Andrew Schott › Comments

"I agree with the article, except the distro thing. All in all it is irrelavent providing one thing -- packages can be found easily and updated as easily. So in theory (theory, mind you), a person could do what the article says, using Gentoo (remember now, this is theory) with a nice manager for pulling in prebuilt ebuilds and come stock with the apps aforementioned in the article, and it should not matter that its not Debian, or Ubuntu. But thats really the only gripe I got -- that the base actually mattered. Although I prefer Thunderbird over Evolution, that is not to imply that Evolution sucks in any way. I just like the plugins that Mozilla products can take advantage of. If Evo could do the same I probably would migrate back to Evo in a heartbeat." - Andrew Schott

"Its getting rather rare though. I just got Fedora 10 slapped onto a eeePC and it was nominal effort. I added 3 repo files and that was it, the rest could come down the pipe -- rpmfusion's 2 and Adobe's Flash one. My wifi drivers, all software, flash, java. The only individual package I needed was cedega (gotta have my WoW :P )" - Andrew Schott

"The reason it doesnt include static links to the libraries is for security and simplicity. The best example is the infamous zlib bug. Put simple, there was a nasty flaw that was discovered in zlib.so and a simple fix. So literally a few hours after discovery, all the distros updated zlib's packages. Well that didn't fix everyone's problems. Anyone who had a static linked binary was still vulnerable. What happened was that developers that statically linked created more work for themselves. For no good reason. Now on the simplicity side, it comes down to space and money. If you can reduce the package size and just require a shared library that is a few 100k to save 35x100K for each user, that adds up. and that 35x100K adds up even further when you take into account the updates (and linux software is updated much more rapidly than anything else out there). So from a bandwidth and disk space front, its cheaper and cleaner. Really, this is all moot -- the user really doesnt have to worry..." - Andrew Schott

"What people tend to not understand, is that when using ONLY packages (.deb or .rpm for example), if a library gets updated and depreciates any calls that a manually installed program needs, you will not be warned, it will just bomb. If you are using a package, aside from the fact that its unlikely that the package wouldnt be patched to work with the new library revision, but that it would tell you something is up and a dependency is no longer there. This can save ALOT of time. Not to mention sanity." - Andrew Schott

"Wah wah wah! If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. Boo hoo hoo." - Andrew Schott

"I have to say, my chums and I hitup an Irish Bar every Christmas evening, and Guiness, Killian's Red, and (Brit not Irish, I know) Newcastle all fall down the hatch quite nicely. Downtown Milwaukee, WI." - Andrew Schott

"Actually over the last 2 or 3 releases of Fedora the yum backend has gotten much much much better. As a long time Red Hat user, I know, because now I think its like comparing an 8080 to the new i7s :P" - Andrew Schott

"Actually it does matter. Dell, HP, Gateway, and ASUS (and others) are going to only want to support one maybe two distros if they opt to go and preload Linux. One commercial (RHEL or SLED), and one not (Fedora or Ubuntu). So, if it is definitely the market leader, Fedora will generally win out. Otherwise, as Dell has shown, Ubuntu will get it. Once they go Fedora, RHEL is an easy migration, and a split on profits from subs can be arranged. This makes sense to me that they would go this route. What suprises me is how many people are favoring Fedora over Ubuntu nowadays. That and the usage statistics. Amazing. I would have bet my pack of smokes that Ubuntu was gaining leaps and bounds and the rest were fighting for sloppy seconds. Either way, we need a linux more mainstream. I hate the fact that to get a decent system preloaded, I have to Dell or System76, each a mail order machine. If Fedora and Ubuntu can do this great. Otherwise go Slackware!" - Andrew Schott

"I respectfully disagree. I was, and still am, a Mitt Romney fan. He was spending money like I drink beer at the bar -- like its going to be illegal tomorrow. He has more, and much more than what Obama has already pissed away. However, there would be little chance of him winning the general election. If the people that he is supposedly most directly representing, the conservative Republicans cannot get behind him, why would he fare any better with the staunch foe of the liberal Democrat? The free money that the feds hand out makes up for it in the end, and thats aside from whatever the said political party kicks back. Thats what party dues and donations are for. Don't get me wrong, I think that of the two choices these days, Democrat & Republican, neither side chose a remotely decent candidate. Not to go all political, I think both are about as competent as my used beer from a Saturday night lushfest. At least last time with Kerry, I thought that he was a very good choice on that side..." - Andrew Schott

