900+ people and the most popular download only kicked over 12 times? The RIAA lost how many $ on that? The aritsts lost how many 1/10000th of a cent over this? Am I reading this wrong, or is this who thing adding up to a big ZERO?
SlashDotters are here because they're deeper into the community, the practices, and either the hobby or profession (for many, both) of computing.
Part of that is advocy. That involves teaching and listening. There are plenty of people here with a clue.
I've been teaching a newbies class for the last four or five months. I've worked in large and small companies and have some idea of what people want and what software can reasonably offer them.
Set up multiple OS for demonstration. This is the hardest thing for a newbie to do, so it's the best service to offer. Windows 101? Sure, teach it on KDE and give them a reasonable notion of why there's a log on, what it protects them from and what it gives them. Games, OK, windoze wins there for now. For everything else, free software is easier to use and maintain. "Sheilding" newbies from the "complexity" of different OS and desktop environments does them a disservice. They quickly master basic concepts of files and GUI. Giving them more makes them happier and lets them make up their own mind down the road.
Visit the, admittedly windoze heavy, Cajun Clickers Computer Club for an idea of what a community, all volunteer computer club teaches and people want to know.
Basically this looks like they're beefing up their data controls, and centralizing existing data - as opposed to invasively gathering more data and infringing on privacy. What exactly is the problem, then???
Predicting drop out from atendence records and grades - what a concept. Teachers do this already they are the ones that will create the attendece records that will then be passed on to potential employers, loan agents and others who have no real business with the information. That's the problem with making teachers do this aditional chore. The central office should not even keep names in their records. All they need to know is how well each school is doing and why. It's the local schools responsiblity to make sure their students are doing well.
Oh well, welcome to the future of pre emptive judgement. It's not enough to follow the rules, you must do so cheerfully with enthusiasm. Miss a few days, for any reason, and a little mark will be activated by your name. You might get an embarasing visit from a school counseler who will just make sure everything is OK and your are not thinking of dropping out, or shooting your classmates.
buy your hardware from the few companies that make OS free, or Linux dedicated boxes.
Sure, I do this and get far superior hardware to any of the big rip-off box sellers like Dell or Gateway. This won't work in many situations though. Laptops and company roll outs are prominent examples.
Last time I looked, there were still no makers of OS free laptops. Two or three trolls pointed to one or two companies that sold what were really luggables or computers with many choices of Windoze. There, most people are better off buying used equipment. This sucks and it's exactly what Stevie faced.
Company roll outs are hard to devise as well. The small business puts themselves at great risk trying to build more than a few boxes at once. Even if you have bought and used a motherboard in the past, you can't be sure you will get the same thing next time and quirks on roll out are embarasing. Things to look out for are bios changes like the addition of a "bios virus checker" that sees lilo (and perhaps others) as a boot sector virus. If you can't disable this, you are screwed and have to push the roll out back while you fix things. This potential stall added to the time it will take you to put the things together needs to be talked about upfront before you get your boss or client in a jam. It puts you at a disadvantage to big dumb companies that only sell windoze boxes.
It would be better if big dumb companies acted honestly to begin with, and that's what cases like this will force. Steveie has presented a way to make selling windows only very expensive. It should be persued the same way big companies have been happy to persue DMCA and other abominations. Breach of contract is simple to prove but it takes time and effort big dumb companies don't expect people to put forth. Ha.
The thing that you do not want to do is be a nut case. Don't bash Microsoft...
That's right, but you should have quoted the rest of it. You let the company you are dealing with act in an unreasonable manner and then you present the record of that to a small claims court judge. The winner is,
"Your honor, I read the license agreement, and it said they'd give me a refund. But they won't do it." That's it. A simple contract dispute. Judges understand things like that.
The site is very good and this is worth doing if you want to buy a fancy laptop nice and new or if you are a small company buying a few dozen computers. His little web page describing computer vendor and microsoft behavior says all he needs to about the quality and worth of Microsoft software. I avoid the whole thing by building my own computers, like most people do. Sometimes you don't have the option. 10 computers is about $2000, well worth the time and trouble.
You and Bill Gates only hope that few people have the sense of self control it takes to do this. The EULA will have to be rewritten, because this stratagy will work. Who knows, companies might start to sell hardware with alternate or no OS if this costs them enough. Way to go Stevie! Let's make it hurt.
