I use the proprietary NVIDIA driver, but I just use the ones straight from NVIDIA rather than do it "the Debian way", or use someone else's bundled package. I wonder how many other debian users are doing that as well? As far as I know, this behavior wouldn't show up in the package tracking system. I do have gnome installed, but I never use it, also using e17, but I compile it from source using the svn repo., which also wouldn't show up in the package tracking system. I suppose the point is moot though, because I also don't have the package tracking system installed (I'm a big fan of only having the things that I want on my computer).
I suspect that my behavior is actually about par for Debian users, i.e. as TFA says, Debian users don't tend to install the default packages. I know I don't. I usually start with just the basic install and add the desktop packages I want because there are so many packages included in the default desktop that I don't want.
Well said. One other comment that I'll make is that in the last ten years or so, it's obvious that Apple has invested some money into Research & Development. One reason I think Apple has such a cult following is that there is something to follow. When was the last time you got excited about a new Dell product offering? I know the last time I was, it was when they released their 2005 FPW widescreen monitors (I bought one). But then, it wasn't excitement for a new product so much as, oh good, Dell now has similar monitor offerings as others (*cough* apple cinema *cough*) for much cheaper. Granted, I haven't been following Dell a lot lately, but Apple actually does have new and innovative ideas they put into their products, and that's been incredibly refreshing when some other formerly innovative companies (e.g., HP) have spun-off or canceled their R&D programs all together and prefer to sell rebranded LG televisions.
Often on slashdot we read comments about how Apple is just selling commodity hardware. Nobody who actually owns an macbook pro would say that, or an ipod touch or an iphone. The reason is that they can look beyond just the processor speed and ram and actually see the magsafe connector, or the firewire 800, or the accelerometer that shuts down the hard drive when the laptop falls or whatever $FEATURE that the competition left out of their $500 notebook. The best way I can put it, is that watching those keynote addresses in the 2000s has been like the early days of computers, when they were fun, rather than a mundane commodity. (E.g., here's one of Phil Schiller jumping from ~20 feet up up with a macbook to demonstrate the accelerometer.)
The question is, how much did Steve jobs have to do with that? Obviously, the same hardware engineers and programmers are still working at Apple. How much did Jobs need to persuade the board of Apple to put the time into being innovative rather than pursue more short-term gains that would be good for the quarterly results? I don't know. I do know that at least one board member, Al Gore, does have the vision and the patience for long-term gains. (Al Gore trolls, you can go straight to hell.)
The unfortunate reality is that this split will only be resolved when either GNOME and all of the associated GTK applications die, or KDE and its associated applications die
I think that's a little extreme. There is room for more than one desktop environment. Just like there is room for both Windows and OS X, or Vista and XP for that matter.
I think that Nokia trying to open up Qt is absolutely great. The reason is that I think that the kde apps are great like amarok, gwenview, konqueror and k3b, but what I dislike is kde itself. kde isn't bad, but I prefer to use e17 as my WM because I wrote my own theme for it that doesn't look like anything else you've ever seen in a WM. What I'd very much like to see is to be able to run kde apps without having to load all the kde overhead. It's annoying like hell, that if I want to load gwenview or konqueror I have to load the dcopserver and all the other kde Krap and there's no way to shut it off (yes I know what the dcopserver does, but I'd still like to turn it off). Ergo, if Qt is more widely used outside of kde, perhaps we'll see some of my favorite applications able to run without loading all the kde libraries and helper apps.
Look at the kWh, he's using 1,635kWh per month. While it is high, it's not surprising if his house is especially large and he has a heat-pump. Those things are notoriously inefficient if the temperature drops below 40 degrees F. It getting that cold should be rare in silicon valley, but it does happen.
What I found interesting was that, while December was bad for solar power, he says:
My total power consumption cost for the last six months is $389.39--less than my utility bill for January, 2008.
Basically, his solar power does what it's supposed to more often than not. But then again, we've always known that about solar power, the big problem with solar is the large up-front capital cost of installing it.
(Or other strange things, like my mother just moved into a retirement community and her housing rules say solar panels are not allowed because they're unsightly, but directTV antennas and satellite dishes are just fine. One must have priorities I suppose. Television is obviously more important than renewable energy.)
You're not the only one. Microsoft has been shepherding the UI towards 'desktops for simpletons' since at least 2K.
