Not to mention all the renaming that would have to be done when the machine moves...
Alphabet soup for host name doesn't strike me as being very bright either... (and it *might* be offensive to your Slovenian client "My mother was a what ??").
Kparts means that you can include practically entire programs (spreadsheets, browsers, editors) inside other programs - how much more modular can it get?
From the article : "KDE 4.1 continues the porting of applications, notably with 4.x versions of KGet, a versatile download manager, and the KContacts, the KDE personal information suit." What other desktop environment comes with a wearable PIM ? And I'm sure it's themable too, so you don't even have to change before you go clubbing !
Summary: "19 percent say nothing would persuade them to upgrade"
In other news, 81% of Americans on Dial-up would like to switch to high speed internet if the price was right...
Nothing to see here... Move along...
Except the US doesn't get "right" prices since the (wide) territory has been split between the providers which have a de facto local monopoly and can set the prices as they see fit.
Broadband provider is X for $Z. If you aren't happy with that, unless you're in a metropolitan area, the alternative is a POTS modem. In Europe/Asia, in most locations you actually have a choice for at least ADSL2+ providers (up to roughly 22Mbps depending on how far you are from the local hub), and nowadays fibre with typically 50Mbps+ *for the same price* (in France you get *at least* 50Mbps with fibre for about 30 € per month, whis is about, what, $50, $55 ?).
There is a category of users that only use the network to send email. You can do that over a 2.4K modem. I've run a 5 person network over a 9.6K modem with a Linux dial on demand box back when...
Actually, I was part of the tech people building one of the first public ISP in Europe over a *64K* line. For about 9000 subscribers who opted to use the Internet facility (we already had Internet -- among others -- mail gateways for ages). And at the time it was plenty. In the early 90s I downloaded my Linux floppy images on that link (several times even, when you wrote 30 floppies, some were bound to be bad).
Anyway, You and I would have trouble with a modem link (my offsite backups would become very complicated for example), but if all you use is email and a few web pages ? Should work like a charm (maybe adblock would be handy nowadays though).
Oh and I used to check my mail with nothing but a VT100 and a modem. Get off my lawn (waves walker and falls over).
Ok, granted, but apart from the roads, the education, the water, the open borders, the peace, and the standardised banana sizes, what has the EU *really* done for us ?
"We don't believe that society can allow the free consumption of content to persist"
So I can still pay my 30€ each month as long as I don't plug anything into the ADSL box ?
If I close my eyes while reading/., does it still qualify as "free consumption of content" ? Or should I browse Digg ? After all pretty much everyone agrees that it's content-free.
The point is: They haven't got a clue! The haven't the faintest idea what they're talking about. But that doesn't stop them from passing laws...
When the journalist has a clue (which admittedly doesn't happen very often), a politician's interview on any technical topic has great comedy value (if you can still manage to laugh in between the tears of despair when you realise the consequences).
I guess when Isaac Asimov was infected with HIV from a contaminated blood transfusion he deserved to get sick and die!
Absolutely, according to the original poster he shouldn't have had a transfusion without a condom, so it was completely his fault. (details are left as an exercise to the reader).
The French government and courts have a long history of issuing prejudiced laws and decisions in favor of French companies (especially in cases where the opposition are American or British companies), but this is disturbing even by their standards. While ostensibly about counterfeit goods, this ruling goes FAR beyond that--giving the original producer full control of resell rights for even LEGITIMATE goods.
Of course, there are fewer French companies with an international reach than there are US companies, so this may explain that. When <foreign> company sues a French one it never makes the headlines after all (except here, sometimes).
However this does not explain the number of brain dead decisions by the local (yes, I'm French and live in Paris) courts that have happened lately. Now there *is* a cottage industry of resellers of fake handbags, mostly ordinary, everyday people, that supplement their income through eBay. The big names in this industry have always been nervous with counterfeiting as well as with the second hand market (the latter not making much sense).
For example one of the major luxury brands in Paris will allow Japanese tourists (Japanese are weird with this for some reason) only 3 bags per head in its shop. Those tourists (who of buy the bags that feature the brand most prominently on the outside) will actually recruit passers-by on the side walk to buy more bags for them.
Fakes (fairly poor quality ones for the most) used to be available in Vintimille, a border town on the Italian side. And a very popular destination, easily accessible by train or car. Apparently even the Italians got the message (although I heard the market only moved somewhere else).