I'm not sure this will contribute much to your privacy, especiall on Windoze. A software approach using free software from the ground up might work better, but you won't hide from the RIAA.
The real question is, if the Key is USB, does the OS need to mediate between the SecureIDE subsystem and the USB key, or does the BIOS do it below the OS?
Yes, that's the real question, but why go through all the trouble to run your OS on something shitty like a DOS file system when all you want is an encrypted partition? If this is BIOS level crap, and it probably is, why not do the same thing with software, where you encypt what you want and only let certian users have the keys. I don't know how to set something like this up, but it can't be too much more work than the password system. If it is the relief promised and the hardware does passivly encrypt a whole IDE channel, then simply mount it up where you want your private information. Even then, the software solution might be more secure.
if you're getting sued and the court requires you to make the data accessible, saying you 'lost' the key is going to put you in jail.
Really? I suppose if they have a valid search warrent they can look at it, but you don't have to incriminate yourself. If they can't read your stuff, aren't they simply screwed when they try to prove your guilt and can't? You might get in trouble if you deliberatly destroyed evidence by pretending to co-operate and giving a password that deleted all of your shared music.
In any case, if you are running something like a music sharing system, they just plug into it and see what you have to offer. The point of sharing is, after all, to make what you have available.
900 people. It sounds like a log but didn't more people win the lottery last year?
I bet it will be like PC standards are. Nobody really conforms to all of them, 100%
Microsoft has given you low expectations.
pcmcia, compact flash, ISA and PCI all work great. I really like the fact that I can take my CF from my camera to my laptop or my PDA. The M$DOS file system may not have been free, but it's well known enough to have outlived Microsoft's use of it and will live on after they abandon it for their patented file systems. I also like the fact that CF can easily be used as an IDE drive and you can stick any filesystem you like on it. Standards in hardware that really nail down the interface are good and CF is a good example.
Those companies that follow the M$ way and make dinky devices that don't work are shunned and their crap does not sell. Yes, you can make a PCI card that won't talk or a USB device that takes some obsucre command language over the standard interface. If you can't use is without a Windoze driver, I don't want it. I have a few of these devices around and a windoze98 computer to talk to them. I refuse to buy XP as I know most of those devices I have won't have drivers for it. Microshaft tried to screw everyone. What they did was screw themselves.
As the goddess of scripts put it, " when things don't go perfectly - as we all know can happen when you're working with computers." That should be Microsoft infected computers. Oh the low expectations generated by Microsoft.
It's not just the focus of the website, it's the whole platform and it's bad attitude. It's Hosted on M$. You can't even look at their catalog if you are not using IE. They require you to have all sorts of M$ DRM turned on so they can grab all the information from you "primary" computer that they can. You can only download one song at a time, even though you bought the whole album. You must "verify" each song individually before you can play it, despite the fact that you bought them in a single purchase. When you have finally done all that, they require you to use a specific plugin for a specific CD burning software that does not work. When you ask them what you can do to fix the problem, they tell you it's your fault for using the wrong sofware and are ignorant of their own instructions. Total Microsoft, from start to blame shift!
I can't wait for Paladium, so that nothing else works. When that happens, music sales will really go to zero. Yes, it's going to get much worse. Legacy hardware and free software rock.
See "Bill Gates Dollars" for a proper perspective. While there are relatively few people with billions to blow trying to bribe whole countries, there are plenty of people with modest multi-million dollar nest eggs that might want that suit. Not being one of them, I'd be happy to sell that suit for what it's worth if I owned it. What would you do with it?
Nothing new.... It's a clamshell design which means that it's even less useful than the palm-top design. Chiclet keyboard, small screen, bad fonts.
Huh? That keyboard is like 5 times the size of the already very useful keyboard on the Zaurus or the wildly popular blackberry devices. I liked their little pointer device, but the new one's arrow keys look just as functional. Between that and tab complete and the very nice looking and very much big enough to be useful screen, this should be easier to use than the already easy to use Zaurus. It certianly kicks WinCE ass.
I guess it's nice that it runs QT which means development for it should be a breeze, but seeing as how the source kit for this is still under lock and key (it's not the same source as the palm-sized Zaurus), it's not yet Free.
Lottery Stats. I'm willing to bet that your chances of being served by the RIAA, in any form, are about as good as winning the lottery.
