources. They should pay more property taxes.
That won't happen under the Bush administration, or is at least very unlikely - even he has to realize that the military is stretched so thin that we could not win a war in Iran, and furthermore, invading Iran will only provoke the entire Arab world into attacking Israel, which will in turn initiate a world war. He can't possibly be so blind as to think that we could possibly win. Also, with most of our manufacturing base gone, if WWIII were to break out, we would see imports cease due to sanctions and ourselves in a war that cannot possibly be won. He has already alienated much of NATO so our allies cannot be counted on to come to our aid.
This is SOOO untrue. Linux is only as fat as you can make it.
Every time I see someone complaining "Linux is slow" or "Distribution Foo is bloated" I remind them that their system is bloated because they CHOSE to install unnecessary services (You're running MySQL, PostgreSQL, PostFix, Apache, Subversion, DHCPD, BIND. and everything else available in the distro? You have Composite enabled with KDE with ALL eye candy turned on and every SuperKaramba theme you could get your hands on? You're running a non-SMP kernel on that shiny dual core processor?
Let me tell you something: I still run dual Celeries and dual Pentium II Xeons at my office - and they're going to be wiped soon and be reinstalled with bare KDE installations for use as CSR workstations, probably with build server and 3D rendering daemons to take advantage of spare CPU cycles should we need it (those will be off by default of course). Even with full installations those machines are all mighty responsive. I don't turn on eye candy, Postfix, MySQL, apache, etc. remain turned off unless absolutely needed for testing a web or other application locally, and superkaramba is not installed.
Now, I've tried complete installations (installing EVERYTHING on Mandriva, SuSE, and other distributions) one weekend out of morbid curiousity and yes, it gets piggish, and composite made it absolutely unbearable, but I wanted to see just how much those boxes could take before Linux became unstable -- plus I wanted to have easy access to all apps because there are many, MANY Linux apps I've never even tried. And wouldn't you know it, the systems did not become unstable, but just painfully slow. That's an extreme case, but obviously it wasn't the fault of Linux that I chose to do something that many newbies do because they think it might be convenient.
Linux isn't bloated in and of itself. It's used in many embedded devices where CPU cycles, memory, and storage are all scarce. When designing embedded systems the engineers select only the bare essentials to get the job done - check out Snapgear (now Cyberguard SG) routers, some of LinkSys' routers, and Zaurus PDAs. Check out any number of the latest-generation cellular telephones, most notably Nokia's and Motorola's. Check out Tivo.
Not a lot of CPU power in many of those, and yet they do their jobs very, VERY well.
My own desktop is a little slow due to the ATI video card (video is a big bottleneck on ATI with Xinerama - I keep sticking with the AiW card in the hope that X.org's integrated Gato drivers will eventually work) but the other desktop boxes in the office are NVidia and they absolutely fly (in terms of responsiveness), despite having more toys enabled than my box, and all having slower CPUs than my system. Heck, even the dual Pentium II Xeon with NVidia card is more responsive than my system. When I switch to a single-head configuration my system is plenty fast. Even with Xinerama, Linux is more responsive than Windows is on my box.
Linux isn't bloated. It all comes down to configuration, user error, and to a lesser extent, hardware choices (imho, ATI cards should be avoided if you run a dual-head system).
By your argument, Windows bloated if you base your judgement on an OEM who installed a ton of eye candy, or if you installed something like WinFX, Desktop Sidebar, SpyderBar, or other CPU-sucking toys. Windows by itself with unnecessary services disabled is not bloated, and on the same token neither is Linux.
Want a nice responsive system? Install what you need, and either disable or don't install what you don't need. Forget about eye candy. SuperKaramba isn't a necessity. Install the right kernel for your processor (in the case of dual core systems, the SMP kernel is the right choice - or for a single-core processor with hyperthreading, an SMT-aware SMP kernel is the right choice).
The Web Developer tool bar can do this as well. Click the Resize button ant notice that you can configure your own custom sizes.
Now, for resizing the search box: I hate hard-coded sizes, and I've hated the search box from day 1. There is an extension called Resize Search Box which can avoid the need change the size by hard-coding a different size into the skin. Resize Search Box adds a handle to the Search Box element so that you can resize the field at whim as needed.
A lot of conservatives feel let down by Bush, for any number of reasons - growth of government, spending increases, liberalization of handling of illegal aliens, Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the whole Gitmo thing, not practicing actual forensic science and using profiling in airport security checks out of fear of 'offending' political correctness people, limiting of peaceful protests to alloted "free speech" zones, pledging tax dollars to "economic development" abroad (effectively boosting up our own competitors), not promoting energy independence, and many other reasons.
