I have no idea why somebody in the european parliament would want more than 8 GB of RAM. Apparently he runs Visual Studio inside a VM, but I'm not sure why he does a lot of software development.
I guess the original question still remains the same
(One wonders how that worked out for him; I'd find that answer a lot more interesting than his connection.)
And for the avoidance of FUD: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths
It is worth pointing out that Bitcoin does not require an investment to use it. Merchants can price their goods in bitcoins using a real-time exchange rate to limit their exposure to changing prices.
Since transactions propagate (without confirmations) within a few seconds the merchant can accept the payment and later cash out to, say, USD/GBP/EUR via the exchange or some other mechanism (e.g. direct to a credit card). Alternatively, if part of their supply chain takes payment in bitcoins (e.g. a hosting service for their website, or a supplier of goods) then they can simply pay their overheads with them.
Disclaimer: I am currently long on bitcoins and am using them as part of my long term retirement fund.
Seems to me that investing heavily in bitcoins right now might be similar to investing in real estate. Yes, if you invested a lot of money x years ago you would be rich. If you invest money in it now, though, your odds are pretty poor. That being said, I think Bitcoin has a lot more room for expansion in price compared to real estate. But it's possible that buying bitcoins now is a bit like buying into a stock heavily after it has boomed. The ones who bought before the boom got rich. The ones who do so after the boom, not so much.
640kB ought to be enough for everybody?
Seriously, why not? RAM is so ridiculously cheap these days there's no excuse not to get 16GB when you buy a new machine. If nothing else it'll be used as a disk cache.
Most universities have full-duplex 100Mbit+, and at those speeds it's not your connection that's the bottleneck, it's the latency of getting your request to the server and the server's available bandwidth. I imagine most routers are smart enough not to completely saturate the pipe with a single user's connection.
> Avoiding the Microsoft tax[...]
For me, it is the multidesktop support and great terminal emulators (like terminator) which make linux a very good OS, supporting me to get things done.
[edit: OK - Missed the line about this topic in the original text. coffee.]
2) He's got the money to pay for it.
3) It would be incredibly stupid of him to flagrantry violate copyright and commit a crime. Rick is many things, but stupid is not one of them.
I just don't get that.
What I don't understand is the comment about the "Microsoft" tax as he seems to work on Windows.
I think Linux is the best development platform of all, and I don't think he has the right to say Linux is behind Windows n development tools.
But true, while 100/100 Mbit is commonly an option in big cities (when I looked for an apartment in Malmö a few years ago, all the ones I looked at had 100M-1Gbit), I'm sure most people go for the cheaper 100/10 option, since most people aren't uploading anything. One friend has 250/50, which seems like a good compromise.
Smaller cities usually have decent connections over DSL or Cable though, so bandwidth is usually not a problem anywhere you go in this country.
"For my primary workstation, I’m using a built-from-parts box optimized for silence with a couple of graphics cards. That also allows me to evade the Microsoft Tax"
"Unfortunately, GNU/Linux can still not match Windows in the development department. I use an emulated Windows box with Visual Studio for that"
I am not trolling for RMS's affection. I'm thinking my understanding of MS Tax is not accurate/up-to-date?
Seeing as he works for the Pirate Party, I don't think it's a stretch to assume he got his copies of Windows and Visual studio off The Pirate Bay.
Seeing as he is a public spokesperson, it would be insanely stupid of him to commit a crime that could be used by the copyright industry against him.
What are good video production tools for Linux?
[Aside: Strange how he slags Linux for development and uses Windows, but uses Linux for video production.]
Cinelerra is probably the most advanced: http://cinelerra.org/
Most people have decent connections from their cable providers or phone operators but nowhere near full duplex 100mbit and in most areas lousy DSL is all you can get (or mobile which also leaves a lot to be desired outside of large agglomerations).
