News flash for you: we are over taxed, this is not new we have been saying this for a long time.
Actually, you are vastly under taxed. The US is running a huge deficit - even in boom times. To cut the deficit, the US will probably have to cut costs and raise taxes.
Most businesses would do fresh installs anyway... Make a new image from scratch, add applications, deploy the image automatically. "Upgrading" vs. "installing" is not a a problem (or even relevant) - upgrades increase risk, no reasons to do anything but start from a clean slate. Most of the work and cost is to test (and possibly replace) hardware and software that no longer work.
FWIW, it's pretty much how I would do upgrades on Linux too. The data is obviously on separate storage, so install a new system (the old one is documented, right?), try it out with a copy of the data. If it works, it can go live.
Windows 7 is going to be a success - simply because you can't get XP no longer, and I doubt many would select Vista of Windows 7. While I would love for everyone to look at Mac and Linux instead, I doubt it will happen overnight.
Not nice benchmarks either, as the beta has debugging enabled. It's rather pointless - as is a couple of the other tests (especially the gcc one) when just listed as a graph.
So do things like "suspend when closing the lid" and "plug in random projector to do presentations" (without manually hacking the x config and restarting X) work now?
I know that the situation on web cams etc are a lot better now, to the point where skype (evil, close sourced and useful as it is) works with video on Linux now
Dear last.fm, I have deleted my account because of this ethnic discrimination.
It's not ethnical discrimination - that would be charging e.g. people of Chinese origin living in Germany, but not the rest.
They're doing it because they have ad departments in these three countries, and this is where they get the revenue. Not sure why they couldn't just do google or similar, but I guess they have looked into it.
I've been a subscriber for a while because I liked the added features at the time (artist and tag radios), and 3 (see if you can pay in GBP, that's a lot cheaper;) a month is close to nothing if you get any value from the service. I pay even more for spotify, and I'm happy with that too.
I'm willing to pay for good enough internet services (like Linux Weekly News for example) though, but this is like a punch in the face. Most of the content in last.fm is fucking user contributed!
The content they are going to be charging for, streamed music, is not user created - the web sites, scrobbling etc. should continue like now, if I read them right. I've been a subscriber for a while, and I greatly prefer their approach to the Pandora approach (no access outside the US).
If their only concern were defense, then the solution is obvious! PUBLISH. The only difference between publishing your invention and patenting your invention is that you can sue someone for violating your IP rights associated with the patent.
Publishing would protect against being sued for this particular "invention". What defensive means in this context is to have a portfolio of patents - if another software vendor sues for violating their patents, Red Hat can point at their portfolio and say "you are violating ours!" and use these to negotiate a deal.
Yeah, because you really need more than 10,000 songs on you. God forbid you have to listen to the same song twice in 2 months.
Currently, I need 256 GB;) I've got my CD collection ripped as Apple Lossless, as I also listen to it on my sound system. Of course, one way of reducing the need for space would be if Itunes could transcode to a lower bit rate when syncing - but it only does that for Ipod shuffle.
The cable can't be changed - it isn't just a USB cable, it transfers many other things too
Support for replaceable cards take more space than just adding the flash in the phone. You need a slot, room around the slot, pins etc. I've got a replaceable card in my current phone, but it's been inserted since I bought it.
MMS - I sent maybe two of them last year. Email is a lot better. I wish there was an easy way to send my pictures as email from my N95, but the builtin email client sucks to bad to be used and I can't find the pictures inside the gmail app I downloaded.
I agree with you on many points, though - so I don't have an iphone yet, just an ipod touch:
Bluetooth. I don't care about file transfer, but I do care about audio profiles, syncing and tethering
Cut and paste. I have a password management app that syncs with my mac, and typing strong, generated passwords in the web browser is more fun than I want
Notifications and/or background apps. I want IM:)
And I want skype and Gizmotalk
That said, what I like about the iPod (and thus iphone, I guess), is that while it doesn't try to do everything (like my Nokia) it does what it does well(unlike my Nokia). Web browsing, email, media are all much, much better than on my N95- and the app store is light years ahead on the situation on Nokia with random downloadable apps everywhere which I can't really update and have to find/download whenever I upgrade the firmware.
I've read in David Pogue's "OS X Missing Manual" that you can share the Mac's internet connection to computers using Airport. Seems simple enough; I'm just curious if anyone is doing this.