I like the idea of sharing files by musicians who give you permission. Besides promoting the right people, you make it harder for these dummies to do their impossible job. Shutting down all such alternate distribution is what this all about anyway. Give them exactly what they don't want.
Share free music. I like it. Just let them haul you to court and slap them with harassment. If they get enough people like you, that constitutes anti-competitive behavior of a type the Federal Governemnt should be interested in. It also would make a great class action lawsuit. Every single person dragged to court by one of these illegal supenas has suffered a real losses. I've never run one of these music sharing programs, but I think I'll start. Let them spider my free bytes and fuck themselves!
Basically, my idea was that each person's file swapping client would only make/accept connections to/from people that you trust: friends, family, etc.
The twist would be that the system would allow relaying of searches and of actual files. In other words, if I request a file that is on my friend's friend's computer, then the file has to come through the computer of our mutual friend.
You realize that this is the way AIDS gets around. Yes, I just compared the RIAA spyder to the AIDS virus.
I think it's time to stomp out the source. Don't buy CDs from record stores. Buy them from bands you like at the show and share them with your friends the traditional way, long ago covered by fair use. Bite me RIAA - you never brought me anything worthwhile anyway.
most computer geeks have trouble getting out of their chair, let alone run, I'd say they're in pretty deep trouble
What? With people like this doing chasing? He said, " there is not a rock in the world you can hide under if you are sharing files." Yeah, he looks like he knows all about living under a rock. Come out and see the light!
Mark Ishikawa. I'm sharing files, thousands of them on my Debian Mirror. You are welcome to come and get them at any time. It might help change that bad attitude of yours. All that bandwith you are wasting could be used to make people happy. You too, Coltrane. Microsoft and the RIAA are dying. There's a beter living to be made being nice to people and treating them with respect than there is to posting infamatory bullshit on Slashdot all day.
Compare prices by the rating. If the rating in milli-Amp-hours (mAh) is not on the battery or packaging, you don't want it. If you know your device's current draw, you can make a reasonable guese at how long your batteries will last. Conversly, you can get your device's average current draw from how long your batteries last. Wal Mart has reasonbly priced high capacity NMH. Between that and a fancy Radio Shack charger, I have few battery problems.
Good call. This works great for me too, but "rechargeable" devices can be a pain and I'm clueless about lithium type batteries.
I love the convenience of NMH. You can get reasonable quality NMH at the Walmart and an OK charger at Radio Shack. Radio Shack batteries are overpriced. I got the fancy charger with settings for my old NiCads and NMH, high and low capacity, and a discharge button to avoid memory effects on devices that don't drain the battery all the way. I keep a little plastic box of charged AA and another of AAA to make swap out easy. Cameras, cellphones, whatever mostly work great.
Sealed package NMH and NiCad are evil. I hate to death the adverts running in National Geographic about how, "it's easy to be green" with a picture of a frog on top of a dead cell phone battery. While the collection effort is commendable, packaging non-standard sized batteries with products is unforgivable. It's especially irksome when the batteries are NMH and the housing can easily contain standard sizes but they are welded together and glued shut. These packages create waste and are painful to use. A cell phone is typically NOT a good battery and they ruin NMH and NiCad quickly as well as take up all your sockets and make travel difficult. Converting these saves time and trouble. Cut them open, and epoxy in some springs from a Radio Shack "project" battery pack and you are back to normal and can toss the custom charger in the parts bin.
Lithium batteries time warp me right back to the land of multiple chargers. Is there any help for these devices? Are there standard chargers and battery sizes for these devices or am I doomed to pay Cannon $75 when that strange square battery fails? All the advantages of Lithium type batteries are undone by this. What's to do?
255 million downloads of Kazaa, 232 million of ICQ pro through Download.com that shows a real fear of Windows
Did you ever think that many of those downloads were by the same people who feel compelled to "rebuild" their windoze computers every two months? This shows very little trust or feeling of real ownership.
Just like any/. "discussion" on Microsoft's business practices.
That's the complaint alright, robot content generation. M$ must be up to Barkto 10 by now, with a whole class of VB objects for Slashdot DoS.
then my electric company would just charge more for less so they don't lose profits...damn
That, and they don't get to build a new plant and they have to fire a few people, like me. That's OK as it's better to have someone like me working on something productive. In the mean time, I think you were refering to something like this for roofs?
but it's easier to keep that 1929 Coal plant running and those power commisioners that have no fricking clue or care outside their pocket or circle of power than to change to current technology.