The Republican party no longer stands for what it once did, but appears (at least at face value) be a form of liberalism of a different sort, bordering on fascism, either that or leading toward the mythical "new world order" which I used to read up on for kicks, but now after watching the Bush administration in action, now think that there may be at least some element of truth to those conspiracy theories which don't seem so crazy any more.
Thankfully some Republicans have awoken and have realized that the GOP is not what it once was.
In the next election whom do we vote for though? A big-government Democrat, or a big-government Republican, both of which seem to want to institute an Orwellian society?
MPAA to sue 10 recently-reviewed sites citing DMCA violations in 3, 2, 1. . .
So, when will Casio be using this processor in a watch? ;)
Apparantly the n00b with mod points isn't aware that BugMeNot is an extension which automatically logs one into sites such as the New York Times which require registration. Oh well.
AC, Let me introduce you to bugmenot. Bugmenot, meet AC. I suggest you two get acquainted! :D
My distribution of choice is SuSE, because the time from booting from the install disc to having a full functional environment with everything we need is the quickest. The primary environment we use is KDE, but we keep Gnome installed alongside and any time anyone logs in they can choose whatever desktop they wish (disk space is cheap!).
However, every few months I reevaluate distributions and environments. The fact that KDE seems to be better today doesn't mean that the next Gnome release won't be superior for our needs. And, as more releases of Mandriva, Ubuntu, Fedora, and others come out, if they somehow leapfrog ahead in an area which is important, doesn't it make sense to not wear fanboy blinders?
That statement reminds me of how (some) Apple users always think that Apple can do no wrong, and no matter how good or how bad a particular Apple product is, it's better than anything else simply because it carries the Apple brand. (I'm not attacking Apple here, I just know people who love anything Apple comes out with regardless of quality, just because it's Apple, and freely admit it). Now Apple has some damn fine products, but they've also had some duds over the years) but because Apple has worked so well for someone up to now, does that mutually exclude the possibility that someone, somewhere, someday might offer a better product?
Examine the problem, examine possible solutions, and then arrive at your decision. In six months, if you encounter a similar problem, the best choice may not be the same one you settled on for that problem today. Perhaps with today's solution you had to make some compromises or put a little more work in terms of spending many hours to tweak some code, but six months from now there may be two additional options, one of which might be plug&play?
In six months KDE might suck, and our Indian friend here might be inclined to go with a Gnome-heavy distribution. Right now KDE seems to be a better option for him. What of it? Just as you have your opinion that Gnome is the best thing since sliced bread, he finds KDE to be superior. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with his choice, but for different reasons; the over-simplification of Gnome.
Nice troll, but what the heck does that have to do with a business plan?
;)
Let's run through it:
- We used to run asp.net - it is slower/less reponsive and more memory intensive than LAMP
- Licensing - we spent money on exchange and SQL server but will be saving the money on upgrades. We develop solutions for SQL Server for clients who want Windows, but since we've removed SQL Server from production and now use it only for development, future upgrades (MySQL and Postgres) will be - yep, the cost of a download and CD-R or DVD-R. If clients are so inclined to pay thousands for SQL Server licensing, let them. It's THEIR choice. We will be saving money, lowering our overhead. As we need upgrades for development, that will be covered by MSDN subscriptions.
- Exchange - in order to maintain it properly, "Maintenance windows" must be scheduled to bring down the information store (EVEN if we were to cluster it). Not so with Postfix (which is email-only), Zimbra, Open-Xchange, or Scalix. So, very soon we will be punting Exchange, and while an investment was made future upgrades for other solutions will be either free (Postfix, Open-Xchange, or Zimbra) or inexpensive - PLUS all maintenance can be automated. Not only that, the user experience is transparent since Outlook or Thunderbird can still be used by Windows users, and any number of clients may be used by Linux users.
In other words, what impact does this have on our business plan? None. It does affect our bottom line in a positive way, however, and our uptime is steadily increasing as we move more services off of Windows and on to Linux.
Again, nice attempt at a troll though. Isn't AC a nice feature?
Speak for yourself. Many of us DO want to read Microsoft news. I may choose Linux for my personal computers (unless hardware is an issue such as ATI tuner/AiW cards) and more and more so for the office, but I don't deny that Microsoft does produce some great products.
