Not in the US. A good number of people commute from home to work and need a computer that is portable enough to move, but not necessarily to use in a mobile environment. Assuming that you're a student based on your backback comment, then yes, this is not targetted at you, nor are those huge 3" thick Dells I see here at work. However if you need power and stare at the screen all day, yet need to take your work with you to a hotel/home/alternate place of work that has a desk, then this laptop would be easier to use than one with a 12" screen
Perhaps it isn't that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, but rather people aren't ready for linux. I like Linux for the reasons that thus guy doesn't! I like compiling my own programs and I like editing my/etc/lilo.conf and my/etc/fstab. I like compiling my own kernel. It gives me a feeling of intimacy with the Operating System because I know exactly what is going on.
As for his X server gripes, I don't have any of his problems. My fonts out of Redhat and Mandrake are fine, I've got 3-D on my Radeon out of the box and I can play Tux Racer, my 2-d is as fast as on my windows boxes.
He says he hates recompiling his kernel every time he gets new hardware. What is wrong with the default distro kernel? They're usually full of everything conceivable, and you can even switch motherboards and usually have it boot flawlessly. Do that with Windows and you'll be fighting with drivers and IRQ conflicts as Windows tries to initialize the non-existant hardware before your new stuff. In my experience, recompiling the kernel/running kudzu is MUCH faster than messing with drivers. I switched all the hardware on one of my dual boot boxes, and Redhat was working in about 5 minutes with no reboots. Windows98 took about 2 hours before I just formatted and reinstalled.
Try this They seem to have some anime stuff, but I'm not sure what you like...
This company rents you unlimited DVDs for a monthly fee. You can have 3 DVDs out at a time, and when you return them (at company's expense) you can get your next selection (shipped at their expense as well). No late fees or anything since you pay by month not quantity.
I don't know anything about this company but I've heard people talk about it at work, and they're apparently pretty good except getting new releases might be difficult (not a problem if all you want is anime, I suppose.)
I feel that having a large following of tech fans is a plus, because a larger amount of them understand things such as value and capitalism. Reading slashdot user comments shows people always telling us to support artists that we like by buying their stuff. Look at Mandrakesoft. They say they're out of money, put up a donate link, and bam, cash flow. Why? Because their product has more value than $0 to many people who use it.
It is the non tech people who hurt sales; they see $0 vs $19 and don't consider things like quality, bandwidth, time, and value as measures of money. A lot of my non-tech friends used to buy CDs, but now don't understand why the money needs to change hands.
It is those people who will download with no intention of buying, not tech savy economically conscious slashdotters. (In most cases at least)
On the other hand, this allows one to build a DIVX player into some old hardware. Imagine if the board does so well that it works on a low power fanless Pentium p54c processor, Flex ATX power supply with a large quiet hard drive. Rather than having a fairly loud and possibly large duron system, this could take dumpster diving to a new level!
There are only so many mp3 players, keychains, and paperweights that can be useful with all those old processors that people have laying around.
This board should therefore do very well in the home-brew market.
At the time of this posting, 3 of the 5 posts moderated over 4 have mentioned Newegg.com. That should tell you something, and I agree with the posters. Prices are good, and service is good too. I've done an address correction with them as well as a defective product return. With good timely results.
For other companies, check out www.resellerratings.com which is a user contributed site that ranks the quality of companies. I think they're using a 10 scale now, so I make it a rule only to order from companies ranked 8 and over.
on one hand you want the government to abide by the rules set forth for this, but you do not want the government to abide by the rules about enforcing the DCMA?
False. The DMCA violates my rights and shouldn't be a law.
Snow Crash's Metaverse but without the VR stuff. Great... and I was hoping to be one of the early ones so that I could drive around in a huge pirate ship at the speed of light:)
I'm not entirely up to date as to the security or privacy issues since I only visited recently, but here is why a lot of people choose to use it: it is fast. In fact, if you have no other cards with magnetic stripes on them, you can just stick your purse/backpack/wallet close to the reader and it will take your money. It is that fast.
Of course, if privacy or security is a concern one can always opt for cash which works just as well.
worked out the theoretical maximum possible power a laptop computer could posess
I didn't read about this, but it seems that unless he absolutely and rigidly defined what a laptop is (which I don't think is necessarily definable considering what a "portable" from 30 years ago was and therefore what it might mean in another 30 years) he is going to feel very silly and very wrong in a short while.
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way in the PC world. In PC laptops, the chip maker provides specs to the laptop manufacturer and says, "be able to cool x watts of heat in your next design."
The laptop manufacturer has to listen since nobody really has enough of the market to make the chip manufacturer do otherwise.
It depends what you need them for. I'm not sure where you get the $600 per unit quote from, but assuming you recycle most of the things, I'd say $300 a unit is likely sufficient.
For simple office work, a $50 Duron and something like a $100 moderate quality motherboard should suffice, throw in a $100 hard drive to increase speed, maybe add 128 megs of ram for a little boost too, without topping $300
For 3-d or crazy amounts of compiling, you can probably upgrade to a 1.6ghz Athlon XP and a new hard drive as well as DDR RAM for under $500.