They have a clue and have been moving production to nuclear as fast as they can. Even single reactor plants designed in the 70's from late 60's technology are viable down to a wholesale electric price of about 2 cents/kWH. Only gas is cheaper or safer and gas is only ocasionally cheaper.
For compairison purposes, the nice 10 to 400MWe towers from Sandia have only managed to get their costs down to 5 cents/kWH, way cheaper than photovoltaics. That's impressive, but not there yet. 400MWe is as big as some of the first nuke plants, but those have grown to 1GW minimum.
People in the generating business will be happy to replace coal plants with solar just as soon as it's cheaper. Turkeys like Jack Welch don't like to waste money on anything but themselves. Do you think someone who begrudges his ex-wife anything would waste money on someone without enough sense to replace an outmoded pump? Get real.
The next time these machines get an update, they're going to Linux, and that's only when I know that things are going to work right.
To make sure everything "works right", I suggest you dual boot the machines that have specific hardware functions and other nasty traps that are difficult for the free software community to solve. This way, your clients get the best of both worlds and lose nothing. You might also consider keeping one latest and greatest Microsoft box around, but blind it to the network and get things on and off it with the other free operating system. If you really want to get fancy, look into Suse, which can run many Microsoft progams like Excell, Word and Outlook. My Microsoft translators are Star Office for file formats and a dual boot Debian and Windoze98 computer for leagcy hardware.
The point was, Linux isn't a major market share holder yet, and until it becomes one, the Linux community will have to play by the current rules, no matter how unfair they may seem.
Free software is better because it adheres to RFCs and other best practices. The rules being broken are silly Microsoft "standards". Microsoft's refusal to work with the rest of the world, combined with abusive licensing is why they are losing their grip.
... maybe if you have a 300mhz CPU, 64mb of RAM and a 2gb hard drive, it [XP] doesn't work too well... Bootvis.exe makes Windows boot faster.
I get great GUI performance out of 400MHz K6/2's for three people at a time. You can buy such a machine, new, for about $200. A P133 with 64MB RAM is usable under Debian stable and is closer to six years old. I don't "boot" any of my machines because I don't have to turn them off. An OS that does not run well on hardware like that is wasting resources on things the user neither asked for nor wants, like screwing up network settings and forgetting what hardware it has. Why would anyone spend money and subject themselves to M$'s humiliating EULAs for something that blows like that?
Actually, if you want to compare a cars radio to MS software- I think the obvious comparison is to Windows Media Player. It's free. Excellent quality. No advertisements. Does more than most of the competitors. Exportable playlists. Free Upgrades (Download from the fastest servers on the web.) Built right into the dash.
I'll give you that it's built into the dash. Microsoft makes it just about impossible to use anything else. Only the most dedicated windoze user could figure out how to undo it to use winamp or Apple's player instead. I lack such patience.
Everything else you believe is wrong. WMP is neither free or without costs. You must own a current M$ OS to have the WMP binary program, and that's very expensive. Other costs are a EULA that essentially gives M$ full read/write access to your computer, which they abuse with an avalanche of adverts. The quality may be good enough for you, but every other player and every other format is technically superior. The playlists are so unlexible as to be useless. The upgrades are forced and more likely to remove functionality from your entire OS. The next feature M$ is proudly promoting is files that "expire" and are erased without your consent. You probably already have a passport account, demonstrated to as insecure as any M$ thingy, and tied directly to your wallet. There you have it - you have to give up all privacy, take finacial risks, suffer adverts and pay for the ability to listen to music on M$ platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
900+ people and the most popular download only kicked over 12 times? The RIAA lost how many $ on that? The aritsts lost how many 1/10000th of a cent over this? Am I reading this wrong, or is this who thing adding up to a big ZERO?
Using Excell, yes. Their parsing is pathetic and would have required lots of manual editing.
spreadsheet abuse is one of my pet peeves
Data is a terrible thing to put into Microsoft.
Part of that is advocy. That involves teaching and listening. There are plenty of people here with a clue.
I've been teaching a newbies class for the last four or five months. I've worked in large and small companies and have some idea of what people want and what software can reasonably offer them.
