[... ] if a computer is cheaper with Windows, why not buy the cheaper computer and get a refund for not accepting the EULA? You then save money on both fronts, and get your Linux computer. On both fronts ? You've obviously not been through the hassle of trying to claim a refund for Windows. It would be much less work to just find and patch the bugs in Windows.
From the BoingBoing atricle: "But Alton Towers amusement park in the UK has instituted a new rule, and has instituted 'special wardens' to enforce it. If you are seen using a Palm, iPaq or other personal digital assistant or smartphone, the special wardens will take it away from you." So did anybody find the "Alton Towers Second Hand PDA and Smartphone" WebSite ? Do they have any good deals ?
Whoa, no s**t... the iRex is $600-$700 and only comes with 128 MB of storage, so tack on a few more dollars for some flash memory. You call this pricey ? Try buying it over here. It sells for 600 €.
They haven't heard of change rates apparently.
We're probably lucky the dollar is low or it would sell for the price of a small car.
And don't get me going with software (Photoshop is 1 075€ - $650 in the US -, extended 1 600 € - $1000 in the US).
uh, where does CmdrTaco live that medical face masks were once a popular fashion item? I certainly don't remember that fad. Bell bottoms, I do unfortunately remember, but not medical face masks... Maybe there was a time when lots of medical students robbed banks to pay for their studies ?
There are Asian countries where their are also popular (mostly with girls) to prevent yourself from getting a tan (gloves are often worn for the same reason).
But Christianity also takes a large chunk of Judaism to make the Old Testament, which does go back several thousand years. Wasn't christianity marketed as judaism for dummies at the time ?
Are you seriously stating that you're considering a 190mhz machine, with 64MB of RAM, with a 640x480 8-bit display, as a web browser? Do you use the same web I do? Even applying CSS rules would crush that machine. I don't remember when I got my PictureBook (very first model, PII based, 200 or 400 MHz, not sure, it's a C1XD) but it browses the current Web just fine. I tried it just a couple months ago. And I can't remember when it was (not very long ago, 5 or 6 years) when I last browsed the web with just my VT320 (still on a shelf behind me) and a modem (with lynx at the other end), and yet I still couldn't go to a local computer shop without hearing the reseller telling customers "frankly you can't connect to the internet with anything else than this"... not that it has changed much "you want to send email with a/single core/ ??" (ok, VTs aren't so hot for video)
So, yes, ok, it's not a machine from the dark ages. But it's still fairly old, and it also can fit in my pant side pockets (for a value of pants being something you wouldn't being ashamed of wearing either being enlisted or on a safari). I haven't yet gotten my grubby little hands on an Eee yet but my PictureBook still runs (ok, the battery is deader than a door nail but compatible batteries are still sold and it works fine while plugged in) and I'm working on reviving it with something more up to date than the ederly Mandrake it's currently running (I know, if it isn't broke don't fix it and all that but I'd rather run the current XFCE than that old KDE).
So anyway, now as before, most people believe it takes a (I finally get to say it) beowulf cluster to run anything when a Pentium II actually works for an amazing amount of stuff. The variety of things that get better just by adding RAM is impressive. Especially if you run Unix (Linux/BSD/Whatever).
My gateway (not the brand, on my network) at home, runs an AMD Duron 750 with 256 MiBs of RAM. With that it runs a NAT with semi-dynamic filtering rules, a bunch of webservers and their databases, two domains (as primary, although there are some/real/ secondaries elsewhere since I'm just on ADSL2+), primary SMTP for my domains (including spam filtering -- on and off, depending on the current settings), plus a few logging thingies. Which is to say that tiny (more or less) as it is, my old (I've had a, now abandoned G4 Mac since then) laptop is actually still capable. Just the same as my elderly NAT server (and I don't even want to know what kind of hardware is in my LAN's tiny RAID 1 NAS -- actually given the abysmal performance of the damn thing, no, I really don't).
Now what *really* was a problem with it was its vertical 480 pixel resolution. When you use it on a daily basis, that's really not a lot (I think the 700 series Asus use the same). Even though the horizontal 1024 helped make up for it.
So anyway, ah, where was I ? Ah yes. Stop overengineering everything. The only large things users need are (and this is important) screens, and mice. Users like me that is. For others, YMMV.
I don't know why Windows still includes games, but I do know what Solitaire is awfully good for: education.
All the computer-illiterate people I've taught found Solitaire an invaluable aid in learning how to use the mouse. When discussing the bundled games with the IBM OS/2 people (back when), the consensus was indeed that the purpose of those little games was to teach mouse usage. I too have found through the years that they work pretty well in this regard.
No, it will not. There is another ruling that says something like: "a PC without OS can not be considered a functional PC, it is either defective (since it can't boot) or spare parts". They have to provide something. I don't remember that one, but assuming it's enforced, they can provide a pseudo-bare bones machine by simply sticking Free DOS on it. It'll be mostly useless but it will boot. The user will then have an editor (edlin) and, um, presumably some kind of BASIC game to entertain himself, i.e. a complete system. Kind of. Or of course he can install whatever other system he likes better.