I run Linux for four primary reasons:
1. I disagree with Microsoft's anti-customer policies as of late, including no de-activation, their suing of customers, and their DRM-infested media player
2. I believe Microsoft has been abusing their monopoly status, especially since SmartSuite and WordPerfect have been rendered impotent in the marketplace
3. because I like the KDE desktop far more than I like Explorer (tabbed file browsing is great. *nix shell scripting is undeniably superior to scripting on Windows and konsole is a wonderful console manager)
4. Everything, and I mean everything can be automated on Linux/Unix/UNIX where maintenance is concerned. and nearly all maintenance can be performed live. Unix doesn't have to play the "let's redefine the term 'downtime'" game
With that said, I'm interested in what Microsoft is doing with their Linux lab. I'd be interested to see whether they release Visual Studio (Kdevelop is great, but it's no comparison to Microsoft's IDE) and Microsoft Office for Linux. I'm interested in watching the price of Microsoft Office now that OpenOffice is nipping at Microsoft Office's heels in terms of usability/functionality. I'm interested in whether or not Microsoft adjusts their marketing to indicate true TCO of each environment. I'm interested in what Monad has to offer. I'm interested in whether or not I'll be able to watch HD-DVD and Blu-Ray media at FULL resolution on my 2048x1536 CRT displays, or if I will have to downgrade to lower-resolution LCD screens.
Believe me, although some of us hate Microsoft's current actions, we actually view software products as tools, and Linux is not the BFH that is right for all problems.
I'd buy OS X for the PC. In fact that is the only way I will ever run OS X at home. At the office we'll likely buy two x86 Macs, but begrudgingly. I'd rather build my own PC using higher-quality motherboards and power supplies. Will it be as nice looking as an actual Apple computer? Not likely - they do have (IMHO) the best-looking cases. They tend to skimp on quality whether motherboards and power supplies are concerned though (look at G3 motherboards, and G5 tower power supplies), and somewhat limit expansion capability. Also, I'd never buy an Apple laptop, because their failure rate, according to surveys, is worse than even low-end HP and Dell hardware. And the iMac line? Ugh.
They really ought to consider licensing the OS to OEMs again - they can do what Microsoft did with Windows NT: have a hardware compatibility list and refuse customer support if you stray from that list; that would limit their support costs and keep compatibility very high. Leave it up to the user to decide whether or not to stray from that list, or leave it up to the OEM to provide the support on Apple-unsupported hardware. Apple hardware would of course always be stable running OS X.
OS X? Great stuff, high quality, very stable. Apple hardware? Meh. They've had too many lemons. Heck, with the warranty claims, they may be far better off focusing on the software (where they really shine) and leave the hardware up to others.
Of course, because:
"All software wants to be free" (in which case you end up with The Gimp instead of Photoshop. The Gimp is nice, unless you've actually bothered trying Photoshop)
"morality" (e.g., charging for Linux) - OK, so who is going to keep a roof over your head, food on your table, and pay for yor next shiny? A welfare check? There is certainly room for commercial software. Exhibit a: Adobe CS2; were it to be released for Linux, I'd buy it. Also, the GPL specifically allows charging for GPL-licensed software. What is immoral, unethical, or illegal about it? Answer (for those who don't get it): Not a thing.
"Linspire's Security" - if they have indeed removed the "default user is root" factor, then Linspire is probably just as secure as any other distribution
"business model" see morality, all software wants to be free, etc.
Would I personally use Linspire? Not bloody likely.
Would I recommend it to novices who just want to surf the web, watch DVDs, play a few games, and instant message friends? Absolutely.
1. OS X and macs aren't gay. The folks who chose the color schemes for them might be though! (kidding, I'm KIDDING. Relax)
2. Ubuntu "Just works" - Mandriva "Just works" - SuSE "Just works"
Want to "dick around with libraries?" Choose Fedora, Slackware, or an older Debian derivative.
With 300 distributions it's easy to make the statement you did, but I just pointed you at several which prove the opposite can be true as well.
re: One such misspelling, neoppets.com, is currently serving ads promising naked photos of Britney Spears or other adult images.
/. pointed to that article resulted in neoppets' daily revenue increasing by several orders of magnitude today?
Let me guess:
I can see it now: a million slashdotters thinking "Oooh, naked pics of Britney. I gotta see it!"
You went there. Admit it. You know you did.
Same here, nor will you see me mix tenses in writing because there is no going back to edit what I wrote and forgetting to change everything else to match; once it's written, it's written.
