Posts by David Hicks 1235 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Apr 2008
That already comes with too much rubbish if you ask me. It don't need ekiga, vinagre, sound-juicer, epiphany or rythmbox on my netbook, thanks. Installing a .net runtime simply for a note-taking application seems like ridiculous amounts of overkill to me.
Also, @The Other Steve - If you think MS invented the popup menu, the notification area or the clock then you're something quite special.
"Ladies reap additional benefit from their random approach to finding men attractive, as in general they don't face competition - their possible rivals probably favouring something quite different in the boyfriend line than what they may have snared themselves."
In my (limited) experience, there's nothing that women like as much as a man who is already showing that he can be a satisfactory partner by being one.
"So it's now up to faceless 'crats to decide when businesses can release new software?"
Umm, no.
It's up to them to decide when and how *multiply convicted monopolists* can continue to take part in the market.
This is not anti-MS, euro-centric nonsense, this is a company that have been shown time and again in multiple markets to have abused their monopoly status. As a result you shouldn't be surprised the courts and bureaucrats get involved in new releases.
If they increase advertising on the free version then they'll lose people who use it casually but don't want to pay.
I buy lots of music (maybe 50 quid a month rather than per week) but I sure as hell won't pay for spotify because I don't get anything physical, nor do I get to keep the music. I'm probably a relic, but it's those shiny, new-fangled Compact Discs for me every time.
And if Spotify becomes annoying due to ads, I've still got a huge music collection I can listen to where and when I want...
I thought that was the point?
I'm very, very happy with my eee 901, but that's because I have a relatively lightweight OS (debian) on it and didn't expect it to perform like my Core 2 Duo laptop.
That said, there's not much it can't do. Even (just about) 720p video to a large external screen.
Perhaps most people are disappointed with what they can do because they naturally went for windows (familiar interface and apps) but found out that their netbook just can't cope with XP and whatever else it is they want to do.
I have a dumbphone. It costs me 15 quid a month. Thats 30+ quid extra beer money. I also don't feel the need to take my laptop home from work, but then that's because when I'm not at work they're not paying me to read my damn work email. There is such a thing as offline time.
Perhaps some of you should try it sometime, it's most relaxing.
(I'm also an old curmudgeon by the standards of the survey, I turned 30 last year)
Tux because he's what's on my non-working open source phone that I gave up on for the cheapest PAYG unit that actually worked...
The man to ever enter parliament with honest and straightforward intent.
Here in the UK the state seems to think too much of itself. I'm not for a second advocating the blowing up of parliament, but getting children to watch out for extreme views is a little bit Stasi for my liking.
I have extreme views - I think there's a hell of a lot wrong with our model of government and the people that execute it - but that doesn't make me a terrorist.
After searching my name and then providing more details when it claimed multiple matches it said the page didn't exist.
Good work!
As a general principle I dislike this. I try never to give explicit or implicit consent for anyone to do anything with my details but I'm only human and I sometimes miss. Passing my details to sales people is annoying enough, but to directories seems like an abuse.
Still, at least they don't give out numbers directly, just annoy you with text messages.
"sadly until Linux looks like Windows and plays exactly like Windows, it will not cut it with more than small number of people."
1. Aero is a blatant copy of compiz
2. Surely the popularity of MacOS X shows that other things can succeed?
I'll freely admit that Linux can be a pain in the backside to maintain/administer though. I shan't be moving my mum off windows for some time.
My one experience of Xandros is the broken install that came on my eeepc901
There was little to no way to install new stuff.
The menu/icon systems sucked.
There was no "normal" desktop mode.
Updates were just broken.
The key map kept switching back and forth between UK and US every few boots.
No, that was a failure. If they want to be anything useful then they need to make sure that what gets sent out on these machines works. Debian, OTOH, is a delight on the 901. And if they're having trouble making desktop linux pay, they may want to ask Shuttleworth for tips. Last I heard Ubuntu was slowly approaching profitability.
@George
Go to the menus in Gnome, choose System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager.
Enter the root password when prompted, select openoffice.org and click OK.
Alternatively, if you're not scared of the command line, just sudo apt-get install openoffice.org
I fail to see how it could be simpler. No searching on the web, no non-standard installers, just the built in software repository (I know, not as snappy a name as "App Store", but it's basicalyl the same thing). Sure it could use some polish, but it's neither complex, arcane nor weird.
I mean, it's not like flash memory is actually expensive these days. What difference does 4 or 8 or even 16 GB make?
I mean, you can get a 4GB SD card for a fiver, or 8GB for a tenner. Seems shameful to me to limit the capacity so much when it costs so little. But then I suppose they have to differentiate between the "premium" and budget products...