Anyway this kind of stuff happens every now and then. This is our equivalent of your creationism.:(
I do have add-ons installed and it hasn't crashed once. Aren't anecdotes fun?
Well, I know someone who hasn't installed it yet, but I'm pretty sure that if he did, it would crash. (upping your anecdote by one made up semi hear-say):)
Only times I've had firefox 3 go down is on particular, badly made, flash-based sites, when trying to do specified things, which makes me fairly sure it's Adobe's fault.
It also seems to me that the latest Linux Flash release is much worse than the previous ones (which were pretty bad already). I don't know if Adobe replaced the Linux team or used new tools, but I hope the trend doesn't continue given the number of Flash tools being deployed online.
I also wish GNU Desktops would make use of such special key for shell commands and such (win+l locks, win+e browses etc.). The keyboard has so many useless keys, we're better off recycling them!
In KDE, KDE system settings, Keyboard and mouse, Keyboard shortcuts, Global shortcuts; scroll to Desktop : "Lock session" : default Alt+Ctrl+L Change to whatever you like. If you want to start an application with a keybinding, go to the "Command Shortcuts" tab and bind whatever (or one of those shortcut keys many keyboards have these days).
Presumably the Gnome environment and XFCE both have a similar gadget (or you can do always do it with a little startup script).
Why don't they sell keyboards without these stupid windows-keys?
The Windows and Menu keys make fine Super, Meta and Compose keys which are useful in a number of ways especially if you happen to write complex text (this is assuming you run Unix, if you run Windows, the Windows keys are supposed to actually be useful). I just wish it said so on the keycaps instead of having the Microsoft ads. I've often wondered how I could cleanly relabel those keys but I'm not really very good at this kind of thing. And I want a quiet keyboard so things like the "Das Keyboard" are right out (using a Logitech UltraX at the moment which suits me just fine, flat and quiet).
No, it honestly feels like overkill for an appliance. I think I read somewhere that with a stripped down version it was possible though.
Also, does it network at gigabit speed (over 10 megabytes per second) or just 100Mbps (under 10 megabytes per second)?
It's on a 100Mb network. So it won't go above that anyway. I'm not even sure there's a Gb port on that little box. At any rate I seriously doubt it would be able to sustain Gb network rates.
BTW, nice attempt at that "carefully hand crafted computer, made by artisans who trained for decades" canard. Apple is as mass produced as every other product out there (exploding batteries, anyone?). What IS different is that Apple manages to get at least 50% profit out of everything they make.
Apple batteries may explode, but at least they explode with style ! And look at those sticks of RAM, that shade of green obviously wasn't picked at random. That's genius design at work. Reminding you that at the heart of your computer there's still a little bit of nature. No wonder it's expensive.
Silicon Graphics (and any other maker of workstations that had standard parts in them) used to do the same thing BTW.
I run a Thecus 2100, currently with 2x350 Gigs in RAID1 to store my photos and documents.
It's not very fast and some of the old firmwares were broken (as in data loss broken) but nowadays it works ok and there's a little community of users that make modules to run on it. You can add a number of functions that way. I haven't really played with it yet although I've been wanting to add rsync for a while since it would be more convenient than the SMB based shares I currently use (out of the box it supports SMB and HTTP, and maybe FTP, not sure about that one). Bundled applications are a crappy image gallery, some kind of ipod music sharing thing (not sure what it's about, I don't run the Apple music program), USB mass storage dump (as in plug in some kind of mass storage device and it gets dumped into the NAS), printer sharing... Of course there's basic user authentication.
All in all it's not bad. Just a bit slow. The only real problem I've had is it doesn't come back up by itself when the power goes down. Can be annoying when you're away and you need something that's on it (can be solved with a UPS of course).
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention all the renaming that would have to be done when the machine moves...
Alphabet soup for host name doesn't strike me as being very bright either... (and it *might* be offensive to your Slovenian client "My mother was a what ??").
KDE? more modular?
Kparts means that you can include practically entire programs (spreadsheets, browsers, editors) inside other programs - how much more modular can it get?
From the article :
"KDE 4.1 continues the porting of applications, notably with 4.x versions of KGet, a versatile download manager, and the KContacts, the KDE personal information suit."
What other desktop environment comes with a wearable PIM ? And I'm sure it's themable too, so you don't even have to change before you go clubbing !
If they did that, it'd be Network Solutions all over again. Remember their exorbitant monopoly prices when they were the only shop in town? Like that.
