So... you want to read/write email and surf the net? Nothing more, nothing too fancy?
Get an al-cheapo terminal:
1. That's a (used?) PC with max. 1GHz and about 128/256 MB RAM in it (easy to get, cheap, nobody wants them),
2. put Gentoo Linux on it (free, fat step-by-step installation handbook),
3. install Firefox or Mozilla (the single command "emerge mozilla" will do just this for you, no brains needed),
4. install AdBlock,
5. get a simple firewall (usually in your router - good enough for now),
6. Profit! Er, I mean, That's it!
Your system will be nice and safe, you can email about as much as you want (I use Mozilla for the Email as well - dirt easy to setup), you can surf safely...
To simply try this out, all you need to do is get a cheap piece of hardware, put Knoppix in the CD, and boot. See if you like it. If you do, go to step 2 above.
*shrug*
Anything more complex (online games, MMORPG, etc) will require a bit more thought and effort. But this simple system, used just for mom & pops internet activities, will do fine otherwise.
Ciao, Klaus
PS: (Yes, yes, it can do much more, printer spooler, router, bla bla, I know. This is just TSS (The Simple Setup)).
...my guess is that messages (crash info, bad weather, congestion) will quickly move down the highway... and the cop car in the middle will get the extra hidden bits, as in license plate + speed for every car around them.
Yes, in 1986 I first got into contact with 'Turbo Pascal'. And Turbo it was, with integrated debugger (showed you the line where your error was - in the editor!), graphics support, LOGO add-on - and dirt cheap.
I switched to them, and never went back. Followed them through Borland Pascal into Delphi, and still love it. Every time I see people use the MS compilers, I'm surprised. Slooooow. Stupid. Lots of irritating edges and meat hooks. Delphi ist just screamingly fast (I rebuild my entire app - well over 80.000 lines - in a few seconds), tight, exceptionally good, and it's used in Europe quite a lot. Heck, they even made a Linux version: Kylix.
The problem Borland has is their Sales & PR Dept. Always been like that. Try visiting their site (http://www.borland.com) and try to guess what they are producing. Managers? Yuppie-toys? Expensive consultants? You'd never believe that they make anything useful at all, judging from their pages.
I'd *love* one of these. Not for turning off irritating TVs in restaurants and the like. If a restaurant has a TV, I'll leave, and won't come back.
No, it's when I go shopping. Over here in Germany, for example, is a place called 'OBI', which sells tons of useful stuff for making other stuff. Tools, screws, wood, doors, lights, desks - you name it. I spend a lot of time there, thinking if I should buy a certain something. And - usually right next to me - is a small TV set showing an advertisement for a product. Which is 30 seconds long. And repeats ad infinitum the same advert.
Drives me nuts, and usually causes me to leave without buying whatever I was looking at. So I'm forced to wear an MP3-player. But one of these things would bring blissful silence instead...
Actually, the computers decision had little to do with tic-tac-toe (although he did play that as well) Instead, he ran through all possible permutations of nuclear war, and always came up with the same answer: no winner. Quote: "What a strange game - the only way to win is not to play."
But then, hey, surely I'm preaching to the converted - you must *all* have seen that movie.
Wait... I said "No Problem"? But I loathe ads! It's the reason I don't have a TV or even a radio!
Ah, but it won't matter in games. See, when you buy a game these days, the first thing you do is download a crack for it, so you don't need the CD in your drive all the time.
You want to put stinking advertisements in my games? Hey, I'll just download the crack *and* an ad-crack.
See, I don't have a TV. Or a radio. Simply because not only are they exclusively full of trash, they're also full of advertising, which I detest deeply (it's aimed at the lowest common denominator - which I am *not* part of).
So, I don't pay the GEZ.
Now, suddenly I have to pay the GEZ to fund some broadcasting agency I couldn't give a flying rats fart for? Yes? Because my PC could - could! - be upgraded easily and used to actually see TV. That's the reason. That's the only reason the powerful tool on my desk is going to cost me money every month, and not just a couple of cents. And without me getting anything at all in return, mind you.