I'll buy one when it comes with a (micro) SDHC slot so it can be expanded. And a reasonably priced one year contract. And a pony.
Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!
Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead.
Wake up - sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. She's gone where the goblins go,
Below - below - below. Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong' the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead!
I, for one, will be having a celebratory pint this evening. It's a shame she wasn't kicked out for being an authoritarian superbitch, but hey, at least she'll be gone.
Where are Singapore, Hong-Kong, Thailand. Malaysia, Indonesia etc?
In these places you got into a shopping mall and head to a movie or games store and they're both shocked and unable to help you if you have the tenacity to ask for an original of a movie, album or game. That's above and beyond internet piracy if you ask me.
"You won't mind paying extra bank charges to help cover the bank's loss then."
At the moment, as a taxpayer, I'm doing this for miserable failures of banks that I don't even have an account with.
So yeah, hope they ran to somewhere in South America that has no extradition rules and lots of carnivals!
"Subtly it is saying that trying to block the use of its software, when perfectly reasonably licensed, is a form of bullying, that the very act of issuing a suit against RealNetworks is an act of anti-trust."
Well yes, because there's no "loser pays" rule in the US, in general, whoever has more money or is more committed to the fight can quite easily bully other parties into capitulation. Filing suit is the first step, dragging it out until the target is bankrupt through legal costs the second.
The sue-happy US has become a place where the people try not to get noticed by the corporations, because even if they were 100% in the clear they could never afford to defend themselves.
Yeah, but try searching for mandelbrot set or julia set, or even try putting in the functional definitions. I even tried a mandelbrot formula I found on another wolfram site.
A friend worked it out though -
http://www50.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Julia+set+-0.40%2B0.65I
Not 100% intuitive I s'pose.
In general I like the idea of this though. Anything that makes maths more accessible can only be a good thing.
... at the grand old age of 30.
I last used it because my mp3 player was in the other room, under soemthing, and I couldn't be bothered to find it.
If they start playing more ads or trying to charge me, or even just make the product more awkward to use, then I'll give it up. I like to buy music on CD, rip it and file it away, then I can listen to it anywhere in the world on a variety of devices.
Spotify will only appeal as long as it's convenient and free.
(That said, I have some friends who love it and pay for it, but they're not as acquisitive as I am)
Chris, you make the device sound good. Am looking for something at the moment and this is on the list now.
As for OGG, well OGG is not a lossless format, it's a lossy format much like mp3. The difference is that you don't need to break the law to get free OGG creating software.
In various countries the MP3 algorithm is owned (By Thompson was it) and charged for and you could be sued for giving it away and not paying royalties. This is why mp3 support is often not enabled by default in linux.
That said, I use MP3, sod the legal side, because it's the defacto lingua-franca of music playing. Also I can't be arsed to re-rip my cd collection.
C is a beautiful, wonderful language that sorts the men from the boys and no mistaking.
Sure, there are other ways to get things done quicker, but when you absolutely, positively have to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of something, well, there's no other way to go (except assembly and maybe C++).
Yes, you can shoot yourself in the foot, or the head, with ease. But that's what makes the language so flexible. Take away my ability to treat everything as a piece of memory filled that I can stomp all over as I like and you take away some of my power to make things go fast.
Genuinely scary stuff, that there's a semi autonomous secret military in the US that's about as big as any other world power's. Who know what they could get up to?
Well, ok, we know they like torturing "terrorists" in other countries whilst staying outside the reach of their own or foreign law. The only shock here is the size of it.
A free country with a new president that promised a transparent government.... of course they need the biggest clandestine military organisation the world has ever seen. Of course....
We don't have time to look at it properly now, so we'll give it back to the suspect with a trojan on it and trust them not to delete stuff until we get around to looking?
Or is it the more sinister option of not bothering to collect hard drives in the first place, just hacking the machine and grabbing the info?
The former case is just damned stupid.
In the latter case I fail to see how that would affect the backlog in any way, just give police an even easier time spying on us.
FAIL.
(on my part if I've missed an option, on theirs if it's either of these)
It's the positive discrimination aspects that scare me. She's quoted as saying a business should be able to hire a woman over a man because they want more women in the workforce and avoid being sued under gender discrimination laws.
Sorry but WTF happened to the best person for the job?
I bet this %&*£$*& of a woman would have some way of weaseling out of it in cases (like teaching and nursing) where men are under-represen
Yeah.
She's already shown that she doesn't care and she won't either resign or take the blame for anything.