Set up multiple OS for demonstration. This is the hardest thing for a newbie to do, so it's the best service to offer. Windows 101? Sure, teach it on KDE and give them a reasonable notion of why there's a log on, what it protects them from and what it gives them. Games, OK, windoze wins there for now. For everything else, free software is easier to use and maintain. "Sheilding" newbies from the "complexity" of different OS and desktop environments does them a disservice. They quickly master basic concepts of files and GUI. Giving them more makes them happier and lets them make up their own mind down the road.
Visit the, admittedly windoze heavy, Cajun Clickers Computer Club for an idea of what a community, all volunteer computer club teaches and people want to know.
Predicting drop out from atendence records and grades - what a concept. Teachers do this already they are the ones that will create the attendece records that will then be passed on to potential employers, loan agents and others who have no real business with the information. That's the problem with making teachers do this aditional chore. The central office should not even keep names in their records. All they need to know is how well each school is doing and why. It's the local schools responsiblity to make sure their students are doing well.
Oh well, welcome to the future of pre emptive judgement. It's not enough to follow the rules, you must do so cheerfully with enthusiasm. Miss a few days, for any reason, and a little mark will be activated by your name. You might get an embarasing visit from a school counseler who will just make sure everything is OK and your are not thinking of dropping out, or shooting your classmates.
Sure, I do this and get far superior hardware to any of the big rip-off box sellers like Dell or Gateway. This won't work in many situations though. Laptops and company roll outs are prominent examples.
Last time I looked, there were still no makers of OS free laptops. Two or three trolls pointed to one or two companies that sold what were really luggables or computers with many choices of Windoze. There, most people are better off buying used equipment. This sucks and it's exactly what Stevie faced.
Company roll outs are hard to devise as well. The small business puts themselves at great risk trying to build more than a few boxes at once. Even if you have bought and used a motherboard in the past, you can't be sure you will get the same thing next time and quirks on roll out are embarasing. Things to look out for are bios changes like the addition of a "bios virus checker" that sees lilo (and perhaps others) as a boot sector virus. If you can't disable this, you are screwed and have to push the roll out back while you fix things. This potential stall added to the time it will take you to put the things together needs to be talked about upfront before you get your boss or client in a jam. It puts you at a disadvantage to big dumb companies that only sell windoze boxes.
It would be better if big dumb companies acted honestly to begin with, and that's what cases like this will force. Steveie has presented a way to make selling windows only very expensive. It should be persued the same way big companies have been happy to persue DMCA and other abominations. Breach of contract is simple to prove but it takes time and effort big dumb companies don't expect people to put forth. Ha.
That's right, but you should have quoted the rest of it. You let the company you are dealing with act in an unreasonable manner and then you present the record of that to a small claims court judge. The winner is,
"Your honor, I read the license agreement, and it said they'd give me a refund. But they won't do it." That's it. A simple contract dispute. Judges understand things like that.
The site is very good and this is worth doing if you want to buy a fancy laptop nice and new or if you are a small company buying a few dozen computers. His little web page describing computer vendor and microsoft behavior says all he needs to about the quality and worth of Microsoft software. I avoid the whole thing by building my own computers, like most people do. Sometimes you don't have the option. 10 computers is about $2000, well worth the time and trouble.
You and Bill Gates only hope that few people have the sense of self control it takes to do this. The EULA will have to be rewritten, because this stratagy will work. Who knows, companies might start to sell hardware with alternate or no OS if this costs them enough. Way to go Stevie! Let's make it hurt.
The real question is, if the Key is USB, does the OS need to mediate between the SecureIDE subsystem and the USB key, or does the BIOS do it below the OS?
Yes, that's the real question, but why go through all the trouble to run your OS on something shitty like a DOS file system when all you want is an encrypted partition? If this is BIOS level crap, and it probably is, why not do the same thing with software, where you encypt what you want and only let certian users have the keys. I don't know how to set something like this up, but it can't be too much more work than the password system. If it is the relief promised and the hardware does passivly encrypt a whole IDE channel, then simply mount it up where you want your private information. Even then, the software solution might be more secure.
if you're getting sued and the court requires you to make the data accessible, saying you 'lost' the key is going to put you in jail.
Really? I suppose if they have a valid search warrent they can look at it, but you don't have to incriminate yourself. If they can't read your stuff, aren't they simply screwed when they try to prove your guilt and can't? You might get in trouble if you deliberatly destroyed evidence by pretending to co-operate and giving a password that deleted all of your shared music.
