Coupon for 6 months of "free" support != free for Dell (they have to pay Novell for it) Redirecting systems for completion at Novell = very expensive as you're adding shipping
Plus, if people buy hardware and software from Dell they will expect support from Dell. That's one of Dells big selling points is having somewhat easy to access support.
Meaning that the cost of supporting a customer support infrastructure for SuSE, PLUS two different OS installation lines in production, means higher cost to provide the system.
Would you buy a Linux based system if it costs more than the Windows based one?
The the problem becomes that it costs Dell more to produce and support a box when it has a more restrictive list of devices with drivers for them. If they focus on just having one hardware platform that is Windows and Linux solid then they limit themselves on the number of devices they can put into it and others who can use more device which don't have Linux support get an edge on them.
The minute you make it less profitable for Dell you basically lose their interest.
I think the problem becomes evident looking at the Dell survey...
6) Which Linux distribution should Dell prioritize on?
Commercial: Novell/SuSE Linux Desktop
Commercial: Red Hat Enterprise Desktop
Community Supported: Fedora
Community Supported: OpenSUSE
Community Supported: Ubuntu
Other
If 'Other', please specify
People complain about several different versions of Windows Vista but you just named 5 completely different builds of a Linux OS, and there are several more I know some niche market people would like to see on that list too (like Kubuntu). Since if you roll out a SuSE based Linux machine several of the others would just say "Meh, I'll order it however and flatten it once I get it" you have a much smaller target audience who would actually buy it.
And until a company can determine that there's a big enough audience who would buy a specific distro of linux on a computer they won't make efforts to support them.
If they want to use the power they have to make the internet in some way a better place, which I think we can all agree it would be without people cybers-quatting for greed and profit, they have my vote.
The question becomes, if they nail the current squatters to the wall what is to prevent another round of squatters from snatching up the domains? If they really want to be heroes in this field they should destroy the squatters, then take the domains and establish a non-profit org which would take applications and award the domain name to the first person with a viable use for it. Unfortunately this would be exceedingly venerable to corruption. Once they've established the "domain trust" hand it over to a neutral third party and fund it "blind trust" style.
I know Google is hoping for the "DCMA > You" verdict which will basically say "tough.. they get to post it until you tell them to take it down".
But there is another angle Viacom could be positioning for. A de facto value for media shown via legal precedent. The court could say "well, you owe Viacom 50/70/90/100% of the money you made by showing their content."
If that happens then Viacom files for records showing how many views every clip of theirs has had and cashes in. If they find more later, they cash in again. At this point YouTube becomes a cash cow for big media. At the same time admittedly it becomes a small cash calf for producers of independent works which they copyright then allow to be shown on YouTube with the understanding that they may file and claim money for it later. The problem here is that it tears into the profitability of YouTube and that business model. Right now the YouTube business model is "have people supply us with content to show, then tack ads on to make money." Viacom will make the argument that in "brick and mortar" terms this would be like letting pawn shops sell whatever anybody brought in until individuals tracked down the stolen goods on their own and had the pawn shops take them off the shelves.
I could also see a variant of this where YouTube is required to manually view and verify all content is not copyrighted before publishing it if they are making money off that publishing. At that point YouTube is essentially destroyed because they couldn't afford the kind of staff it would take to have an actual person verify that something isn't a clip of a network show.
Overall I agree that this is Google picking when it is going to take it's stand and fight. They picked YouTube as the place. This could be their Iwo Jima, or it could be their Waterloo...
If I understand the philosophy underlying Wikipedia is that it's SUPPOSED to be an encyclopedia everybody can change. Admittedly this is an inherently flawed belief since it does require you trust people not to lie, slander, and vandalize it.
This change, whereas it will make Wikipedia a far more reliable tool for information, would also as I see it destroy a fundamental principle on which it was founded.
Sony came out with the intent of winning the affections of gamers with a flash and dazzle. Like a girl who wears her whale tail action with a semi transparent top when she's trying to hook you in on the second or third date.
Nintendo came out like the girl who doesn't have the porn start measurements, but baked you cookies and came over to sit with you when you had a really rough day at work and cuddled on the couch.
One looks great on the arm, but we all know which one loves us.
