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Where stories about weight loss, Hollywood-grade entertainment industry rumors and get-rich-quick speculators routinely get voted up to the top, while kick-ass Rails API documentation site I submitted yesterday was not even noticed.

What's next? Britney's next pregnancy prediction?

I used to work under a CTO who's been in OS/2 kernel group at the time of their cooperation with MS. He's still claiming them all idiots and arrogant pricks, only "their" OS/2 eventually worked out, but "his" OS/2 silently died.

You can't beat at the same time the mighty gorilla (IBM) and ambitious uprising young startup (Apple) on marketing or luck alone, you'd need an engineering arm slightly above mediocre level.

So... I call BS on your comment. I bet Microsoft in the 80s was more exciting place to be than Google is today.

Well... gVim is pretty nicely integrated into Gnome, picks up theme/colors/icons, etc. I like it a lot.

Thank you for replying BTW: I will definitely install 4.1 myself. If FF and Gimp experience won't suffer, I may actually consider switching.

Soon, however, we invented ways to record sound cheaply, thus one didn't have to spend as much on recording/reproducing hardware, giving people ability to do it themselves, and the "industry" started to bitch about VCRs and cassette recorders.

Now we've come up with even cheaper way to record, copy and even manipulate (!) sound. And a way to distribute it for free.

The "industry" is clearly not needed anymore, there is no "product" behind it, just a bunch of useless "distributors" and "promoters". Why would we want to save THAT?

Nothing is going to happen to music, the music has been around for thousands of years, long before all these inventions took place, and the best musical creations happened without any help from the "industry".

We (engineers) gave them (the industry) an exclusive monopoly to charge for a short-lived privilege of storing and transporting sound, now we're taking it back. In that sense everything goes back to normal: nothing to be saved here.

The only KDE app that is worth using compared to GTK counterparts that comes to mind is probably Amarok [and I still prefer Rythmobx].

Am I missing something here?

And I never had to recompile the kernel. In fact, the only software I ever had to compile on Linux was mine (I did compile my own builds of a few apps, but only because I wanted to enable some "experimental" features not available in standard repositories).

An isomorphic Windows comic would be about computer virus eating your cat or a pop-ups window bumping your grandma in the forehead.

What? They're not only "better", they're actually _threads_, i.e. are able to run in parallel, you know? What are Ruby 1.8 threads good for, except for sitting on sockets?

Both of my parents have been railroad engineers all their lifes, and the main thing I learned was this: railroads are not economical at transporting passengers. Nearly all countries with "decent train systems" use government subsidies to effectively sponsor passenger railroad transport. Even subways can't make any profit.

And I am against paying more taxes. Period. Therefore, no government subsidies to Amtrak from me.

The original, true meaning has been lost: nobody I know uses this word it in's original context. A "hacker" these days means one of these three:

1. Programmer (or a manager) who prefers quick&dirty hacks that can't be maintained and, after accumulating into a critical mass, tend to bring the overall project progress to a halt.

2. Someone who breaks into other people computers, steals their personal porn, collection of cat photos and, of course, credit card numbers.

3. The other, non-business type of founders of "Internet Startups". Often not having an MBA, or simply a possession of "Python in 21 days" automatically qualifies you as a "hacker".

And since majority of people use the word in one of those contexts, I figured why bother... BTW my cat is a hacker too: his portfolio of hacks is growing every day.

Questions like: when Rails support is coming? Or will native threads be supported?

Are you going to open the code? I'm sure you've used tons of other people's work: come on, contribute some back!

I'd love to run it on my laptop: since the software is truly personal, without any sharing/collaboration benefits, why would I want to keep it in the "cloud", which often is unavailable?

So... where is the code? I saw "download" feature, but it gives me HTML, not the software.

Also, do not dismiss Phillips as "one of those" authors. Far from it.

Following your logic we shouldn't be building factories in China (because they're commies) and we shouldn't be investing in Iraq (because they're crazy Muslims).

American economy, and the super-power status that comes with it, had been built on two things: exploration of oil as a new energy medium and devastating world wars in Europe that crippled competitors, namely UK. But we aren't #1 oil producer anymore, soon we won't be #2 as well, meanwhile the world oil production has stopped growing 2 years ago, thus we need something else.

We've tried at least one "new thing", look at our attempt to become the center of world's finance, but failed. Why not become the global dominating power at computation and information processing? Why not take advantage of American universities, cheap Russian electricity, whatever it takes, to find something, besides oil and finance, to power US economy for years to come?

For English speakers the only source of information about international affairs, IMO, is books: Internet and TV are useless. For Daniel I'd recommend "Bad Money" by Kevin Phillips.

If I can't download a video, I don't care for it. iTunes HD rentals are ok, but selection is small. Amazon's offering is Windows-only... What a weird choice of a target market... I thought only unemployed still use Windows at home since it comes standard on $299 laptops.

#1 No it isn't. Remember Microsoft Passport?

The web will be transformed from the still (somewhat) closed system it is today, to a massively social experience

No it wont. See #1.

Most of content on about.com is utter junk: a bunch of bored housewives trying to make a buck are desperate to write something, anything.

In that regard, entrepreneurs who build to flip are no different from real estate speculators: they make a few people richer, but in the end you'll end up with the same lot of aging houses.

Not to mention that "build to flip" companies simply suck. Their products are jokes built overnight as parasites on shoulders of open source excellence, and in the end they don't reward financially anyone but investors and (but not always) founders: it's statistically stupid decision to work long hours as a regular programmer for a startup whose goal is to sell out for $50M after 3 rounds of funding.

I like Paul a lot, but his patronage and encouragement (!) of build-and-flip projects is the worst part of "PG culture" that I have the biggest problem with. Especially when he blames VCs for not funding the "next Google". The Google wouldn't has happened if S&L landed on YC.news some day in 99: they'd sell out to Yahoo for $10M instead.

This still can't explain how come Ubuntu-based machines are more expensive.

I think that Dell simply rides the demand train: they're the only big-name brand that sells Ubuntu-powered machines (very few know that Lenovo sells SUSE) and they're enjoying higher profit margins on them.

Video: Always Intel integrated. Wifi : Anything from Intel Suspend/Resume: Thinkpads

What Linux needs, is PC manufacturer's support. I am not talking about drivers here, I'm talking about quality pre-installs done at the factory. Once suppliers see this, they'll provide quality Linux drivers in order to compete. And for users stuff "will just work".

ThinkPad T61 running Ubuntu is in many ways superior to MBP/OSX (and 30% cheaper), but only because I deliberately configured it with only Linux-compatible components and spent a weekend tuning it upon arrival.

A decent houses/condos in all interesting US metro areas are still in $400K+ range, which is absolutely insane, considering median family incomes.

Even most financial planning books/sites will tell you that it's "normal" to spend about 30% of your after-tax income on housing. WTF? Since when it's been "normal"?