I drove in a smart car for quite a while here in Germany. Okay, it was not the smart Bubblecar, but the smart Roadster - smaller and flatter. It drove very well. And when I had a serious accident last October (5 cars got destroyed in it), I didn't have a scratch on me, and neither did my girlfriend - while the car looked like a banana somebody had kicked in the front.
Our boss drives one and likes it (he used to drive a - believe me! - Porsche Carrera), and my doctor also drives one (used to have a Renault 2CV;).
They're popular because they're small, useful, low on petrol-usage, and work well even on our Autobahn.
(Nope, I'm not connected. I just really like them)
I *know* I wouldn't buy a piece of software called 'Echelon'. Perhaps you've forgotten it already, but that's the name of the US spy system, used to spy on everybody including its 'allies'.
We found quite a big network here in Europe, and were not pleased at all. The citizens are even less pleased by the fact that nothing serious was done about it.
Apologies if I sound angry at this, but the word 'Echelon' triggers dark thoughts.
...is the fact that you need a highly specific piece of software to even be able to *use* it.
And that is: MS Office XP. Let's not fight about MS or !MS, but the idea that you can only use a rather expensive, general-purpose hardware device if you use the latest version of an expensive (and in my eyes, not very useful) software product from another company is simply ridiculous.
Goody. Let's make a list of game companies interested in this appalling concept. So far I have found:
* Activision, Inc * Atari * Ubisoft
No need to buy games from these people, is there?
And what a lovely quote in the FA: "It's like when I played 'Grand Theft Auto' for the first time," he said. "I thought to myself how much better it would be if the signs were real."
Bah. Do I have to tell you how massively irritating the 'real' signs would have been, compared to the rather amusing 'false' ones? Just shows that these people have absolutely no idea whatsoever about what makes a game.
Little, slightly OT, example: Roller Coaster Tycoon. Has 'poor graphics, no 3D'. Well, looks like lots of people (including me, I might add) rather like isometric 2D graphics, and RCT with all add-ons sold over 7 million copies...
The G80 is nice, but sports the Windows Keys, which I certainly don't need.
I love my IBM keyboard (from '89). I don't mind the noise, my cow-orkers have learned to live with it (we work 2 to an office), and the weight makes it a perfect LART should need arise.
The online cartoons - once again - show us how the world works. Here you can find the difference between Hollywoods form of dealing with intruders, and The Real Worlds:
Look, I'm sorry, I really don't mean to troll... but why all this info about Longhorn? In the past, Microsoft has told us a lot about the next OS. What it'll do. How great it'll be. How safe. How good.
And then, when you had the actual CD(s) in hand, it turned out to be less, to be announced, to be patched, to be in the next version...
I don't care about Longhorn. It's years away. Many years. When it's promised to show up within the next three months, I'll be interested. And I'll try it out. And I'll look at a lot of reviews. And I'll read the hatred from Slashdot;)
Way back when a Commodore 64 was still the Latest and Greatest, a friend of mine bought himself a disk drive for it. While it was not called The Tortoise for its amazing speed, it way way, way better than a tape.
Except that his little brother kept fiddling with it. So I got him a keyboard lock (circular keys were also a pretty new thing), which he soldered onto the data connection to the disk drive.
Sadly, his soldering skills were not that hot. However, his C64 was, when 230V shot through the data lines from the drive into the computer...
Waaaay back when, I was - amongst other things - selling Olivetti M24s in Cape Town. Great fun, lovely PCs except for the very dust-sensitive keyboard.
Sold one to a customer who insisted on seeing it work. Hey, no problem. I opened the boxes, hooked everything up, turned on the power - and the power supply burst into flames. Whoops.
I keep hearing all kinds of curses, rants and shoutings about this movie (no, it hasn't opened in Europe yet).