With the continuing villification of steroid use in society how long was a guy who basically got so juiced up by the government in the 40's that he literally survived being frozen in a block of ice and STILL woke up to be an Uber-mench supposed to fly?
Also I agree with the "Irony of fighting against the government to save America" being the real thing which did him in.
On the topic of super heroes dying, there was a great riff on this in the She Hulk series where She Hulk needs to have the testimony of a ghost in court in order to clear someone of a murder rap. The court of course doesn't believe the testimony of a dead person to be viable, so she brings in The Thing and asks him "How many times have you died?" ergo proving that death is a temporary condition and shouldn't prevent someone from testifying in court.
People get a laptop instead of a QQQ or Blackberry or smartphone usually because they need to do serious work, this usually requires prolonged reading of the screen. This means the screen size is an important factor...
Over this last weekend my wife brought my mother-in-laws computers back to the house because it was "behaving badly". Hard drive was making some noise and thrashing constantly. This even though she had a nice anti-virus/spyware/whateverware package on it (AVG), updated regularly, and had FINALLY broken her habit of opening all those cool attachments her other computer novice friends kept e-mailing her.
Turns out the HD was going south on her, it had developed some bad sectors and whatnot and was having issues coping with these, and I suspect had some corrupted files because of it. I pull one of my spare 60G drives from my workshop slap it in and proceed to tell Norton Ghost to make that puppy the new C drive.
Still has trouble on booting because it's hanging trying to load some files which seemed to be broken. Next easy step. Pop in her XP CD (which still had the booklet with sticker showing her key) and tell it to repair the install. It does, and things boot, but now it says it's failing WGA checks. I wrestled with it for a good hour before finding that even though it had a fresh install of windows some of the WGA stuff had failed to install right and was giving "not sure" messages. I had to dig through more MS KB stuff to find the files to re-download and fix. And I kept eying that CD on my desk with the "fix WGA... but good!" tools on it that don't come from microsoft, but I know would have straightened it's nasty WGA habit right up...
They seriously need to make that less intrusive, and considerably "smarter". Before further punishing innocents with it. Of course from what I hear Vista WGA has already been cracked, so it gets back to the "why punish people with DRM that gets cracked as fast as you can release it anyways" argument.
If the company paid for rights to the land it's cable goes through. And if the company paid the cost of deploying the fiber and none of it is government funded/subsidized then the company should be able to do as they damn well please with it.
If you say "develop and deploy this state of the art network which will increase the countries infrastructure and help along network access in the country, but we're going to make you let your competitors use it too" then I would say that's a good incentive to respond with "well then the government should build and maintain it".
I use CFL's in my house where it's the right application. On top of that I have several large aquariums (hobby) and CFL's are by far the best lighting for those to grow plants in tanks.
On the other hand, if you use X-10 switches and controls, and/or you want to be able to DIM your lights my experience would suggest you stay away from CFLs for those applications.
Outlawing them is stupid.
And yes, I have noted a difference in my electric bills since I started converting over the lights I could to CFL.
What is the point of releasing a new iteration of an existing platform to bump up speed and still not catch up with the competitions products?
Wouldn't they have been better served re-routing this R&D effort/money into something which would put them back on top of either the price or performance curves?
The RIAA is offering up the ability for you to go to a website.. pay a "pre-settlement" and then not be libel if they get around to suing you. Is that it?
Wait... Does this mean I'm clear of future lawsuits?
How about they just be more up front and sell a $250 "Get out of lawsuit free" card. Then you buy that, download all you want, if/when they sue you, you hand them the card, and it's done? Or is that too close to the "we know you're a criminal" iPod tax?
People still buy books, including audio books and eBooks, even though photocopier exist.
I think the recording and motion picture industries need to look at why, and follow that lead. Instead of millions in copy protection R&D, why not spend millions to improve the product? Make the product something people liked owning. (Notice how libophiles obsess over the actual tangible book?).
The one really viable way to control it would be to mandate that all players have an internet connection and it verify the purchaser has rights to the media before playing it. Of course if people have good high speed connections to the internet there's no reason to buy the physical media, which they recording and motion picture industries simply can't abide with.
I agree that the easiest method would be to have a slot on the front of the axe that you click your Wiimote into, it attaches to the guitar through the nunchunk port, and some kind of click lock, or other mechanism to hold it in place...
