You know.. I'm going to put Win8 on my aging Fujitsu Lifebook P1620 since I primarily want to use it in "tablet" mode. It looks pretty much perfect, and the metro version of OneNote is supposedly pretty amazing.
Why pay for Win 8 when I assume you have Win 7 on your P1620 unless you are one of those in the "Green parrot on shoulder brigade":)
My son's 4 year old HP touch screen laptop which originally ran MS Vista works perfectly under Fedora 17 so why would you want to pay for Windows 8 unless you are going to buy a new PC which in the majority of cases will have Windows 8 by default?
But, Win7 will be the OS of choice on my actual desktops.
So, maybe I'll be the only guy that likes it...:)
It's not mine but then again I have been using Fedora on my laptops (no dual booting) for over four years now and in a professional capacity as well. I have yet to be convinced of anything on a Microsoft OS that can do stuff better than what I can do on my preferred OS with the exception of "Games for Windows", however I have always preferred console games so for me that is a non issue. Of course I could reinstall a legitimate copy of MS Windows 7 if I have some sort of metal breakdown.
Actually from the article the Microsoft controller sort of looks like an oversized NES controller with a screen that can display the controls within the pressure sensitive display area around the main display screen. The iPhone and Android can do this now (sans pressure sensitive) with some games although the controls are actually on the main screen. Of course a controller being like an oversized NES controller I would expect a huge jump in people with RSI. Personally the Wii U's controller does not look all that comfortable as well for long term use.
Personally when I play a game I normally look at the main screen and a second screen would be rather useless unless to me especially when playing action or FPS games.
Try "I Robot" by Isaac Asimov (1950). Some Science fiction writings dating back to the nineteenth century also covered robots however I am not sure they demanded their own Olympics, although some writers had them trying to take over the earth.
No, the point of olympic/professional sports is making money via entertainment.
Definitely agree with you there.
Not all drugs that increase performance will kill or even harm the user. I take a drug daily(prescribed by a doctor) that measurably improves the quality of my life and the length of it. It also improves my performance in some physical tests.
When it comes to performance enhancement drugs for sports the possibility for misuse increases alarmingly and will in the medium to long term debilitate the user.
As for taking prescribed drugs that is fine although if possible it is not a good idea to prolong taking those drugs unless those drugs are vital to the continued health and well being of the person taking them. As an example my wife has glaucoma and has to take two different types of eye drops a day for life and they are not cheap however the choice of not taking them is to go blind. I am quite sure many readers can give good examples of prescribed drugs that are actually required for that persons life and well being.
Considering the article is about cracking high security handcuffs the easiest way of getting out them is some C4 or just a plain sharp knife assuming you don't really care about the person you are trying to get out of the handcuffs:)
Actually the sharp knife is the cheapest method but the cost of hand reattachment surgery won't be cheap unless you are one of those people who have an eye-patch have a long haired white cat:)
The "cloud" makes sense for small and even medium sized businesses
In what way? Before any company considers using remote services which is really what the so called "Cloud" is (this is what it was called in the early 1980's) they have to determine if benefits verses cons are worth it. Each company whether small, medium or large has to consider security as a top priority. As an example consider a Law Firm, you would virtually want a guarantee written in blood that your data which may only be a Terra Byte. is going to be secure from prying eyes.
Depending on what stats you're using, between 18,000 and 24,000 people die every year from lightening strikes.
The above is actually called an "Act of God" or just plane stupidity when standing under a tree during a lightning storm. I would not call murder by terrorist an "Act of God" although I am quite sure those people believe they represent God.
Well Apple's Mountain Lion is $19 for starts. Even if you had to buy Lion at $29 at's still less than the traditional Windows upgrade.
Since I don't have a MAC I cannot install Apple's OS however I do have a PC so if I download my favourate version of Linux (I use Fedora) and do a fresh install on the OS only. Torrent for the DVD Fedora 17 took about one hour and I did some web sufing while I waited. After the download I created a bootable USB key (10 minutes), then the fresh OS install, configuration and update took about two hours. Played a game on my PS3 while I was waiting. Total cost $0.
Problem: You can't roll back to 7 once you start down the dark path of 8. Forever will those metro tiles dominate your destiny.
