Huh, did you mean to reply to a different comment?
I must have.
the reason to compare Windows to Linux in general, without naming a specific distro, is because even though the default configuration depends on the distro, you can customize most so much that you can end up with something very similar no matter where you start from.
True, but choosing ths wrong distro when one is first trying out Linux, who may have no experience whatever with any OS but Windows, can make him think "Linux sucks" when the truth is he shouldn't have chosen Red Hat for a desktop system. Yes, you can get Red Hat to do what you want, but a Windows user couldn't.
BTW, and completely offtopic here: I'm greatly looking forward to the next time travelling story, I enjoy them a lot! I hope you have just as much fun writing them!
Thank you! I doubt I'd write them if I didn't enjoy doing so. I just dumped all of them into an Oo file, and it was only 30 pages long, so there will have to be quite a bit more before it's a book. I'm not sure what order the chapters will be in later.
If you haven't seen The Paxil Diaries, it's on BitTorrent. It will probably take a while to download, there aren't many peers or seeders.
It will probably be years before I see W8, if ever (I've only seen one computer with Vista), but why the comparison to Linux? Why not compare it to W7? And if you're comparing Linux to Windows, why not compare a single linux distro since every flavor of Linux is different to the Microsoft OS that's currently shipping?
Does W8 need reboots as often as W7? Linux almost never needs reboots. Does W8 enter a password automatically if told to do so on bootup, like Linux and unlike W7? W7 was far better than XP at handling flaky hardware, but nowhere near as good as Linux. Has Windows caught up in this regard? Does W8 boot up with everything that was open when you shut down reopened, like Linux does and W7 doesn't? Will W8 allow you to have movies and slideshows as wallpaper, as KDE does but W7 doesn't?
Actually, W7 was such an improvement that I've had that notebook for a year and still haven't installed Linux on it yet (but that's mostly from laziness).
Won't be long before lazy fat people are using these just because they don't feel like using their own muscles to move their limbs
I feel sorry for fat people. It's not laziness, how would you like to have to lift 350 pounds just to get off off the couch? Plus, they usually get problems with their joints wearing out from carrying all that weight.
Obesity is a health problem, and laughing at someone's health problems, whether it be morbid obesity, insanity, or cancer, is the mark of a heartless jerk.
I'm just damned glad I'm skinny. I can't gain weight if I try.
Paying for music is precisely the same as paying for land or any other form of property.
No, it isn't. Physical property is limited, intellectual "property" is not. If I could download a car, yes, I would.
And this "property" is, at least in the US, decidedly NOT property. When I wrote a story or a song, I don't own that story or song, I only have distribution rights for a limited time. I rent my houuse, "my" house is no more my property than the stories I write. If I owned the house it could be passed down for generations.
I agree with Doctorow -- nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity. Is it wrong for me to check a book or movie out of the public library?
And DRM cannot work, period. All DRM can do is inconvinience paying customers while it's still easily available for free without the inconviniences. DRM itself costs sales, by people refusing to buy DRM material. But piracy has been shown over and over again to increase sales.
We don't expect accountants, doctors or engineers to work for nothing because they are good at what they do, why should musicians or other artists?
Accountants, doctors or engineers get paid once for the work they do, not for the rest of their lives plus 75 years. If copyright terms were sane, say 20 years, I believe piracy would decrease.
So do I and indeed it does. I can't compare with Apple sinnce I don't have an Apple, but compared to W7, kubuntu has it beat on features, useability, and stability (even on flaky hardware). Linux used to be problematic but those days are long gone.
The reason Linux hasn't gotten more traction on the desktop:
No advertising. Nobody but us nerds have ever heard of it. But everybody knows about Windows and Apple.
FUD. Folks repeat their tales of woe from a decade ago, or use the wrong distro for the wrong purpose. Hint: Red Hat is a lousy distro for a media center.
Windows comes on every non-Apple PC and laptop sold. As long as it works, and they're used to it, nobody's going to switch to Linux unless a) they lose their Windows disks or built the PC themselves or b) are frustrated and fed up with Windows' annoying behavior.