On a similar topic, anyone catch this Brown quote (on the slur thing) earlier -
"I take full responsibility for what happened. That's why the person who was responsible went immediately."
That'd be just the sort of responsibility Jaqui and Gordo know all about, the type where you claim to take it and then fire someone else. Doublespeak at its finest.
Of course we wrote this stuff, but it was a joke, right? We were just going to chuck it out, really.
Of course it was wrong to do that, clearly it's the code of conduct rules that need changing! Nothing to do with us!
Of course it was undertaken by my close friend, confidant and advisor without my knowledge! Entirely his fault and nothing to do with me!
Never, not even once is there a hint of real apology. Every time it's an exercise in passing the buck, expressing regret that they got caught and explaining to us poor proles how we've got it wrong and it wasn't really their fault.
How long do we have to wait for the next election cycle?
Before the 70's we were dumping (at least) two sets of nasties into the atmosphere, that cancelled each other out in terms of warming effects.
Now because we've stopped doing one, the damping effect it was having on the other is gone.
Surely the best answer is to try to stop pumping shit into the atmosphere, not ramping back up on the acid rain?
Big Blue have interests. They pushed their stuff into Linux to help themselves.
In the typical FOSS scenario we refer to a developer scratching their itch, and by doing so in an open way we all benefit.
How is this any different?
(I also agree with the above comments, Big Blue are a profit driven corporation, of course they'll only contribute to Linux when it is to their advantage to do so. Duh!)
You entirely missed the point didn't you?
That these things are NOT as harmful as the propaganda has been saying. That your children can actually do some of these things WITHOUT screwing up their lives and more than they're headed straight for the gutter when they have that first sip of beer.
That thing your feeling right now, some sort of mixture of horror and indignation is there because you'll never believe me. It's there because you have bought, hook line and sinker, the idea that all "drugs" are necessarily harmful and their use is a moral failure.
Enjoy your glass of wine/beer/whisky "to relax after work" later on. I know it'll never sink in that cannabis and some of the other soft drugs have been rated in government reports as even less harmful to the health than your little glass of stress-reliever there.
But go on, keep justifying yourself. It must be kept illegal for the sake of the children!
Your kids would be better off having the odd "magic" brownie than going off to uni and binge drinking until they vomit, as is the current mainstream fashion.
Making a judgement before any of the evidence is in.
We know you don't like linux (either it's not enough like windows or it's just trying to copy windows, which is it today?) but some companies are pushing it internally now. Government organisaations too.
Sorry if that rubs you up the wrong way.
I use Linux, windows and solaris on the desktop, just to set things straight before I get called a fanboy.
"How? The only "laws of physics" that are relevant is the speed of light. The same that apply now, same distances, just more data."
Well, Laws of physics could be a bit strong, but the internet being what it is I find it hard to believe that they could do anything useful without installing rendering farms in every ISP's network. Big, expensive, supercomputing rendering farms.
"Actually, as the "server" will be "centralised", averaging out pings from individual players (due to its location), the lag would be less if anything."
Dear god no!
All that is communicated to the server usually is your position, velocity etc. Your local machine has control over what is displayed to you, so when you move it does not wait for the server to tell it "go ahead, you can turn now", it just draws the scene. If the server disagree with what it sees (you can't run that fast!) it'll reset your position to stop cheating.
This way the game continues to be responsive whilst also working over less than brilliant connections.
If you had to wait until a message had gone to the server and come back again before the screen started moving, you'd feel like you were trying to play in a world filled with treacle.
I've been playing "killer" video games since I was five. That's (sadly) 25 years.
Apart from the odd scuffle when I was at school I have yet to get into a single fight, let alone murder anyone.
Video games are now so ubiquitous that it's very likely that nearly every computer-owning male has at least one FPS that the police and media can use to hype their agenda.
Probable cause my heini.
"She called on "the harnessing" of technologies that "enable seamless communication between school and home" to make a schoolkid's day a more collaborative experience in which the parent plays a key role."
The absolute last thing I wanted when I was a teenager at school was for my parents to have any involvement at all in my day. School is where you learn to be an independent entity and should be (apart from in matter related to academic progress and problem behaviour) free of the purview of the parents.
It would be horrible to have had my parents able to see me in class, and it would probably lead to overprotective mothers getting even more obsessed and sheltering their poor little lambs (whose growth they already stunt with overprotection) even more.
Are the worst offenders?
Sort it out Utah. If you don't want kids seeing porn then use filters. If you don't want to see porn then don't go looking for it!
Also, I don't really get what the point would be of moving to a new port, it doesn't mean you can't point a browser at it...
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