Before doing the upgrade you should image your hard drive providing you have a device you can put the image on so you can roll back if you have a problem. There are plenty of tools available for this.
The problem with a roll-back or should I say an image reinstall is you have effectively wasted your time and you are back at square one. This is why I always say if you are going to upgrade from one major release of an OS (Linux, MS Windows or Unix) you should always do a fresh install, this way you get rid of all the previous rubbish. Of course many will disagree with me but that is what I always reccommend and implement for many companies I consult for.
Being forced to upgrade from one major release is IMHO is a potential fail, but if people feel that is the best way then please call me if you fail and I will charge you friends rates:)
I think you mean hand or parking brake and in some cars it can be a push button (see VW Passat). Still it could be used in an emergency but in the majority of cases if you need it to slow your car with it you would probably be a few seconds away from death and praying would be a better option:)
Libreoffice cares, that's who. This boneheaded move by Microsoft will be good for at least doubling the downloads.
I use Libreoffice on my Linux laptop (Fedora 17) and actually do collaborative work with people who use Microsoft Office. Unfortunately I do have to produce xml, docx or doc files so the people who use Microsoft Office can read them which is easy for me to do. Usually most people I work with don't even know I run pure open source software and even if they see my screen think it is some professional version of Microsoft Widows which their company has not upgraded to yet. I do explain when asked but most people I work with have company laptops and are pretty much locked into a Microsoft environment.
If you want the latest AAA game in Australia you normally have to shell out over AU$100, however you can order games from anywhere in the world and if you have a PS3 you can play that game (most xbox360 games can also be played as well). The problem with ordering from overseas is the cost of shipping which can be quite expensive. There are sites such as here that normally get their games from Hong Kong and in Australia shipping is free although you may have to wait up to two weeks for delivery.
Still if you really have to have a particular game from day 1 then you have to pay the exorbitant price for it.
As for the the old NTSC and PAL standards. In Australia you would be really hard pressed to get a pure PAL TV, just about all new TV's here are HD (LCD, LCD/LED and Plasma) and are commonly 1080p with support for 720p as well as the other standards 1080i, NTSC and PAL.
Unfortunately Australia has a population of just over 22 million while the USA has a population of about 313 million (not including Canada) so in terms of consumer push Australia is fairly weak and is probably not seen as a major import market for electronic games. What is really starting to upset the major retailers here is many people are becoming aware that you can save a considerable amount of money if you buy on-line with an interesting effect that many retailers are actually meeting on-line prices if the item you want to purchase is from an Australian company.
I think the epitome of a great non-analog controller was the SNES controller.
The first time I saw the SNES controller I thought "OMG I am going to have really sore hands using that". I was actually pleasantly surprised to find that the controller was actually quite comfortable and if you look down on most controllers today (except for the Wii remote and the Move) you can still see a similar layout to the SNES controller.
Another controller I did not like was for the N64's although my initial impression was that it looked comfortable however most games I played on it forced me to have one hand on the middle protrusion and the other on the outer one. Not very comfortable when playing RPG or action adventure games.
Looking at the article the Wii U controller is supposed to be a revamped version of the old NES game-pad which IMHO was a great way of crippling your hands and that controller does not look all that comfortable to hold even for adult hands. The Wii U will support all the other Wii peripherals though and this in itself is good since I don't think many adults would be happy with their kid handling a controller that won't be cheap (not confirmed) or even robust (not confirmed).
I think one of the most important attributes of any game controller is can it survive the drop test and looking at that controller I don't think it could survive repeated drops.
Don't forget that Nokia owns Qt (and Qt creator, etc), and they are now basically beholden to Microsoft. It is currently is a semi-symbiotic relationship, but there is plenty of past evidence to suggest that Nokia will eventually be forced to bend their knee to Microsoft.
True, however from the web site.
Qt Creator is available under GPL v3, LGPL v2 and a commercial license. i am quite sure even Microsoft would have a difficult time of forcing Nokia to stop making Qt freely available since the GPL does have teeth if the occasion arrises.
I dual boot win7 and Ubuntu and there is still no comparison.
