Agreed, but I'm specifically curious about XP. Sure Linux uses less resources, and you or I might be quite happy, maybe even happier, running it. But why are these companies using Win7 when it makes their hardware look like a steaming pile of Fail? Are they forced to (assuming they want to offer a Windows platform)?
1. I thought people hated on Vista because it was a resource hog for no reason. That and their hardware, which used to work in XP, no longer worked in Vista; particularly old hardware. It's exceptionally rare that I find something that doesn't work in Linux these days (Ubuntu specifically), and if it's old, it'll almost work guaranteed. Hardware, I've also had no problems at all, with the exception of ATI graphics. If you've got an Intel video chipset or an nVidia card... or really ANYTHING beside ATI, you'll be fine. For the record, I've also had a lot of problems with ATI cards in Windows too.
2. This I will agree with. I've NEVER gotten Wine to work right in all my years of using Linux and I hate when people say "just use Wine". I much prefer to use Virtualbox for my Windows software needs. I wouldn't really recommend it for gaming (though it does work for some games), or any really high-resource software (it'll work but be painfully slow), but it's pretty awesome for the random Windows apps you just NEED to run.
I used to use Gentoo exclusively (RedHat before that). It wasn't THAT hard. I even did a COMPLETE install once.... took 4 days to compile it all.
I got sick of having to compile EVERYTHING though; I wanted software right away! I read that compiling didn't help much and I kept hearing good things about Ubuntu. I tried it out when I borked my Gentoo install (thanks to incessant tweaking) and haven't looked back. That was back with 5.10 I believe. 9.04 is pretty damn great and I look forward to my eventual upgrade to 9.10.
I'd have to agree with you here. Not surprising, since OSX essentially runs on BSD, which Linux is a clone of.
3rd party support is kind of a cyclical problem. There's not much interest in it because the market is so small, and the market remains small because there's not much 3rd party support. Time will tell if Google can turn that tide or not... or if they really even have an interest in doing so.
I'm as much a Linux advocate as anyone else, but people have been calling for the death of Microsoft and Windows specifically for years at the hands of Linux to no avail. Apple has been chipping in to their share thanks to their brilliant marketing. Google has been helping Linux move forward, but it remains to be seen if they'll be a major player or not. My money is on not right now, but I wil admit that there is potential.
The typical user will ask either for Windows, because it's what they know, or a Mac, because they've heard good things about it or know someone else that uses it. Nobody is championing Linux to the average user. It will continue to have its niche markets (and dominate them), but I don't know that we'll ever see a mainstream push for Linux on the desktop, and especially on the corporate workstation. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, just that nobody is really *working* (ie. marketing) to make it happen.
"Blame Microsoft and its passive-aggressive rules governing Win 7 Starter. The Redmond, Wash., company will license this edition for sale only on computers with 1 GB or less of memory and a screen no larger than 10.2 inches."
What's the rule on OEMs selling machines with XP pre-installed? Is that totally out of the question now?
There's really no compelling reason I can think of to run Win7 on a netbook. 1GB of RAM is more than enough to run XP. Surfing, emailing, chatting, Skyping, etc have all worked on XP for a long time, so why is having the "latest and greatest" OS even an issue here? Is XP just unavailable now or do these companies just think they NEED to run Win7?
That's far less true than it used to be. You can usually avoid headaches by looking at user comments before buying the hardware. Especially on sites like Newegg, if you simply pull up the comments and search for "Ubuntu" or "Linux" you'll find out pretty quick if what you're planning to buy will work. If your machine is even mildly old, even a couple months, chances are quite high it'll all work out of the box.
Google is your friend, and if in doubt, run the Live CD.
I'll feed the troll cause I think it might help. There are very few things that I plug in to my Linux box these days that don't work out of the box. Webcams, headsets, hard drives, mp3 players, cameras, etc; plug them in and you're done. No drivers, no configuration, no tweaking or tinkering, It Just Works (tm).
And nowadays, "a level of technical ability" is basically typing your error in Google, copying and pasting from a website or forums and moving on, especially in a distribution like Ubuntu.
And regarding the command line concerns; it makes things easier, not harder, and only at the expense of more keyboard use. The command line is nothing like the powerless DOS prompt.
At the very least, I'm with senshikaze; you will never lose anything by learning something new and different. You might even learn a thing or two about how computers work overall.
I thought Apple was going to change the game? When the iPhone was first announced, Steve said that it would turn the cell phone market completely upside down. Then they made an exclusive deal with ATT for their phone. In the short term, yeah, that might have made sense to ensure you got you R&D money back, but at this point, why is the phone at the very least not quad-band and available on TMo? Or even better, on all the major US (and world-wide) carriers?
Yeah, they've got a kickass phone, but they've partnered with a really shitty provider and left room for anyone to steal their market. Android is on at least the other 3 providers already and making a lot of waves. It's still no iPhone, but it's close and it's good enough to get people to leave ATT. The only part of the game they seem to have changed was giving the market to Google...