I've occasionally done it with my macbook, on hotels where they have wired internet and no wi-fi. It works well. Too bad the laptop can't share wifi, to handle all those stupid pay schemes on various hotels with strange authentication mechanisms. Paying once per room should be enough, I'm not paying double to use my ipod.
If the kindle was available in Norway and it handled PDFs well, I probably would buy it. If the DRM issue was solved, I definitely would.
I love my iPod Touch (so much that I might buy the next version of iPhone), but I don't see myself reading a lot of text on it - due to size and screen type. I prefer paper, and from what I've read, the Kindle works very well in that respect.
You quoted: "any illusions about Windows 7 somehow being leaner or more efficient than Vista can now be thrown out the window."
As long as it isn't slower, that will be sufficient for most purposes - simply because the computers of the world are faster and have more memory than three years earlier when Vista was releases. I certainly don't root for Microsoft, but if it runs at the same speed as Vista on entry level hardware, the chances of people running away screaming because of the speed will be smaller this time. The main exception is netbooks.
No one who lives outside of their mum's basement cares. Really. Your average MP3 player is not hifi, and your average consumer doesn't
Many people play audio files on their hifi as well - either via the receiver, or via devices that decode it and provide the sound in analog or digital format to the receiver/amplifier. AppleTV, Sonos, Squeezebox are just some examples of devices that do this.... and then you do want good quality files.
Apple moved in the right direction a long time ago - the big news yesterday was that the remaining big record companies allowed Apple to sell their music without DRM. Apple has done so with EMI and smaller labels for a while now.
True, but the games do remind me of old Jeff Minter games - like Gridrunner and Matrix. Both "Geometry Wars" games are highly addictive, quick and well worth the money.
One reason is personal taste, of course, but I think games in the past had to rely on something else than games typically do now
Just a myth... back in the "good old days", many eye-candy-only games were made too - not just the good ones people remember. Sure, there were "Rainbow Island", "Impossible Mission", "Lemmings", "Elite" and "Psi-5 Trading Company" and "Wizkid" - but there were plenty of games we have forgotten. "Space Ace" and "Dragon's Lair" spring first to mind, but there were tons of "looks great, plays bad" games on the Amiga as well - and on the CBM64, even though the "graphics candy" bar were a bit lower.
The worst period of "eye candy" was probably when the CD-ROM was introduced... e.g. "the 7th guest"
Why is that a step in the right direction? My credit card will handle conversions anyway. My experience is that the prices in NOK or EUR will not be lower or comparable to the prices in USD, they'll take advantage of the different currencies to increase prices.
Modern "Portfolio" Theory has received at least three Nobels. Yet MPT has lead directly and predictably (no fat tails) to the financial crisis.
There is no "Nobel Prize" in economics. You've only got "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". As for the peace price, it has had its scope extended a bit - e.g. Al Gore. There's no doubt that setting focus on the problem of increased global warming caused by humans is important, and that this eventually will cause a many conflicts, wars and turmoils (scarcity of water, some countries being submerged etc...). But it's extremely proactive, and he didn't solve the problem - he just helped drawing people's attention to it.
These were all decent apps to make some users choose Mac. But none of these were really killer apps, at least not after 1990. Mac only has 8% market share.
A "killer app" can be restricted to specific segments - the Mac market share was much higher than 8% in some specific areas, like graphics design and desktop publishing.
Oh yes, spotlight is soo novell. Exactly what can you do with spotlight *nixes haven't done with find, locate, and grep for many more years before apple even thought of going the *nix route?
Spotlight searches the contents of files which are not easily greppable - PDFs, office documents of various kinds (Microsoft and openoffice) and more. Also, for some mail scenarios grep isn't all that useful... there's plenty of encodings etc to screw that up.
Beagle and Google Desktop have similar capabilities to Spotlight.
And as for open alternatives? I've had a Symbian phone for years. Lots of free apps and developer tools, built in GPS and great touch screen, been around for years... That didn't stop the iPhone coming out either.
I don't have an iPhone. I do have an iPod touch, and comparing how well e.g. email and web browsing works compared with my Nokia N95 (built-in and Opera Mini) and HTC it's no wonder why iPhones are popular. The usability is in a different league altogether. And at some point "being able to use the features" trumps "more features".
My Nokia has tons of features that are there, but which I never use because they suck (email, document viewers, wen even music player) or I don't know about them. My iPod has less features, but they work way, way better and they're visible. So an iPhone is tempting...
