I have an N800 with an external (Bluetooth) keyboard. Not nearly as practical as you'd guess. That setup won't be convincing over netbooks.

And my friggin' keyboard ate that missing 'n'.

I probably need an IBM patented dictionary adjustment program for posting this carp.

No, it means: I my humble opinion.

Get an IBM patented thesaurus, you douche!

Reminds me of the documentary: The Corporation (2003)

They did a psychological profiling with on corporation activities and came to the conclusion that corporations act like psychopaths. Worth watching.

You are weird.

I just double clicked a *.csv file in my file manager (Ubuntu/Nautilus) and it opened up with OO instantly. Never configured that. Ok, it did not do that with Firefox, but seriously, who downloads csv's from the web regularly (not many people do, which is why it is ok to have that thing set up manually).

OO fired up in like 5 secs for me (without pre-loading), which I consider acceptable. It probably won't break any records, but it works and for a software with it's capabilities that's pretty acceptable. If you try to run it on a very low end device, it'll take some time, but what not?

Resizing all the fields worked for me too. Selected everything, double clicked on the sizer thingy in the top row, everything resized to optimal fit. Dragging that thing made everything uniform with.

No idea what your problem is, but it sure as hell isn't the software.

They probably just confused the currency with the dollar from 10 years ago..

Mocking aside, $300m is really improbable and probably wrongly quoted by someone that had a stressed day and therefore hit one unimportant zero too much.

As for resemblance, it's more like a hybrid of "Sky captain and the world of tomorrow" and the game "Supreme commander".

Your third paragraph is a gem though. Yea, he probably spent months if not years on the CG as hobby project. Also contributions and the basic ability to create such things are not really that easily put on a tab. If you'd try to create that short clip (exactly as it is) in a western society, than you'd be at several thousand (if not tens of thousands).

Guess that's the 'small' margin between inspiration and profit.

p.s. @ Hollywood: I know you screwed over all your writers and they are mad at you, but please try to find someone that creates a decent story for the next SciFi thing.. I get the feeling it's already decades ago..

So, who do you think helps when family / friends / whoever has computer problems?

Yea, it's those geeks. What do you think they will install first when they try to find a solution in the Internet to some technical problem? AdBlocking. Mandatory 10 seconds.

And people like it. They talk about it and others follow.

General demographic is catching up to ad-blocking very fast.

There is some degree of truth in what you say: the monoculture that Microsoft represents is indeed a big problem in respect to attack surface. This is not even a software specific problem, same with crops for example. If you only plant one sort, then the mayhem of a parasite is pretty much absolute. For that reason it is logically very foolish to use such a system. Using a variety of crops/OS's is much saner.

On the other part, you are just plain wrong: the Linux and open source development model is more secure than the binary blob one because a lot more people see the code. Though it is hard to make comparisons with desktop systems, this is evident from comparisons in the server area. For instance, Linux/Apache has a somewhat bigger market-share than Windows/IIS, still, Apache is generally less vulnerable and the havoc is much less severe in case of bugs (compared to some IIS bugs that did a lot of damage).

Also third party blobs pose a big problem, because they basically represent the same monoculture that Microsoft does *cough*adobe flash*cough*. Common protocols and individual, competing implementations make much more technical sense. Sadly, reality is little about logical or technical sense, which is why we are in our current mess.

Mod parent up!

Though I currently use Ubuntu, I spent a lot of time with Gentoo and some time with LFS and a few other distros. With some additional reading about POSIX and SUSv3, the Linux file system and the most common tools I tend to intuitively solve most problems and generally enjoy working with Linux.

If I'd had started with such a user friendly distribution, then I probably wouldn't have developed this kind of mindset, and wound have an entirely different view on the OS.

None the less, if you have someone to set up your system, then Ubuntu is quite a good choice for non CS/IT people, as it works quite well (without much hassle) once it is set up.

~ my 2 ct.

P.s.: And there are good books about the usage of Linux in book-stores/Amazon, but nobody really wants to read them actually. Google is indeed more comfortable and tends to find more relevant solutions to specific problems.

Nice argumentation, except that you are WRONG!

Sure, things would change. The classical business models wouldn't be viable any more. Companies would have to adapt new ones, but creation of software/content would by no mean end, or be reduced much for that matter.

You can see good examples of business models that have giving content/software away for free. Like for instance Nine Inch Nails. You can download their new albums from their website for free, in high quality. You can do whatever you want with it, and they made a shitload of money with it. Read techdirt for more examples.

You can't deny that free software is out there too. It's made with other business models in mind, and it thrives like never before.

Also, many sane people don't even want to completely abolish copyright, just reduce it to some saner values, like 5-10 years. What the heck do you want with lifetime + 90 years copyright. Not to mention patents. The current system is much more inhibiting for content/software creation than it is good for progress.

Also, when was the last time you saw a really good movie in the cinema? Really can't get much worse, even if we stop having movies all together, but that would not happen either. We'd probably see much better movies that would be used with other business operations in synergy to generate profit and actually make the word advance in an actually competitive way.

Now please stop being an ass and think before you write something.

On GNOME this is awfully hard to do:

You have to go to the "System" menu on the panel (part of the allays present menu thingy), then to "Preferences" and then "Display", which also has a tooltip: "Change Screen Resolution".

I know, there are some users you can't help, but most with at least a modicum of intellect would be able to find this.

First off: a mobile phone has quite a limited interaction possibility due to the small size and no real specialization.
Second, and most important: most people can't grasp even a small portion of what little their phone can.

Sure, some folks use it as replacement for an alarm and watch. Inbuilt camera is also cute, though not even suited for good vacation photos, much less professional ones.

Games will stay with DS and PSP, and they won't loose sleep over it. Did not even see many people using their phones for music, though that would be a possibility (thanks RIAA).

Practically the only 2 thing mobile phones changed were, that people were more often reachable via phone (which they mostly don't pick up anyway) and everyone is typing those damn SMS all the time.

Now stop dreaming, face reality. Seriously..

Why on earth does the CDC need to use flash for a still, non interactive image??

The one point they missed then and now is, that the network coverage is carp (not too much change there, crap also meaning expensive, no unlimited tires that relate to offline). For the same reason it will fail now, and for some years in the future, sadly.

ps. Oh, and there were no specs that would competitively make any sense of that price. Just too damn expensive for the mass market.

Seriously, if you are going to wage war, it is a very bad idea to buy non trivial weapons systems from your enemy or his allies. Actually it's a bad idea to buy it from anyone that is not 100% on your side. Best would be to build it yourself.

Those amateur war mongering folks down there. Still don't think that anyone is learning out of it, I mean, where are the chips for NATO equipment come from? Oh yea, who manufactures them cheapest. How does this make sense in the context?