"With regards to Me rev2, I actually must confess I argued a good friend with that viewpoint about a year ago. I thought that everyone was overreacting or just haters. A month later I finally got around to installing the copy I ordered on launch. I spent a month dealing with it, and had to apologize to said friend. He was right - Vista was awful and still is." - Andrew Schott

"I agree to a point, but as a budding self employed fella in this arena, I feel the pain of vendors trying to choose which ones to support and taking heat for not supporting all. Quite frankly, my systems will be Fedora, CentOS/RHEL, and Ubuntu. Preloads arent that bad, but the drivers can get hairy with nVIDIA/ATI and other hardwares. Now with any custom package(s) that need to be made, its that much less effort by restricting to one RPM and one DEB. This is precisely why FLOSS drivers are even more important -- simplicity. The more that gets merged into the kernel or Xorg, the better. Cuz then, its just a matter of autmating an install script to blast said image to drive. Sometimes reality of business sucks for all parties involved." - Andrew Schott

"Its not the power its the current ..." - Andrew Schott

"No insult, but says you. I own two Macs and the happiest moment in recent times (kid's birth still wins out overall) was the vapage of OS X for Linux. OS X to me was nothing but an apple version of Windows. Bloated (10.4 was good, 10.5 was awful), slow, and saw zero reason for the laggy performance when I have a 2.4Ghz 4GB DDR2-5300 system. I don't. But now with CentOS on it, life is good again. The whole system updates, not just the apple parts and the programs when I run them. The system is much snappier. Now I just need to fix that moneysink MacBook and then I can drop Ubuntu or something on it." - Andrew Schott

"Well here is the part the ensures to me its a hoax: "The story was being met with heavy doses of scepticism tonight, not least because of the lack of scientific validity and the involvement of Tom Biscardi, an ’expert’ with a prior record of dubious discoveries relating to Bigfoot - also known as the Sasquatch, America’s equivalent of the Abominable Snowman. " Tom Biscardi is known as a schemer and a hoaxster. If anyone is interested in getting the debacle he started on Coast to Coast AM, I can dig up the MP3s and send them to you. It will be 8 mp3s total, for the show he was on and his apology show where basically Noory banned him forever for being a lying POS and trying to steal something along the lines of $50 from each potential viewer online of the bagged bigfoot. andrew at schotty dot com" - Andrew Schott

"@zorkon: Yeah, and I was one of them, and to be frank, GLAD I WENT BACK! Apple is arrogant as are their userbase. I am sick of the restrictions the OS impales me with and respect MS moreso for being just crap, rather than restricted overhyped crap. Linux on the other hand, is all what the vendor makes of it. You have good flavors and crap flavors. And quite frankly its all in the eye of the customer which is which. I personally prefer the Red Hat distros, and absolutely am sick of all of the crap coming out of Novell. A good friend of mine is %100 the opposite. Should either wither away? Hell no. It offers a good choice while still in the end being the "same." Apple on the other hand, is a cult of sadists that is forced to do things Apple's way. Don't like it? Well it's the highway. And until Apple changes (aka, does the unholy and removes Jobs and his army of demons), this is just going to be reality. Being better than Windows is not hard. But being a viable alternative is. I think..." - Andrew Schott

"not even. I know many people who have been arrested and charged with DUIs. Its freakin expensive. Dont risk it, not because its the "good thing", rather, the $2000 you are going to shell out to the city, and another $2000 in legal fees for a decent lawyer. All said, one guy spent over $10,000 on one DUI when it was all figured out. Its not cheap, and one arrest can pay for more than a few replacement pairs." - Andrew Schott

"Not for us at the strip clubs...." - Andrew Schott

"Actually at work we have a pair, for the safety classes that they make us go through. One phrase sums it up: Not close to reality, but an absolute blast. You couldn't walk a line if you had a gun to your head, but as fun to poke around with as a kid at Six Flags. These are more like stoned + drunk + disabled rather than just drunk. These will cause a headache and then complete breakdown in all skills. I was screwing around with coworkers for about an hour with these and was useless afterwards. We deemed it not close at all to real drunkards, since we rotate designated driver duty frequently and deal with each other on insanely itoxicated days. But fun nonetheless." - Andrew Schott