You are half right. Most people assume I'm a bible humping right winger, but in reality I'm an agnostic anti-idiotarian Libertarian.
To a lot of folks, Libertarian means conservative -- no taxes, little government, no regulations at all. Most folks (and I don't know why) confuse "conservative" with "Christian". Perhaps because the conservative atheists who pretend to be Christian (Rick Perry comes to mind) scream so loudly about their imaginary faith. They make real Christians cringe.
I broke the screen off my phone three months ago and it's been like a landline ever since, sitting on my end table. The only thing I miss is the clock and calendar and camera.
Sorry, I can't make heads or tails of what you just said. Can you elaborate? What do you mean by "console voodoo"? The only voodoo I have to do on my Linux box is if I want to exchange files with my Win7 box, which was, like iTunes, engineered to make it difficult to network (TFM says you nee W7Pro on the network or you can't network).
And there's no command prompt, just Samba. So I really don't understand what you're talking about.
On the interstate, doing 20 over the limit for a 100 mile trip will save only a little time. At 50 mph it takes two hours, at 70 it takes twenty or thirty minutes off the trip -- unless, of course, you get pulled over, in which case you'll get there later than if you'd done the limit, or wreck your car, in which case you won't get there at all.
In the city, speeding is simply fucktardedly idiotically moronically STUPID. The posted speed limit is meaningless in a city, your speed is determined only by the behavior of traffic lights. Speeding in the city only wastes your fuel, and can even make you get there slower, as the intelligent drivers pass you while you're stopped at that light that just turned gree that's been red for two minutes while you've been getting zero mpg.
Especially one that will screw over many small town governments which exist merely because of the speeding fines from speed traps on highways and routes that go through them.
IMO those towns deserve bankrupcy. They should tax, just like every sane community. Fines should NOT be an income for a city, at best they should only help pay for catching the lawbreakers.
Because then you could post an insightful comment, get a +5, and edit it to be Goatse and GNAA. Or you could say something REALLY stupid, and when corrected, edit it to make whoever corrected your stupidity look stupid himself.
OK, so explain something to me. When I was a kid, school started in late September and let out in early May. Now, they start in mid-August and don't let out until June. Yet my generation knows the difference between their and there, and knows when and when not to use an apostrophe, can do arithmetic without a calculator, etc.
If the longer school year is so beneficial why are the twentysomethings so ignorant?
It's the baby boomers. They grew up in the drug-fucked 'free love' Sixties,
And?
got free education,
So did my kids. So did you. College? Nope, we had to pay, too.
raped and pillaged the environment,
We were the generation that got the Clean Air and Clean Water acts passed. It was our parents and grandparents' generations that raped the environment; actually, not OUR parents but the rich kids' parents... who are now fighting for the end of the environmental regs we fought for.
You sound like an unemployed white racist who blames blacks for his troubles and the black who blames whites for his poverty, when it's the rich of both races that are to blame. It's not my generation, it's the rich of all generations. Mitt Romney's "I like to fire people" isn't an opinion held by many boomers.
The "bugger you Jack, I've got mine" isn't my generation's attitude, that's Mitt Romney and Donald Trump's income level's attitude.
Well, Triton is similar in mass and size to Pluto and has a tenuous atmosphere. Jupiter's Ganymede's atmosphere isn't well understood but is thought to be thin. But looking at the size of our own moon's size in comparison to Earth's size, and Earth compared to Neptune, I don't see any reason why a Neptune-sized planet couldn't have an Earth-sized moon.
Your Linux/American car analogy is apt. At one time, American cars were far crappier than Japanese cars. At one time Linux was a PITA to install and some stuff wouldn't work, some distros still are. I've owned both domestic and foreign cars, these days they're pretty much the same. My sister bought a new Lexus several years ago, I owned a Crysler (still have it), and the Crysler had more comfortable seats and a better stereo. It's ten years old now, I've only needed routine maintenance. I run kubuntu, XP, and W7. The latest upgrade did break Flash on kubuntu, but it crashes constantly in W7. I can fix the linux box by downgrading, there's no fixing the Windows box unless you know of a way to downgrade Flash.
