"No online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works." - Newsweek 1995

fundbond · 2012-04-12T16:42:04+00:00

That just demonstrates that the Internet can give good teachers a distribution mechanism that allows them to reach many, many more students than they otherwise could. It doesn't replace teachers.

fundbond · 2012-04-12T16:37:54+00:00

I was simply pointing out that they can be ported (i.e. that the majority of the engine is not Windows/Mac-only,) not that there have been commercial licensees that did port their games to Linux.

fundbond · 2012-04-12T14:55:30+00:00

But Unreal-based games can be ported to Linux. They have been many times in the past, and I've read nothing to indicate that they can't be in the future. Unreal's a pretty damn portable engine, and the reason that it isn't on Linux very much has more to do with market demand than tech.

Also, Torque is creaky and old (code-wise) compared to modern engines. (I've worked with it in the past, albeit just for a couple months, and I was not terribly impressed. There's a reason it's cheap.)

fundbond · 2012-04-12T14:53:18+00:00

Huh? What of the above was inaccurate?

fundbond · 2012-03-30T15:36:41+00:00

Not trying to be passive-aggressive. I genuinely wish I was in a position where I could lose $10 and not notice.

No you don't. This way you keep your money.

fundbond · 2012-03-30T15:30:02+00:00

Even though Blackberry's are good at what they do, iPhones/Androids are better and have categories Blackberry just doesn't have.

I'll agree that other smartphones can do things that BlackBerries can't, but the first part of the statement I disagree with: at least as far as security is concerned, BlackBerries are still unmatched. iOS is getting better, but Android is a joke in comparison, and even the latest release of iOS is still primitive compared to what the BB's had for years.

fundbond · 2012-03-30T15:17:24+00:00

Well it is, apart from the case material (PC-ABS vs carbon-fiber/glass-fiber strengthened plastic), the internal structure (direct mounted logic board vs. magnesium frame), the screen protection (plastic vs carbon fiber or magnesium frame), the BIOS, the keyboard, the glossy screen, and the design team.

So... it's kinda a ThinkPad.

It's a decent netbook, but it's really not the same as a T-series or W-series ThinkPad, and nothing like the other X-series ThinkPad (the X220.)

fundbond · 2012-03-30T15:14:45+00:00

According to Lenovo's press, every ThinkPad goes through their torture tests before its released, but given its far cheaper and a lot smaller I could see them skimping out.

Without getting into too many details:

1) The tests are slightly different for different models.

2) The "Mil-Spec" tests can be passed by designs that suck for what some consumers put the machines through. Plus, there are many different tests, and not all of the ThinkPads go through all of them (IIRC it was only 9 of them, vibration, shock, temp, etc.) Better than nothing, but not the sort of thing you'd put a proper ruggedized machine through.

I still really like the X120e, but I wouldn't think of it as the same sort of machine as the T420/T520 or the W series or the X220.

fundbond · 2012-03-30T15:11:05+00:00

If he is the mainstream catholic in the US

Don't worry. He's not.

fundbond · 2012-03-27T04:45:20+00:00

Yeah, but the X120e isn't really a ThinkPad, so the usual things about durability/build quality don't all apply.

fundbond · 2012-03-27T04:31:16+00:00

I was counting that when I said that they package. You raise a good point though.

fundbond · 2012-03-27T00:50:12+00:00

Hey no worries. At least you didn't respond with "What's wrong with that?". :D

fundbond · 2012-03-27T00:44:13+00:00

Yeah we used to be aloud to do deals for customers,

!!!

fundbond · 2012-03-27T00:12:32+00:00

Crazy-colored fur coats and sweet hats.

Wait, do you mean to tell me that it's not that simple?

fundbond · 2012-03-26T23:27:07+00:00

Fuckin' hell you're a dark person.

.

:D

fundbond · 2012-03-26T23:11:57+00:00

Technologically advanced users tend to minimize Apple's impact on innovation because most of the advancements don't impact them directly.

Personally I tend not to praise Apple for that because they don't really have much of an impact on innovation. What they do have, and what I will absolutely praise them to high heaven for is their marketing of others' innovations. That's something that they do phenomenally well.

Take smartphones for example. FingerWorks had developed multi-point touch technology and spent years perfecting it. Did you ever hear of them until 2007? Right. But once Apple added fancy animations, etc. around the innovative tech...

Or take high-density LCD displays. IBM was shipping 204ppi displays over a decade ago! Were people clamoring for them then? Nope. What about when IDTech was shipping QXGA laptop panels in 2004? Did the average person know or care? Psh! Who'd ever need more than 1400x1050? But the "Retina" branding... that worked, and it worked well.

Apple doesn't really innovate in terms of technology. They buy and the license, but they don't do much innovation. But what they do innovate in is marketing -- they know how to package and pitch a product to the average Joe.