What I would do is build a couple dual Athlon linux servers and compile code on them while doing development and small compiles locally on the current 400mhz machines, but it depends on your application.
bots that talk to children...leave it to a greedy corporation to start targeting the most naive and vulnerable demographic there is.
How is this wrong? If advertising to kids is wrong, then you'd better not let your kids watch TV, read magazines, or go outside! Besides, it isn't like the kids have credit cards and are going to purchase themselves into debt or anything.
This might have some merit if when the poster said "targeting the most naive and vulnerable demographic there is" he meant parents, in which case he is probably right:)
Read this for more information and specific model numbers.
I just bought a "Toshiba 3005" from them, and since they don't come default operating systems I didn't have to may the M$ tax and get an extra battery instead.
Heat sink shims are for balancing the pressure of the heat sink on the CPU die so that the heat is transferred evenly and that the core doesn't get damaged by unequal pressure. It does nothing for cooling. You could use concrete if you wanted to, it is just that nobody would buy that because it isn't a colorful shade of copper.
Perhaps a good way to implement a lockout is that once lockout occurs it will still accept passwords but it must be typed in 3 times in a row at 15 seconds apart. It would only take 45 seconds to log in (as opposed to getting locked out for x minutes) but the delay and requirement would be a buffer against a cracking program.
A good password is not necessarily one that is random characters. In my experience, an easy to remember one that is difficult to crack involves building one from common terms.
Let's take for example a Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme. Take a 2 syllable word, say "zaphod" Take a number, of course "42" Put the number between the syllables word: zaph42od. It is still pronouncable, and you know where it came from, but now it is a common word that has numbers not at the end, but inside it, so even cracking programs will have a significantly more difficult time randomly generating it.
The other technique I use is to also hit the last key twice: zaph42odd. It ofuscates it further but at the same time has a minimal cost to you for remembering it.
So, even if you're a lamer whose password is "password," changing it to pass43wordd makes it significantly harder to crack but just as easy to remember.
Re:there's always a deal to be found...
on
Low-end Laptops?
·
· Score: 3, Funny
One of my friends worked at Staples and when somebody stole a laptop they were forbidden to chase them because it would create a hostile environment for the other customers.
Slashdot Mirror
Today's Penny Arcade comic pretty much sums up this argument.
Not in the US. A good number of people commute from home to work and need a computer that is portable enough to move, but not necessarily to use in a mobile environment. Assuming that you're a student based on your backback comment, then yes, this is not targetted at you, nor are those huge 3" thick Dells I see here at work. However if you need power and stare at the screen all day, yet need to take your work with you to a hotel/home/alternate place of work that has a desk, then this laptop would be easier to use than one with a 12" screen
Perhaps it isn't that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, but rather people aren't ready for linux. I like Linux for the reasons that thus guy doesn't! I like compiling my own programs and I like editing my /etc/lilo.conf and my /etc/fstab. I like compiling my own kernel. It gives me a feeling of intimacy with the Operating System because I know exactly what is going on.
As for his X server gripes, I don't have any of his problems. My fonts out of Redhat and Mandrake are fine, I've got 3-D on my Radeon out of the box and I can play Tux Racer, my 2-d is as fast as on my windows boxes.
He says he hates recompiling his kernel every time he gets new hardware. What is wrong with the default distro kernel? They're usually full of everything conceivable, and you can even switch motherboards and usually have it boot flawlessly. Do that with Windows and you'll be fighting with drivers and IRQ conflicts as Windows tries to initialize the non-existant hardware before your new stuff. In my experience, recompiling the kernel/running kudzu is MUCH faster than messing with drivers. I switched all the hardware on one of my dual boot boxes, and Redhat was working in about 5 minutes with no reboots. Windows98 took about 2 hours before I just formatted and reinstalled.
Unlike this guy, I'm never going back. Ever.
It's because the familys surrounding the kidnapping are always "whities" :)
Try this
They seem to have some anime stuff, but I'm not sure what you like...
This company rents you unlimited DVDs for a monthly fee. You can have 3 DVDs out at a time, and when you return them (at company's expense) you can get your next selection (shipped at their expense as well). No late fees or anything since you pay by month not quantity.
I don't know anything about this company but I've heard people talk about it at work, and they're apparently pretty good except getting new releases might be difficult (not a problem if all you want is anime, I suppose.)
A sign at the door reminding people to turn it off?
I know the theaters I go to don't have them. I'm sure a lot of it is people forgetting to turn them off (happens at school during classes too)
I feel that having a large following of tech fans is a plus, because a larger amount of them understand things such as value and capitalism. Reading slashdot user comments shows people always telling us to support artists that we like by buying their stuff. Look at Mandrakesoft. They say they're out of money, put up a donate link, and bam, cash flow. Why? Because their product has more value than $0 to many people who use it.
It is the non tech people who hurt sales; they see $0 vs $19 and don't consider things like quality, bandwidth, time, and value as measures of money. A lot of my non-tech friends used to buy CDs, but now don't understand why the money needs to change hands.
