Yes, but they also had more traditional shielding in place to help mitigate some of this, and also stayed inside the space craft during high solar activity. As it is now as long as you're inside some sort of decently shielded structure such as the space shuttle, or ISS, you won't be exposed to anything that's too far outside the normal exposure range.
The article mentions that the results are probably skewed by the likes of E-Bay providing direct links to file complaints, and it also doesn't say if the complaints were ever followed up on or not. This is probably a list of all complaints, rather than those that were shown to be legitimate.
There's a hard sci-fi novel out there called Twister that talks about having 6 dimensions, although the author takes liberty by allowing the main character to travel into a "shadow dimension" that he's able to open using a device he invented (by accident IIRC).
Ok, I'm just a developer, but I've used Linux off and on for various things over the years, and I'd like to think I have a pretty good feel for what Linux needs to really take off on the Desktop (and no it's not there yet, but it's getting closer every day). There are essentially three different flavors of "desktop market", and you really need to cover at least two of these three in order to have an impact.
The first market, and the one that Linux is more than capable of supporting as it stands now with little trouble, is that of the enterprise desktop, which is distinguished from the enterprise server by the fact that the likes of the CEO and marketing department would be running these systems, rather than the IT guys. The main problem with this market is one of image. You need to actually convince the CEOs that Linux on their desktop is just as good or better than Microsoft. To a great extent IBM, Novell, and other major corporations are doing a very good job of getting the word out, and I think we're really seeing progress on this front.
The second market, and once again, one that Linux can handle without much problem is that of your typical non-technical home user. The problem with this market is that it needs to be easy. Dead easy. One button, very small words, short sentences easy. For an example of how to handle this market perfectly, see the install process of the latest beta of Ubuntu (7.04). The key to winning over this segment is to first get a distro that is so simple they never have to use the command line to do everything they need on a day to day basis. This means, they need to be able to setup and install new hardware and software, perform updates, and configure everything from GUI without any particular technical knowledge outside of that supplied by said software/hardware. Once you've got the distro nailed, have some technical user install it for them the first time and get them using it, once they use it on a day to day basis, become comfortable with it, and realize it's better than what they had before, they're sold. Distros like Ubuntu are making headway in this market, but still have a little ways to go, I think this is the source of at least part of the comments in TFA.
The third market, which is the hardest one for Linux, and also the most critical right now, is the power user and gamer market. In order to win this market, Linux needs two things, it must support the latest and greatest in graphics cards out of the box (look to intel for some interesting developments in this department), and it must encourage game developers to produce cross-platform games. Now, the second of those two requirements can be mitigated by using things like Cedega to run non-ported games, but in that case graphics cards need to be fully supported in order for the games to play on par with the windows counterparts. To a certain extent this market revolves around hardware support, followed by market demand. Intel and AMD are positioning themselves to be strong players in this arena, in particular the moves by Intel to package Linux drivers with their Windows drivers on new graphics cards, as well as to open source graphics drivers is very encouraging. AMD (ATI) has recently started to release drivers for their cards if not at the same time as the Windows ones, at least in the same time frame, and adopting a common versioning number for all the drivers has also helped in comparing support progress. Once the hardware support is in place, it's just a matter of demonstrating to manufacturers that the user base is sufficient to justify the cost of developing on Linux. One of the best ways to do that would be to get a large enough portion of the casual computer user population switched over to Linux.
If linux can get a large enough portion of two of these markets, or even a relatively small portion of all three, it will have enough momentum to finally interest the likes of Dell, and HP. From that point forward, it's just a matter of free market dynamics.
The post calling for a -1 Flamebait mod being moded -1 Flamebait tickles my weird sense of humor. What's next, a post asking for a +1 Insightful mod getting moded +1 Insightful?
I've never worked the helldesk myself, but I have seen posts by others that have stated that some companies will actually fire anyone on the helpdesk that deviates from the script.
