Slashdot Mirror

I also set up a spam blog for no real reason, just for fun. I like how the spams often change the whole look of the site, too, like backgrounds and stuff - I miss out on all that junk because I don't use Outlook express.

What I found is that if your web server also has a mail server running on the same IP address, accepting mail for that same domain, your spam jumps incredibly.

Spam programs seem to not be aware of DNS MX records, so if they find a host called www.wirefarm.com, they will try to connect to port 25 of that host.
A well-behaved mail progam will do an MX lookup first and see that mail for my domain is handled elsewhere and send through the proper host.

The effect of this is that if you send me a mail with a real client, I get it, but if your spam-sending program just sends through wirefarm.com:25 it goes through, but winds up on the spam blog.

If you're running a mail server from home on a dyndns address and you have a friend doing the same, you might consider swapping MX records. If you're fortunate enough to have more than one IP address at your disposal, I'd bet your spam problems would go way down if you put mail and web on two different hosts. (At least until the spambots get smarter...)

Monkeys with four asses
Woman with two asses
And, finally,
God with two asses

I wound up quitting my local LUG, along with a half dozen, others over this very issue - People were getting slammed on the mailing list for asking "Isn't there a better way?" in regards to systems administration.

80 years ago, you had to be a mechanic to own and use a car - it was a simple necessity, but of course, now, you don't have to be.

Unix is just leaving that state now - BSD, in fact just got air conditioning, power windows, cup holders and automatic transmission in the form of OSX, while us Linux people are left in our garages on Saturday, tinkering with our jalopies...

Back when the whole LUG thing happened, I posted a couple of articles on my website outlining my feelings - I'd summarize it more, but the whole issue leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Yet still, I used Linux long before I joined the LUG and their elitism outlined only some faults of some prominent and vocal members of the community, not the kernel itself.

I still use linux as my primary OS at home, at work, on my servers, on my laptops and all of the other random boxes cluttering up my apartment. (Though I do have one iMac loaded with OS X...)

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

I wound up quitting my local LUG, along with a half dozen, others over this very issue - People were getting slammed on the mailing list for asking "Isn't there a better way?" in regards to systems administration.

80 years ago, you had to be a mechanic to own and use a car - it was a simple necessity, but of course, now, you don't have to be.

Unix is just leaving that state now - BSD, in fact just got air conditioning, power windows, cup holders and automatic transmission in the form of OSX, while us Linux people are left in our garages on Saturday, tinkering with our jalopies...

Back when the whole LUG thing happened, I posted a couple of articles on my website outlining my feelings - I'd summarize it more, but the whole issue leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Yet still, I used Linux long before I joined the LUG and their elitism outlined only some faults of some prominent and vocal members of the community, not the kernel itself.

I still use linux as my primary OS at home, at work, on my servers, on my laptops and all of the other random boxes cluttering up my apartment. (Though I do have one iMac loaded with OS X...)

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

Moments ago, I posted a story on my website to the Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii exhibit on LOC.gov. I clicked submit and then jumped to Slashdot to check the headlines - Imagine my surprise when I see this link.
I feel like monkey #100 right now...

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

Your post was a bit vague on the name of the actual product you are endorsing...

;^)

(I just counted the word 'Webmin' like 17 times in your post...)

Actually, I couldn't agree more.
A couple of weeks ago, my boss called me 2 hours before I was supposed to be at work to tell me that something needed to be fixed on the server. I literally rolled over, grabbed my laptop, logged in using the ssl option, fixed it and went back to sleep.

Now you might say that all I really needed was SSH and VI, but I hadn't had any coffee yet and Webmin just required a bit of clicking. It rarely screws up and doesn't mess with your config files.

I wrote a bit more on it on my web site a while back - scroll down about half way.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

And maybe if I can transfer my low-res expensive watch photos to my low-res expensive pda, I'll feel better about having already wasted my money.

This might make you feel a bit better:
Palm and Wrist Camera.