There in lies the problem "dual booting". If you are serious about running a Linux desktop you have to have your favourite Linux distro as your only OS and for those who still need their Microsoft fix then run the MS OS in a virtual machine otherwise you may just as well forget it and run a Microsoft OS. As for getting "more work done in Win 7" are you talking about MS Office or something else and have you or your work paid for it. I have been using a pure Linux (Fedora) distribution for a few years now in the corporate sector and have not had any major issues with collaborating with customers and colleagues who are running a Microsoft OS and Office.
I would assume more like 99% and I am being generous, however while I myself don't pirate software since I run pure Linux machines I do download TV shows (not movies) so even though that is a grey area I think this would still be classified as piracy.
Also garbled passwords are going to be far harder for people to memorize if seen by accident.
Not if they do not recognize it as a password e.g. "Remember the lepton-jet meeting at 8am" would look more like a reminder than a password.
You could do this to the sentence in quotation marks "Rtl-jm@8am". Easy for you to remember but a real bitch for someone looking over your shoulder. Actually a better way is to poke the guy in the eyes who is looking over your shoulder:)
Runs pretty nicely in Linux. It's a good deal faster than FF anyway.
Personally I don't really notice any difference in performance by eye between Chrome and Firefox under Fedora 16. Both browsers do what I want. Personally I like Chrome for is minimal interface but I also also like the Firefox interface as well. It really depends on what I am doing and on some occasions I actually use browsers in tandem.
Running the benchmark on both the latest versions of Firefox (12) and Chrome I get 1064, html 5 4/7 for Firefox and 3169, html 5 6/7 for Chrome which I am sure most people would say that Chrome is the outstanding winner for that suite of benchmarks. So well done Chrome, however this still won't stop me using both Chrome and Firefox.
For most users it is not a good idea to get first release applications. The best testing initially comes from the developers as well as the alpha and beta users and the last thing you want are annoying bugs appearing in the finished product since the customer usually gets annoyed. Actually if anyone has read the first link you will read that the people are discussing getting the Linux Community involved. Even if you read the second link you will see that while Linux apps comes third after MS Windows and Mac it is by no means going to be dropped. By Mozilla apps I would assume they are seriously considering charging (ok some will be free) just like you get on Android (Linux kernel) and iPhone.
Personally I do like Firefox (version 12) which does run on my Fedora 16 (soon to be 17) laptop and I do like the fact that its upgrades are small. I don't really have any issue with native Chrome (version 18.0.1025.168-134367) on Linux (I have not used Chromium for a few years which was replaced by Google Chrome 64 bit and 32 bit) although I wish they would arrange for delta updates rather than a 34MB update. Still that's not too bad for an excellent browser.
Even if Firefox was dropped from Linux (the Articles don't allude to that though) there are always plenty of other browsers available.
You forgot to mention that the GIMP and Inkscape are Open Source and free although the links do mention that but really how many will follow the links. Of course you realise you may have started another Photoshop GIMP war:)
Most users of Photoshop including those of the "Green Parrot Brigade" won't even bother to upgrade however there are some who will which helps Adobe. IMHO if Adobe was serious about security they would offer upgrade services for a reasonable price, say $20 to $50 per year but then again it makes much more sense (at least for Adobe) to charge full price for a yearly upgrade.
Since I have been running Linux as my desktop for over four years (I actually use my Linux laptops for corporate use as well over this time) any upgrades and fixes are done very quickly and most of those fixes including those to the GIMP have been with "Delta" packages which means I don't have to download the full package every time an upgrade is made. This is one of the many reasons why I would never go for an Adobe or Microsoft solution.
Wait until someone decides to build an airport, chemical plant, garbage pail or pig farm directly next to your house.
You'd be surprised how fast one can become one of those dreaded "activists" you always read bad press about.
The NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude is quite valid if you have been living in an area and a new proposal that will affect you is put forward, however I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who buy or move into an area which already has an airport, chemical plant etc and then get upset with what is already there. The exception is if there is a proposal to massively upgrade the offending thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Since OS X is open-source, has anyone attempted to recompile 10.6 or 10.7 to run on PowerPC?
Since when has any Apple OS been Open Source?