Actually I remember when there was only one shop in town and it was free.
She says that her internet at home is "perfect Grandma speed", and us "young-uns with fresh brains can handle the zip of that fast stuff."
I'll just go and make some preserves and I'll read that Internet thngammajy whan it's done a'loadin.
Summary: "19 percent say nothing would persuade them to upgrade"
In other news, 81% of Americans on Dial-up would like to switch to high speed internet if the price was right...
Nothing to see here... Move along...
Except the US doesn't get "right" prices since the (wide) territory has been split between the providers which have a de facto local monopoly and can set the prices as they see fit.
Broadband provider is X for $Z. If you aren't happy with that, unless you're in a metropolitan area, the alternative is a POTS modem. In Europe/Asia, in most locations you actually have a choice for at least ADSL2+ providers (up to roughly 22Mbps depending on how far you are from the local hub), and nowadays fibre with typically 50Mbps+ *for the same price* (in France you get *at least* 50Mbps with fibre for about 30 € per month, whis is about, what, $50, $55 ?).
There is a category of users that only use the network to send email. You can do that over a 2.4K modem. I've run a 5 person network over a 9.6K modem with a Linux dial on demand box back when...
Actually, I was part of the tech people building one of the first public ISP in Europe over a *64K* line. For about 9000 subscribers who opted to use the Internet facility (we already had Internet -- among others -- mail gateways for ages). And at the time it was plenty. In the early 90s I downloaded my Linux floppy images on that link (several times even, when you wrote 30 floppies, some were bound to be bad).
Anyway, You and I would have trouble with a modem link (my offsite backups would become very complicated for example), but if all you use is email and a few web pages ? Should work like a charm (maybe adblock would be handy nowadays though).
Oh and I used to check my mail with nothing but a VT100 and a modem. Get off my lawn (waves walker and falls over).
The Roads.
Ok, granted, but apart from the roads, the education, the water, the open borders, the peace, and the standardised banana sizes, what has the EU *really* done for us ?
"We don't believe that society can allow the free consumption of content to persist"
So I can still pay my 30€ each month as long as I don't plug anything into the ADSL box ?
If I close my eyes while reading /., does it still qualify as "free consumption of content" ? Or should I browse Digg ? After all pretty much everyone agrees that it's content-free.
The point is: They haven't got a clue! The haven't the faintest idea what they're talking about. But that doesn't stop them from passing laws...
When the journalist has a clue (which admittedly doesn't happen very often), a politician's interview on any technical topic has great comedy value (if you can still manage to laugh in between the tears of despair when you realise the consequences).
What has the EU done for us anyway...
On linux, wouldn't it be ...
host:>man 80085
???
And on 8 bit machines it was "POKE 80085"...
Hours of fun to be had by all. (sigh)
I guess when Isaac Asimov was infected with HIV from a contaminated blood transfusion he deserved to get sick and die!
Absolutely, according to the original poster he shouldn't have had a transfusion without a condom, so it was completely his fault. (details are left as an exercise to the reader).
No, not zombies, corpses.
So... pre-zombies?
We scientific types prefer to call them zombie precursors.
No, we run out of zinc in 2011 and the end of the world comes in 2012.
We could just move the end of the world forward by one year to solve the problem.
I certainly hope their "Got Wind ?" campaign doesnt backfire...
The French government and courts have a long history of issuing prejudiced laws and decisions in favor of French companies (especially in cases where the opposition are American or British companies), but this is disturbing even by their standards. While ostensibly about counterfeit goods, this ruling goes FAR beyond that--giving the original producer full control of resell rights for even LEGITIMATE goods.
Of course, there are fewer French companies with an international reach than there are US companies, so this may explain that. When <foreign> company sues a French one it never makes the headlines after all (except here, sometimes).
However this does not explain the number of brain dead decisions by the local (yes, I'm French and live in Paris) courts that have happened lately. Now there *is* a cottage industry of resellers of fake handbags, mostly ordinary, everyday people, that supplement their income through eBay. The big names in this industry have always been nervous with counterfeiting as well as with the second hand market (the latter not making much sense).
For example one of the major luxury brands in Paris will allow Japanese tourists (Japanese are weird with this for some reason) only 3 bags per head in its shop. Those tourists (who of buy the bags that feature the brand most prominently on the outside) will actually recruit passers-by on the side walk to buy more bags for them.