"He's still not totally convinced however -- as he notes that the reason his experiment worked was because it drove sales of the physical (paper) book. But he's worried that when more people have ebook readers, then things might change."
For better or worse, that is my thought on the topic as well. I buy books because they are easy to handle and read in their print format; that's my reason to buy. I can't shake the feeling that once ebooks become more affordable that people will buy less print books because they are just as easy to read and print is no longer a compelling reason to buy on its own.
I don't think this applies to reference books (since they read differently and it's hard to replicate that on an ebook), but for normal, linear reading, I see why ebooks wouldn't be just as usable as print books.
That's not to say that someone can't come along and make it so easy to buy that it actually costs you more in time and effort to pirate, I just don't know if that exists yet or will before ebooks really take off.
I operate under the belief that the yellow light time is usually decreased when the cameras are installed, presumably in order to generate more tickets/revenue from people who would have otherwise safely made it through the intersection during that stage of the light cycle. If not at the time of installation then later in the life of the cameras. I'd be interested in knowing if that was the case here.
I hate the red light cameras as much as the next guy, but I would agree that in a city like Chicago, seeing an additional 10 accidents in a year doesn't really mean much; watching those numbers in the coming years (and comparing them to the past handful of years) would be much more interesting.
I don't really know much about contract law, but I assume if Rolling Stone made their contract with the artist before they signed with the merchandising company, then that contract would take precedence. I can see the merchandising company taking it up with the artist if they signed the contract without their consent I guess, but yeah, I guess it doesn't make a lot of point for them suing Rolling Stone; they don't seem to be involved really. I simply assumed the merchandising companies filed the suit on behalf of the artists. Perhaps I was jumping to a poor conclusion there.
Whoa whoa whoa, you're not implying I simply vote the other party now, are you? I'm simply saying that THAT party is pretty messed up, for better or worse, and this story isn't helping them out...
To clarify; the original catalog could be gotten for cheap/free, so nobody would pay for a re-work. They might pay to see someone PERFORM the re-work (scarcity), but not the work itself.
I've gotta agree here. It really all depends on the contract. Rolling Stone should have said something along the lines of "We can use the images any way we see fit" and if artists didn't agree to that, then they didn't make the cover. If the original contracts had limitations about how the images could be used, then those limitations must be honored. The same would go for any royalties resulting from the shirt sales, assuming such things were covered in the contract.
Obviously if the contracts said nothing of the use of the images, then there's no grounds for a lawsuit and it should be thrown out. The reason for buying the shirts doesn't weigh in at all; Rolling Stone (most likely) paid for the images, so if there's not a contract saying otherwise, the images belong to Rolling Stone and can be used as they see fit.
What?! When's the last time you saw a cover band hit the mainstream?!! Never, that's when. And why would you need a cover band to "re-do" the catalog? If there was no more copyright on it, people could just get the original works with ease.
What copyright DOES do is prevent people from using that music to create new works. Remixes, sampling, etc are all NEW works that can't be done without deep pockets thanks to copyright.
Your cover band argument is probably the worst one I've ever heard...
Seems odd that the labels give the artists ANY royalties at all if they aren't going to bother with the accounting. I mean, if they don't have any plans to pay the artists back, why not just write that up in their contracts? $400k is a sizable chunk of cash, and I'm sure some artists would be happy to sell their works outright to the labels for that kind of money.
I'm NOT saying the labels are right here or that I support Warner or any other RIAA label. I'm just saying is seems like they could do away with the "headache" completely by changing the contract terms they offer. Anyway, I've gotta get back to downloading RIAA-backed music and buying indie-label albums. Thank you http://riaaradar.com!
On the post: Why Does Microsoft Limit Netbooks?
Re: Re:
On the post: Why Does Microsoft Limit Netbooks?
Re: Re: Re:
2. This I will agree with. I've NEVER gotten Wine to work right in all my years of using Linux and I hate when people say "just use Wine". I much prefer to use Virtualbox for my Windows software needs. I wouldn't really recommend it for gaming (though it does work for some games), or any really high-resource software (it'll work but be painfully slow), but it's pretty awesome for the random Windows apps you just NEED to run.
On the post: Why Does Microsoft Limit Netbooks?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I got sick of having to compile EVERYTHING though; I wanted software right away! I read that compiling didn't help much and I kept hearing good things about Ubuntu. I tried it out when I borked my Gentoo install (thanks to incessant tweaking) and haven't looked back. That was back with 5.10 I believe. 9.04 is pretty damn great and I look forward to my eventual upgrade to 9.10.
On the post: Why Does Microsoft Limit Netbooks?
Re: Re: Re: No fear of linux
3rd party support is kind of a cyclical problem. There's not much interest in it because the market is so small, and the market remains small because there's not much 3rd party support. Time will tell if Google can turn that tide or not... or if they really even have an interest in doing so.
On the post: Why Does Microsoft Limit Netbooks?
Re: Why Does Microsoft Limit Netbooks?