It lets you transfer pics from the original wrist camera to a PalmOS device, via infrared.

Quite nifty.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

Oddly, my ICQ number is at position 19724810 counting from the first digit after the decimal point.
What're the odds of *that*?
;-)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo


Have no clue about firewalls?

CJ Date's "Introduction To Database Systems"
Great book.
All of the O'Reilly books.
Mythical Man Month.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.
The K & R C book.
Knuth.

That would do it for me...

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

Have no clue about firewalls?

OK, then, let's see how it works when you spammify the address...

xcizjev55jf55t001@NOSPAM.sneakemail.com

That address agan:

xcizjev55jf55t001@NOSPAM.sneakemail.com

I always wonder how much crap you get from posting slasdot with a spammified address....
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo


Have no clue about firewalls?

I think your post underscores a lot of the frustration that people feel. What can you do?
Probably nothing.
It's as if your company's policy is to have a night watchman who invites his friends over at night to go through your desk and try to trash your stuff and see what they can embarrass you with.
Since the PHB's are incapable of seeing that this is a bad idea, you are forced to live with it, by not keeping anything personal in your desk and keeping important files backed up and encrypted.
If Microsoft would publish a protocol for connecting to Exchange servers, this problem and all its waste would _vanish_ as other clients emerge.
POP 3 is a pretty good standard in that it lets users use any mail client that they like to get their mail.
I use Sylpheed for Linux - I could just as easily use Outlook Express or Netscape or whatever...
All you can do at your company is to be as careful as you can in protecting your files and be ready to explain the alternatives to anyone who is starting to realize that Outlook is a Bad Idea.
In the mean time, well, hang in there.

Cheers,
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

> Do they plan to only allow unfettered access to the athletes?

Wasn't athlete's internet access being restricted during the last olympics? I seem to remember someone trying to update his/her homepage and being told that he couldn't - That his experiences were the property of whatever media company had bought the rights.

Of course, I'm probably mistaken...

Cheers.
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC Mobile Media

OK, it was 5 minutes.
My bad.

I guess what I meant was that people would use it for about 10 minutes before hooking up a keyboard.
I mean, I like the idea of Crusoe and all - Linux is great and all, but this is one expensive piece of hardware they're selling.
Every year or so, a company comes out with a tablet-style computer and time after time, it falls flat. I guess they picture that doctors or field engineers or somebody will be using them, but it just hasn't happened.
I know I sound cynical, but oddly, I run a site for palm pilot... Go figure.



MMDC Mobile Media

$2300 for a 400mhz web browser?
Netscape 4.7? (The bane of my existence...)
No CD/DVD?
No built-in wireless?
Yeah, sure...
Send me 10 of them...
I give it ten minutes before people try to find a way to add a keyboard and mouse, too.

My PC has 'Instant On' too, if I only turn off the screen...



MMDC Mobile Media

Well, It *is* getting better and easier.
If you're interested in seeing what all this nonsense is about, get your hands on a brand new distro from somewhere (Linuxiso.org or cheapbytes or a magazine) and try it again.
I've done a *lot* of installs. Took me a year of occasionally farting with it to get X running on Slackware a few years ago. Now, RedHat and all the others set up like a dream. USB works. Sound works - Good, easy DVD - well, I guess that's about 6mos away.
Sometimes, I try a distro and it fails on my hardware - C'est la vie. I try another distro. Right now, RedHat is running great for me - 2 months ago, it was Caldera. All the time, I've kept Windows without a problem.
Now I've been using Linux exclusively for weeks. It has, for me, finally surpassed Windows in usability. (I *do* miss NoteTab Pro, though...)

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC Mobile Media

They are under no obligation to write the drivers, especially when it's costing them money to do so.
They might be motivated to, if it's costing them sales.