The actual guitar hero controller is EASILY mapped to a legacy controller such as is already attached via the nunchuk port for virtual console games...
5 button - a, b, c, d, x Strum trigger - either y button, or maybe use the analog stick to be able to track hos strong your hitting it. Alternately connect the nunchuck and hold it in your hand so it can track the hand motion. Whammy bar - other analog stick
Movement cues... Chuck Berry duck hop Behind the head Play with teeth
But lets avoid the "Smash into amp to finish the song" move please.
Did you know that nearly all of the people who commit subtle accounting fraud are good with math?
I agree, mostly useless info there as you're saying the people who commit most of the crime in question are the ones with skills to commit the crime in question.
Now it's "Viral Marketing" instead of "Publicity Stunt"?
As for the "there's no way those were bombs" people....
From what I understand it was a board of LED's with something along the lines of a D sized battery. Who says it would have been trying to blow up the building? What would a D cell battery sized package of ricin, nerve gas, or some other equally nasty chemical do if released under several bridges simultaneously during, oh, say, rush hour.
Ad companies doing crap like this need to expect the "worst possible public response", which is what they got. Now, on the other hand, they probably love this as it got far more attention than people saying "Oh look a light up sign with that pixel guy from ATHF..." would have garnered.
If I recall correctly there are ways to get around this by calling actual MS support. Usually this involves being the "bullying customer" some. But they will do an over the phone registration. I had to do this when I had to replace the MB in my mother-in-laws computer.
P.S. - This should also blossom into a beautiful flame war, I would recommend hot cocoa with marshmallows for viewing it.
Slashdot Mirror
Coupon for 6 months of "free" support != free for Dell (they have to pay Novell for it)
Redirecting systems for completion at Novell = very expensive as you're adding shipping
Plus, if people buy hardware and software from Dell they will expect support from Dell. That's one of Dells big selling points is having somewhat easy to access support.
Meaning that the cost of supporting a customer support infrastructure for SuSE, PLUS two different OS installation lines in production, means higher cost to provide the system.
Would you buy a Linux based system if it costs more than the Windows based one?
The the problem becomes that it costs Dell more to produce and support a box when it has a more restrictive list of devices with drivers for them. If they focus on just having one hardware platform that is Windows and Linux solid then they limit themselves on the number of devices they can put into it and others who can use more device which don't have Linux support get an edge on them.
The minute you make it less profitable for Dell you basically lose their interest.
I think the problem becomes evident looking at the Dell survey...
6) Which Linux distribution should Dell prioritize on?
Commercial: Novell/SuSE Linux Desktop
Commercial: Red Hat Enterprise Desktop
Community Supported: Fedora
Community Supported: OpenSUSE
Community Supported: Ubuntu
Other
If 'Other', please specify
People complain about several different versions of Windows Vista but you just named 5 completely different builds of a Linux OS, and there are several more I know some niche market people would like to see on that list too (like Kubuntu). Since if you roll out a SuSE based Linux machine several of the others would just say "Meh, I'll order it however and flatten it once I get it" you have a much smaller target audience who would actually buy it.
And until a company can determine that there's a big enough audience who would buy a specific distro of linux on a computer they won't make efforts to support them.
If they want to use the power they have to make the internet in some way a better place, which I think we can all agree it would be without people cybers-quatting for greed and profit, they have my vote.
The question becomes, if they nail the current squatters to the wall what is to prevent another round of squatters from snatching up the domains? If they really want to be heroes in this field they should destroy the squatters, then take the domains and establish a non-profit org which would take applications and award the domain name to the first person with a viable use for it. Unfortunately this would be exceedingly venerable to corruption. Once they've established the "domain trust" hand it over to a neutral third party and fund it "blind trust" style.
I know Google is hoping for the "DCMA > You" verdict which will basically say "tough.. they get to post it until you tell them to take it down".
But there is another angle Viacom could be positioning for. A de facto value for media shown via legal precedent. The court could say "well, you owe Viacom 50/70/90/100% of the money you made by showing their content."