Slashdot Mirror
News flash for you: we are over taxed, this is not new we have been saying this for a long time.
Actually, you are vastly under taxed. The US is running a huge deficit - even in boom times. To cut the deficit, the US will probably have to cut costs and raise taxes.
I can buy a Ferrari for a few hundred thousand or I can buy a Toyota for a few thousand.
Wouldn't comparing Chrysler with Lexus be a better comparison here? ;)
Most businesses would do fresh installs anyway... Make a new image from scratch, add applications, deploy the image automatically. "Upgrading" vs. "installing" is not a a problem (or even relevant) - upgrades increase risk, no reasons to do anything but start from a clean slate. Most of the work and cost is to test (and possibly replace) hardware and software that no longer work.
FWIW, it's pretty much how I would do upgrades on Linux too. The data is obviously on separate storage, so install a new system (the old one is documented, right?), try it out with a copy of the data. If it works, it can go live.
Windows 7 is going to be a success - simply because you can't get XP no longer, and I doubt many would select Vista of Windows 7. While I would love for everyone to look at Mac and Linux instead, I doubt it will happen overnight.
Not nice benchmarks either, as the beta has debugging enabled. It's rather pointless - as is a couple of the other tests (especially the gcc one) when just listed as a graph.
So do things like "suspend when closing the lid" and "plug in random projector to do presentations" (without manually hacking the x config and restarting X) work now?
I know that the situation on web cams etc are a lot better now, to the point where skype (evil, close sourced and useful as it is) works with video on Linux now
Dear last.fm, I have deleted my account because of this ethnic discrimination.
I've been a subscriber for a while because I liked the added features at the time (artist and tag radios), and 3 (see if you can pay in GBP, that's a lot cheaper ;) a month is close to nothing if you get any value from the service. I pay even more for spotify, and I'm happy with that too.
I'm willing to pay for good enough internet services (like Linux Weekly News for example) though, but this is like a punch in the face. Most of the content in last.fm is fucking user contributed!
The content they are going to be charging for, streamed music, is not user created - the web sites, scrobbling etc. should continue like now, if I read them right. I've been a subscriber for a while, and I greatly prefer their approach to the Pandora approach (no access outside the US).
If their only concern were defense, then the solution is obvious! PUBLISH. The only difference between publishing your invention and patenting your invention is that you can sue someone for violating your IP rights associated with the patent.
Publishing would protect against being sued for this particular "invention". What defensive means in this context is to have a portfolio of patents - if another software vendor sues for violating their patents, Red Hat can point at their portfolio and say "you are violating ours!" and use these to negotiate a deal.
Yeah, because you really need more than 10,000 songs on you. God forbid you have to listen to the same song twice in 2 months.
Currently, I need 256 GB ;) I've got my CD collection ripped as Apple Lossless, as I also listen to it on my sound system. Of course, one way of reducing the need for space would be if Itunes could transcode to a lower bit rate when syncing - but it only does that for Ipod shuffle.
A couple of comments:
I agree with you on many points, though - so I don't have an iphone yet, just an ipod touch:
That said, what I like about the iPod (and thus iphone, I guess), is that while it doesn't try to do everything (like my Nokia) it does what it does well(unlike my Nokia). Web browsing, email, media are all much, much better than on my N95- and the app store is light years ahead on the situation on Nokia with random downloadable apps everywhere which I can't really update and have to find/download whenever I upgrade the firmware.
I've read in David Pogue's "OS X Missing Manual" that you can share the Mac's internet connection to computers using Airport. Seems simple enough; I'm just curious if anyone is doing this.
I've occasionally done it with my macbook, on hotels where they have wired internet and no wi-fi. It works well. Too bad the laptop can't share wifi, to handle all those stupid pay schemes on various hotels with strange authentication mechanisms. Paying once per room should be enough, I'm not paying double to use my ipod.
If the kindle was available in Norway and it handled PDFs well, I probably would buy it. If the DRM issue was solved, I definitely would.
I love my iPod Touch (so much that I might buy the next version of iPhone), but I don't see myself reading a lot of text on it - due to size and screen type. I prefer paper, and from what I've read, the Kindle works very well in that respect.
iTunes stores are all over the world. So what if the EULA says you cant buy in the US store if you're in Sweden, use the Swedish iTunes store.