When you buy a piece of hardware, you are paying for the hardware and the *drivers* to run it.
With Linux, you're often at the mercy of independant developers to write these drivers, but some companies make it easier for them by following standards, releasing specs, or actually doing the development in-house.
I don't know if it is common in the US, but here in Japan, hardware is often sold with a little Tux sticker on it to let you know that it is Linux-friendly. Companies that do this are more likely to get *my* business, since I often buy on impulse and don't check ahead of time to read a compatability list.
I bet if you asked most scanner manufacturers about Linux, they'd say "This scanner is USB - USB doesn't work with Linux, does it?"
I can use peripherals with Linux now that I could not have hoped to a year ago. My digital camera shows up as a mountable drive icon on my desktop now and this alone makes Linux a *lot* more viable to me.
(/etc/fstab entry:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/cam vfat noauto,user 0 0)

If being able to put a "Works With Linux!" sticker on the box increases sales by 5%, companies will start doing it.

When they do, give these manufacturers higher consideration and some feedback.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo



MMDC Mobile Media

I just did a page on this very thing:
http://mmdc.net/p/ssh.html

Hope this helps -
Jim in Tokyo



MMDC Mobile Media

Well, since the citizens are obligated to comply with them, yes, they should be understandable *to all of the people*.
If a law cannot be broken down into "bite-sized-chunks" that every last person inside its jusisdiction can understand, it should be abandoned - otherwise it is probably too complex or one-sided.
Can you give an example of a sensible law that breaks this line of reasoning? (Tell me something with which I am expected to comply, yet cannot comprehend with my tiny little mind?)

Cheers,
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

Interesting that you said "Top Ten" - They used to teach a kind of "Top Ten", but now it's illegal to do so.
I think that was sort of the intent of the Ten Commandments - Now, I'm not pushing Christianity, but I have to admit, if you follow those 10 rules, you're unlikely to break many laws. Well, as long as you add the codicil "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's." (For tax reasons.)
That pretty much covers it, aside from copyright and Intellectual Property law, which have no basis in logic...
Maybe we should summarize it down to one rule:
"Be excellent to eachother..."
:-)
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

Well, at the time, Earhart's trip was hugely publicized as a good-will mission of peace around the world -
What if the government was forced to admit that a national heroine was, in fact, a spy? It would have been a real black eye for America.
Tensions between the US and Japan were mounting and Japan felt that they were divinely empowered to win any war they entered. This was around the time that Japan was devestating Manchuria and Nanking - their Navy was very strong and Saipan and the Northern Marianas islands were a key position for them, as well as a threatening one to America. (It's funny, none of my American friends knew that Saipan is a US posession now.)

I live a few blocks from the Japanese War Museum and Shrine - (Yasukuni Jinja. I'll be up there tonight, in fact, for a summer festival.)
There's always elderly Japanese soldiers up there, often looking at items from some island where they were stationed. I wonder if any of them were Saipan at the time and would be able to offer any information, but it would be just too insensitive for a foreigner to ask about such a thing. Plus, if they were sworn to secrecy then, I am sure they would still respect that.
Maybe in a few years, as they die off, a diary or some photographs will surface and the mystery will be solved.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo



MMDC Mobile Media

I was in Harrod's a couple of years ago and I noticed one of the ceiling cameras pointed directly at me. I walked 45 degrees along its circumference and it followed. Another direction, it followed again. I put down the £200 worth of stuff that I was buying, flipped the camera the bird and walked out. I was disgusted.
That kind of rudeness should not be tolerated - not from a salesperson and not from some clown sitting in a back room twiddling his joystick.
I hear people in England say thet they enjoy the *security* of these cameras, but at what cost?
Where I live, we have beat cops who actually walk around, not so afraid that they have to hide behind a camera. They say hello, offer politeness and respect and expect it in return, get to know the people in the neighborhood (to the point of stopping by your house once a year to introduce themselves and see who you are) and they won't hesitate to stop you if you look like you are doing something suspicious. (Or lend a helping hand if you happen to need one at that moment.)
That's the kind of security I would prefer from the police - When a policeman makes a mental note of you, he has his intuition and his conscience, backed by a brain that no computer can compete with. When a camera takes note of you, you are just an entry in a database waiting to be taken out of context, the first time suspicion is cast upon you for something. I mean, we are conditioned to see anyone on a security monitor as an instant perpetrator.
Which would you choose?