I can vouch for that sentiment. My personal experience is that for several years I was on solely linux (w/ kde or e17 WM) and os x literally didn't touch a windows machine. Then, a year or two ago I got a new job and I've been going back to a lot of windows quite a lot. I still find myself cursing at the ui after about ten minutes or so, but I think that people who have been using windows consistently get inured to it or something.
It's not necessarily that it's bad design, but for someone who is used to the way everything is done in linux or in os x, going over to the windows gui always makes me feel like Microsoft thinks I'm an idiot, which is ironic, because I have about the same opinion about them after ten minutes of heavy use. Things like trying to hide the program and system files from me, or the incessant reminders of things I already know about. God-fucking-forbid there ever be an unused icon on my desktop!!! I'm so glad that MS put all these resources into telling me this, again, and again, and again, and again.
Vista seems to take that philosphy to the extreme with the UAC and the seriously messed up control panel. My first impression of the new office with the ribbons is a pain in the neck too but I haven't used that for any significant amount of time yet.
For some reason that I don't fully understand, I just bought one of these new Apple keyboards that this EEE PC is modeled after (my other option was a unicomp model M remake). For the apple, I had to make some adjustments to my chair height and throw out my wrist rest because of the low height, but so far... I have to say the keyboard isn't bad. My reasoning for buying it was thus (which may be completely wrong): I imagined that short-throw keys would stress your fingers less, because you would need less force for each keypress. However you also need to have unambiguous tactile feedback that, A) you've started pressing a key and B) you've pressed it all the way to the stop. I think the trick is that it's easier to make a long-throw key switch that does both these than a short-throw switch, but it shouldn't be impossible to make a good short-throw one. I typed for about 20 minutes on the Apple one in the store before I was satisfied that I the key switches were sufficient quality to do that and since I've gotten it home, I haven't run into any problems. I make about just as many mistakes and type about as fast as I do on a regular keyboard, but YMMV.
That's a good point, but in order to really force me to upgrade they should add a new version of DirectX that will arbitrarily only run on $NEW_VERSION and introduces some $NEW_VERSION only effects."
Nope, never was. That was incredibly annoying for me because it basically meant I was shut out of any developer stuff on my server until I managed to get the map editor running using winex.
The most exciting thing for me that's happened in free software in the last year was Wine 1.0. The "1.0" is not itself as important, but the usability in wine of many apps has improved dramatically in the last year. I can remember that wine in principal was a fantastic idea, but in practice it was so difficult to get anything to run your time was better spent dual-booting. E.g., this time last year, I was still having to run a patched version of winex from cedega to get the map editor in neverwinter nights to run and even then it still crashed periodically. This year, that app runs using the stock wine code.
The thing is, I'm no longer playing nwn because I can run Civ IV, Medieval 2 and a bunch of other newer games using wine instead. Yes, I still have to dual-boot into windows to run the newest games at high resolutions and good frame-rates, but older games are getting very playable using wine and the number of hacks you have to do to get them to run is decreasing. It's great! Just about the only one that you have to install on a regular basis is the no-CD hack, but that's a useful thing to have anyway. Some stuff just makes me laugh, like when punkbuster runs for Far Cry 2 and bitches at you because it thinks you're a punk, you just close the window and the installation continues. (Unfortunately Far Cry 2 is one of those that doesn't run very well at high resolution.)
Yeah I agree with the parent. I bet that there was some critical flaw in the drive that was fixable through the firmware. Instead of waiting to get sued, it looks like Samsung did the honorable thing to do and preempted it by shipping the fix. Once a company is sued successfully in a class action, they often are required to resort to these things. I get letters once every few years about various products I've purchased that are in litigation because of defects. If say, the company were sending you unsolicited advertisements using this method, that is annoying, or using it to sue their customers, that would be scary, but this behavior isn't scary, it's helpful.
Wow, that sucked. Just to show that not everyone is an idiot about these things, Ted's Montana Grill (Ted Turner's restaurant, it's a chain) gives out $2 bills as change sometimes, it's pretty cool!
Apple could have taken the correct option and continued to hold out for fair treatment and reasonable pro-consumer policies. Instead they sold out. The iTunes Music Store is now just yet another front for the labels, controlled by the labels.
Maybe, maybe not. Do you think the labels would want DRM-free music? Doubtful. My guess is that amazon only got the deal they did without DRM because Apple was doing so well and wouldn't play ball on the tiered pricing. What if the labels only could concede DRM-free music if Apple gave in on the tiered pricing? It's not an unequivocal victory but if I had to choose I'd much rather have tiered pricing and DRM-free music than DRM-ed music and non-tiered pricing. Now if they'd just let me get the songs off my ipod using iTunes and not having to resort to third party software I'll be happy.