Mainly, I keep hearing about 'lies'. Ladies and Gentlemen, you may assume that he does not lie. That he has a lawyer very carefully check every single fact (as he did in his last film and his books). Because if he didn't, he would be sued.
He's not being sued, despite meeting a lot of hate. Thus he is not lying. The rest of his movie is debatable - I can't join in until I've seen it.
>Who I am beginning to hope will start to react to this kind of thing is our governments.
Oh, no. Please not. You do realize how completely helpless the gubmint is in such things? It will take several years, cost a fortune, be completely worthless, cause no end of trouble in environments it was not designed for, and finally be used for DRM/DMCA/AntiTerror/whatever.
Don't fine MS. Just have it tell people that there are solutions out there which are not only better, but also cheaper. Most of them still don't know.
Ever had geese living in your garden? I did. They shit huge amounts right in front of your door, they wake you at 4 a.m., and they eat the (dry) dogfood.
Wow. I can't believe the cubicles described here, some of them even in good terms ("room to breathe, shoulder-high walls"). I've seen people working in such places. I've been offered positions in companies who place their programmers in such cubicles, something resembling a swine-farm.
No. No thanks.
Give me an office. Make it single. Make me choose the amount of light in it. A windows is a good idea, if I can darken it as necessary. Free water/cola/orange juice/etc. A gym nearby. Give me a huge desk, a big bookshelf, a good chair, a powerful PC, and then leave me alone.
I guarantee a *much* better result, for low costs.
Slashdot Mirror
So... you want to read/write email and surf the net? Nothing more, nothing too fancy?
Get an al-cheapo terminal:
1. That's a (used?) PC with max. 1GHz and about 128/256 MB RAM in it (easy to get, cheap, nobody wants them),
2. put Gentoo Linux on it (free, fat step-by-step installation handbook),
3. install Firefox or Mozilla (the single command "emerge mozilla" will do just this for you, no brains needed),
4. install AdBlock,
5. get a simple firewall (usually in your router - good enough for now),
6. Profit!
Er, I mean, That's it!
Your system will be nice and safe, you can email about as much as you want (I use Mozilla for the Email as well - dirt easy to setup), you can surf safely...
To simply try this out, all you need to do is get a cheap piece of hardware, put Knoppix in the CD, and boot. See if you like it. If you do, go to step 2 above.
*shrug*
Anything more complex (online games, MMORPG, etc) will require a bit more thought and effort.
But this simple system, used just for mom & pops internet activities, will do fine otherwise.
Ciao,
Klaus
PS: (Yes, yes, it can do much more, printer spooler, router, bla bla, I know. This is just TSS (The Simple Setup)).
...my guess is that messages (crash info, bad weather, congestion) will quickly move down the highway... and the cop car in the middle will get the extra hidden bits, as in license plate + speed for every car around them.
No thanks.
Yes, in 1986 I first got into contact with 'Turbo Pascal'. And Turbo it was, with integrated debugger (showed you the line where your error was - in the editor!), graphics support, LOGO add-on - and dirt cheap.
I switched to them, and never went back. Followed them through Borland Pascal into Delphi, and still love it.
Every time I see people use the MS compilers, I'm surprised. Slooooow. Stupid. Lots of irritating edges and meat hooks.
Delphi ist just screamingly fast (I rebuild my entire app - well over 80.000 lines - in a few seconds), tight, exceptionally good, and it's used in Europe quite a lot. Heck, they even made a Linux version: Kylix.
The problem Borland has is their Sales & PR Dept. Always been like that. Try visiting their site (http://www.borland.com) and try to guess what they are producing. Managers? Yuppie-toys? Expensive consultants?
You'd never believe that they make anything useful at all, judging from their pages.
They have an applet in their ads?
In fact, Slashdot has ads? Haven't seen them in a long time.
Mozzi + Adblock are your friends.
I'd *love* one of these.