If that happens then Viacom files for records showing how many views every clip of theirs has had and cashes in. If they find more later, they cash in again. At this point YouTube becomes a cash cow for big media. At the same time admittedly it becomes a small cash calf for producers of independent works which they copyright then allow to be shown on YouTube with the understanding that they may file and claim money for it later. The problem here is that it tears into the profitability of YouTube and that business model. Right now the YouTube business model is "have people supply us with content to show, then tack ads on to make money." Viacom will make the argument that in "brick and mortar" terms this would be like letting pawn shops sell whatever anybody brought in until individuals tracked down the stolen goods on their own and had the pawn shops take them off the shelves.
I could also see a variant of this where YouTube is required to manually view and verify all content is not copyrighted before publishing it if they are making money off that publishing. At that point YouTube is essentially destroyed because they couldn't afford the kind of staff it would take to have an actual person verify that something isn't a clip of a network show.
Overall I agree that this is Google picking when it is going to take it's stand and fight. They picked YouTube as the place. This could be their Iwo Jima, or it could be their Waterloo...
You're looking at this from the perspective as a native English speaker.
Imaging all the Japanese who don't know English, but have to learn/type english domain names. Very unintuitive for them.
My concern would be for all the internet filtering and firewalling software which explicitly only allows ASCII in HTTP headers.
If I understand the philosophy underlying Wikipedia is that it's SUPPOSED to be an encyclopedia everybody can change. Admittedly this is an inherently flawed belief since it does require you trust people not to lie, slander, and vandalize it.
This change, whereas it will make Wikipedia a far more reliable tool for information, would also as I see it destroy a fundamental principle on which it was founded.
Sony came out with the intent of winning the affections of gamers with a flash and dazzle. Like a girl who wears her whale tail action with a semi transparent top when she's trying to hook you in on the second or third date.
Nintendo came out like the girl who doesn't have the porn start measurements, but baked you cookies and came over to sit with you when you had a really rough day at work and cuddled on the couch.
One looks great on the arm, but we all know which one loves us.
With the continuing villification of steroid use in society how long was a guy who basically got so juiced up by the government in the 40's that he literally survived being frozen in a block of ice and STILL woke up to be an Uber-mench supposed to fly?
Also I agree with the "Irony of fighting against the government to save America" being the real thing which did him in.
On the topic of super heroes dying, there was a great riff on this in the She Hulk series where She Hulk needs to have the testimony of a ghost in court in order to clear someone of a murder rap. The court of course doesn't believe the testimony of a dead person to be viable, so she brings in The Thing and asks him "How many times have you died?" ergo proving that death is a temporary condition and shouldn't prevent someone from testifying in court.
People get a laptop instead of a QQQ or Blackberry or smartphone usually because they need to do serious work, this usually requires prolonged reading of the screen. This means the screen size is an important factor...
"5.6" display"
Next please.
Over this last weekend my wife brought my mother-in-laws computers back to the house because it was "behaving badly". Hard drive was making some noise and thrashing constantly. This even though she had a nice anti-virus/spyware/whateverware package on it (AVG), updated regularly, and had FINALLY broken her habit of opening all those cool attachments her other computer novice friends kept e-mailing her.
Turns out the HD was going south on her, it had developed some bad sectors and whatnot and was having issues coping with these, and I suspect had some corrupted files because of it. I pull one of my spare 60G drives from my workshop slap it in and proceed to tell Norton Ghost to make that puppy the new C drive.
Still has trouble on booting because it's hanging trying to load some files which seemed to be broken. Next easy step. Pop in her XP CD (which still had the booklet with sticker showing her key) and tell it to repair the install. It does, and things boot, but now it says it's failing WGA checks. I wrestled with it for a good hour before finding that even though it had a fresh install of windows some of the WGA stuff had failed to install right and was giving "not sure" messages. I had to dig through more MS KB stuff to find the files to re-download and fix. And I kept eying that CD on my desk with the "fix WGA... but good!" tools on it that don't come from microsoft, but I know would have straightened it's nasty WGA habit right up...
They seriously need to make that less intrusive, and considerably "smarter". Before further punishing innocents with it. Of course from what I hear Vista WGA has already been cracked, so it gets back to the "why punish people with DRM that gets cracked as fast as you can release it anyways" argument.
If the company paid for rights to the land it's cable goes through. And if the company paid the cost of deploying the fiber and none of it is government funded/subsidized then the company should be able to do as they damn well please with it.