I haven't bought a single song from the iTunes music store because of DRM, I might actually consider it now.
The American desire to get rich quick has completely polluted the whole concept of research and innovation for the sake of science and not just as a means to buy a solid gold Bentley.
There are a few of us "real" scientists left, who do science for the sake of science and for the benefit of humanity -- not to get rich. Actually, I don't know of any scientists who are in it for the money, but I do environmental work and not in a medical field or something like that. Nominally, when a university wants to get a patent for someone under them, it is because the university as a whole has a greater resource pool and can hire a specialist patent lawyer whereas the individual would strain his income. The trade-off here is that the university gets a say in how the patent is used. However, the article in the summary shows that not all universities have such a good attitude about it.
The one time I have watched this process was when my co-workers were patenting something, our university had no interest in helping them patent the device because it was too specialist for them. Fortunately the university of the collaborators who were working with them was interested and did the work for the patent. In this case, the patent was mostly just to stop the big corporations from stealing the idea and the issue of the patent allowed the scientists to distribute the design with permission to people who weren't interested in making a profit (i.e., other scientists). There have been a few of the devices made, but no one has demanded any royalty payments. Of course, no one has tried to use the idea for a profit yet either (well, one big corporation has tried stealing the idea, but no one was interested in licensing it properly).
That's a very interesting comment. A few years ago now I moved to the middle of a large (5.5 million) city after living in small towns (50k) for the last ten years. Lately I've been feeling more and more like I'm constantly on the defensive and it's nerve wracking. Part of this is the job for sure, it's a high pressure one that hopefully will pay off, but now I wonder how much the city itself has to do with the way I've been feeling. I can certainly say that it doesn't help that if you walk around during night you have to be on your guard constantly, and even in the day you have to be a little wary. I walk everywhere so maybe it's more of a problem for me than others. Hmm, you've definitely given me something to think about.
I don't know why I'm doing this, because you can almost never figure out what is going on from these kinds of stories but I feel I need to at least try and help you.:) So, did you install any of the "Application Enhancer" or other kernel hacks? If you did, there's your problem, they break with ever upgrade and have been known to cause the system to become unstable. Next, try reseting the PRAM and the PMU. If that doesn't help, try keeping your activity monitor open and see what applications are hogging the resources and see if there's one in particular or something else. Also, you probably should have 1 GB of memory, memory is so cheap that it's worth avoiding any possible memory issues (just don't buy your memory from Apple, they rip you off).
Overall I'm still enjoying my laptop, but I'm astounded that so many people basically lied to me with claims of how perfectly stable and wonderful macs are.
Often, they are. The key word there is often. Sometimes they're not. No computer is perfect, and I suppose that your mac friends were overselling their computers and gave you unrealistic expectations. Yes, Apple computers cost more, and whether that cost is worth it depends on your individual priotities, but they have problems sometimes just like every other computer. I find they have few enough problems to keep me coming back. To give you an indication, I've owned or used macs for about 11 years now and I've never once had a software update cause a problem on any of my computers. Not once. The record for my current desktop uptime is 112 days, and then I only had to reboot to install a security update. I've had three mac laptops, my Lombard powerbook was a handme down and we retired it after 5 years. My Ti powerbook lasted 4 years before a logic board failure caused me to replace it. My current Al macbook pro is running strong after three years and certainly runs better than newer "Vista-ready" laptops that ended up not really having the resources to run Vista well, but I have to say that XP SP2 is probably about as stable as OS X at this point.
When many people believe that the continued success of a large company depends on one individual, his health becomes news.
And this is all the more reason for Mr. Jobs to stop giving the keynote. Apple needs to break this perception that Mr. Jobs is Apple. He can't go on working there forever, and if they want to survive once he retires, they need to get him to take a back seat for awhile so the ninny-headed stock holders stop believing the sky is falling every time Mr. Jobs gets a cold.
Incidentally, it's not surprising that Mr. Jobs might have this happen, a lot of people as they get older have thyroid or other changes that cause them to gain or lose weight. E.g. Bush Sr. had that thyroid operation when he was president because it was becoming overactive IIRC.