You know.. I'm going to put Win8 on my aging Fujitsu Lifebook P1620 since I primarily want to use it in "tablet" mode. It looks pretty much perfect, and the metro version of OneNote is supposedly pretty amazing.
Why pay for Win 8 when I assume you have Win 7 on your P1620 unless you are one of those in the "Green parrot on shoulder brigade" :)
My son's 4 year old HP touch screen laptop which originally ran MS Vista works perfectly under Fedora 17 so why would you want to pay for Windows 8 unless you are going to buy a new PC which in the majority of cases will have Windows 8 by default?
But, Win7 will be the OS of choice on my actual desktops.
So, maybe I'll be the only guy that likes it... :)
It's not mine but then again I have been using Fedora on my laptops (no dual booting) for over four years now and in a professional capacity as well. I have yet to be convinced of anything on a Microsoft OS that can do stuff better than what I can do on my preferred OS with the exception of "Games for Windows", however I have always preferred console games so for me that is a non issue. Of course I could reinstall a legitimate copy of MS Windows 7 if I have some sort of metal breakdown.
Actually from the article the Microsoft controller sort of looks like an oversized NES controller with a screen that can display the controls within the pressure sensitive display area around the main display screen. The iPhone and Android can do this now (sans pressure sensitive) with some games although the controls are actually on the main screen. Of course a controller being like an oversized NES controller I would expect a huge jump in people with RSI. Personally the Wii U's controller does not look all that comfortable as well for long term use.
Personally when I play a game I normally look at the main screen and a second screen would be rather useless unless to me especially when playing action or FPS games.
Try "I Robot" by Isaac Asimov (1950). Some Science fiction writings dating back to the nineteenth century also covered robots however I am not sure they demanded their own Olympics, although some writers had them trying to take over the earth.
No, the point of olympic/professional sports is making money via entertainment.
Definitely agree with you there.
Not all drugs that increase performance will kill or even harm the user. I take a drug daily(prescribed by a doctor) that measurably improves the quality of my life and the length of it. It also improves my performance in some physical tests.
When it comes to performance enhancement drugs for sports the possibility for misuse increases alarmingly and will in the medium to long term debilitate the user.
As for taking prescribed drugs that is fine although if possible it is not a good idea to prolong taking those drugs unless those drugs are vital to the continued health and well being of the person taking them. As an example my wife has glaucoma and has to take two different types of eye drops a day for life and they are not cheap however the choice of not taking them is to go blind. I am quite sure many readers can give good examples of prescribed drugs that are actually required for that persons life and well being.
are all of their keys identical?
Considering the article is about cracking high security handcuffs the easiest way of getting out them is some C4 or just a plain sharp knife assuming you don't really care about the person you are trying to get out of the handcuffs :)
:)
Actually the sharp knife is the cheapest method but the cost of hand reattachment surgery won't be cheap unless you are one of those people who have an eye-patch have a long haired white cat
The "cloud" makes sense for small and even medium sized businesses
In what way? Before any company considers using remote services which is really what the so called "Cloud" is (this is what it was called in the early 1980's) they have to determine if benefits verses cons are worth it. Each company whether small, medium or large has to consider security as a top priority. As an example consider a Law Firm, you would virtually want a guarantee written in blood that your data which may only be a Terra Byte. is going to be secure from prying eyes.
Depending on what stats you're using, between 18,000 and 24,000 people die every year from lightening strikes.
The above is actually called an "Act of God" or just plane stupidity when standing under a tree during a lightning storm. I would not call murder by terrorist an "Act of God" although I am quite sure those people believe they represent God.
What's Bing?
That is the sound made by a very expensive machine. See Bing :)
Well Apple's Mountain Lion is $19 for starts. Even if you had to buy Lion at $29 at's still less than the traditional Windows upgrade.
Since I don't have a MAC I cannot install Apple's OS however I do have a PC so if I download my favourate version of Linux (I use Fedora) and do a fresh install on the OS only. Torrent for the DVD Fedora 17 took about one hour and I did some web sufing while I waited. After the download I created a bootable USB key (10 minutes), then the fresh OS install, configuration and update took about two hours. Played a game on my PS3 while I was waiting. Total cost $0.
Problem: You can't roll back to 7 once you start down the dark path of 8. Forever will those metro tiles dominate your destiny.