If you say "develop and deploy this state of the art network which will increase the countries infrastructure and help along network access in the country, but we're going to make you let your competitors use it too" then I would say that's a good incentive to respond with "well then the government should build and maintain it".
There are Windows and OS/X clients.
Several people have gotten it to work in Linux with the help of third party apps/emulators.
I use CFL's in my house where it's the right application. On top of that I have several large aquariums (hobby) and CFL's are by far the best lighting for those to grow plants in tanks.
On the other hand, if you use X-10 switches and controls, and/or you want to be able to DIM your lights my experience would suggest you stay away from CFLs for those applications.
Outlawing them is stupid.
And yes, I have noted a difference in my electric bills since I started converting over the lights I could to CFL.
What is the point of releasing a new iteration of an existing platform to bump up speed and still not catch up with the competitions products?
Wouldn't they have been better served re-routing this R&D effort/money into something which would put them back on top of either the price or performance curves?
One of the reasons that it's obvious that the "magic" is gone from the Wii is that they are perpetually sold out?
I wonder if Sony is wishing the magic of the PS3 was gone too...
This is just like someone who really REALLY wanted a girl child having a boy, then at age 2 you see the boy running around in pink frilly dresses....
If you want a thinking mans political game with good FPS shoot em up action write it.
If you get put in charge of a "hunt down the bad aliens and kill them dead game" write that.
This is a case where I don't think the peanut butter and chocolate will taste great together.
The RIAA is offering up the ability for you to go to a website.. pay a "pre-settlement" and then not be libel if they get around to suing you. Is that it?
Wait... Does this mean I'm clear of future lawsuits?
How about they just be more up front and sell a $250 "Get out of lawsuit free" card. Then you buy that, download all you want, if/when they sue you, you hand them the card, and it's done? Or is that too close to the "we know you're a criminal" iPod tax?
We could have drive thru courts!
People still buy books, including audio books and eBooks, even though photocopier exist.
I think the recording and motion picture industries need to look at why, and follow that lead. Instead of millions in copy protection R&D, why not spend millions to improve the product? Make the product something people liked owning. (Notice how libophiles obsess over the actual tangible book?).
The one really viable way to control it would be to mandate that all players have an internet connection and it verify the purchaser has rights to the media before playing it. Of course if people have good high speed connections to the internet there's no reason to buy the physical media, which they recording and motion picture industries simply can't abide with.
I agree that the easiest method would be to have a slot on the front of the axe that you click your Wiimote into, it attaches to the guitar through the nunchunk port, and some kind of click lock, or other mechanism to hold it in place...
The actual guitar hero controller is EASILY mapped to a legacy controller such as is already attached via the nunchuk port for virtual console games...
5 button - a, b, c, d, x
Strum trigger - either y button, or maybe use the analog stick to be able to track hos strong your hitting it. Alternately connect the nunchuck and hold it in your hand so it can track the hand motion.
Whammy bar - other analog stick
Movement cues...
Chuck Berry duck hop
Behind the head
Play with teeth
But lets avoid the "Smash into amp to finish the song" move please.
Did you know that nearly all of the people who commit subtle accounting fraud are good with math?
I agree, mostly useless info there as you're saying the people who commit most of the crime in question are the ones with skills to commit the crime in question.
Or kittens...
Kittens go in.. pop tarts come out!
Too vague?
Now it's "Viral Marketing" instead of "Publicity Stunt"?
As for the "there's no way those were bombs" people....
From what I understand it was a board of LED's with something along the lines of a D sized battery. Who says it would have been trying to blow up the building? What would a D cell battery sized package of ricin, nerve gas, or some other equally nasty chemical do if released under several bridges simultaneously during, oh, say, rush hour.
Ad companies doing crap like this need to expect the "worst possible public response", which is what they got. Now, on the other hand, they probably love this as it got far more attention than people saying "Oh look a light up sign with that pixel guy from ATHF..." would have garnered.
If I recall correctly there are ways to get around this by calling actual MS support. Usually this involves being the "bullying customer" some. But they will do an over the phone registration. I had to do this when I had to replace the MB in my mother-in-laws computer.
P.S. - This should also blossom into a beautiful flame war, I would recommend hot cocoa with marshmallows for viewing it.
He's just taking a page from the Andrew Carnagie playbook...