Fine. Here's some benchmarks from Vista SP1 vs. XP SP2 from ZDNet. Again, Vista is slower... despite the mighty passage of time:
So, onto conclusions. Looking at the data there's only one conclusion that can be drawn - Windows XP SP2 is faster than Windows Vista SP1. End of story. Out of the fifteen tests carried out, XP SP2 beat Vista SP1 in eleven, Vista SP1 beat XP SP2 in two of the tests, and two of the tests resulted in a draw.
Beyond that, I have yet to see any conclusive benchmarks posted by the defenders of Vista on this thread showing any proof that Vista is faster than XP, just empty assertions. What I do see is a bunch of Microsoft fanboys comforting themselves that their favorite brand released an OS that has turned out to be a flop.
Let me qualify my positions here though. I have Vista installed on an old hard drive on a brand new PC -- my own conclusion is that Vista is not as bad as everyone makes out, but you all need to stop pretending that Vista is fast. It isn't. It's not terribly slow on nice hardware, and it looks very nice and it has some nice features, e.g., the DX10 features on new games, but it's not fast.
Take results with a grain of salt. He ranks Vista as better than XP on the AMD machine and as nearly equal on the Pentium machine
Sadly, as much as the SlashDot world not like to believe, this is accurate.
Here are some benchmarks right over at tomshardware that show that the "SlashDot world" in this case is accurate (amazing!).
Conclusion: K.O. For Windows Vista?
Windows Vista clearly is not a great new performer when it comes to executing single applications at maximum speed. Overall, applications performed as expected, or executed slightly slower than under Windows XP. There are some programs that showed deeply disappointing performance.
This was on a system with 2 GB of RAM, so according to you Vista should have been faster, but it wasn't. So your idea that it's the RAM that's the problem is bollocks.
Anecdotally, a colleague of mine was complaing her brand new lenovo thinkpad with Vista was slow compared to her imac -- she was kind of amazed that the they had the same processor and memory.
Hey, here's a thought - PUMPING STUFF UNDERGROUND increases pressure.
Ever had a hydrology course? It's obvious you haven't. If you had bothered to read the link I posted about the mud volcano, just the act of drilling causing the hydrology to change & the sudden decrease in pressure causes the volcanism. How about next time you take such a snarky tone, you remove your head from your ass first?
I wonder if this could be caused by drilling. There have been cases of volcanic activity triggered by drilling. Of the top of my head, I remember that the Air Force got caught pumping waste chemical weapons into the subsurface under Rock Flats, CO without a permit. They were detected by the increase in earthquakes. Couple that with George Bush's legislation to allow drilling in preserved areas, that Republican mantra of Drill Baby Drill may not have been so smart after all...
The GP could also try using an desktop that does that. E17 will let you scroll any window at all, it doesn't need to be in focus. I can't say for sure about kde or gnome. I could have sworn that OS X did it to, but I just tried it and it doesn't.
As for mice: I can't stand wireless mice, I tried one once and the weight of the battery made me feel twinges of pain in my joints after a week of use. Ugh! My all time favorite is just a simple Logitech optical mouse. The first thing I do with one of these mice is take it apart and remove the tensioner spring on the scroll wheel. It takes a little getting used to scrolling just one click without a click and to press the button without moving the scroll wheel, but the feel is nice, it doesn't jar my fingers and is very comfortable to use.
I don't know what their deal is, but the grand-parent's comment about Sun not playing nice with volunteer developers is not a new one. The guys over at NeoOffice also started by trying to contribute to a Mac port of OO.o, except Sun rebuffed them much preferring to write their own which is OO.o native mac port. Here's a quote from one of the two developers for neooffice in response to some comments by a Sun employee:
While it is wonderful that Sun has put so much work into the Windows, Linux, and Solaris ports over the years (and I have no criticism with that), their behavior in the Mac area has been quite aggressive towards us over that last few years. We've taken Sun's open source license, implemented a huge hole in their code, and made no attempt to proprietarize the code. What did we get in return, lots of very negative pressure from the OOo managers and volunteers. So you are surprised when we view their grand magical Mac port as competition?
For a long time now, Sun has been pulling a bit of a bait and switch. They claim that they are open source friendly, etc. etc., but then they do everything they can to prevent any outside interference. That's they whole reason why NeoOffice exists, the guys who made it got tired of Sun giving them the run-around.
