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Zaurus is a good quality player and much more flexible than "normal" players. I use Open Zaurus the ogg tools you can get for it and CF. A 64 meg CF is cheap and loads up an hour's worth of music and a shell script or two for random play. Larger CF cards are getting cheaper all the time and a CF wifi card could eliminate the need for the clumsy transfer step. I'm sure people will make software that does all of this easier than my dinky shell script, but I like the speed of simple tools like sed and urandom. Don't forget to use the -q flag for ogg123 to silence the output and don't forget to change the power and light settings so the screen turns off but the power does not and you have a beautiful and very powerful jam box and rounds out an all free music system.

My next project for it is to get a car power adaptor and a little nicer mounting system than I already have.

Open Zaurus is a little more flexible than the software that comes with it, but you might not want to do that if you need to sync with nasty old Lookout or something. Debian Zaurus with X11 will be massivly cool when it settles down to stable.

Zaurus is a good quality player and much more flexible than "normal" players. I use Open Zaurus the ogg tools you can get for it and CF. A 64 meg CF is cheap and loads up an hour's worth of music and a shell script or two for random play. Larger CF cards are getting cheaper all the time and a CF wifi card could eliminate the need for the clumsy transfer step. I'm sure people will make software that does all of this easier than my dinky shell script, but I like the speed of simple tools like sed and urandom. Don't forget to use the -q flag for ogg123 to silence the output and don't forget to change the power and light settings so the screen turns off but the power does not and you have a beautiful and very powerful jam box and rounds out an all free music system.

My next project for it is to get a car power adaptor and a little nicer mounting system than I already have.

Open Zaurus is a little more flexible than the software that comes with it, but you might not want to do that if you need to sync with nasty old Lookout or something. Debian Zaurus with X11 will be massivly cool when it settles down to stable.

It makes a difference to me because I thought I'd pass a resume to anyone intersted in your excellent project. The first company did not look right, the second one provided me with no information.

Oh well. If you are bored after your marathon question and answer sesion here, have a flower, or a lizard or a spider. The flowers might be nice backgrounds for your corporate desktops. I had fun taking the pictures and hope other people enjoy looking at them. The flower page comes in handy when secretaries do nice things for me. =:>

I've become addicted to the amazing detail that is visible in large prints from these images!

....

Given that the resolving power of the human eye (under ideal conditions at the center of the retina) is about 1 arcminute (1/60th of one degree) ... Assuming one pixel per arcminute, an image with dimensions of 3780 x 2485 would suffice to capture the amount of detail that the naked eye could resolve. This image has more than 100 times this detail. Looking at the full sized digital image, one is able to see things that might have been difficult or impossible to spot, even when using binoculars.

I know the feeling. I've rigged a 2.1 MPixel camera to both a 50 mm telescope, a few simple close up lenses and a microsoope. Some of the results are here. I know want that kind of vision enhancement everywhere.

Open Zaurus, Debian, Ogg-Vorbis and some CF cards are all you need. Here's a quick howto. If you can't master the Debian install, use Knoppix. Move your music to free formats and never mess with DRM BS again. If you can't read it and move it to a free format, don't buy it. The RIAA is going to lose this one. The harder they suck the easier it is to be free.

Yeah, you might have been joking. That's OK, I like the chance to sound off about free goodness.

Microsoft is dead, all hail the true kings of order.

OLVWM does that too. It's also nice to have an unlimited number of desktops too. With as many desktops as you want, you don't feel as inclined to buy a $200 "dual head" video card and a second flat screen monitor and are much happier with your 17" CRT. Do I need to mention "ssh -X hostname" logs you in graphically to all your computers? Yes, more than one user can run Star Office, Open Office, Kword, Emacs and or Vi at the same time. That's not alowed by the EULA for M$ Word, even if you were clever enough.

I'd be surprised if there isn't a hack for XP to do the same thing

Hack, hack, and still pay through the nose, why bother? Apt-get yourself out of that mess. Once you've got your modelines set up, that's it, video just works. Go see for yourself at www.hillnotes.org. The stuff I've got posted is all easy to do. Anyone who can figure out the Windoze hack game is more than up to the task of learning free software. When it's all said and done, you get way more for your free software effort than you can buy from Bill and friends.

The funny thing is that I actually did try Suse the other day. I downloaded and burned their "Live CD" as part of a lecture. I was very impressed at how well it worked. It really was a no fuss deal. Like you I'll put up with a little meglomania for that. What harm can he really do to free softare? Who really needs large IT vendors? The future is free.

He also says lots of good stuff too. He slams SCO and easily dances around all their FUD. He's creating value and sees himself as a big institutional player. Good for him. No free softare based system can be as ugly or as abusive as Microsoft was.

Well, it's not that hard. Anyone who can do a Windoze install can do Red Hat and the Red Hat is easier. Of course there's worlds of free help available through your local LUG. If your want your hand held and can't find a friend to do it, you can wait for an install fest or ask around for someone like me who will go to your house or business for a modest fee.

You are right about the distinction between the distros, but it's best to explain the whole free software thing first. You can do that in about 10 minutes. Intereste users can then read the free software site on their own. I've made a little newbie lectures, including "Where does free software come from." to sum it up for myself and others. After that, the different distros make sense and you can start to try and match the user with a distro that will make them happy.