Cheers,
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

Not to mention that it could be a boat wreck or the engine from an abandoned fishing boat.
One of the main pieces of supporting evidence that she was there is from the discovery of the heel of a woman's shoe. Dig around on the web and see if you an find a picture of her in anything but man-style shoes and boots. Even as a child, she wore pants, rather than dresses, which was quite unusual for the time.

MMDC Mobile Media

Did a little digging on Google and found this link:

http://www.earhart.org/

Interesting reading, as it claims a big coverup and the direct involvement of James Forrestal, then Secretary of the Navy.
Since it's on the internet, it *must* be true...
;-)



MMDC Mobile Media

I visited Saipan a year ago and there's a lot of local legend about Amelia Earhart. From what people have peiced together, AE's plane supposedly was shot down over/near Saipan by the Japanese forces on the island. Saipan natives recalled the Japanese's surprise that it was a woman aviator and especially that her navigator, a man, took orders from her. They were apparently imprisoned as spies, which they would have been, if they were in that area.
One old chamorro woman recalled seeing a tall white woman with an injured arm ocassionally walking under guard of Japanese navy men.
Later, American soldiers told of destroying a Lockheed plane that was in a Japanese hangar, after the fall of Saipan.
If you go there, you can see the foundations of the prison where she was supposedly kept, as well as some really cool caves and bunkers hidden all over the island. Saipan is also one of the places where the Japanese soldiers were hiding and didn't know that the war was over - The last of them came down from the hills in 1953 or so.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC Mobile Media

Statistics always seem to say exactly what the author wants, so how about this:
A drag race.
That's right, get teams together competing in certain hardware classes and let them compete, MS against RedHat against OpenBSD against Solaris.
Let the teams use every resource they can to tune and optimize and try to kick the other team's butt.
Include competitions for Web Serving, database, crackability, that kind of stuff.
Whenever someone does a benchmark study that shows Microsoft beating Linux, people scream 'unfair' - That the people who set up the Linux box didn't optimize correctly or used a setup that caused the results to be skewed. This would force people to put their money where their mouth is.

I have a programming student who uses Windows 2000. He and I were setting up MySQL on his machine and I was showing him the 'benchmark' feature of SQL, as in
"SELECT BENCHMARK(1000000000,radians(180))". While basically a meaningless test, it did give him some bragging rights and motivate me to optimize a bit when he trounced me and my Linux box, (both with 600MHz and 128MB.)
Who knows, could be fun...

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC Mobile Media

Anyone else notice that Jon Katz is sounding more and more like that entertainment critic from The Onion - Jackie Harvey?



MMDC Mobile Media

Well, don't worry too much, They are sure to do it in a way that their analysts tell them will be profitable to *them*.
Napster worked using a very simple algorythm:

unless(music eq $free){
die("No way, Dude!");
}

No other formula has been shown to be effective. None are likely to work until another variable comes into play and I just don't see it...
Of course, after a while, Forbes Magazine will declare that P2P is dead as a business model and people will go back to trading on IRC and Gnutella.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC Mobile Media

When Ricochet was new in the DC area, I managed to run a small web server from the basement of the Department of Justice. It was from my personal laptop, not connected to the DoJ network in any way, but it *Could have been*.
Kinda scary.
I understood the risks and *really* only used the Ricochet modem to get my personal mail and files from my home PC, but it shows a lot of the possibilities of this type of unauthorized conectivity.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo



MMDC Mobile Media

Maybe on AOL -
People on the internet are too used to the idea that everything can be had for free.
Here in Tokyo, there's a new service called Usen - They're offering 100 megabit connections to the internet. From what I've heard, they offer a lot of micro-payment-type sevices along with that connection.
You've got to put some real value-added services in the mix for micropayments to work. Would you put up with a lot of AOL/Time/Warner type crap to get the fastest possibe connection to what you actually want to see?
Trust me, it's not going to be based on any type of peer-to-peer model - People will always figure out a way to do that stuff for free. When 5 MB is no longer a big amount of data to email to a friend, i.e., when that's the size of your typical Outlook.NET email, it will be impossible to stop the free flow of MP3's and other BLOB data around the net.
Well, as long as there is PGP/GPG, that is...