I think the reason Linux hasn't and won't gain mainstream traction is because Widows is good enough and comes with your computer. Nobody is going to upgrade to Linux unless Windows enrages them enough, or someone shows them the advantages (which still may not be enough to make them switch).
I see you never finished the series. The axolotl tanks turned out to be human women. As to "incubator," that's a business term, and IMO shouldn't be used on a nerd site without explanation. I mean, you wouldn't talk about pions on a business site without explaining what they were... if an MBA could actually understand the explanation in the first place. It would be like Sheldon trying to explain something to Penny.
Good luck potty training a baby who can't walk. Once they're old enough to walk, THEN they're old enough to patty train. In my kids' cases, it was about 6 months of age.
I'd mod you up if I had points. My oldest daughter never did learn to crawl; she discovered at about two months that she could cross a room by rolling, so she rolled everywhen until she she started learning to stand, which was about the normal time. If we'd stuck her in one of these robots she may well have never learned to walk.
There's only the tiniest bit of resistance in the short length a charging cable takes, while any kind of induction will have bigger losses, and the farther away the device to the charger, the more power is wasted.
I'd say a large part of America simultaneously believes birds aren't dinosaurs, and that birds didn't evolve from them, since they feel in their gut that life as we know it today is the exact same as it was when created by god 6000 years ago when the earth wasn't around, but the ocean was.
You would be wrong. Most Americans don't, in fact, believe that. In fact, I have yet to meet a single person who does.
Slashdot Mirror
Unicorns don't eat hay, they live in the ocean.
Er, what species are you? ; )
Huh, did you mean to reply to a different comment?
I must have.
the reason to compare Windows to Linux in general, without naming a specific distro, is because even though the default configuration depends on the distro, you can customize most so much that you can end up with something very similar no matter where you start from.
True, but choosing ths wrong distro when one is first trying out Linux, who may have no experience whatever with any OS but Windows, can make him think "Linux sucks" when the truth is he shouldn't have chosen Red Hat for a desktop system. Yes, you can get Red Hat to do what you want, but a Windows user couldn't.
BTW, and completely offtopic here: I'm greatly looking forward to the next time travelling story, I enjoy them a lot! I hope you have just as much fun writing them!
Thank you! I doubt I'd write them if I didn't enjoy doing so. I just dumped all of them into an Oo file, and it was only 30 pages long, so there will have to be quite a bit more before it's a book. I'm not sure what order the chapters will be in later.
If you haven't seen The Paxil Diaries, it's on BitTorrent. It will probably take a while to download, there aren't many peers or seeders.
That was a chuckler, someone should mod you up!
It will probably be years before I see W8, if ever (I've only seen one computer with Vista), but why the comparison to Linux? Why not compare it to W7? And if you're comparing Linux to Windows, why not compare a single linux distro since every flavor of Linux is different to the Microsoft OS that's currently shipping?
Does W8 need reboots as often as W7? Linux almost never needs reboots. Does W8 enter a password automatically if told to do so on bootup, like Linux and unlike W7? W7 was far better than XP at handling flaky hardware, but nowhere near as good as Linux. Has Windows caught up in this regard? Does W8 boot up with everything that was open when you shut down reopened, like Linux does and W7 doesn't? Will W8 allow you to have movies and slideshows as wallpaper, as KDE does but W7 doesn't?
Actually, W7 was such an improvement that I've had that notebook for a year and still haven't installed Linux on it yet (but that's mostly from laziness).
Won't be long before lazy fat people are using these just because they don't feel like using their own muscles to move their limbs
I feel sorry for fat people. It's not laziness, how would you like to have to lift 350 pounds just to get off off the couch? Plus, they usually get problems with their joints wearing out from carrying all that weight.
Obesity is a health problem, and laughing at someone's health problems, whether it be morbid obesity, insanity, or cancer, is the mark of a heartless jerk.
I'm just damned glad I'm skinny. I can't gain weight if I try.
Paying for music is precisely the same as paying for land or any other form of property.