Nice troll there. Here's some non-generic hardware for you: The mag-safe power connector. You won't find that on any other notebook. For another, there's the new single piece combination aluminum frame & chassis. Then there's the lighted keyboard that comes on automatically at low light and dims the screen a the same time. Or maybe the trackpad gestures? Until you've tried it, you won't be able to appreciate being able to scroll without having drag the cursor over to scrollbar, it's an immense timesaver. (And no that autoscroll that is on Vista is not equivalent!)
Granted, the hard drives, memory and cpu are standard parts, but those extra features that you are conveniently forgetting are value-added products. We can argue about whether those value-added products are worth the extra cost of the Apple products, but Apple products are not "generic PC hardware" and it's obvious that Apple actually puts time and money into R&D. But you're probably one of those people who just looks at the CPU speed and memory and forgets all about everything else. Nevermind that for day-to-day operations my three year old 1.8 GHz os x macbook pro outperforms a brand new 2.2 GHz core 2 Duo thinkpad with Vista for everything except raw floating point calculations or fps on rendered objects, but games are why I have Vista on a desktop at home, I use linux or OS X when I need to get real work done.
There's also the commonly overlooked fact that the presidency suggests a budget every year to congress. Congress looks at that one, and they either approve it, or modify it substantially. Saying the president has no power to control the economy is misleading. It's more like the the president has some power to control the economy, if he chooses, and if congress allows him to. That's only natural, since most of the government spending is spent in programs that operate under executive branch, the executive in chief would be the one who would suggest the budget.
Oh, and as far as I know, nobody really disputes that Roosevelt repaired the U.S. economy through massive spending on infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, etc.). As far as I know, the only ones who dispute it are conservatives, libertarians and neoliberals, who have obvious reasons to do so since their political ideology is opposed to it.
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I use the proprietary NVIDIA driver, but I just use the ones straight from NVIDIA rather than do it "the Debian way", or use someone else's bundled package. I wonder how many other debian users are doing that as well? As far as I know, this behavior wouldn't show up in the package tracking system. I do have gnome installed, but I never use it, also using e17, but I compile it from source using the svn repo., which also wouldn't show up in the package tracking system. I suppose the point is moot though, because I also don't have the package tracking system installed (I'm a big fan of only having the things that I want on my computer).
I suspect that my behavior is actually about par for Debian users, i.e. as TFA says, Debian users don't tend to install the default packages. I know I don't. I usually start with just the basic install and add the desktop packages I want because there are so many packages included in the default desktop that I don't want.
Well said. One other comment that I'll make is that in the last ten years or so, it's obvious that Apple has invested some money into Research & Development. One reason I think Apple has such a cult following is that there is something to follow. When was the last time you got excited about a new Dell product offering? I know the last time I was, it was when they released their 2005 FPW widescreen monitors (I bought one). But then, it wasn't excitement for a new product so much as, oh good, Dell now has similar monitor offerings as others (*cough* apple cinema *cough*) for much cheaper. Granted, I haven't been following Dell a lot lately, but Apple actually does have new and innovative ideas they put into their products, and that's been incredibly refreshing when some other formerly innovative companies (e.g., HP) have spun-off or canceled their R&D programs all together and prefer to sell rebranded LG televisions.
Often on slashdot we read comments about how Apple is just selling commodity hardware. Nobody who actually owns an macbook pro would say that, or an ipod touch or an iphone. The reason is that they can look beyond just the processor speed and ram and actually see the magsafe connector, or the firewire 800, or the accelerometer that shuts down the hard drive when the laptop falls or whatever $FEATURE that the competition left out of their $500 notebook. The best way I can put it, is that watching those keynote addresses in the 2000s has been like the early days of computers, when they were fun, rather than a mundane commodity. (E.g., here's one of Phil Schiller jumping from ~20 feet up up with a macbook to demonstrate the accelerometer.)
The question is, how much did Steve jobs have to do with that? Obviously, the same hardware engineers and programmers are still working at Apple. How much did Jobs need to persuade the board of Apple to put the time into being innovative rather than pursue more short-term gains that would be good for the quarterly results? I don't know. I do know that at least one board member, Al Gore, does have the vision and the patience for long-term gains. (Al Gore trolls, you can go straight to hell.)
No, the iCart. It revolutionizes plague-victim disposal a trendy brushed-metal look and user-friendly interface.
I think that's a little extreme. There is room for more than one desktop environment. Just like there is room for both Windows and OS X, or Vista and XP for that matter.