Fakes (fairly poor quality ones for the most) used to be available in Vintimille, a border town on the Italian side. And a very popular destination, easily accessible by train or car. Apparently even the Italians got the message (although I heard the market only moved somewhere else).
Anyway this kind of stuff happens every now and then. This is our equivalent of your creationism. :(
I do have add-ons installed and it hasn't crashed once. Aren't anecdotes fun?
Well, I know someone who hasn't installed it yet, but I'm pretty sure that if he did, it would crash. (upping your anecdote by one made up semi hear-say) :)
Flash sites?
Only times I've had firefox 3 go down is on particular, badly made, flash-based sites, when trying to do specified things, which makes me fairly sure it's Adobe's fault.
It also seems to me that the latest Linux Flash release is much worse than the previous ones (which were pretty bad already). I don't know if Adobe replaced the Linux team or used new tools, but I hope the trend doesn't continue given the number of Flash tools being deployed online.
I do this every three months. I take a picture of it with my mobile phone (so I can see what keys belong where) [ ... ]
However you couldn't do this with Das Keyboard because it's so easy to get the keys mixed up...
I also wish GNU Desktops would make use of such special key for shell commands and such (win+l locks, win+e browses etc.). The keyboard has so many useless keys, we're better off recycling them!
In KDE, KDE system settings, Keyboard and mouse, Keyboard shortcuts, Global shortcuts; scroll to Desktop : "Lock session" : default Alt+Ctrl+L Change to whatever you like.
If you want to start an application with a keybinding, go to the "Command Shortcuts" tab and bind whatever (or one of those shortcut keys many keyboards have these days).
Presumably the Gnome environment and XFCE both have a similar gadget (or you can do always do it with a little startup script).
Why don't they sell keyboards without these stupid windows-keys?
The Windows and Menu keys make fine Super, Meta and Compose keys which are useful in a number of ways especially if you happen to write complex text (this is assuming you run Unix, if you run Windows, the Windows keys are supposed to actually be useful). I just wish it said so on the keycaps instead of having the Microsoft ads.
I've often wondered how I could cleanly relabel those keys but I'm not really very good at this kind of thing. And I want a quiet keyboard so things like the "Das Keyboard" are right out (using a Logitech UltraX at the moment which suits me just fine, flat and quiet).
Have you tried installing Debian on it?
No, it honestly feels like overkill for an appliance. I think I read somewhere that with a stripped down version it was possible though.
Also, does it network at gigabit speed (over 10 megabytes per second) or just 100Mbps (under 10 megabytes per second)?
It's on a 100Mb network. So it won't go above that anyway. I'm not even sure there's a Gb port on that little box. At any rate I seriously doubt it would be able to sustain Gb network rates.
BTW, nice attempt at that "carefully hand crafted computer, made by artisans who trained for decades" canard. Apple is as mass produced as every other product out there (exploding batteries, anyone?). What IS different is that Apple manages to get at least 50% profit out of everything they make.
Apple batteries may explode, but at least they explode with style ! And look at those sticks of RAM, that shade of green obviously wasn't picked at random. That's genius design at work. Reminding you that at the heart of your computer there's still a little bit of nature.
No wonder it's expensive.
Silicon Graphics (and any other maker of workstations that had standard parts in them) used to do the same thing BTW.
I run a Thecus 2100, currently with 2x350 Gigs in RAID1 to store my photos and documents.
It's not very fast and some of the old firmwares were broken (as in data loss broken) but nowadays it works ok and there's a little community of users that make modules to run on it. You can add a number of functions that way. I haven't really played with it yet although I've been wanting to add rsync for a while since it would be more convenient than the SMB based shares I currently use (out of the box it supports SMB and HTTP, and maybe FTP, not sure about that one). Bundled applications are a crappy image gallery, some kind of ipod music sharing thing (not sure what it's about, I don't run the Apple music program), USB mass storage dump (as in plug in some kind of mass storage device and it gets dumped into the NAS), printer sharing...
Of course there's basic user authentication.
All in all it's not bad. Just a bit slow. The only real problem I've had is it doesn't come back up by itself when the power goes down. Can be annoying when you're away and you need something that's on it (can be solved with a UPS of course).
And each bomb was perfectly brewed with milk added just as it left the bomb bay.
Later versions even came with biscuits !
The KWGR614 was the single worst router I have ever used.
It's a shame with the catchy name and all.
Those things have even worse naming schemes than CPUs.