Isabel at God Plays Dice finds the definitive review of Dummit and Foote, here at adequacy.org.
(If you have any questions as to the objectivity of adequacy.org, I suggest checking out their Wikipedia page.)
I had to go and unapprove a bunch more comments. I am erring on the side of removing anything provocative.
Things to know:
We’ve just had our first really serious flame war. While I respond to flame wars the way most people do — taking sides and flinging insults, I decided to resist my natural inclinations. As an experiment, I have hidden the inflammatory comments to let things cool off.
And remember. People are not stupid. It’s only math that’s stupid. Okay, that doesn’t sound quite right…
It turns out that Megan does not take no for an answer from hardware. She beat HP’s laptop into Linux submission, so now I have a working laptop. Hopefully regular posting will resume.
I bought a new laptop yesterday. I thought my days of skulking around computer labs was over. But no, HP has managed to make a laptop that doesn’t support Linux. These days, you have to go out of your way to not support Linux. So now I have to take it back and try again.
It looks like I’m going to have to buy a new laptop: the warranty doesn’t cover the current problem. Hopefully I’ll be able to do that soon, and then a more-normal posting schedule will resume.
My laptop broke again today, so posting will continue to be light. (This time, it’s the monitor.) Also, my car broke. Next, after I post this, a meteor will probably flatten my house.
I was out of town for a couple of days. Regular posting should resume. (I was going to post beforehand to let you all know that I was going out of town, but then I thought “Who are you? My mom?”)
My laptop is back from the dealer. They replaced the motherboard, which is the best outcome I could hope for. (The alternative — which I have experienced — is that you have to send it back three times before they accept they have to replace the motherboard.) I don’t think anything breaks on laptops other than motherboards. On my previous laptop, the ‘N’ key broke. When I took it into a shop to get it fixed, they told me they’d have to replace the motherboard.
Now I’m working my way through my RSS feeds. Every single weblog I have subscribed was updated, so it’ll be awhile.
My laptop was still under warranty, so I took it back to the store to get it fixed. They originally told me it would be “a few days”, but then they decided to send it back to the manufacturer to repair. And it’ll take four weeks! Mercifully, my warranty includes a loaner, so I have a temporary laptop. It’s a newer laptop, which would make me sad that it’s so much faster than my old laptop, but fortunately it runs Vista so that’s not a problem. Vista’s main features seem to be a) translucent windows, and b) if you let IE run for a couple of hours right-clicking stops working entirely.
With any luck, some sort of normal posting schedule will resume.