No, it isn't. Physical property is limited, intellectual "property" is not. If I could download a car, yes, I would.
And this "property" is, at least in the US, decidedly NOT property. When I wrote a story or a song, I don't own that story or song, I only have distribution rights for a limited time. I rent my houuse, "my" house is no more my property than the stories I write. If I owned the house it could be passed down for generations.
I agree with Doctorow -- nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity. Is it wrong for me to check a book or movie out of the public library?
And DRM cannot work, period. All DRM can do is inconvinience paying customers while it's still easily available for free without the inconviniences. DRM itself costs sales, by people refusing to buy DRM material. But piracy has been shown over and over again to increase sales.
We don't expect accountants, doctors or engineers to work for nothing because they are good at what they do, why should musicians or other artists?
Accountants, doctors or engineers get paid once for the work they do, not for the rest of their lives plus 75 years. If copyright terms were sane, say 20 years, I believe piracy would decrease.
I got linux on desktop. It works perfectly.
So do I and indeed it does. I can't compare with Apple sinnce I don't have an Apple, but compared to W7, kubuntu has it beat on features, useability, and stability (even on flaky hardware). Linux used to be problematic but those days are long gone.
The reason Linux hasn't gotten more traction on the desktop:
No advertising. Nobody but us nerds have ever heard of it. But everybody knows about Windows and Apple.
FUD. Folks repeat their tales of woe from a decade ago, or use the wrong distro for the wrong purpose. Hint: Red Hat is a lousy distro for a media center.
Windows comes on every non-Apple PC and laptop sold. As long as it works, and they're used to it, nobody's going to switch to Linux unless a) they lose their Windows disks or built the PC themselves or b) are frustrated and fed up with Windows' annoying behavior.
Again, who promised you an unlimited data rate that will not slow down automatically when other users are on line in your area?
Your employer, the phone company, advertise it. If you advertise a feature you should provide it.
You are half right. Most people assume I'm a bible humping right winger, but in reality I'm an agnostic anti-idiotarian Libertarian.
To a lot of folks, Libertarian means conservative -- no taxes, little government, no regulations at all. Most folks (and I don't know why) confuse "conservative" with "Christian". Perhaps because the conservative atheists who pretend to be Christian (Rick Perry comes to mind) scream so loudly about their imaginary faith. They make real Christians cringe.
I broke the screen off my phone three months ago and it's been like a landline ever since, sitting on my end table. The only thing I miss is the clock and calendar and camera.
"unavoidable console voodoo" of the GNU/Linux.
Sorry, I can't make heads or tails of what you just said. Can you elaborate? What do you mean by "console voodoo"? The only voodoo I have to do on my Linux box is if I want to exchange files with my Win7 box, which was, like iTunes, engineered to make it difficult to network (TFM says you nee W7Pro on the network or you can't network).
And there's no command prompt, just Samba. So I really don't understand what you're talking about.
On the interstate, doing 20 over the limit for a 100 mile trip will save only a little time. At 50 mph it takes two hours, at 70 it takes twenty or thirty minutes off the trip -- unless, of course, you get pulled over, in which case you'll get there later than if you'd done the limit, or wreck your car, in which case you won't get there at all.
In the city, speeding is simply fucktardedly idiotically moronically STUPID. The posted speed limit is meaningless in a city, your speed is determined only by the behavior of traffic lights. Speeding in the city only wastes your fuel, and can even make you get there slower, as the intelligent drivers pass you while you're stopped at that light that just turned gree that's been red for two minutes while you've been getting zero mpg.
Especially one that will screw over many small town governments which exist merely because of the speeding fines from speed traps on highways and routes that go through them.
IMO those towns deserve bankrupcy. They should tax, just like every sane community. Fines should NOT be an income for a city, at best they should only help pay for catching the lawbreakers.
(Why doesn't slashdot allow editing of posts?)
Because then you could post an insightful comment, get a +5, and edit it to be Goatse and GNAA. Or you could say something REALLY stupid, and when corrected, edit it to make whoever corrected your stupidity look stupid himself.
Your editing options are the "preview" button.