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo


MMDC Mobile Media

Interestingly, someone here pointed out that searches for N'Synch and Ricky Martin yeilded results when artists like Tom Waits were blocked.
One has to wonder if the companies were keeping some searches unblocked, just to see how it affected their sales.
Personally, I don't think I'm alone in being some one who mainly used Napster for old, obscure songs that I doubted I'd be able to find at the local CD store. I can't help but wonder if that's the market that the RIAA really wanted to kill, while examining the viability of the peer-to-peer market for new releases.
I will miss Napster's feature of seeing what else a user has on their hard drive - If someone actually has Etta James' "Out of The Rain" or Gavin Bryars' "Jesus Blood Never Failed me Yet", I want to see what else they have. Probably stuff worth acquiring...

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC Mobile Media

The Iran hostages are in day 18,470 of their freedom and Princess Diana is still dead.
As is napster.
I mean, when was the last time anyone downloaded *anything* from Napster?
Sayonara, Napster, it was fun...Nothing to see here, move along...



MMDC Mobile Media

Whenever I travel and jet lag is a problem, I sleep with ear plugs.
No big deal.
(I use the little yellow foam ones shaped like a cylinder...)
One time I recommended them to a co-worker who was complaining about his noisy neighbors.
He came in 2 hours late the next day, because he didn't hear his alarm.

MMDC Mobile Media

If you think life is so bad up there, don't go.
I mean, these guys are supposed to be great explorers? No shampoo? Shave your damn head, whiner.
Too much velcro? Cover it with something.
DVD player not working? God, I'm not even going to start on that one...
I mean, for god's sake, you're in space, not a MiniVan on a ride to the mall.
How about that Dennis Tito guy? (or was it Tito Puente?) That guy paid $20,000,000 of his own money for a short trip to space - I bet he wouldn't be whining that the station doesn't have enough cup holders and doesn't get ESPN2.
How many people here would happily go up and promise never to whine about a little inconvenience?

Whatever...


MMDC Mobile Media

Ok - I don't see anyone asking this -
I have the first edition, with the six books.
Is it worth it to buy the new edition?
Other than the mentioned 'drop two books, add one', are the rest unchanged from the last set?
As for that annoying Java thing, I stopped using that after about 5 minutes.
Why didn't they just write a simple search in say, um... PERL? (I would guess most users have it on their systems...)
If I really can't find what I need using the hypertext table of contents, I'll usually use grep...

Cheers,
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

I just took another look at Glade. (It came with this distro of Linux...)
Well, it looks pretty nice and I'm sure people like it and find it useful and all, but...
Where is the help file?
Why doesn't it have a sample project available?
How am I supposed to *start* using this thing?
You say it does Perl - I'd love to write my perl code in a really snappy IDE that has a code folding, chromatic editor that offers command completion, the way Kylix does. Until I find one that doesn't crash too often, I'll keep doing it in vi.
Back when I was learning to program, (
on VB and Access, yeah, go ahead, snicker...) I found that the VB IDE, which is the absolute best IDE I have seen, (no matter how bad the language is,) gave you an opportunity to actually learn more about the language while you were writing the code. If you're using an object, as soon as you type its name, you get an unobtrusive drop-down of all of the properties and methods for that object.
Even before it had that, there was a useful helpfile (with examples) that was always just one "F1" away.