I suspected you were going for sarcastic, but wasn't sure. It was either that, or you were an unbelievable asshat, glad to know it was being sarcastic.
But really, how often does that occur compared to Joe Schmo calling about his broken intarweb? If you take it personally that the CSR has you do steps you swear you've already done and know aren't a problem then the issue is with you and not them. They're *trying* to evaluate your situation and you're impeding that.
Actually, the problem here is, they aren't trying to evaluate your situation, they're trying to follow the little boxes on their screen. If they were trying to evaluate your situation they would realize when you started by saying things like "My DHCP lease is failing to renew, and the DSL light on the modem is lit, but the Internet lite is off." that you probably have enough brains to have some idea of what you're doing.
As one of the better experiences I had while getting tech support, I actually managed to get someone on the phone who realized this, and treated my like I actually had a brain. He initially started with some fairly simple things, asking me if I knew how to open a command prompt, and when I told him I did, he didn't bother trying to walk me through the process, just told me which commands he wanted me to run, and I read him the output he needed to diagnose and fix the problem (which was partially my fault, and partially theirs. They had a misconfigured gateway, but I also had gotten a new modem recently and didn't realize this one was smarter than the last one and actually performed DHCP and NAT itself before going to my router). Now on the other end of the spectrum I once also got a script jockey that kept telling me to do things like reboot my computer, to which I would tell him ok, go grab a sandwich, then tell him I had rebooted it. Worked out just fine, he got to check all the little boxes, I got something to eat, and they eventually realized that some work was being done on the line and informed me of such (which would have been nice to know without having to run through the script in the first place).
I have to wonder though, in the long run, wouldn't they be saving money on phone charges if they actually bothered to keep this people up to date on outages from work and upgrades, instead of having them spend 15 min running through a script before finally checking in with someone who informs them of the work being done?
I know a lot of you out there are going to be "but we often know better than the CSR anyway", but if that is the case, then wtf are you doing calling the support line? You obviously need help, so -let- them help you in the way that they know will be best. Yes, they'll walk you through a stupid flowchart on their screen - but those flowcharts are typically well-made to determine exact causes and exact solutions.
When I call tech support, 90% of the time it's because something is wrong outside of my control, if it was in my control I would have fixed it already. I usually also have a pretty good idea of what exactly it is that's wrong, and will provide the details of all the tests I've run and also what I suspect the problem is. It's unfortunatly rare that I manage to get someone on the phone that is trained to do more than read what the screen tells them and click buttons. If I wanted to follow a flow chart, I'd just use some brain-dead product like 90% of the Microsoft help files (when was the last time the help utility on a Microsoft product actually helped you solve any sort of error?).
Now, that being said, sometimes people do make mistakes, and a tech that actually knows what he's doing, after you've given your explanation of everything can often point out a few things to check over to make sure you didn't miss anything. The problem is, the minimum wage phone jockey they usually have running these operations will take 30 minutes running through some script before you finally get down to some of the usefull checks (or worse, just telling you to re-install everything and call back if it doesn't fix it it, which is the tech support equivalent of flipping someone the bird), rather than going to them right from the beginning based on the symptoms the user reports.
Well, if you define a fear of death as a indicator of sanity (and I think most people would), then I don't think the Columbine kids were sane as it seems likely they never planned to leave the school alive. Of course, you do want to reduce the risk of guns being used by those with proven poor judgement, so those that are under age, mentally ill, or have been convicted of violent crimes should of course not be allowed to purchase or own guns. Also of course, part of owning a gun is being trained in the rules of using it. Important things like, never point a gun at someone unless you're planning to use it, and being instructed on the definition of whether certain acts count as self defense or not, would go a long way towards reducing accidental shootings.
I think the point is, that if more people carried guns, it would make sane people think twice before deciding to try shooting someone, and in the event an insane person went on a rampage like this, it would increase the odds of them being stopped sooner, rather than later. The constitution, and our gun laws are structured the way they are for a reason, which is that it's impossible to prevent people from committing crimes with guns, even if they're made illegal. We just have to go on the assumption that most people are decent and sane, and deal with the ones that prove they aren't.