Not for turning off irritating TVs in restaurants and the like. If a restaurant has a TV, I'll leave, and won't come back.
No, it's when I go shopping. Over here in Germany, for example, is a place called 'OBI', which sells tons of useful stuff for making other stuff. Tools, screws, wood, doors, lights, desks - you name it.
I spend a lot of time there, thinking if I should buy a certain something. And - usually right next to me - is a small TV set showing an advertisement for a product. Which is 30 seconds long. And repeats ad infinitum the same advert.
Drives me nuts, and usually causes me to leave without buying whatever I was looking at.
So I'm forced to wear an MP3-player. But one of these things would bring blissful silence instead...
Actually, the computers decision had little to do with tic-tac-toe (although he did play that as well)
Instead, he ran through all possible permutations of nuclear war, and always came up with the same answer: no winner.
Quote: "What a strange game - the only way to win is not to play."
But then, hey, surely I'm preaching to the converted - you must *all* have seen that movie.
Wait... I said "No Problem"? But I loathe ads! It's the reason I don't have a TV or even a radio!
Ah, but it won't matter in games. See, when you buy a game these days, the first thing you do is download a crack for it, so you don't need the CD in your drive all the time.
You want to put stinking advertisements in my games? Hey, I'll just download the crack *and* an ad-crack.
No worries, mate.
Am I the only one who immediately wanted to see these charts in high-res?
m l
Well, here you can get them:
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM340NKPZD_index_1.ht
I care. A lot.
See, I don't have a TV. Or a radio. Simply because not only are they exclusively full of trash, they're also full of advertising, which I detest deeply (it's aimed at the lowest common denominator - which I am *not* part of).
So, I don't pay the GEZ.
Now, suddenly I have to pay the GEZ to fund some broadcasting agency I couldn't give a flying rats fart for? Yes? Because my PC could - could! - be upgraded easily and used to actually see TV.
That's the reason.
That's the only reason the powerful tool on my desk is going to cost me money every month, and not just a couple of cents. And without me getting anything at all in return, mind you.
Bah.
Trust me - they're safe.
;).
I drove in a smart car for quite a while here in Germany. Okay, it was not the smart Bubblecar, but the smart Roadster - smaller and flatter.
It drove very well. And when I had a serious accident last October (5 cars got destroyed in it), I didn't have a scratch on me, and neither did my girlfriend - while the car looked like a banana somebody had kicked in the front.
Our boss drives one and likes it (he used to drive a - believe me! - Porsche Carrera), and my doctor also drives one (used to have a Renault 2CV
They're popular because they're small, useful, low on petrol-usage, and work well even on our Autobahn.
(Nope, I'm not connected. I just really like them)
The questions will not be answered by the two key-people. They will be answered by PR departments.
The key-people will not answer questions straight and honestly, but will waffle around them or lie through their teeth.
The key-people won't even think about holding any words, promises or whatever once they're [still] in office.
So... who cares?
I *know* I wouldn't buy a piece of software called 'Echelon'.
Perhaps you've forgotten it already, but that's the name of the US spy system, used to spy on everybody including its 'allies'.
We found quite a big network here in Europe, and were not pleased at all. The citizens are even less pleased by the fact that nothing serious was done about it.
Apologies if I sound angry at this, but the word 'Echelon' triggers dark thoughts.
...is the fact that you need a highly specific piece of software to even be able to *use* it.
And that is: MS Office XP. Let's not fight about MS or !MS, but the idea that you can only use a rather expensive, general-purpose hardware device if you use the latest version of an expensive (and in my eyes, not very useful) software product from another company is simply ridiculous.
Oh, well.
Next!
Goody.
Let's make a list of game companies interested in this appalling concept.
So far I have found:
* Activision, Inc
* Atari
* Ubisoft
No need to buy games from these people, is there?
And what a lovely quote in the FA:
"It's like when I played 'Grand Theft Auto' for the first time," he said. "I thought to myself how much better it would be if the signs were real."