If you want to see what it takes to get developers to use an IDE, go read "Dynamics of Software Development" by Jim McCarthy. (Microsoft Press. ISBN 1-55615-823-8)
Jim was in charge of getting Visual C++ 1.0 out the door, back in the days when they were a far second to Borland.
He goes into a lot of the fears that developers feel when facing a new technology and how to overcome them.
Since the world is getting motivated to move to Linux, the old-school Linuxers had better be prepared to perform some triage for the people coming to Linux from Windows - It's not just about getting a good word processor for people to use, it's about giving developers the capability of writing in-house apps for data entry into the company database. Something with a learning curve comparable to VB. Something your typical mid-sized company developer can pick up in a few weekends, because as much as he might love the idea of using Linux, without a great development IDE, it's just not a viable platform for any business that I know of.
If glade can't get helpfiles together fast enough, how about a bunch of tutorial-style apps?
"Hello, World"; "Hello, Database" kind of stuff - It didn't take me many of those to become pretty useful in perl...
Am I completely alone in feeling like this?

Just a thought...
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC Mobile Media

Maybe Hughes should move their legal base of operations *to the satellite*.
I mean, is it that much different than having a company who's legal head office is a post office box in the Cayman Islands?
What they could save in taxes could probably pay for sending a guy up there once in a while to satisfy any legal requirements.
(And, since it was my idea, *I* should get to be that guy...)

Cheers,
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

I'd venture that you don't need application software.
I think what would really get kids jazzed is to see their *own* work, not Carmen Sandiego or Rug Rats or whatever passes for educational software.
Buy a cheap scanner for the school. Get it to work on a Linux box. Set up Apache.
I'm sure kids and parents alike would much rather see scans of crayon drawings and digital photos of the Christmas Pageant than anything from any of the 'educational software' companies.
Give each kid directions on how to log in or FTP in and how to chmod the files in ~/public_html so that they can show off *their* work. Work with them and make it easier
What kind of box would you need? (My webserver is a PII that I *Found in the Trash*.)
Get a couple of boxes donated and set them up as Linux/ Apache /Samba/Gimp/Abiword/ MySQL boxes for specific tasks or general hacking. Get the school to donate the use of a couple of analog phone lines for use after hours for dial-in access to email and the kids user space. Get every parent/student/teacher set up as a user. Get the High School computer club to be administrators. Form a Linux club and donate some time to it.

Someone mentioned that their school district holds "Windows Night" once a month. Um, so just hold "Linux Night" once a month. Take a CD Burner and a stack of blank discs and burn copies of Redhat or Debian or Mozilla. Show people how to install them. Encourage them to bring an old PC to set them up on. Provide donuts and coffee
Find out what your school district spends on software licenses - I'm sure the school's budget is public record - Let people know how much of that could be saved. Did they spend $2,000 on licenses for MS Access? Did they know that MySQL is *free* and also runs on Windows and the apps they develop could probably be written as a CGI app using perl or PHP?
Promote your Linux night as a way for parents and teachers and students to learn the basics, whatever you consider that to be, (be it KDE or Gnome and StarOffice or Bash and pine and Pico.)

The way to get Linux into homes and offices is to promote it as a "Second Box" solution. If they have a PC, they probably have a copy of Windows and a license. Don't compete with that - Get Linux on the second PC, the kid's PC, the print server, whatever. That's the benefit of MSBloat - The copy of Office that comes with the box they bought recently will run like a slug on the box from 2 years ago. Linux will make better use of the resources that they probably have. Your office getting rid of some Pentium 133's Grab a couple, set them up with a workable linux configuration and give 'em away to people who are interested.

Most of all, let your kids' teachers know that you want your kids learning Python, not PowerPoint, Ansi C, not Excel macros.

I think that this recent wave of MS/BSA crackdowns is the best thing that could happen. Remind people that a MS Office CD is a lot like a credit card. Use it and it's going to cost you $500 a pop. If you manage to avoid getting caught, you are a thief.
I think licenses should be strictly enforced at schools and businesses. Once you buy the software and install it, the install CD should be locked up in the school's safe - (The liability is just too high.) Does the school leave its credit cards lying around for the convenience of the teachers? No way, that would be madness.
How is this any different?
OK, I should stop ranting...
Cheers,
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

I can't be the *only* one posting to slashdot from a Kueffel & Esser Duplex 4080-3 rule, can I?

