Slashdot Mirror

I personally prefer Luna Element 5.0.5. Sure it requires cracking the uxtheme.dll, but its a nice theme. A nicer dark blue, an excellent black, 2 different sizes for each, and a super-compact start menu.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/04IeXRcj3cxx47DTl2p1_A?authkey=Gv1sRgCLKv0fLe5P3fvwE&feat=directlink

http://www.box.net/shared/dobdfiuut3 - to download Luna Element + its themed login screen

And it doesn't have much of a Comic Sans look to it, like the normal XP one does...

"I'm facepalming hard."

Could be you are doing it wrong? Lose the palm, try the edge of the table. If you regain consciousness, you might want to explore nlite: http://www.box.net/shared/c1d4bd0az5#1:10768665:108618379 http://www.nliteos.com/guide/ Shared DLL's remain, of course. The DLL's are called "shared" for a reason. But, IE can be removed, not just disabled.

MPC-HC is very good, and using ZoomPlayer's codec downloader makes it damn near invincible. It auto-configures the codecs, and if you run it again a month or so later, it updates them for you too. It seems to download only the newest version of open source codecs straight from sourceforge. If you wanna use 7zip to extract the codec downloading app out of zoom player's installer you can do that, or you can just use this version here: http://www.box.net/shared/rljvutz9nq

The only thing it doesn't have is quicktime, and downloading quicktime alternative takes care of that.

I really enjoy the codec auto-configure...saves me alot of time getting any sort of media to play on anyone's computer.

Each device gets to use more bandwidth.

This isn't true. Linux doesn't allocate more bandwidth to devices than Windows. It follows the same bandwidth allocation rules (e.g. 10% of bandwidth is reserved for control transfers). If anything the USB stack and drivers are just faster and more efficient.

Do you have some benchmarks to back that up? The best I have seen with Linux is around 25MB/s (that was a couple of years back though), with XP x64 (which is more or less Windows 2003) I get 32MB/s with a good enclosure.

Here's a video the same demo with a USB 2.0 drive under EHCI. Linux shows 35MBps. Granted, I do need to run with some standard benchmark tools. ;)

You *can* download books - on the net, using p2p, copy the file from your friend. It is not hard for an average person or author to do this once the book has been scanned/ocr'd.

In addition, you can now get a new version of these. Previously the copy was in rtf, doc or PDF and would be 'sort of okay' to read via computer monitor. Now they have versions that are suitable to print on A4. Download file, print, bind and viola - book (albeit) in A4.

What you now have to ask yourself is: will a lot of people do this?

On this topic, I note that in Australia paperbacks are now over $20 for many titles. From the Wikipedia article on paperback books:
  Paperback editions of books are issued when a company decides to release a book in a low cost format.

Before I found out that the paperback was designed to be the 'cheap' version of books I was horrified at the rising costs of paperbacks. I bought hundreds (literally) of paperbacks for between AU$5 and $14. When the price rose over $15 I just stopped buying. A few years later I found the price to be just under $20 and pretty much rarely bought anything.
The interesting part here is that before when I was buying $10 books I hardly had the money.. and now that I *do* have money I can't easily justify over $20. I'll go out of my way for a Simon Green that's got a 20% store discount mind you :)

I believe that they are working themselves into their own economical mess. I've spoken with the book store staff, publishers, librarians and anyone else who I've come across with an interest in this. They all say the same thing 'it's costing too much to produce and sell paperbacks, less people are buying them'. I've been very blunt with store managers, to the point of saying I would buy 5 to 10 books on the spot, right then, if they were $10 to $15. Oh well.

I've heard about machines that can print a book on demand. Pity they will never bring it here, I've love to go the 'buy 10 and save' option on one of those.

Link to Physical Review E Article:

http://www.box.net/public/lsp933t2un

Click on "ebay.pdf"

You can try these guys: http://www.box.net/ Marc