Hmm, most drivers in Linux are modular and loaded on demand during the boot process. Graphics cards usually don't require a particular driver until you startup your X server, although with most distributions aiming for point and click operation the X server is just about required to boot. That being said, I know that Ubuntu has a boot option that says something like "Boot into safe graphics mode" that represents a lowest common denominator and should boot safely on virtually and graphics card. As for other hardware, that could be an issue. When you say custom drivers were written, who wrote those drivers, and how did you get them? I doubt FC has drivers in it that the other distros don't, although it may be the case that they arn't compiled by default in other distros. If you really want something up to date, and you have some strange hardware that drivers are available for, but not normally compiled, you may have some luck with Gentoo, although it can be daunting to install even for technical users. In general, if you follow the walk through on the Gentoo website exactly as it says, and have all your hardware information written down beforehand so you know what kernel modules to compile, it's time consuming, but not that hard.
There's a reason that we usually tag these articles with mafiaa. You know, that other organization that prompted the creation of racketeering laws in the first place.
What kind of graphics card? I find it unusual that you have a graphics card that works in a old distro, but not in a new one, it's usually the other way around. It might be a issue with a kernel setting I suppose. I know I've had to add some boot options to Ubuntu to get it to play nice with a older laptop I have (forget what, something about disabling APIC or something like that).
I think I saw a headline where Microsoft just announced Office Vista Pro 2006 Hyper Fighting Edition Alpha, which has new skins for most of the widgets, and overclocked the cursor blink speed to seizure inducing levels.
The latest beta of Ubuntu (7.04) is about a close as you can get to a one click install. If I recall correctly from the other day it's about 3 clicks, which consist of telling it to wipe the HD (as opposed to attempting to preserve the previous OS), select your keyboard layout and language, and then select your timezone. Not sure what kind of wierd HD you had that was giving it fits, but I have never had a problem with Linux working with a HD before.
As for that completely generic laptop, laptops are notoriously difficult to get everything working correctly on due to manufacturers cutting corners on components to bring weight and cost down. What you end up with is something that's pretty close to the original component, but that the manufacturer provides a tweaked driver for to get it working in windows. Problem with that is, in Linux the hardware auto-detect thinks it's the stock hardware version, and not the hacked up one the manufacturer is using, so the default drivers fail. Of course, given a bit of time the Linux drivers get updated and it all works, but there's always a bit of lag time, so of course a brand new laptop is probably going to have a few items that don't work out of the box.
Wireless is also one of the harder things to get working because most of the wireless cards are using proprietary firmware drivers that often times hook into windows for some of the functionality. They can be made to work in Linux, (at the very least you can use ndiswrapper to run the windows drivers) but it's often tricky, and usually a legal minefield which is why many distributions are hesitant to include certain drivers in the default install.
I think that was his problem, he looked and got overwhelmed. There really is a large number of competing display technologies out right now, and without having display samples to look at I can understand his confusion. I'm not sure about the color option, or development kit, but if you're looking for something that dosn't need to be viewable in the dark e-Ink is very promising. Only major problem with e-Ink is the refresh rate is pathetic, so not really viable for any sort of video. Other than that, OLED is the hot new thing, but those are still hard to come by in larger display sizes, and even then pricey unless you're looking to buy in bulk and have some clout to throw around. Also coming over the horizon be looking for SED displays.
Further, the verified pages should be printed and bound, perhaps in a book form. Then the schools should setup a system where they can trade copies of the books between each other at request. Lastly they should construct special rooms in each school for the specific purpose of housing these books. Of course, with the number of books involved they'll need a system to organize all of them and allow for quickly finding a book. I propose a system where we divide everything into 10 main categories. Then within each of those categories we further subdivide into 10 subcategories. Finally, within each subcategory there will be 10 sections. Using this amazing system, all human knowledge can be conveniently indexed.