The typical user will ask either for Windows, because it's what they know, or a Mac, because they've heard good things about it or know someone else that uses it. Nobody is championing Linux to the average user. It will continue to have its niche markets (and dominate them), but I don't know that we'll ever see a mainstream push for Linux on the desktop, and especially on the corporate workstation. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, just that nobody is really *working* (ie. marketing) to make it happen.
On the post: Why Does Microsoft Limit Netbooks?
"Blame Microsoft and its passive-aggressive rules governing Win 7 Starter. The Redmond, Wash., company will license this edition for sale only on computers with 1 GB or less of memory and a screen no larger than 10.2 inches."
What's the rule on OEMs selling machines with XP pre-installed? Is that totally out of the question now?
There's really no compelling reason I can think of to run Win7 on a netbook. 1GB of RAM is more than enough to run XP. Surfing, emailing, chatting, Skyping, etc have all worked on XP for a long time, so why is having the "latest and greatest" OS even an issue here? Is XP just unavailable now or do these companies just think they NEED to run Win7?
On the post: Why Does Microsoft Limit Netbooks?
Re: No fear of linux
Google is your friend, and if in doubt, run the Live CD.
On the post: Why Does Microsoft Limit Netbooks?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
And nowadays, "a level of technical ability" is basically typing your error in Google, copying and pasting from a website or forums and moving on, especially in a distribution like Ubuntu.
And regarding the command line concerns; it makes things easier, not harder, and only at the expense of more keyboard use. The command line is nothing like the powerless DOS prompt.
At the very least, I'm with senshikaze; you will never lose anything by learning something new and different. You might even learn a thing or two about how computers work overall.
On the post: $500 YouTube Video Gets Director $30 Million To Play With From Hollywood
Re: Re: Re: Re: hoax?
I'm glad Mike posted the video. I hadn't seen it before, and it's pretty impressive. $500 or not, I enjoyed it.
On the post: As AT&T Complains, People Notice That It Has Decreased Infrastructure Investments, But Wireless Revenue Is Way Up
What happened?
Yeah, they've got a kickass phone, but they've partnered with a really shitty provider and left room for anyone to steal their market. Android is on at least the other 3 providers already and making a lot of waves. It's still no iPhone, but it's close and it's good enough to get people to leave ATT. The only part of the game they seem to have changed was giving the market to Google...
On the post: David Pogue Weighs In On Ebook DRM: Non-DRM'd Ebook Increased His Sales
For better or worse, that is my thought on the topic as well. I buy books because they are easy to handle and read in their print format; that's my reason to buy. I can't shake the feeling that once ebooks become more affordable that people will buy less print books because they are just as easy to read and print is no longer a compelling reason to buy on its own.
I don't think this applies to reference books (since they read differently and it's hard to replicate that on an ebook), but for normal, linear reading, I see why ebooks wouldn't be just as usable as print books.
That's not to say that someone can't come along and make it so easy to buy that it actually costs you more in time and effort to pirate, I just don't know if that exists yet or will before ebooks really take off.
On the post: Chicago Tribune Notices More Accidents Happening At Many Intersections With Red Light Cameras
Re: Hard to seperate out data
I hate the red light cameras as much as the next guy, but I would agree that in a city like Chicago, seeing an additional 10 accidents in a year doesn't really mean much; watching those numbers in the coming years (and comparing them to the past handful of years) would be much more interesting.
On the post: Arizona Politician Accused Of Using Voter Database To Stalk Young Woman
Re: Re: Yikes
On the post: Can Rolling Stone Sell T-Shirts Of Its Covers? It's Not That Simple, Apparently...
Re: Re: Re: please release me, let me go....
On the post: Arizona Politician Accused Of Using Voter Database To Stalk Young Woman
Re: Re: Re: Yikes
On the post: And Here We Go Again: Argentina Extends Copyright
Re: Re: Well DUH!
On the post: Can Rolling Stone Sell T-Shirts Of Its Covers? It's Not That Simple, Apparently...
Re: please release me, let me go....
Obviously if the contracts said nothing of the use of the images, then there's no grounds for a lawsuit and it should be thrown out. The reason for buying the shirts doesn't weigh in at all; Rolling Stone (most likely) paid for the images, so if there's not a contract saying otherwise, the images belong to Rolling Stone and can be used as they see fit.
On the post: And Here We Go Again: Argentina Extends Copyright
Re: Well DUH!
What copyright DOES do is prevent people from using that music to create new works. Remixes, sampling, etc are all NEW works that can't be done without deep pockets thanks to copyright.
Your cover band argument is probably the worst one I've ever heard...
On the post: Arizona Politician Accused Of Using Voter Database To Stalk Young Woman
Yikes
On the post: Warner Music's Royalty Statements: Works Of Fiction
I'm NOT saying the labels are right here or that I support Warner or any other RIAA label. I'm just saying is seems like they could do away with the "headache" completely by changing the contract terms they offer. Anyway, I've gotta get back to downloading RIAA-backed music and buying indie-label albums. Thank you http://riaaradar.com!
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