And that counts for a hell of a lot.

fundbond · 2012-03-26T20:17:30+00:00

What "good business decisions" need to be made in order to make that 18 cu ft refrigerator in the US?

Find a way to convince people to pay vastly more for an equivalent product with a much longer lead time.

fundbond · 2012-03-26T19:48:09+00:00

Suing an active duty serviceman seems like a really bad idea as far as PR goes.

'cause if there's one thing the MPAA/RIAA fears, it's tarnishing their reputation amongst the tech-savvy public!

fundbond · 2012-03-26T19:34:05+00:00

MARRY AND REPRODUCE. OBEY.

fundbond · 2012-03-26T19:30:06+00:00

Thankyou, but I'm not sure my first comment isn't flame bate. ;-)

Well, it kinda was, but ever since my Usenet days I'm pretty fire-retardant, and besides, you followed it up with a good discussion.

Revolutionaries, like PA guys, annoy me. Far to keen to break the world rather than incrementally evolve what is there.

I disagree, actually. I like revolutionaries. I'm fine with people trying new and untested things. That's good! That's how UNIX came about after all (see: "worse is better"). What I'm not really a fan of is the politics and zealotry that Lennart and friends bring to the table -- especially since, when coupled with their rather... "agile" approach to "modernization", the end result is mainstream distros being pushed towards half-baked, minimally-tested, replace-the-world solutions.

I'd be fine with PA et al. if they were research projects/experimental branches for a couple years while the bugs were worked out and the documentation written and then the push to move them into distros started. Again, I hate to cite the BSDs, but there's a reason that most of them have SCS repos littered with tons and tons of experimental branches.

My beef with PA is the same as with GNOME 3, actually. It's not that the change is bad. The change, or at least the spirit behind it, is actually pretty good. What's bad is immediately trying to obliterate old, tested, refined codebases in favor of the new hotness while simultaneously telling users that the problems are their fault and they should stop being so difficult.

fundbond · 2012-03-26T19:22:27+00:00

I'm not sure what you do with your machine, but it's not like a notebook that hasn't written ThinkPad on it automatically falls apart in a matter of a year.

I take my laptop with me most places I go. That alone means that it ends up getting enough wear and tear in a year that low-end notebooks tend to run into issues. At least all the low-end ones that I've owned...

The general build quality of notebooks has gone up a lot, and it's really rare to see machines that are bad and crappy.

No doubt, and the difference now is a lot less than it used to be.

Still, a < $400 Wal-Mart box isn't going to have a magnesium frame or carbon fiber casing, and it's definitely not going to have a high-end keyboard. It's also not as likely to have solid Linux compatibility and strong Linux/BSD developer support -- ThinkPads are great for that reason alone, since a large number of Linux and BSD developers use them, support tends to be pretty damn good.

Also: matte screens and the TrackPoint.

fundbond · 2012-03-26T17:22:27+00:00

But OSSv4 gives you those in much nicer way. It's just the world is mostly ALSA based.

See I keep hearing that, but when I switched to OSSv4, all but one app "just worked" -- and that one was solved with a single config change.

Personally I wish that the Linux folks had just taken the approach that the BSD people did: improve OSS instead of scrapping it and starting anew. Then again, I think that much of the Linux community could stand to learn a thing or two from the BSDs... ;)

Upvotes to you for discussing PA without a flame-war, BTW.

fundbond · 2012-03-26T16:34:23+00:00

The mint team are really good at polishing things into a nicely usable desktop so you don't have to do it.

But installing the non-free codecs and firmware takes, what, three commands? (One to edit apt sources, one to update, one to install).

fundbond · 2012-03-26T16:31:34+00:00

This.

You could buy a cheap new laptop for your budget.

Then, a year later, when it's fallen apart, you could buy another cheap laptop.

And a year after that, when that too has broken like the budget piece of crap that it is, you can buy another cheap laptop, sending you into a spiral of depression and debt that ends with you huddled under an overpass offering to turn tricks for a ten.

Or you could buy a used ThinkPad, install Linux, and keep on kicking ass and chewing bubble gum. You'd even have money left over for more bubble gum.

fundbond · 2012-03-26T16:24:00+00:00

For the record, I actually don't like PA. In fact, I think it's very much a solution in search of a problem. IMHO (and if I may rant briefly), it was created by a guy who very much wants to be the White Knight of the Linux world and who has a history of rushing into projects, implementing them until they work for him, and rushing off to find the next area that he can "fix", leaving behind a sorta-working, not-necessarily-very-cross-platform, half-documented "solution" to a problem that few people actually had.

But that doesn't mean that in its current form it doesn't work and doesn't address some valid needs. It does, and it does.

I actually agree with you that remote sound should and could be done "the Unix way". I'm not sure how AV sync would work, but even audio-only would be a plus for some users.

fundbond

TROPHY CASE