There seems to be this prevailing opinion among schools that the information on wikipedia is of such poor quality as to be considered outright lies. Yes there is some mis-information present on wikipedia, but the same could be said of virtually any source of information. Wikipedia, like any source should be cross-referenced with other sources, but it also serves as an excellent initial source of information, and is often one of the most up to date sources you can find. In reference to modern events, both political, and scientific, it represents the best resource short of dedicated peer journals (which are often hard to find, and even harder to search). Finally, censorship of any kind on the internet, particularly in schools which are usually understaffed and poorly designed in terms of IT is a joke that can be easily circumvented by students with basic computer skills and motivation to do so.
You both miss the point, although I think the GP misses it less than you do. Fallout was great because of both the story, and the game mechanics. It's like trying to argue that either FX or plot don't matter in a movie, the fact is, they both contribute and screw either one (or both) up and the movie just isn't as good as it could be. Now, as for realtime vs. turn-based, I really hope they stay with turn-based. For me, part of the fun of Fallout was the turn-based combat, and it's something I've really missed. No one is making turn-based RPGs anymore, and it really saddens me. The closest you get to turn based is NVWN2 where you keep having to mash the space bar to pause and queue up more commands. If they turned out Fallout 3 with a modern graphics engine, but kept the old skill/turn-based gameplay (similar to what was done with supreme commander, if you compare it to say Starcraft), I think it'll be a great game. If they ditch the turn-based combat, it'll still be a ok game, but to me it wouldn't feel like Fallout anymore. By the same token, if they keep the turn-based combat, but trash the atmosphere and story, it would be a similarly mediocre game.
Maybe if you had RTFA instead of giving up partway through the first part you'd have realized that the article is trying to point out the stupidity of the scare mongering the government is doing to try and get blanket laws passed that give them free reign to do whatever they want. The DMCA is a perfect example of this sort of strategy being employed by the media cartels to get broad laws passed that allow them to strong arm people. The basic point of the article is that as long as the general public continues to believe in this "Superhacker" concept, then they'll ignore it when laws get passed that say stupid things like accessing a computer through a network without express written consent of the owner constitutes a federal crime punishable by 10 years in prison without stoping to realize that a law like that effectivly makes anyone browsing the internet a criminal because in there mind the law only affects "those damn hackers".
This sort of thing also makes life easier on prosecutors, as they don't actually have to backup unbelievable claims against someone as long as they can show that the person is capable of some basic hacking. As far as the general populace is concerned, anyone capable of writing a virus (and any programmer worth his salt could write a virus) is also equally capable of stealing nuclear launch codes, and shutting down every traffic light in a major city, at any given time, in about 10 minutes. The only reason prosecutors can claim that these people are such unbelievable dangers to the general public that they need to be thrown in a cell for the next 20 years is because as far as the jury knows, they actually are.
The article claims the best way to combat all this is to provide actual *gasp* scientific studies into just how statisticly probable these various claims actually are. No where in the article does it try to claim that "Superhackers" don't exist, just that they are far far more rare than hollywood (among others) would have you believe. The idea is to provide some ammo to law makers and lawyers to try and defend against stupid claims that is actually scientific
I used to really like AMD. They were the under-dog, they made CPUs that didn't require a massive heatsink just to run at the normal clock speed without frying, and they actually had a rather nice 64 bit CPU. That being said, there latest acquisition of ATI, who I refuse to buy any products from after the last couple I had kept glitching, and then I couldn't get updated drives for because the website you downloaded them from kept redirecting back to ATIs homepage, and now this boneheaded move, I'm afraid I'm going to have to go Intel. They've also been having issues competing on the high end market, and lately the heatsinks on there CPUs have gotten just as bad if not worse than those of Intel. I'm sorry for AMD, I really wanted to like them, but they made one goof to many.