No one goes to heaven, it does not exist.
Your hypothesis is untestable, yet you are certain it's true? There's a bit of a logical disconnect there, you can't see it?
Look at a modern car. Not only does it parallel park for you, but it breaks if you get too close to the car in front
Man, your car sure is poorly engineered. You have to see a mechanic every time you get too close to another car?? I think I'd trade that clunker in!
OK, so explain something to me. When I was a kid, school started in late September and let out in early May. Now, they start in mid-August and don't let out until June. Yet my generation knows the difference between their and there, and knows when and when not to use an apostrophe, can do arithmetic without a calculator, etc.
If the longer school year is so beneficial why are the twentysomethings so ignorant?
The Boomers was really a short sited generation.
At least we can handle homophones.
It's the baby boomers. They grew up in the drug-fucked 'free love' Sixties,
And?
got free education,
So did my kids. So did you. College? Nope, we had to pay, too.
raped and pillaged the environment,
We were the generation that got the Clean Air and Clean Water acts passed. It was our parents and grandparents' generations that raped the environment; actually, not OUR parents but the rich kids' parents... who are now fighting for the end of the environmental regs we fought for.
You sound like an unemployed white racist who blames blacks for his troubles and the black who blames whites for his poverty, when it's the rich of both races that are to blame. It's not my generation, it's the rich of all generations. Mitt Romney's "I like to fire people" isn't an opinion held by many boomers.
The "bugger you Jack, I've got mine" isn't my generation's attitude, that's Mitt Romney and Donald Trump's income level's attitude.
You're fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong war.
Well, Triton is similar in mass and size to Pluto and has a tenuous atmosphere. Jupiter's Ganymede's atmosphere isn't well understood but is thought to be thin. But looking at the size of our own moon's size in comparison to Earth's size, and Earth compared to Neptune, I don't see any reason why a Neptune-sized planet couldn't have an Earth-sized moon.
Your Linux/American car analogy is apt. At one time, American cars were far crappier than Japanese cars. At one time Linux was a PITA to install and some stuff wouldn't work, some distros still are. I've owned both domestic and foreign cars, these days they're pretty much the same. My sister bought a new Lexus several years ago, I owned a Crysler (still have it), and the Crysler had more comfortable seats and a better stereo. It's ten years old now, I've only needed routine maintenance. I run kubuntu, XP, and W7. The latest upgrade did break Flash on kubuntu, but it crashes constantly in W7. I can fix the linux box by downgrading, there's no fixing the Windows box unless you know of a way to downgrade Flash.
I think the reason Linux hasn't and won't gain mainstream traction is because Widows is good enough and comes with your computer. Nobody is going to upgrade to Linux unless Windows enrages them enough, or someone shows them the advantages (which still may not be enough to make them switch).
Or is this the first step towards axolotl tanks?
I see you never finished the series. The axolotl tanks turned out to be human women. As to "incubator," that's a business term, and IMO shouldn't be used on a nerd site without explanation. I mean, you wouldn't talk about pions on a business site without explaining what they were... if an MBA could actually understand the explanation in the first place. It would be like Sheldon trying to explain something to Penny.
Can never start potty training too early.
Good luck potty training a baby who can't walk. Once they're old enough to walk, THEN they're old enough to patty train. In my kids' cases, it was about 6 months of age.
I'd mod you up if I had points. My oldest daughter never did learn to crawl; she discovered at about two months that she could cross a room by rolling, so she rolled everywhen until she she started learning to stand, which was about the normal time. If we'd stuck her in one of these robots she may well have never learned to walk.
Wires have resistance, after all.
There's only the tiniest bit of resistance in the short length a charging cable takes, while any kind of induction will have bigger losses, and the farther away the device to the charger, the more power is wasted.
I'd say a large part of America simultaneously believes birds aren't dinosaurs, and that birds didn't evolve from them, since they feel in their gut that life as we know it today is the exact same as it was when created by god 6000 years ago when the earth wasn't around, but the ocean was.
You would be wrong. Most Americans don't, in fact, believe that. In fact, I have yet to meet a single person who does.