I think that Nokia trying to open up Qt is absolutely great. The reason is that I think that the kde apps are great like amarok, gwenview, konqueror and k3b, but what I dislike is kde itself. kde isn't bad, but I prefer to use e17 as my WM because I wrote my own theme for it that doesn't look like anything else you've ever seen in a WM. What I'd very much like to see is to be able to run kde apps without having to load all the kde overhead. It's annoying like hell, that if I want to load gwenview or konqueror I have to load the dcopserver and all the other kde Krap and there's no way to shut it off (yes I know what the dcopserver does, but I'd still like to turn it off). Ergo, if Qt is more widely used outside of kde, perhaps we'll see some of my favorite applications able to run without loading all the kde libraries and helper apps.
What I found interesting was that, while December was bad for solar power, he says:
Basically, his solar power does what it's supposed to more often than not. But then again, we've always known that about solar power, the big problem with solar is the large up-front capital cost of installing it.
(Or other strange things, like my mother just moved into a retirement community and her housing rules say solar panels are not allowed because they're unsightly, but directTV antennas and satellite dishes are just fine. One must have priorities I suppose. Television is obviously more important than renewable energy.)
I can vouch for that sentiment. My personal experience is that for several years I was on solely linux (w/ kde or e17 WM) and os x literally didn't touch a windows machine. Then, a year or two ago I got a new job and I've been going back to a lot of windows quite a lot. I still find myself cursing at the ui after about ten minutes or so, but I think that people who have been using windows consistently get inured to it or something.
It's not necessarily that it's bad design, but for someone who is used to the way everything is done in linux or in os x, going over to the windows gui always makes me feel like Microsoft thinks I'm an idiot, which is ironic, because I have about the same opinion about them after ten minutes of heavy use. Things like trying to hide the program and system files from me, or the incessant reminders of things I already know about. God-fucking-forbid there ever be an unused icon on my desktop!!! I'm so glad that MS put all these resources into telling me this, again, and again, and again, and again.
Vista seems to take that philosphy to the extreme with the UAC and the seriously messed up control panel. My first impression of the new office with the ribbons is a pain in the neck too but I haven't used that for any significant amount of time yet.
For some reason that I don't fully understand, I just bought one of these new Apple keyboards that this EEE PC is modeled after (my other option was a unicomp model M remake). For the apple, I had to make some adjustments to my chair height and throw out my wrist rest because of the low height, but so far... I have to say the keyboard isn't bad. My reasoning for buying it was thus (which may be completely wrong): I imagined that short-throw keys would stress your fingers less, because you would need less force for each keypress. However you also need to have unambiguous tactile feedback that, A) you've started pressing a key and B) you've pressed it all the way to the stop. I think the trick is that it's easier to make a long-throw key switch that does both these than a short-throw switch, but it shouldn't be impossible to make a good short-throw one. I typed for about 20 minutes on the Apple one in the store before I was satisfied that I the key switches were sufficient quality to do that and since I've gotten it home, I haven't run into any problems. I make about just as many mistakes and type about as fast as I do on a regular keyboard, but YMMV.
That's a good point, but in order to really force me to upgrade they should add a new version of DirectX that will arbitrarily only run on $NEW_VERSION and introduces some $NEW_VERSION only effects."
Nope, never was. That was incredibly annoying for me because it basically meant I was shut out of any developer stuff on my server until I managed to get the map editor running using winex.
The most exciting thing for me that's happened in free software in the last year was Wine 1.0. The "1.0" is not itself as important, but the usability in wine of many apps has improved dramatically in the last year. I can remember that wine in principal was a fantastic idea, but in practice it was so difficult to get anything to run your time was better spent dual-booting. E.g., this time last year, I was still having to run a patched version of winex from cedega to get the map editor in neverwinter nights to run and even then it still crashed periodically. This year, that app runs using the stock wine code.
The thing is, I'm no longer playing nwn because I can run Civ IV, Medieval 2 and a bunch of other newer games using wine instead. Yes, I still have to dual-boot into windows to run the newest games at high resolutions and good frame-rates, but older games are getting very playable using wine and the number of hacks you have to do to get them to run is decreasing. It's great! Just about the only one that you have to install on a regular basis is the no-CD hack, but that's a useful thing to have anyway. Some stuff just makes me laugh, like when punkbuster runs for Far Cry 2 and bitches at you because it thinks you're a punk, you just close the window and the installation continues. (Unfortunately Far Cry 2 is one of those that doesn't run very well at high resolution.)