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Yes, but they also had more traditional shielding in place to help mitigate some of this, and also stayed inside the space craft during high solar activity. As it is now as long as you're inside some sort of decently shielded structure such as the space shuttle, or ISS, you won't be exposed to anything that's too far outside the normal exposure range.
The article mentions that the results are probably skewed by the likes of E-Bay providing direct links to file complaints, and it also doesn't say if the complaints were ever followed up on or not. This is probably a list of all complaints, rather than those that were shown to be legitimate.
There's a hard sci-fi novel out there called Twister that talks about having 6 dimensions, although the author takes liberty by allowing the main character to travel into a "shadow dimension" that he's able to open using a device he invented (by accident IIRC).
Just looked it up on amazon.com, it's by John Cramer: http://www.amazon.com/Twister-John-Cramer/dp/04505 51172/ref=sr_1_11/103-3660020-3447003?ie=UTF8&s=bo oks&qid=1176908792&sr=1-11
Ok, I'm just a developer, but I've used Linux off and on for various things over the years, and I'd like to think I have a pretty good feel for what Linux needs to really take off on the Desktop (and no it's not there yet, but it's getting closer every day). There are essentially three different flavors of "desktop market", and you really need to cover at least two of these three in order to have an impact.
The first market, and the one that Linux is more than capable of supporting as it stands now with little trouble, is that of the enterprise desktop, which is distinguished from the enterprise server by the fact that the likes of the CEO and marketing department would be running these systems, rather than the IT guys. The main problem with this market is one of image. You need to actually convince the CEOs that Linux on their desktop is just as good or better than Microsoft. To a great extent IBM, Novell, and other major corporations are doing a very good job of getting the word out, and I think we're really seeing progress on this front.
The second market, and once again, one that Linux can handle without much problem is that of your typical non-technical home user. The problem with this market is that it needs to be easy. Dead easy. One button, very small words, short sentences easy. For an example of how to handle this market perfectly, see the install process of the latest beta of Ubuntu (7.04). The key to winning over this segment is to first get a distro that is so simple they never have to use the command line to do everything they need on a day to day basis. This means, they need to be able to setup and install new hardware and software, perform updates, and configure everything from GUI without any particular technical knowledge outside of that supplied by said software/hardware. Once you've got the distro nailed, have some technical user install it for them the first time and get them using it, once they use it on a day to day basis, become comfortable with it, and realize it's better than what they had before, they're sold. Distros like Ubuntu are making headway in this market, but still have a little ways to go, I think this is the source of at least part of the comments in TFA.
The third market, which is the hardest one for Linux, and also the most critical right now, is the power user and gamer market. In order to win this market, Linux needs two things, it must support the latest and greatest in graphics cards out of the box (look to intel for some interesting developments in this department), and it must encourage game developers to produce cross-platform games. Now, the second of those two requirements can be mitigated by using things like Cedega to run non-ported games, but in that case graphics cards need to be fully supported in order for the games to play on par with the windows counterparts. To a certain extent this market revolves around hardware support, followed by market demand. Intel and AMD are positioning themselves to be strong players in this arena, in particular the moves by Intel to package Linux drivers with their Windows drivers on new graphics cards, as well as to open source graphics drivers is very encouraging. AMD (ATI) has recently started to release drivers for their cards if not at the same time as the Windows ones, at least in the same time frame, and adopting a common versioning number for all the drivers has also helped in comparing support progress. Once the hardware support is in place, it's just a matter of demonstrating to manufacturers that the user base is sufficient to justify the cost of developing on Linux. One of the best ways to do that would be to get a large enough portion of the casual computer user population switched over to Linux.
If linux can get a large enough portion of two of these markets, or even a relatively small portion of all three, it will have enough momentum to finally interest the likes of Dell, and HP. From that point forward, it's just a matter of free market dynamics.
