Comment: Re:So what? (Score 1) 848
Progress: "I don't need my car anymore! I now have a bicycle, a rapid transit train system, and a conveniently available airport!"
Comment: I didn't even know they had financial difficulties (Score 3, Informative) 62
BerliOS definitely has publicity problems. Either that, or the people running it don't have much of a passion for keeping it running, because the first I heard about them having problems was about them deciding to shut it down.
Contrast that to, say, Wikipedia, Blender, or The Document Foundation. Major publicity when they needed money, with progress tallies and everything. Especially Wikipedia.
Comment: Re:Oh, SO going into my Alpha Personal Workstation (Score 1) 199
Been there, tried that --- this was on an old CATS ARM box. Turns out that there's a lot of ia32 code in ROM on the graphics card which, of course, ARMs and Alphas are totally unable to run.
Actually, the Alphas have a basic x86 emulator in their massive ROMs, so they're able to initialize standard VGA cards. Note that derinax has an ATI Radeon 9000, which certainly did not come in an Alpha version.
I don't know whether this card will work, though.
Comment: Re:Qt-based development (Score 1) 121
It seems likely that politics has a role to play here. Qt came into the MeeGo project from Nokia. Despite recent moves towards open governance, is still very much associated with Nokia. Intel were unhappy that Nokia switched to Windows Phone and the member of LiMo (including Samsung) may prefer to avoid mentioning or relying on what is perceived to be a competitor's asset.
Not just that. Samsung has been sponsoring Enlightenment, and they may see it as being better for low-powered devices than Qt.
Comment: Re:good and bad (Score 1) 121
How the hell have the relevant companies managed to screw up producing a Linux-based mobile phone OS/interface so badly?
I've highlighted the relevant word for you. It's because these are companies with bureaucratic processes and hidden agendas. In these alliances, they cooperate on low-level stuff but try to preserve some sort of "secret sauce," to the detriment of the whole, and that's when they're working properly. Very few companies have the successful dictator like Steve Jobs of Apple.
Comment: Re:There's a problem with ARM computing? (Score 3, Insightful) 332
I was aware of the N900. I still use an N800. I just didn't need an upgrade yet, and I was waiting for step 5 of the 5-step mass market process for Maemo (becoming concerned about bureaucratic interference when Meego became the company's strategy and they decided to dump Debian for Linux Foundation silliness), when the Elop Effect happened. So, no, I don't think the N900 was successful.
Comment: Re:IKEA not really geeky (Score 1) 263
I love building my own stuff, more than most
The more I know how it's assembled, the less I have the ability to build myself. When you build your own electronics, are you actually making masks and lithographing the chips? Or even soldering the components together on the motherboard? Life is just too short, and budget too small.
Building your own stuff is great when your labour results in having stuff finished as it's supposed to be. And here's where IKEA just isn't worth the effort. After huge amounts of labour you almost always wind up with particle board stuff. Ugly, without any personality whatsoever to it and heavy as lead. Ever tried rearranging average IKEA furniture? Ever moved house with IKEA furniture?
[Ikea furniture] is never finished perfectly -unaligned panels and doors, the works. How are you going to die happily when your bank account is full to the brim and you own IKEA furniture?
Ugh, don't remind me. Someone gave me an Ikea thing. I spent a little time assembling it, trying to align it. And then I put stuff inside it, and it warped. Ikea indicates bad taste, if nothing else.
But I don't think it's my place to judge someone else's values. Maybe your acquaintance will be laid off, and then he'll need that full bank account. Even if he'll be fine, there are other uses for money.
Comment: Flaming Batteries (Score 2) 329
Ooh! My favorite is that period from the mid-90's to the mid-00's when their batteries would catch on fire. Ruined the reputations of many competitors, because Sony supplied batteries to a lot of companies.
Comment: Re:What? Never heard of SCP? (Score 1) 262
General idea seems good, but I dont really understand the fascination with drobos for anyone who does any kind of serious IT work. A freenas box with a proper hardware RAID card can be had (sans drives) for about half the price of an equivalent (sans drives) drobo, is faster, supports ZFS, and has built in Unison | Rsync | ftp.... etc. It also doesnt use some poorly documented "kind-of RAID".
Why would I want a drobo?
Some people want to get into cloud-type services because they don't want the hassle of configuring it all themselves. The Drobo is designed to be really easy to use.
Comment: Re:Windows 7 sucks! (Score 1) 766
Sure, Windows 7 sucks, but for different reasons than you think.
Having had the displeasure of working with this abomination at work, I can tell you that whoever thought these "enhancements" to the "user experience" would be an improvement should be taken out back and beaten to bloody a pulp with baseball bat.
You're just used to Windows XP's abusive interface, having had almost 10 years to get used to it.
What used to be a simple process to change, such as changing the default path for a network drive, is now a convoluted mess that requires three times as much effort.
On the other hand, what used to be tedious to change, such as moving a window to the left or right half of the screen, are now much simpler. I dare say people are more likely to do window management than change My Document settings.
You cannot find anything quickly or easily in 7. Everything is a search. I don't want to fucking search for something when I know where it is.
Ah, the joy of ignorance. Microsoft changes where everything is every release or two of Windows. I find search much easier, so I don't have to worry about the latest place where Microsoft hid the settings.
It is impossible to see every program installed on your PC in one location. Who the fuck thought hiding things was a great idea?
As for me, it looks like I'll have to take the plunge and go to Linux (and thrash about with that during the learning process).
Hiding things? Have you been paying attention to GNOME? Not having one location to see every program? You would be disappointed in Linux.