Before doing the upgrade you should image your hard drive providing you have a device you can put the image on so you can roll back if you have a problem. There are plenty of tools available for this.
:)
The problem with a roll-back or should I say an image reinstall is you have effectively wasted your time and you are back at square one. This is why I always say if you are going to upgrade from one major release of an OS (Linux, MS Windows or Unix) you should always do a fresh install, this way you get rid of all the previous rubbish. Of course many will disagree with me but that is what I always reccommend and implement for many companies I consult for.
Being forced to upgrade from one major release is IMHO is a potential fail, but if people feel that is the best way then please call me if you fail and I will charge you friends rates
I hardly ever use my car's emergency brake
I think you mean hand or parking brake and in some cars it can be a push button (see VW Passat). Still it could be used in an emergency but in the majority of cases if you need it to slow your car with it you would probably be a few seconds away from death and praying would be a better option :)
Libreoffice cares, that's who. This boneheaded move by Microsoft will be good for at least doubling the downloads.
I use Libreoffice on my Linux laptop (Fedora 17) and actually do collaborative work with people who use Microsoft Office. Unfortunately I do have to produce xml, docx or doc files so the people who use Microsoft Office can read them which is easy for me to do. Usually most people I work with don't even know I run pure open source software and even if they see my screen think it is some professional version of Microsoft Widows which their company has not upgraded to yet. I do explain when asked but most people I work with have company laptops and are pretty much locked into a Microsoft environment.
why do Aussies put up with such assraping prices?
If you want the latest AAA game in Australia you normally have to shell out over AU$100, however you can order games from anywhere in the world and if you have a PS3 you can play that game (most xbox360 games can also be played as well). The problem with ordering from overseas is the cost of shipping which can be quite expensive. There are sites such as here that normally get their games from Hong Kong and in Australia shipping is free although you may have to wait up to two weeks for delivery.
Still if you really have to have a particular game from day 1 then you have to pay the exorbitant price for it.
As for the the old NTSC and PAL standards. In Australia you would be really hard pressed to get a pure PAL TV, just about all new TV's here are HD (LCD, LCD/LED and Plasma) and are commonly 1080p with support for 720p as well as the other standards 1080i, NTSC and PAL.
Unfortunately Australia has a population of just over 22 million while the USA has a population of about 313 million (not including Canada) so in terms of consumer push Australia is fairly weak and is probably not seen as a major import market for electronic games. What is really starting to upset the major retailers here is many people are becoming aware that you can save a considerable amount of money if you buy on-line with an interesting effect that many retailers are actually meeting on-line prices if the item you want to purchase is from an Australian company.
The problem is this legislation has to be endorsed by all state governments and it only takes one state (six off) to stymie the whole proposal.
I think the epitome of a great non-analog controller was the SNES controller.
The first time I saw the SNES controller I thought "OMG I am going to have really sore hands using that". I was actually pleasantly surprised to find that the controller was actually quite comfortable and if you look down on most controllers today (except for the Wii remote and the Move) you can still see a similar layout to the SNES controller.
Another controller I did not like was for the N64's although my initial impression was that it looked comfortable however most games I played on it forced me to have one hand on the middle protrusion and the other on the outer one. Not very comfortable when playing RPG or action adventure games.
Looking at the article the Wii U controller is supposed to be a revamped version of the old NES game-pad which IMHO was a great way of crippling your hands and that controller does not look all that comfortable to hold even for adult hands. The Wii U will support all the other Wii peripherals though and this in itself is good since I don't think many adults would be happy with their kid handling a controller that won't be cheap (not confirmed) or even robust (not confirmed).
I think one of the most important attributes of any game controller is can it survive the drop test and looking at that controller I don't think it could survive repeated drops.
Don't forget that Nokia owns Qt (and Qt creator, etc), and they are now basically beholden to Microsoft. It is currently is a semi-symbiotic relationship, but there is plenty of past evidence to suggest that Nokia will eventually be forced to bend their knee to Microsoft.
True, however from the web site.
Qt Creator is available under GPL v3, LGPL v2 and a commercial license. i am quite sure even Microsoft would have a difficult time of forcing Nokia to stop making Qt freely available since the GPL does have teeth if the occasion arrises.