The post calling for a -1 Flamebait mod being moded -1 Flamebait tickles my weird sense of humor. What's next, a post asking for a +1 Insightful mod getting moded +1 Insightful?
I've never worked the helldesk myself, but I have seen posts by others that have stated that some companies will actually fire anyone on the helpdesk that deviates from the script.
I suspected you were going for sarcastic, but wasn't sure. It was either that, or you were an unbelievable asshat, glad to know it was being sarcastic.
Actually, the problem here is, they aren't trying to evaluate your situation, they're trying to follow the little boxes on their screen. If they were trying to evaluate your situation they would realize when you started by saying things like "My DHCP lease is failing to renew, and the DSL light on the modem is lit, but the Internet lite is off." that you probably have enough brains to have some idea of what you're doing.
As one of the better experiences I had while getting tech support, I actually managed to get someone on the phone who realized this, and treated my like I actually had a brain. He initially started with some fairly simple things, asking me if I knew how to open a command prompt, and when I told him I did, he didn't bother trying to walk me through the process, just told me which commands he wanted me to run, and I read him the output he needed to diagnose and fix the problem (which was partially my fault, and partially theirs. They had a misconfigured gateway, but I also had gotten a new modem recently and didn't realize this one was smarter than the last one and actually performed DHCP and NAT itself before going to my router). Now on the other end of the spectrum I once also got a script jockey that kept telling me to do things like reboot my computer, to which I would tell him ok, go grab a sandwich, then tell him I had rebooted it. Worked out just fine, he got to check all the little boxes, I got something to eat, and they eventually realized that some work was being done on the line and informed me of such (which would have been nice to know without having to run through the script in the first place).
I have to wonder though, in the long run, wouldn't they be saving money on phone charges if they actually bothered to keep this people up to date on outages from work and upgrades, instead of having them spend 15 min running through a script before finally checking in with someone who informs them of the work being done?
When I call tech support, 90% of the time it's because something is wrong outside of my control, if it was in my control I would have fixed it already. I usually also have a pretty good idea of what exactly it is that's wrong, and will provide the details of all the tests I've run and also what I suspect the problem is. It's unfortunatly rare that I manage to get someone on the phone that is trained to do more than read what the screen tells them and click buttons. If I wanted to follow a flow chart, I'd just use some brain-dead product like 90% of the Microsoft help files (when was the last time the help utility on a Microsoft product actually helped you solve any sort of error?).
Now, that being said, sometimes people do make mistakes, and a tech that actually knows what he's doing, after you've given your explanation of everything can often point out a few things to check over to make sure you didn't miss anything. The problem is, the minimum wage phone jockey they usually have running these operations will take 30 minutes running through some script before you finally get down to some of the usefull checks (or worse, just telling you to re-install everything and call back if it doesn't fix it it, which is the tech support equivalent of flipping someone the bird), rather than going to them right from the beginning based on the symptoms the user reports.
... I can't decide if that was an attempt at being funny or not.
Well, if you define a fear of death as a indicator of sanity (and I think most people would), then I don't think the Columbine kids were sane as it seems likely they never planned to leave the school alive. Of course, you do want to reduce the risk of guns being used by those with proven poor judgement, so those that are under age, mentally ill, or have been convicted of violent crimes should of course not be allowed to purchase or own guns. Also of course, part of owning a gun is being trained in the rules of using it. Important things like, never point a gun at someone unless you're planning to use it, and being instructed on the definition of whether certain acts count as self defense or not, would go a long way towards reducing accidental shootings.
I think the point is, that if more people carried guns, it would make sane people think twice before deciding to try shooting someone, and in the event an insane person went on a rampage like this, it would increase the odds of them being stopped sooner, rather than later. The constitution, and our gun laws are structured the way they are for a reason, which is that it's impossible to prevent people from committing crimes with guns, even if they're made illegal. We just have to go on the assumption that most people are decent and sane, and deal with the ones that prove they aren't.
