I'm totally being a dick here, but I have to reply to a guy named Erroneus about the difference between "effect" and "affect." Sorry man, dictionary.com is your friend.

J

Fair enough, but "beta" is the key word, which was kinda my point.

What part of "BETA" don't you understand? You expect a beta version for three platforms INSTEAD of someone using their head and putting together a beta for the most popular platform while they work out the kinks?

And yes, I'm a linux user, but I have common sense.

J

Anyone besides me think it's interesting to note that even though the music industry keeps bitching about new ways to distribute their music, they keep putting out the same old crap? Spending millions on a "star" personality marketing them to everyone and their dog seems to be the only way they expect to make money, while history shows that its the small-time surprise artists that make the enduring impact on the industry? If they would quit manufacturing superstars and start focusing on bringing GOOD music to the masses, I think we'd all be a little happier.

J

Which shows you how messed up our two party system has gotten... the R's, which should be the true conservatives of the bunch, just run on ballots with an R next to their name, but in reality, there's very few people in the government that truly respect the privacy of individuals. If all the congressmen and senators believe that government can solve people's problems, we're royally screwed.

And YES i'm a conservative bordering in libertarian. Sue me.

J

You're nuts... Batman would obviously be a Slackware guy, he wants control over everything. Spidey I can see as an Ubuntu user, nerdy enough to use Linux, but he doesn't have the OCD to want to tweak everything in his distro. Plus, I'd bet money he dual-boots.

J

For the love of God someone mod this as funny. Silliest episode of ST:Voyager I ever saw.

J

From one Slashdotter to another, give Ubuntu a shot. It's gotten so user-friendly, I've debating putting it on my parent's computer. I've given it to a few friends with zero linux experience, and they love it.

J

IANAP, but isn't the notion of using "files" and "folders" and a "desktop" analogous to how an normal person would work WITHOUT a computer, hence the concepts being transferred to a tool used to speed up and improve the efficiency of a person's work? How are these referred to as antiquated concepts? We use compartmentalized words because of the balance of efficiency with modularity. Our brains inherently compartmentalize, so why should we try to move away from that in a new OS (that I'm betting will be on the vaporware list in the near future)?

Capt Negativity here,
J

I've come to terms with the fact that our government has no conscious about spending ever increasing amounts of taxpayers' hard earned money. What I don't understand is how this could be considered economic stimulus. Sure, it'll help in certain marginal ways, but the only thing that can fix the US economy is if the government quits taking half of what everyone earns and lets the earners of the money figure out the best way to spend it.

If you give tax breaks to the lowest earners, they buy more tv's and mcdonald's... give the tax breaks to the middle and upper class, and they end up investing in new business and current business expansion. If the greedy bastards in DC would quit thinking of tax revenue as their "income" and just cut taxes across the board, including corporate and capital gains taxes, I'd bet you a non-free beer that you would see IMMEDIATE stock market growth, followed by strong GDP growth, dropping unemployment, and REAL opportunity.

The govt can't grow the economy by spending tax revenue on infrastructure (the most deserving of tax dollars). If you allow more of those tax dollars to stay in circulation, the private sector CAN create real, sustainable growth.

J

I'm assuming you mean Ritalin... hard to take you serious when you misspell the name of the widely used medication.... sorry.

Not even that. The average tax-payer in the US is hit for 35-40% of earned income. How much more do they need before they realize that they're wasting money. Most of the US tax dollar is already going to non-military spending. We're a federalist republic, the federal government SHOULDN'T be paying for every program, it should be up the states on anything other than a certain couple of programs.

J

I honestly don't know what you're smoking. I submit the following example:

Running World of Warcraft + Firefox (and system monitor) in Vista = 15 frames per second, over 2gb RAM usage

same hardware,
WoW (under WINE, no less) + Firefox (and system monitors) in (a fresh install, no tweaking) of Ubuntu = 60 frames per second, only 700MB total RAM usage. ... WoW for x86 isnt really meant to run in OpenGL mode, and like I said, under WINE, and I'm getting four TIMES the performance?

J

It's interesting to think about this from the backend, really. Think of how rare we get true creativity in games these days, and how much of it just *flowed* from the developers when video games were new. How many old classics are there that were come up with as a truly original idea when you didn't have all the graphics and physics crap we have today...

~ Ding fries are done! Ding fries are done! Ding fries are done! Ding fries are done! ~

Eh, it was an interesting degree. I never had the patience to code (little too ADD) so no Comp Sci for me, and other than that I had no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. I'm not gonna say what I do now, but I'm very comfortable and love my job, which is about as 180 degrees from what I got my degree in.