"Bonds suck because they are practically zero risk, thus low interest. That is what the GP is getting at. Fine if you are older and looking to shelter the cash, but a complete moronic move for anyone younger. And the GP is spot on with regards to a ROTH. Anyone not investing into a ROTH is a complete moron. And no apologies on the name calling either. Its a tax shelter that has sick gains year in and year out. Why opt for double/triple taxation when you can have it easy with nice gains?" - Andrew Schott

"Well the best audio chip available at the time, the SID. Cheapest on the market in its class. Ended up with the most software available due to its insane lifespan. And as a former programmer on ye olde 8-Bit machines, I can tell you the C64 was the easiest system to code for. The Apples were okay, Ataris better. IBMs were chaotic, since moving to the x86 architecture was vastly different than the 6502 and such. Quite frankly, Commodore in its foray into computing was more saavy and stocked with better engineering teams overall than the competition. Apple, Atari, and Commodore lost in the end due to poor management. Too bad, becuase I got my hands on some of the Atari 1040ST software and a couple computers and those were slick units. Too bad MS won out on this battle." - Andrew Schott

"@pell It makes them fanboys by how stupid they sounded in their replies to Om (and on other Apple related topics). Really, people who say that they have been a loyal payer since day one and its been crappy since then, but hope for a refund are kidding themselves. They have proven that they can get pushed around and will still shell out the money. Thats pure fanboyism (or fangirlism) at its most extreme level." - Andrew Schott

"For the record, I loved Doom 3, and still play it today." - Andrew Schott

"98 S10 Here with 150K and no real issues yet. All the stuff that needs work should be replaced soon or is a suprise that the factory part is still there. These morons saying the US is incapable of doing the work right is full of it. Most of the crap is coming off the Mexican or German lines. Hondas, Toyotas, and the quality GM/Ford trucks (not cars) are all american. Your Honda is more American than Japanese. Research it. The crapheaps that people call "American" are more Mexican or German. An improvement world be Korean. Cheap and decent work at least. My company I work for is feeling the pain of going south of the border with all QA related elements. Yeah we lost the work temproarily, but its already coming back. GM, Ford, Chrysler -- get back home." - Andrew Schott

"@maggotsan I don't know where your numbers come from but I have never seen them. I would say that XP is about 30 Min, Vista 60, Linux (depending on distro) 10-75 min, OS X 45-75 (depending on if you tailor your packages or not, like XCode and such). Office is generally a long arduous process regardless of the version, but the latest ones for the time are always awful. Office 2000 right now is pretty smooth, but 2K3 and 2K7 are not speedy if you install all the stuff to the drive. I presume that we are both speaking with regards to a full drive install, rather than having to stick the MSO disc in for clip art, templates, or any other additional components." - Andrew Schott

"In response to why not to have an OS preloaded as Vista, simple. OEM discs are utterly useless property and thats if you are lucky the recovery discs are junk. One of the best utilities to repair a borked Windows base, is sfc.exe /SCANNOW. You need a real disc however, and in many cases unless you bought an OEM disc from Newegg or whatnot, the vendor will not include this. I have been doing system repair for a sidegig for some time now, and those that have a real copy, I can jam that version (Pro, Home) into the drive and come back an hour or so later. Those with OEM licenses are hosed. To me, I am a pure Linux guy, but am happy to have spent the $260 for Vista Ult Upg. It can actually be used whereas the craptastic OEM recovery discs cannot. To me the saved time in the end is worth the extra $225 or whatever. Or just go Mac/Linux and avoid most of the BS." - Andrew Schott

"Why not? If it makes it easier to find and use, why not tailor a distro to doing one specific job?" - Andrew Schott

"Nice to see this. I am planning on opening a storefront up soon, and this is something that I was looking into doing, if not just stocking only cross-platform friendly components. They exist." - Andrew Schott

"Spoken like a true Wisconsiner :P" - Andrew Schott

"Quite a few actually. Most of the locals are employed by the summer attractions in one way or another. The nearby casino also helps alot too." - Andrew Schott

"Well the reason it could drain was that it was a man-made lake. Not saying that takes any of the unpleasantries out of those afflicted out there, but man-made lakes of that magnitude can be a sight to behold when a natural disaster takes the dam out." - Andrew Schott