Hmm, most drivers in Linux are modular and loaded on demand during the boot process. Graphics cards usually don't require a particular driver until you startup your X server, although with most distributions aiming for point and click operation the X server is just about required to boot. That being said, I know that Ubuntu has a boot option that says something like "Boot into safe graphics mode" that represents a lowest common denominator and should boot safely on virtually and graphics card. As for other hardware, that could be an issue. When you say custom drivers were written, who wrote those drivers, and how did you get them? I doubt FC has drivers in it that the other distros don't, although it may be the case that they arn't compiled by default in other distros. If you really want something up to date, and you have some strange hardware that drivers are available for, but not normally compiled, you may have some luck with Gentoo, although it can be daunting to install even for technical users. In general, if you follow the walk through on the Gentoo website exactly as it says, and have all your hardware information written down beforehand so you know what kernel modules to compile, it's time consuming, but not that hard.
There's a reason that we usually tag these articles with mafiaa. You know, that other organization that prompted the creation of racketeering laws in the first place.
What kind of graphics card? I find it unusual that you have a graphics card that works in a old distro, but not in a new one, it's usually the other way around. It might be a issue with a kernel setting I suppose. I know I've had to add some boot options to Ubuntu to get it to play nice with a older laptop I have (forget what, something about disabling APIC or something like that).
I think I saw a headline where Microsoft just announced Office Vista Pro 2006 Hyper Fighting Edition Alpha, which has new skins for most of the widgets, and overclocked the cursor blink speed to seizure inducing levels.
The latest beta of Ubuntu (7.04) is about a close as you can get to a one click install. If I recall correctly from the other day it's about 3 clicks, which consist of telling it to wipe the HD (as opposed to attempting to preserve the previous OS), select your keyboard layout and language, and then select your timezone. Not sure what kind of wierd HD you had that was giving it fits, but I have never had a problem with Linux working with a HD before.
As for that completely generic laptop, laptops are notoriously difficult to get everything working correctly on due to manufacturers cutting corners on components to bring weight and cost down. What you end up with is something that's pretty close to the original component, but that the manufacturer provides a tweaked driver for to get it working in windows. Problem with that is, in Linux the hardware auto-detect thinks it's the stock hardware version, and not the hacked up one the manufacturer is using, so the default drivers fail. Of course, given a bit of time the Linux drivers get updated and it all works, but there's always a bit of lag time, so of course a brand new laptop is probably going to have a few items that don't work out of the box.
Wireless is also one of the harder things to get working because most of the wireless cards are using proprietary firmware drivers that often times hook into windows for some of the functionality. They can be made to work in Linux, (at the very least you can use ndiswrapper to run the windows drivers) but it's often tricky, and usually a legal minefield which is why many distributions are hesitant to include certain drivers in the default install.
I think that was his problem, he looked and got overwhelmed. There really is a large number of competing display technologies out right now, and without having display samples to look at I can understand his confusion. I'm not sure about the color option, or development kit, but if you're looking for something that dosn't need to be viewable in the dark e-Ink is very promising. Only major problem with e-Ink is the refresh rate is pathetic, so not really viable for any sort of video. Other than that, OLED is the hot new thing, but those are still hard to come by in larger display sizes, and even then pricey unless you're looking to buy in bulk and have some clout to throw around. Also coming over the horizon be looking for SED displays.
Further, the verified pages should be printed and bound, perhaps in a book form. Then the schools should setup a system where they can trade copies of the books between each other at request. Lastly they should construct special rooms in each school for the specific purpose of housing these books. Of course, with the number of books involved they'll need a system to organize all of them and allow for quickly finding a book. I propose a system where we divide everything into 10 main categories. Then within each of those categories we further subdivide into 10 subcategories. Finally, within each subcategory there will be 10 sections. Using this amazing system, all human knowledge can be conveniently indexed.
Don't forget to drop the students in sensory deprivation tanks as well, our senses lie to us all the time.