Unless you have a Swedish creditcard and address, they won't allow that either... so if you're e.g. on a long trip, no purchases for you.
The most annoying thing are all the things they don't sell here in Scandinavia... e.g. no movie rentals via Apple TV. Or buying of movies/TV.
You quoted: "any illusions about Windows 7 somehow being leaner or more efficient than Vista can now be thrown out the window."
As long as it isn't slower, that will be sufficient for most purposes - simply because the computers of the world are faster and have more memory than three years earlier when Vista was releases. I certainly don't root for Microsoft, but if it runs at the same speed as Vista on entry level hardware, the chances of people running away screaming because of the speed will be smaller this time. The main exception is netbooks.
No one who lives outside of their mum's basement cares. Really. Your average MP3 player is not hifi, and your average consumer doesn't
Many people play audio files on their hifi as well - either via the receiver, or via devices that decode it and provide the sound in analog or digital format to the receiver/amplifier. AppleTV, Sonos, Squeezebox are just some examples of devices that do this.... and then you do want good quality files.
Apple moved in the right direction a long time ago - the big news yesterday was that the remaining big record companies allowed Apple to sell their music without DRM. Apple has done so with EMI and smaller labels for a while now.
Never underestimate the beancounter's desire to save every cent possible.
That's contrary to my experience. Other expenses have been skimped on occasionally, but just mention the word "backup" and the funding was there.
Really? That's knightable? Sir JK Rowling? Sir Alan Dean Foster?
JK Rowling also has an OBE, from 2001.
True, but the games do remind me of old Jeff Minter games - like Gridrunner and Matrix. Both "Geometry Wars" games are highly addictive, quick and well worth the money.
One reason is personal taste, of course, but I think games in the past had to rely on something else than games typically do now
Just a myth... back in the "good old days", many eye-candy-only games were made too - not just the good ones people remember. Sure, there were "Rainbow Island", "Impossible Mission", "Lemmings", "Elite" and "Psi-5 Trading Company" and "Wizkid" - but there were plenty of games we have forgotten. "Space Ace" and "Dragon's Lair" spring first to mind, but there were tons of "looks great, plays bad" games on the Amiga as well - and on the CBM64, even though the "graphics candy" bar were a bit lower.
The worst period of "eye candy" was probably when the CD-ROM was introduced... e.g. "the 7th guest"
Why is that a step in the right direction? My credit card will handle conversions anyway. My experience is that the prices in NOK or EUR will not be lower or comparable to the prices in USD, they'll take advantage of the different currencies to increase prices.
Modern "Portfolio" Theory has received at least three Nobels. Yet MPT has lead directly and predictably (no fat tails) to the financial crisis.
There is no "Nobel Prize" in economics. You've only got "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". As for the peace price, it has had its scope extended a bit - e.g. Al Gore. There's no doubt that setting focus on the problem of increased global warming caused by humans is important, and that this eventually will cause a many conflicts, wars and turmoils (scarcity of water, some countries being submerged etc...). But it's extremely proactive, and he didn't solve the problem - he just helped drawing people's attention to it.
These were all decent apps to make some users choose Mac. But none of these were really killer apps, at least not after 1990. Mac only has 8% market share.
A "killer app" can be restricted to specific segments - the Mac market share was much higher than 8% in some specific areas, like graphics design and desktop publishing.
Oh yes, spotlight is soo novell. Exactly what can you do with spotlight *nixes haven't done with find, locate, and grep for many more years before apple even thought of going the *nix route?
Spotlight searches the contents of files which are not easily greppable - PDFs, office documents of various kinds (Microsoft and openoffice) and more. Also, for some mail scenarios grep isn't all that useful... there's plenty of encodings etc to screw that up.
Beagle and Google Desktop have similar capabilities to Spotlight.
And as for open alternatives? I've had a Symbian phone for years. Lots of free apps and developer tools, built in GPS and great touch screen, been around for years... That didn't stop the iPhone coming out either.
I don't have an iPhone. I do have an iPod touch, and comparing how well e.g. email and web browsing works compared with my Nokia N95 (built-in and Opera Mini) and HTC it's no wonder why iPhones are popular. The usability is in a different league altogether. And at some point "being able to use the features" trumps "more features".
My Nokia has tons of features that are there, but which I never use because they suck (email, document viewers, wen even music player) or I don't know about them. My iPod has less features, but they work way, way better and they're visible. So an iPhone is tempting...