I can still draw; not as well as I used to but I'm getting better at it (I started drawing on paper again BECAUSE of this reason). My penmanship though? HA! Utter hen scratch. My penmanship has been getting progressively worse, and has been ever since my first Commodore computer. I write very, very little and without practice my penmanship will only get even worse.
He's never taken a flight to see that the "overpopulation" perception exists only because people tend to congregate and live close to one another. The US is under-populated with vast empty spaces, especially the from the Missippi River and points west. The majority of the I-95 corridor is fairly well populated (too densely, IMHO) but as soon as you get away from the highways and major cities this nation is sparsely populated. Heck, even parts of eastern Massachusetts are sparsely populated.
If you grew up in Atlanta, New York City, Boston, Miami, or (insert other large city here) and think the Earth is over-populated, you need to do one thing: get out of the city for once in your life, Fly or drive across the country. You will see just how over-populated the nation ISN'T.
Or hell, if you're too damn lazy to leave town for once in your life, check out Google Maps. It won't have the same impact as seeing it in the flesh, but it will still give you some idea. Not only that, you can visit the two more populous nations in the world (India, China) and see that even those nations are very sparsely populated, and land is under-utilized, and that the vast, vast majority of it is virgin wilderness. Even in Japan, which is supposedly overcrowded, the land is largely under-utilized, with people congregated into a few areas. It's a herd mentality, and obviously based in practicality (Do you really want to live 120 miles from the nearest market? Heck, most people won't want to commute more than 15 minutes to get to work or 5 minutes to get to a market)
Here is a solution for junk faxes. No, it is not a perfect one but it is a multi-pronged approach. Item #2 applies to email spam as well (I've done it and successfully stopped companies from spamming)
1. Use asterisk or faxworks pro as your fax machine, and do not have it print faxes by default. It won't stop incoming junk faxes (blocking by CID won't help since CID is easily spoofed) but at least it'll save on toner/ink and trees.
2. Call the 800-line on the junk fax (or spam) off-hours repeatedly, filling up the voice mail. Let them know every few voicemails that "what you are experiencing right now is not harassment, but a response to the unsolicited invitation to call, and that having to wade through these voicemails is exactly what receipients of you junk/spam has to do, and would you even consider doing business with me now? Now flip that and put me in your place, why the hell will I ever consider buying your product or services?" - now that I have asterisk in place I am developing a script that I can fire off and run for a few hours to completely fill their voicemail systems - up to now I've been doing it manually. This method has caused at least two major spam customers to stop spamming. It must have sucked being them, having to wade through 100 or so voicemail messages, some of which might be loud music, some which might be sound from a seinfeld episode, and some being the reminder that wading through these voicemails is not fun, and so forth. The best ones are the companies which will record voicemail for as long as the phone is off-hook, then you can just put your phone in front of a TV or radio and fill their voicemail without effort, interrupting their normal course of business. I also remind them that they're paying for the phone calls, not me, and thank you for the convenience.
It may seem like a juvenile response, and were it the first attempt it would be. I try calling them and politely ask them to stop spamming, but never give them my email address (it would only confirm a valid email address and make it more valuable to spammers), and then if they continue I resort to the above methods. I give them only ONE chance to stop spamming, because if they're spamming me, they're also spamming millions of other people, and it takes brute force to get these companies to stop. They know they're doing wrong, and yet they go forward with these unethical advertising practices because it's such a low overhead, and having just one sale in response to a spam campaign is normally worthwhile, but not if they have to pay their CSRs to wade through voicemail for hours every day PLUS pay for the "toll-free" calls that aren't generating sales every day.
More people should use this approach, because it works. Congress won't help stop spam, law enforcement won't, and the spammers haven't even heeded death threats from the irresponsible anti-spam activists, so the logical course of action is to severely disrupt their normal course of business and hit them where it hurts most: by giving them a taste of their own medicine.
What the parent said.
They are only interested in stuffing their own pockets rather than listening to their constituents. I live in Taxachusetts and I wonder in amazement at who the hell is voting for Mr. Drunk Kennedy - I do not know anyone who votes for him, but obviously a lot of people do. He doesn't do a damn thing for this state.
Ditto for John Kerry, who is infamous for missing 1/2 to 2/3 of his meetings. But, given what damage Bush has done to this country, having the President miss 2/3 of his meetings would not be an entirely bad thing; it'd significantly limit the amount of damage one man can do to this once-great nation.
Keeping fit would imply he didn't let himself go and was actually fit at the time of filming. I call shenanigans! At the time of the incident he was already a fatty. What does this fatty look like today now that he, in his own words, has since let himself go?