There seems to be this prevailing opinion among schools that the information on wikipedia is of such poor quality as to be considered outright lies. Yes there is some mis-information present on wikipedia, but the same could be said of virtually any source of information. Wikipedia, like any source should be cross-referenced with other sources, but it also serves as an excellent initial source of information, and is often one of the most up to date sources you can find. In reference to modern events, both political, and scientific, it represents the best resource short of dedicated peer journals (which are often hard to find, and even harder to search). Finally, censorship of any kind on the internet, particularly in schools which are usually understaffed and poorly designed in terms of IT is a joke that can be easily circumvented by students with basic computer skills and motivation to do so.
You both miss the point, although I think the GP misses it less than you do. Fallout was great because of both the story, and the game mechanics. It's like trying to argue that either FX or plot don't matter in a movie, the fact is, they both contribute and screw either one (or both) up and the movie just isn't as good as it could be. Now, as for realtime vs. turn-based, I really hope they stay with turn-based. For me, part of the fun of Fallout was the turn-based combat, and it's something I've really missed. No one is making turn-based RPGs anymore, and it really saddens me. The closest you get to turn based is NVWN2 where you keep having to mash the space bar to pause and queue up more commands. If they turned out Fallout 3 with a modern graphics engine, but kept the old skill/turn-based gameplay (similar to what was done with supreme commander, if you compare it to say Starcraft), I think it'll be a great game. If they ditch the turn-based combat, it'll still be a ok game, but to me it wouldn't feel like Fallout anymore. By the same token, if they keep the turn-based combat, but trash the atmosphere and story, it would be a similarly mediocre game.
Maybe if you had RTFA instead of giving up partway through the first part you'd have realized that the article is trying to point out the stupidity of the scare mongering the government is doing to try and get blanket laws passed that give them free reign to do whatever they want. The DMCA is a perfect example of this sort of strategy being employed by the media cartels to get broad laws passed that allow them to strong arm people. The basic point of the article is that as long as the general public continues to believe in this "Superhacker" concept, then they'll ignore it when laws get passed that say stupid things like accessing a computer through a network without express written consent of the owner constitutes a federal crime punishable by 10 years in prison without stoping to realize that a law like that effectivly makes anyone browsing the internet a criminal because in there mind the law only affects "those damn hackers".
This sort of thing also makes life easier on prosecutors, as they don't actually have to backup unbelievable claims against someone as long as they can show that the person is capable of some basic hacking. As far as the general populace is concerned, anyone capable of writing a virus (and any programmer worth his salt could write a virus) is also equally capable of stealing nuclear launch codes, and shutting down every traffic light in a major city, at any given time, in about 10 minutes. The only reason prosecutors can claim that these people are such unbelievable dangers to the general public that they need to be thrown in a cell for the next 20 years is because as far as the jury knows, they actually are.
The article claims the best way to combat all this is to provide actual *gasp* scientific studies into just how statisticly probable these various claims actually are. No where in the article does it try to claim that "Superhackers" don't exist, just that they are far far more rare than hollywood (among others) would have you believe. The idea is to provide some ammo to law makers and lawyers to try and defend against stupid claims that is actually scientific
No, no, no, it's "Sharks with frrickin' freeze lasers!"
I used to really like AMD. They were the under-dog, they made CPUs that didn't require a massive heatsink just to run at the normal clock speed without frying, and they actually had a rather nice 64 bit CPU. That being said, there latest acquisition of ATI, who I refuse to buy any products from after the last couple I had kept glitching, and then I couldn't get updated drives for because the website you downloaded them from kept redirecting back to ATIs homepage, and now this boneheaded move, I'm afraid I'm going to have to go Intel. They've also been having issues competing on the high end market, and lately the heatsinks on there CPUs have gotten just as bad if not worse than those of Intel. I'm sorry for AMD, I really wanted to like them, but they made one goof to many.