Yeah I agree with the parent. I bet that there was some critical flaw in the drive that was fixable through the firmware. Instead of waiting to get sued, it looks like Samsung did the honorable thing to do and preempted it by shipping the fix. Once a company is sued successfully in a class action, they often are required to resort to these things. I get letters once every few years about various products I've purchased that are in litigation because of defects. If say, the company were sending you unsolicited advertisements using this method, that is annoying, or using it to sue their customers, that would be scary, but this behavior isn't scary, it's helpful.
Wow, that sucked. Just to show that not everyone is an idiot about these things, Ted's Montana Grill (Ted Turner's restaurant, it's a chain) gives out $2 bills as change sometimes, it's pretty cool!
Maybe, maybe not. Do you think the labels would want DRM-free music? Doubtful. My guess is that amazon only got the deal they did without DRM because Apple was doing so well and wouldn't play ball on the tiered pricing. What if the labels only could concede DRM-free music if Apple gave in on the tiered pricing? It's not an unequivocal victory but if I had to choose I'd much rather have tiered pricing and DRM-free music than DRM-ed music and non-tiered pricing. Now if they'd just let me get the songs off my ipod using iTunes and not having to resort to third party software I'll be happy.
I haven't bought a single song from the iTunes music store because of DRM, I might actually consider it now.
There are a few of us "real" scientists left, who do science for the sake of science and for the benefit of humanity -- not to get rich. Actually, I don't know of any scientists who are in it for the money, but I do environmental work and not in a medical field or something like that. Nominally, when a university wants to get a patent for someone under them, it is because the university as a whole has a greater resource pool and can hire a specialist patent lawyer whereas the individual would strain his income. The trade-off here is that the university gets a say in how the patent is used. However, the article in the summary shows that not all universities have such a good attitude about it.
The one time I have watched this process was when my co-workers were patenting something, our university had no interest in helping them patent the device because it was too specialist for them. Fortunately the university of the collaborators who were working with them was interested and did the work for the patent. In this case, the patent was mostly just to stop the big corporations from stealing the idea and the issue of the patent allowed the scientists to distribute the design with permission to people who weren't interested in making a profit (i.e., other scientists). There have been a few of the devices made, but no one has demanded any royalty payments. Of course, no one has tried to use the idea for a profit yet either (well, one big corporation has tried stealing the idea, but no one was interested in licensing it properly).
That's a very interesting comment. A few years ago now I moved to the middle of a large (5.5 million) city after living in small towns (50k) for the last ten years. Lately I've been feeling more and more like I'm constantly on the defensive and it's nerve wracking. Part of this is the job for sure, it's a high pressure one that hopefully will pay off, but now I wonder how much the city itself has to do with the way I've been feeling. I can certainly say that it doesn't help that if you walk around during night you have to be on your guard constantly, and even in the day you have to be a little wary. I walk everywhere so maybe it's more of a problem for me than others. Hmm, you've definitely given me something to think about.
Often, they are. The key word there is often. Sometimes they're not. No computer is perfect, and I suppose that your mac friends were overselling their computers and gave you unrealistic expectations. Yes, Apple computers cost more, and whether that cost is worth it depends on your individual priotities, but they have problems sometimes just like every other computer. I find they have few enough problems to keep me coming back. To give you an indication, I've owned or used macs for about 11 years now and I've never once had a software update cause a problem on any of my computers. Not once. The record for my current desktop uptime is 112 days, and then I only had to reboot to install a security update. I've had three mac laptops, my Lombard powerbook was a handme down and we retired it after 5 years. My Ti powerbook lasted 4 years before a logic board failure caused me to replace it. My current Al macbook pro is running strong after three years and certainly runs better than newer "Vista-ready" laptops that ended up not really having the resources to run Vista well, but I have to say that XP SP2 is probably about as stable as OS X at this point.
And this is all the more reason for Mr. Jobs to stop giving the keynote. Apple needs to break this perception that Mr. Jobs is Apple. He can't go on working there forever, and if they want to survive once he retires, they need to get him to take a back seat for awhile so the ninny-headed stock holders stop believing the sky is falling every time Mr. Jobs gets a cold.
Incidentally, it's not surprising that Mr. Jobs might have this happen, a lot of people as they get older have thyroid or other changes that cause them to gain or lose weight. E.g. Bush Sr. had that thyroid operation when he was president because it was becoming overactive IIRC.