I think that's what Ian was getting at, keeping the user informed and meeting their needs. It's the user's needs that are important. Everything possible should be done to make meeting those needs easy and the user should never be kept in the dark about the way things work. Lock-in is an evil thing and I hope he's not right about the intentions of some vendors.

Even if he's right, lock in is still difficult with free software. I recently moved a machine from Red Hat 7.3 to Debian stable and was able to keep all of my data. Some of the user configurations were off, but it was much easier than any Windoze move I've ever made.

Propriatory drivers and closed source software tacked onto free software definatly degrades the user experience. I've got a wireless network card from a company that touts, "Linux support". It's got some RPMs that may work on Red Hat 7.3 and 8.0, but I've had a very hard time making them run under Debian. It came with "source" that included a precompiled object module. I've had a hard time matching up that silly module with a particular kernel and I'm about fed up with it. I may try to set up a Red Hat box, but it will be a dead box that will have a kernel fixed for freaking ever. Changing the sofware around it will be a pain. That's not Red Hat's fault, it's the card maker's fault. It shows where things can go.

Well, it's not that hard. Anyone who can do a Windoze install can do Red Hat and the Red Hat is easier. Of course there's worlds of free help available through your local LUG. If your want your hand held and can't find a friend to do it, you can wait for an install fest or ask around for someone like me who will go to your house or business for a modest fee.

You are right about the distinction between the distros, but it's best to explain the whole free software thing first. You can do that in about 10 minutes. Intereste users can then read the free software site on their own. I've made a little newbie lectures, including "Where does free software come from." to sum it up for myself and others. After that, the different distros make sense and you can start to try and match the user with a distro that will make them happy.

I think that's what Ian was getting at, keeping the user informed and meeting their needs. It's the user's needs that are important. Everything possible should be done to make meeting those needs easy and the user should never be kept in the dark about the way things work. Lock-in is an evil thing and I hope he's not right about the intentions of some vendors.

Even if he's right, lock in is still difficult with free software. I recently moved a machine from Red Hat 7.3 to Debian stable and was able to keep all of my data. Some of the user configurations were off, but it was much easier than any Windoze move I've ever made.

Propriatory drivers and closed source software tacked onto free software definatly degrades the user experience. I've got a wireless network card from a company that touts, "Linux support". It's got some RPMs that may work on Red Hat 7.3 and 8.0, but I've had a very hard time making them run under Debian. It came with "source" that included a precompiled object module. I've had a hard time matching up that silly module with a particular kernel and I'm about fed up with it. I may try to set up a Red Hat box, but it will be a dead box that will have a kernel fixed for freaking ever. Changing the sofware around it will be a pain. That's not Red Hat's fault, it's the card maker's fault. It shows where things can go.

The average small office, however, has an awful mix of M$ OS. A typical set up will have an assortment of win98 and XP desktops and a "server" of some sort from M$. The desktops are clogged with legacy shit, sometimes carted in from home, spyware and all need to be "rebuilt". Microsoft's tools are so inadequate for sharing work that versioning problems plauge all work. The server might be used as an inferior mail server that ends up blacklisted because it's been broken into. The situation is not much better in larger organizations despite heroic efforts of teams of IT dudes, equally hampered by inferior tools like SMS.

You can compare the frenetic activity of a M$ shop to the calm and order in Largo Florida and know that free software is superior on all platforms.

Oh yeah, I've been thinking about this. The more I use and read about free software, the more I'm convinced it has or will produce the best tool for every job.

Quick results from the hardware you already own.

I'll do it for you.

Those looking for jobs, however, will continue to deem the situation to be awful.......

Sure, if you want to keep on keeping on with the derailed wintel upgrade train, pound sand.

Those providing real upgrades might do better. The typical small office has been needing Unix like services for years. Microsoft's ever more abusive licensing and pricing are putting them out of the market, just when cheaper and better services are available and easy to deploy.

M$ blows

90 day uptimes, brags the NT dude, ha ha ha.

M$ blows

90 day uptimes, brags the NT dude, ha ha ha.

Another way to get a realy fine scan like this would be to mount your digicam on one of these, or a lathe.

That's enough activity for me. Good night.

I'd also like to share a sad story of a lab death due to flying glass. Somewhere around 1989, a student at Tulane died when a piece of glassware exploded in his hand and a fragment severed his jugular vein. His death was partly due to the difficulty the EMS team had finding him in the building.

If the author feels this display of his image constitues a "removal" and untolerable infringment, he may send me a cease and desist letter by replying here, the public place of advertisement of publication. In that case, I'll consider him a weenie.

Good. Use it for 802.11 style community based internet service. It would revolutionize telom and all information services. The internet was designed to be free, this specturm in the hads of the people could make it so. Imagine being able to host your own content with your own equipment without paying a fee for anything but electicity.

I think The Goatse.cx Channel would get quite a following

What you chose to look at and point to is your business. I don't visit your "dump" very often, nor would I recomend it to others, though it's really no worse that broadcast TV. No big deal, someone else might like what you do. (the fly is funny, To get closeups of a fly, use the eyepiece from a set of binoculars or a telescope) Dump or flowers the user can chose. One day everyone might be able to serve as well and there will be more intersting stuff in the world than a few dozen TV executives could ever imagine anyone would be interested in.