Cheers,
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

When the Herley.com webmaster is looking over the logs from the site on Monday -
35,000 hits on some obsolete piece of hardware's page...
Someone send the poor guy an email.

Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

Maybe it's just me, but every time I see
'e. coli', I get it confused with Ebola...

;-)
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

Japanese Windows is not English Windows with Add-ons. It is totally native Double-byte code -
Japanese Windows is just as good (or bad) as its English counterpart, right out of the box.

Also, Linux works great in Japanese. KDE, GNOME - They are all working well.
Since I'm in Japan, I just buy "Linux Magazine" or one of the others - They come with a couple of distros on CD (Sometimes on DVD!)
Set up a new box as a Japanese KDE system and then you can do input with no trouble. You can also then change the language to English from the KDE control panel.
Japanese enabling an English Linux install is much more difficult. I've never been able to get the Japanese input working on such a system, though the display works fine.
Cheers
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

The progrm I was helping out with was in Southeast Washington, DC - I guess that qualifies as third world...
I've personally seen Net Cafes with better equipment in Russia and Thailand - since they are often used for online gaming, the spec's are much higher.

As for giving a bad impression of Linux, I doubt it. I used to use a pretty similar setup to run remote X off a guy's Linux box at my old office. (It was the backup webserver.) On a P90 with 16MB of ram and a 2MB video card, it was surprisingly responsive. KDE looked great at 1024x768x65000. I happily used that for web browsing, since it bypassed the firewall.

I just think that too many useful PCs get tossed into landfills before their time. This guy's howto could delay that a couple of years.

Would I want to use one of these as my main PC? Probably not. Would I use one if that was all that was available? In a heartbeat.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

Join the Great Fujisan Expedition!

Unless that Dell laptop was in the sub $100 range, you're not even talking about the same thing.
What he's outlined is how to make good use of hardware that is affordable to almost anyone.
I once was asked by a non-profit group to help them make use of about 30 donated computers. (Donated by the NSA, no less - Beautiful IBM tempest cases and no hard drives.)
They had no budget. This would have been perfect for them.
Sure, in a perfect world, someone is going to donate 30 newish laptops with Wavelan cards, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

One of the major strong points about the whole Gnu/Linux movement is it's pricetag. Cutting hardware costs can put one more computer in front of one more user, who might not otherwise have a computer to use.
You really can't see this in a school or an adult training program or at a local library?

Doesn't anybody appreciate a good hack anymore?

Jim in Tokyo


Join the Great Fujisan Expedition!

Hemos decided to test Exodus' claim that the colocation cages were sharkproof. He had them lower the cage with him inside.
Poor bastard...

Join the Great Fujisan Expedition!

>>Does this sound like microsoft to anyone else?

Worse - DoCoMo charges for every email - Can you even *imagine* MS trying that?

MMDC.NET

I was reading iMode's html-ish spec tonight and I saw the URL designation tel:// (as in tel://911)
What a bad iDea *that* is... (Yes, it's already been exploited, though over here, I think it's 119, rather than 911...)
Someone made an innocent goof in a HTML-based game a few weeks ago that highlighted this vulnerability.
On top of that, it costs the *initiator* of the call for calls placed from cell phones here, not the recipient - what was that exchange in the Carribean that was supposed to be so bad - 809?
iMode is just untroducing Java on its phones, but from what i've read on the keitai-l listserve, auto-dialing like this is not on an option.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo



MMDC.NET

Now, I don't really know ZeroKnowledge, so I won't pretend to.
But those of you, who, like me, aren't so familiar with them, are you so surprised by yet another setback like this to the community?
It's just another good idea that is going to have to spend some time figuring out if it ever had a chance in a market driven by money - to see if people were as aware of the value of the privacy that they are giving away with every mouse click. But most importantly, if people are willing to *pay* for the luxury of not being a demographic.