In any case, if you are running something like a music sharing system, they just plug into it and see what you have to offer. The point of sharing is, after all, to make what you have available.
900 people. It sounds like a log but didn't more people win the lottery last year?
Microsoft has given you low expectations.
pcmcia, compact flash, ISA and PCI all work great. I really like the fact that I can take my CF from my camera to my laptop or my PDA. The M$DOS file system may not have been free, but it's well known enough to have outlived Microsoft's use of it and will live on after they abandon it for their patented file systems. I also like the fact that CF can easily be used as an IDE drive and you can stick any filesystem you like on it. Standards in hardware that really nail down the interface are good and CF is a good example.
Those companies that follow the M$ way and make dinky devices that don't work are shunned and their crap does not sell. Yes, you can make a PCI card that won't talk or a USB device that takes some obsucre command language over the standard interface. If you can't use is without a Windoze driver, I don't want it. I have a few of these devices around and a windoze98 computer to talk to them. I refuse to buy XP as I know most of those devices I have won't have drivers for it. Microshaft tried to screw everyone. What they did was screw themselves.
It's not just the focus of the website, it's the whole platform and it's bad attitude. It's Hosted on M$. You can't even look at their catalog if you are not using IE. They require you to have all sorts of M$ DRM turned on so they can grab all the information from you "primary" computer that they can. You can only download one song at a time, even though you bought the whole album. You must "verify" each song individually before you can play it, despite the fact that you bought them in a single purchase. When you have finally done all that, they require you to use a specific plugin for a specific CD burning software that does not work. When you ask them what you can do to fix the problem, they tell you it's your fault for using the wrong sofware and are ignorant of their own instructions. Total Microsoft, from start to blame shift!
I can't wait for Paladium, so that nothing else works. When that happens, music sales will really go to zero. Yes, it's going to get much worse. Legacy hardware and free software rock.
See "Bill Gates Dollars" for a proper perspective. While there are relatively few people with billions to blow trying to bribe whole countries, there are plenty of people with modest multi-million dollar nest eggs that might want that suit. Not being one of them, I'd be happy to sell that suit for what it's worth if I owned it. What would you do with it?
Huh? That keyboard is like 5 times the size of the already very useful keyboard on the Zaurus or the wildly popular blackberry devices. I liked their little pointer device, but the new one's arrow keys look just as functional. Between that and tab complete and the very nice looking and very much big enough to be useful screen, this should be easier to use than the already easy to use Zaurus. It certianly kicks WinCE ass.
I guess it's nice that it runs QT which means development for it should be a breeze, but seeing as how the source kit for this is still under lock and key (it's not the same source as the palm-sized Zaurus), it's not yet Free.
Open Zaurus works on this. The Debian style feed is about as free as it gets.
I like the idea of sharing files by musicians who give you permission. Besides promoting the right people, you make it harder for these dummies to do their impossible job. Shutting down all such alternate distribution is what this all about anyway. Give them exactly what they don't want.
You realize that this is the way AIDS gets around. Yes, I just compared the RIAA spyder to the AIDS virus.
I think it's time to stomp out the source. Don't buy CDs from record stores. Buy them from bands you like at the show and share them with your friends the traditional way, long ago covered by fair use. Bite me RIAA - you never brought me anything worthwhile anyway.
What? With people like this doing chasing? He said, " there is not a rock in the world you can hide under if you are sharing files." Yeah, he looks like he knows all about living under a rock. Come out and see the light!
Mark Ishikawa. I'm sharing files, thousands of them on my Debian Mirror. You are welcome to come and get them at any time. It might help change that bad attitude of yours. All that bandwith you are wasting could be used to make people happy. You too, Coltrane. Microsoft and the RIAA are dying. There's a beter living to be made being nice to people and treating them with respect than there is to posting infamatory bullshit on Slashdot all day.
Battery Space is good, thank you.
I love the convenience of NMH. You can get reasonable quality NMH at the Walmart and an OK charger at Radio Shack. Radio Shack batteries are overpriced. I got the fancy charger with settings for my old NiCads and NMH, high and low capacity, and a discharge button to avoid memory effects on devices that don't drain the battery all the way. I keep a little plastic box of charged AA and another of AAA to make swap out easy. Cameras, cellphones, whatever mostly work great.