It is those people who will download with no intention of buying, not tech savy economically conscious slashdotters. (In most cases at least)
On the other hand, this allows one to build a DIVX player into some old hardware. Imagine if the board does so well that it works on a low power fanless Pentium p54c processor, Flex ATX power supply with a large quiet hard drive. Rather than having a fairly loud and possibly large duron system, this could take dumpster diving to a new level!
There are only so many mp3 players, keychains, and paperweights that can be useful with all those old processors that people have laying around.
This board should therefore do very well in the home-brew market.
At the time of this posting, 3 of the 5 posts moderated over 4 have mentioned Newegg.com. That should tell you something, and I agree with the posters. Prices are good, and service is good too. I've done an address correction with them as well as a defective product return. With good timely results.
For other companies, check out www.resellerratings.com which is a user contributed site that ranks the quality of companies. I think they're using a 10 scale now, so I make it a rule only to order from companies ranked 8 and over.
on one hand you want the government to abide by the rules set forth for this, but you do not want the government to abide by the rules about enforcing the DCMA?
False. The DMCA violates my rights and shouldn't be a law.
Snow Crash's Metaverse but without the VR stuff. Great... and I was hoping to be one of the early ones so that I could drive around in a huge pirate ship at the speed of light :)
I'm not entirely up to date as to the security or privacy issues since I only visited recently, but here is why a lot of people choose to use it: it is fast. In fact, if you have no other cards with magnetic stripes on them, you can just stick your purse/backpack/wallet close to the reader and it will take your money. It is that fast.
Of course, if privacy or security is a concern one can always opt for cash which works just as well.
"Sorry, but we asked Microsoft and they said no."
worked out the theoretical maximum possible power a laptop computer could posess
I didn't read about this, but it seems that unless he absolutely and rigidly defined what a laptop is (which I don't think is necessarily definable considering what a "portable" from 30 years ago was and therefore what it might mean in another 30 years) he is going to feel very silly and very wrong in a short while.
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way in the PC world. In PC laptops, the chip maker provides specs to the laptop manufacturer and says, "be able to cool x watts of heat in your next design."
The laptop manufacturer has to listen since nobody really has enough of the market to make the chip manufacturer do otherwise.
It depends what you need them for. I'm not sure where you get the $600 per unit quote from, but assuming you recycle most of the things, I'd say $300 a unit is likely sufficient.
For simple office work, a $50 Duron and something like a $100 moderate quality motherboard should suffice, throw in a $100 hard drive to increase speed, maybe add 128 megs of ram for a little boost too, without topping $300
For 3-d or crazy amounts of compiling, you can probably upgrade to a 1.6ghz Athlon XP and a new hard drive as well as DDR RAM for under $500.
What I would do is build a couple dual Athlon linux servers and compile code on them while doing development and small compiles locally on the current 400mhz machines, but it depends on your application.
bots that talk to children...leave it to a greedy corporation to start targeting the most naive and vulnerable demographic there is.
:)
How is this wrong? If advertising to kids is wrong, then you'd better not let your kids watch TV, read magazines, or go outside! Besides, it isn't like the kids have credit cards and are going to purchase themselves into debt or anything.
This might have some merit if when the poster said "targeting the most naive and vulnerable demographic there is" he meant parents, in which case he is probably right
Future wars will be fought as simulations too, right?
We can only wish.
First the guy calls himself a pirate because he rips his CDs onto his computer. Wrong
Second, he calls P2P software illegal. Wrong.
He must have purchased a copy of the RIAA's Dictionary of Commercial English.
One of the other big names is Compal.
Read this for more information and specific model numbers.
I just bought a "Toshiba 3005" from them, and since they don't come default operating systems I didn't have to may the M$ tax and get an extra battery instead.
Heat sink shims are for balancing the pressure of the heat sink on the CPU die so that the heat is transferred evenly and that the core doesn't get damaged by unequal pressure. It does nothing for cooling. You could use concrete if you wanted to, it is just that nobody would buy that because it isn't a colorful shade of copper.
Luckily, Enlightenment hasn't been updated since the days when 200mhz was the norm :)
Perhaps a good way to implement a lockout is that once lockout occurs it will still accept passwords but it must be typed in 3 times in a row at 15 seconds apart. It would only take 45 seconds to log in (as opposed to getting locked out for x minutes) but the delay and requirement would be a buffer against a cracking program.
A good password is not necessarily one that is random characters. In my experience, an easy to remember one that is difficult to crack involves building one from common terms.
Let's take for example a Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme.
Take a 2 syllable word, say "zaphod"
Take a number, of course "42"
Put the number between the syllables word: zaph42od. It is still pronouncable, and you know where it came from, but now it is a common word that has numbers not at the end, but inside it, so even cracking programs will have a significantly more difficult time randomly generating it.
The other technique I use is to also hit the last key twice: zaph42odd. It ofuscates it further but at the same time has a minimal cost to you for remembering it.
So, even if you're a lamer whose password is "password," changing it to pass43wordd makes it significantly harder to crack but just as easy to remember.
One of my friends worked at Staples and when somebody stole a laptop they were forbidden to chase them because it would create a hostile environment for the other customers.