I truly think this says less about the viability of Linux, or what did they call it, the "Strong customer preference for Windows", that it does about a fringe market product trying to stay afloat on the edges of tough times.
As much as their tech staff might rest their hearts with Linux, (and I'm guessing that that is the case, since they ever had a Linux client at all,) they have just got to see if they can weather out this draught, just like the rest of us. (Best of luck to them and thanks for thinking of us.)
But, even if their product disappears, is it a true, permanent loss for the community?
If there is a need, won't the need be filled? (Hasn't every need been fulfilled...eventually?)
Don't forget that the most important Linux development was *never* done as a business.
It never had venture capital.
It never had a viable business model.
It never had an Annual Report with a heavy gloss cover and and rich earth-friendly soy-based ink gracing its pages.

All it had was stubborn devotion and outdated hardware.
Yet it worked. And it works still.
The real key players in anything that had ever mattered to Linux were never concerned with the money - they would do it for free and, I would venture, most of them always have.
You see, the real innovation of linux happenned in basements and dorm rooms across the planet.
It happened after hours, on borrowed time, by people who knew that they could maybe make a working driver for their video card, or write a script that would help the next guy get X working.
So, if there is a good idea in what they were doing - something the old farts in this game would call a 'Good Thing' - don't worry, it will be there for us, (and *by* us,) the Linux users.

Though some of us may wonder if we will ever get rich at this, who among us has ever had a fear that it won't somehow continue?
Even here on Slashdot, as we filter the signal from the noise, who among us hasn't been occasionally astounded by the amazing pool of insight among this group; Given any highly technical posting on some obscure aspect of some obscure field, within minutes, there are intelligent postings clarifying, obfuscating, correcting, adding insight.
Yet we're merely the shadow of that thing that really matters to Linux.
Those people are probably too busy to waste their time here writing long, rambling, self-congratulatory posts like this one.

So if you want to make a difference to Linux and want to see it continue, you don't have to be a brilliant coder or technical visionary - Maybe you just need to spend a couple of weekends helping someone get Linux running. Maybe that person will be the next Kernighan or Wall or Stallman, or {countless others who have mattered to this community in one way or another}. (Or, maybe you will surprise yourself and *be* that next great coder...)
Oh well, I've probably wasted enough of your time -
Thanks for reading this far down.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo



MMDC.NET

There's a great English mailing list here in Japan for that - The Keitai-L
You can browse the archives at:
http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/
A lot of discussions about taking iMode elsewhere, but Europe will probably be first.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC.NET

>> "different qualities of fiber ..."

fiber??
Such tourists.
(spits derisively...)

Tubing is the way to go, my friend.
Connecting my speakers to the amp are super-cooled copper tubes of a quality generally only used in high-end nuclear research facilities. (Don't buy that cheap Russian Super-Cooled-Copper-Speaker-Tubing that's floating around these days! You'll *really* be able to tell the difference.)
Passing through each one is a super-cooled liquid nitrogen that pushed the temperature of the tube down towards 0 degrees kelvin.
As the tube cools, it becomes a super-conductor, causing the signal's electrons to move to the surface of the tubing, where the sound is richer.
(True audiophiles such as myself, can really tell the difference.)
On a side note, I'm moving soon - the excavation is finally done on my new listening room. I've had an accoustically perfect room carved from a layer of granite bedrock under a mountain in the Black Hills. Sadly, my wife will not be joining me - her presence in the room caused the sound waves to ricochet, causing audible distortion.

;-)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC.NET

Take a typical shop with let's say 10 servers.
If they run Red Hat on all 10, they probably only have one copy of Red Hat on CD, possibly borrowed from a friend.

OTOH:
If they run NT Server on all ten, they probably have... Oh, wait... Never mind. ;-)

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

MMDC.NET