Sealed package NMH and NiCad are evil. I hate to death the adverts running in National Geographic about how, "it's easy to be green" with a picture of a frog on top of a dead cell phone battery. While the collection effort is commendable, packaging non-standard sized batteries with products is unforgivable. It's especially irksome when the batteries are NMH and the housing can easily contain standard sizes but they are welded together and glued shut. These packages create waste and are painful to use. A cell phone is typically NOT a good battery and they ruin NMH and NiCad quickly as well as take up all your sockets and make travel difficult. Converting these saves time and trouble. Cut them open, and epoxy in some springs from a Radio Shack "project" battery pack and you are back to normal and can toss the custom charger in the parts bin.
Lithium batteries time warp me right back to the land of multiple chargers. Is there any help for these devices? Are there standard chargers and battery sizes for these devices or am I doomed to pay Cannon $75 when that strange square battery fails? All the advantages of Lithium type batteries are undone by this. What's to do?
Did you ever think that many of those downloads were by the same people who feel compelled to "rebuild" their windoze computers every two months? This shows very little trust or feeling of real ownership.
That, and they don't get to build a new plant and they have to fire a few people, like me. That's OK as it's better to have someone like me working on something productive. In the mean time, I think you were refering to something like this for roofs?
They have a clue and have been moving production to nuclear as fast as they can. Even single reactor plants designed in the 70's from late 60's technology are viable down to a wholesale electric price of about 2 cents/kWH. Only gas is cheaper or safer and gas is only ocasionally cheaper.
For compairison purposes, the nice 10 to 400MWe towers from Sandia have only managed to get their costs down to 5 cents/kWH, way cheaper than photovoltaics. That's impressive, but not there yet. 400MWe is as big as some of the first nuke plants, but those have grown to 1GW minimum.
People in the generating business will be happy to replace coal plants with solar just as soon as it's cheaper. Turkeys like Jack Welch don't like to waste money on anything but themselves. Do you think someone who begrudges his ex-wife anything would waste money on someone without enough sense to replace an outmoded pump? Get real.
To make sure everything "works right", I suggest you dual boot the machines that have specific hardware functions and other nasty traps that are difficult for the free software community to solve. This way, your clients get the best of both worlds and lose nothing. You might also consider keeping one latest and greatest Microsoft box around, but blind it to the network and get things on and off it with the other free operating system. If you really want to get fancy, look into Suse, which can run many Microsoft progams like Excell, Word and Outlook. My Microsoft translators are Star Office for file formats and a dual boot Debian and Windoze98 computer for leagcy hardware.
The point was, Linux isn't a major market share holder yet, and until it becomes one, the Linux community will have to play by the current rules, no matter how unfair they may seem.
Free software is better because it adheres to RFCs and other best practices. The rules being broken are silly Microsoft "standards". Microsoft's refusal to work with the rest of the world, combined with abusive licensing is why they are losing their grip.
I get great GUI performance out of 400MHz K6/2's for three people at a time. You can buy such a machine, new, for about $200. A P133 with 64MB RAM is usable under Debian stable and is closer to six years old. I don't "boot" any of my machines because I don't have to turn them off. An OS that does not run well on hardware like that is wasting resources on things the user neither asked for nor wants, like screwing up network settings and forgetting what hardware it has. Why would anyone spend money and subject themselves to M$'s humiliating EULAs for something that blows like that?
I'll give you that it's built into the dash. Microsoft makes it just about impossible to use anything else. Only the most dedicated windoze user could figure out how to undo it to use winamp or Apple's player instead. I lack such patience.
Everything else you believe is wrong. WMP is neither free or without costs. You must own a current M$ OS to have the WMP binary program, and that's very expensive. Other costs are a EULA that essentially gives M$ full read/write access to your computer, which they abuse with an avalanche of adverts. The quality may be good enough for you, but every other player and every other format is technically superior. The playlists are so unlexible as to be useless. The upgrades are forced and more likely to remove functionality from your entire OS. The next feature M$ is proudly promoting is files that "expire" and are erased without your consent. You probably already have a passport account, demonstrated to as insecure as any M$ thingy, and tied directly to your wallet. There you have it - you have to give up all privacy, take finacial risks, suffer adverts and pay for the ability to listen to music on M$ platforms.
Why does anyone like that kind of shit?