I dual boot win7 and Ubuntu and there is still no comparison.
There in lies the problem "dual booting". If you are serious about running a Linux desktop you have to have your favourite Linux distro as your only OS and for those who still need their Microsoft fix then run the MS OS in a virtual machine otherwise you may just as well forget it and run a Microsoft OS. As for getting "more work done in Win 7" are you talking about MS Office or something else and have you or your work paid for it. I have been using a pure Linux (Fedora) distribution for a few years now in the corporate sector and have not had any major issues with collaborating with customers and colleagues who are running a Microsoft OS and Office.
Only half?
I would assume more like 99% and I am being generous, however while I myself don't pirate software since I run pure Linux machines I do download TV shows (not movies) so even though that is a grey area I think this would still be classified as piracy.
Also garbled passwords are going to be far harder for people to memorize if seen by accident.
Not if they do not recognize it as a password e.g. "Remember the lepton-jet meeting at 8am" would look more like a reminder than a password.
You could do this to the sentence in quotation marks "Rtl-jm@8am". Easy for you to remember but a real bitch for someone looking over your shoulder. Actually a better way is to poke the guy in the eyes who is looking over your shoulder :)
Runs pretty nicely in Linux. It's a good deal faster than FF anyway.
Personally I don't really notice any difference in performance by eye between Chrome and Firefox under Fedora 16. Both browsers do what I want. Personally I like Chrome for is minimal interface but I also also like the Firefox interface as well. It really depends on what I am doing and on some occasions I actually use browsers in tandem.
Running the benchmark on both the latest versions of Firefox (12) and Chrome I get 1064, html 5 4/7 for Firefox and 3169, html 5 6/7 for Chrome which I am sure most people would say that Chrome is the outstanding winner for that suite of benchmarks. So well done Chrome, however this still won't stop me using both Chrome and Firefox.
For most users it is not a good idea to get first release applications. The best testing initially comes from the developers as well as the alpha and beta users and the last thing you want are annoying bugs appearing in the finished product since the customer usually gets annoyed. Actually if anyone has read the first link you will read that the people are discussing getting the Linux Community involved. Even if you read the second link you will see that while Linux apps comes third after MS Windows and Mac it is by no means going to be dropped. By Mozilla apps I would assume they are seriously considering charging (ok some will be free) just like you get on Android (Linux kernel) and iPhone.
Personally I do like Firefox (version 12) which does run on my Fedora 16 (soon to be 17) laptop and I do like the fact that its upgrades are small. I don't really have any issue with native Chrome (version 18.0.1025.168-134367) on Linux (I have not used Chromium for a few years which was replaced by Google Chrome 64 bit and 32 bit) although I wish they would arrange for delta updates rather than a 34MB update. Still that's not too bad for an excellent browser.
Even if Firefox was dropped from Linux (the Articles don't allude to that though) there are always plenty of other browsers available.
You forgot to mention that the GIMP and Inkscape are Open Source and free although the links do mention that but really how many will follow the links. Of course you realise you may have started another Photoshop GIMP war :)
Most users of Photoshop including those of the "Green Parrot Brigade" won't even bother to upgrade however there are some who will which helps Adobe. IMHO if Adobe was serious about security they would offer upgrade services for a reasonable price, say $20 to $50 per year but then again it makes much more sense (at least for Adobe) to charge full price for a yearly upgrade.
Since I have been running Linux as my desktop for over four years (I actually use my Linux laptops for corporate use as well over this time) any upgrades and fixes are done very quickly and most of those fixes including those to the GIMP have been with "Delta" packages which means I don't have to download the full package every time an upgrade is made. This is one of the many reasons why I would never go for an Adobe or Microsoft solution.
Wait until someone decides to build an airport, chemical plant, garbage pail or pig farm directly next to your house.
You'd be surprised how fast one can become one of those dreaded "activists" you always read bad press about.
The NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude is quite valid if you have been living in an area and a new proposal that will affect you is put forward, however I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who buy or move into an area which already has an airport, chemical plant etc and then get upset with what is already there. The exception is if there is a proposal to massively upgrade the offending thing.