Beyond that, I have yet to see any conclusive benchmarks posted by the defenders of Vista on this thread showing any proof that Vista is faster than XP, just empty assertions. What I do see is a bunch of Microsoft fanboys comforting themselves that their favorite brand released an OS that has turned out to be a flop.
Let me qualify my positions here though. I have Vista installed on an old hard drive on a brand new PC -- my own conclusion is that Vista is not as bad as everyone makes out, but you all need to stop pretending that Vista is fast. It isn't. It's not terribly slow on nice hardware, and it looks very nice and it has some nice features, e.g., the DX10 features on new games, but it's not fast.
Here are some benchmarks right over at tomshardware that show that the "SlashDot world" in this case is accurate (amazing!).
This was on a system with 2 GB of RAM, so according to you Vista should have been faster, but it wasn't. So your idea that it's the RAM that's the problem is bollocks.
Anecdotally, a colleague of mine was complaing her brand new lenovo thinkpad with Vista was slow compared to her imac -- she was kind of amazed that the they had the same processor and memory.
Ever had a hydrology course? It's obvious you haven't. If you had bothered to read the link I posted about the mud volcano, just the act of drilling causing the hydrology to change & the sudden decrease in pressure causes the volcanism. How about next time you take such a snarky tone, you remove your head from your ass first?
I wonder if this could be caused by drilling. There have been cases of volcanic activity triggered by drilling. Of the top of my head, I remember that the Air Force got caught pumping waste chemical weapons into the subsurface under Rock Flats, CO without a permit. They were detected by the increase in earthquakes. Couple that with George Bush's legislation to allow drilling in preserved areas, that Republican mantra of Drill Baby Drill may not have been so smart after all...
The GP could also try using an desktop that does that. E17 will let you scroll any window at all, it doesn't need to be in focus. I can't say for sure about kde or gnome. I could have sworn that OS X did it to, but I just tried it and it doesn't.
As for mice: I can't stand wireless mice, I tried one once and the weight of the battery made me feel twinges of pain in my joints after a week of use. Ugh! My all time favorite is just a simple Logitech optical mouse. The first thing I do with one of these mice is take it apart and remove the tensioner spring on the scroll wheel. It takes a little getting used to scrolling just one click without a click and to press the button without moving the scroll wheel, but the feel is nice, it doesn't jar my fingers and is very comfortable to use.
For a long time now, Sun has been pulling a bit of a bait and switch. They claim that they are open source friendly, etc. etc., but then they do everything they can to prevent any outside interference. That's they whole reason why NeoOffice exists, the guys who made it got tired of Sun giving them the run-around.
Nice troll there. Here's some non-generic hardware for you: The mag-safe power connector. You won't find that on any other notebook. For another, there's the new single piece combination aluminum frame & chassis. Then there's the lighted keyboard that comes on automatically at low light and dims the screen a the same time. Or maybe the trackpad gestures? Until you've tried it, you won't be able to appreciate being able to scroll without having drag the cursor over to scrollbar, it's an immense timesaver. (And no that autoscroll that is on Vista is not equivalent!)
Granted, the hard drives, memory and cpu are standard parts, but those extra features that you are conveniently forgetting are value-added products. We can argue about whether those value-added products are worth the extra cost of the Apple products, but Apple products are not "generic PC hardware" and it's obvious that Apple actually puts time and money into R&D. But you're probably one of those people who just looks at the CPU speed and memory and forgets all about everything else. Nevermind that for day-to-day operations my three year old 1.8 GHz os x macbook pro outperforms a brand new 2.2 GHz core 2 Duo thinkpad with Vista for everything except raw floating point calculations or fps on rendered objects, but games are why I have Vista on a desktop at home, I use linux or OS X when I need to get real work done.
There's also the commonly overlooked fact that the presidency suggests a budget every year to congress. Congress looks at that one, and they either approve it, or modify it substantially. Saying the president has no power to control the economy is misleading. It's more like the the president has some power to control the economy, if he chooses, and if congress allows him to. That's only natural, since most of the government spending is spent in programs that operate under executive branch, the executive in chief would be the one who would suggest the budget.
Oh, and as far as I know, nobody really disputes that Roosevelt repaired the U.S. economy through massive spending on infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, etc.). As far as I know, the only ones who dispute it are conservatives, libertarians and neoliberals, who have obvious reasons to do so since their political ideology is opposed to it.