Bah. Do I have to tell you how massively irritating the 'real' signs would have been, compared to the rather amusing 'false' ones?
Just shows that these people have absolutely no idea whatsoever about what makes a game.
Little, slightly OT, example: Roller Coaster Tycoon. Has 'poor graphics, no 3D'. Well, looks like lots of people (including me, I might add) rather like isometric 2D graphics, and RCT with all add-ons sold over 7 million copies...
The G80 is nice, but sports the Windows Keys, which I certainly don't need.
I love my IBM keyboard (from '89). I don't mind the noise, my cow-orkers have learned to live with it (we work 2 to an office), and the weight makes it a perfect LART should need arise.
The online cartoons - once again - show us how the world works. Here you can find the difference between Hollywoods form of dealing with intruders, and The Real Worlds:
Bigger Than CheeseLook, I'm sorry, I really don't mean to troll... but why all this info about Longhorn?
;)
In the past, Microsoft has told us a lot about the next OS. What it'll do. How great it'll be. How safe. How good.
And then, when you had the actual CD(s) in hand, it turned out to be less, to be announced, to be patched, to be in the next version...
I don't care about Longhorn. It's years away. Many years.
When it's promised to show up within the next three months, I'll be interested. And I'll try it out. And I'll look at a lot of reviews. And I'll read the hatred from Slashdot
But not now.
Strange... I'd have expected the fallout to be worse over Washington and Redmond...
Way back when a Commodore 64 was still the Latest and Greatest, a friend of mine bought himself a disk drive for it. While it was not called The Tortoise for its amazing speed, it way way, way better than a tape.
Except that his little brother kept fiddling with it.
So I got him a keyboard lock (circular keys were also a pretty new thing), which he soldered onto the data connection to the disk drive.
Sadly, his soldering skills were not that hot. However, his C64 was, when 230V shot through the data lines from the drive into the computer...
> I sure felt better afterwords.
After switching to Open Office, I sure felt better after Words, too.
Waaaay back when, I was - amongst other things - selling Olivetti M24s in Cape Town.
Great fun, lovely PCs except for the very dust-sensitive keyboard.
Sold one to a customer who insisted on seeing it work. Hey, no problem. I opened the boxes, hooked everything up, turned on the power - and the power supply burst into flames. Whoops.
I keep hearing all kinds of curses, rants and shoutings about this movie (no, it hasn't opened in Europe yet).
Mainly, I keep hearing about 'lies'. Ladies and Gentlemen, you may assume that he does not lie. That he has a lawyer very carefully check every single fact (as he did in his last film and his books).
Because if he didn't, he would be sued.
He's not being sued, despite meeting a lot of hate. Thus he is not lying.
The rest of his movie is debatable - I can't join in until I've seen it.
>Who I am beginning to hope will start to react to this kind of thing is our governments.
Oh, no. Please not. You do realize how completely helpless the gubmint is in such things? It will take several years, cost a fortune, be completely worthless, cause no end of trouble in environments it was not designed for, and finally be used for DRM/DMCA/AntiTerror/whatever.
Don't fine MS. Just have it tell people that there are solutions out there which are not only better, but also cheaper. Most of them still don't know.
No thanks.
Ever had geese living in your garden?
I did. They shit huge amounts right in front of your door, they wake you at 4 a.m., and they eat the (dry) dogfood.
I rather have a dog for alarms.
Wow. I can't believe the cubicles described here, some of them even in good terms ("room to breathe, shoulder-high walls").
I've seen people working in such places. I've been offered positions in companies who place their programmers in such cubicles, something resembling a swine-farm.
No. No thanks.
Give me an office. Make it single. Make me choose the amount of light in it. A windows is a good idea, if I can darken it as necessary.
Free water/cola/orange juice/etc. A gym nearby.
Give me a huge desk, a big bookshelf, a good chair, a powerful PC, and then leave me alone.
I guarantee a *much* better result, for low costs.