It's not just x64 Linux that has issues with flash. x64 Windows XP/Vista can't do it either (provided you're using IE x64 or even Firefox--Minefield x64). This is neither Microsoft nor the Linux community's fault, rather that of Adobe for being completely lazy and worthless. Nah, it's just that Adobe can only afford PentiumII machines to program on because nobody ever pays for Photoshop.
Get Windows users to buy their software and they'll upgrade to 64 bit.;)
The UIs are extremely poorly designed on Linux and worse still they're often inconsistent with half a dozen ways to do the same operation.
I seem to remember one of the hints in the Microsoft Accessibility Guidelines was that the more ways to do a single operation, the more accessible it is. I don't use windows, so I can't check now, but I'm pretty sure I can think of 4 ways to move a file, 5 ways to change screen resolution and 4 ways to shut down the computer. I don't think this is a bad thing. Not to mention the systems that have only one way to perform a task, which is so cleverly hidden that it takes 10 minutes to figure it out... (happenned to me a lot on Mac OS, I'm probably not intuitive enough for it, and on Windows because it's just weird)
This is the sort of vagueness that some would use to declare that the Linux GUI's is "unready". Then so is Apple's much touted OS X line which regularly requires poking at the system from the shell. Many settings are only accessible that way.
Yet oddly enough nobody seems to mind. People just do without changing those settings. And truth be told, most Mac OS users live without making those changes. As do a lot of Linux users...
You can have to resort to a terminal if you want to poke at the system. Or you can just make do with what you've got. Your choice.
Meanwhile, a billion users worldwide somehow manage to run Windows without the free technical support of a resident geek. And, speaking on behalf of the spam botnet industry, I'd like to warmly thank them all.
I can't believe it would be nearly as delicious as bacon from a pig. I mean, I'm pretty sure that a big part of the purpose of a pig is to get eaten. The name "long pig" doesn't come out of the blue you know...
Yes, but what if you ask the person to type the word/identify the picture/whatever in a specific, random frame of said animation?
Or even something like "please check the objects you see in the animation", followed by, say, 10 radio buttons? Very language specific. And not easy to generalise. You need to write one set of rules per animation, presumably by hand. Captchas can be machine generated from a dictionary or random characters. Which is the point.
Most Americans pay $.10 per message, incoming or outgoing. There, fixed that for you. It's quite unheard of here in Germany. Or in any country with a mature wireless industry for that matter.
It's actually relatively easy to find TrueCrypt volumes assuming that you know you're searching for one - they contain completely random data and are thus distinguishable from most other files. Remember that most compressed files (ZIP, MP3) have easily distinguished patterns, so when you find a large file with no pattern and random data, you can be fairly certain you're looking at an encrypted partition. Nah, I renamed mine to/dev/random.
I mean, i have a better solution than that of bruce: change your initab so initdefault is 3, make sure that that level does NOT turn on the wifi card or any networking at all, change your shell to ASH (hopefully temporarilly) and let them have the root password, who cares.... good luck, mister customs agent. Or create a DOSBox shell. Or just export $PROMPT="C:/>". Anything that looks like DOS turns anyone off fairly quickly.
As they should be able to. Any sovereign nation has the right to control who and what enters the country. I certainly hope they also tightly control what's *already* in the country and that SpyNet will be deployed on every US home machine as soon as possible so it can report crime thoughts and un patriotic behavious as they occur. Why control the borders when the danger might already be past them !
Remember, you can never be too careful, your neighbour could be a terrorist, report him now ! Think of the children !
Best thing to do is not to take a *computer* with you when you travel, but rather take a *terminal* with you (or find one), and use a secure connection to your computer, safely still at home, and then access your data, accounts, apps, etc. over that secure connection. The most likely outcome would be to have the droids try to boot up the terminal, misunderstand what you try to explain them, detain you and presumably blow up the terminal as being potentially dangerous.
Completely wrong. This is industrial supercomputing, not random web applications. Unless they know something we don't... Could it be that Duke Nukem Forever is about to be released ?
Slashdot Mirror
That explanation is good enough for Monsanto, it should be good enough for you.
Ah, you've noticed the reversed rate as well ?
Try buying it over here. It sells for 600 €.
They haven't heard of change rates apparently.
We're probably lucky the dollar is low or it would sell for the price of a small car.
And don't get me going with software (Photoshop is 1 075€ - $650 in the US -, extended 1 600 € - $1000 in the US).
There are Asian countries where their are also popular (mostly with girls) to prevent yourself from getting a tan (gloves are often worn for the same reason).
And I can't remember when it was (not very long ago, 5 or 6 years) when I last browsed the web with just my VT320 (still on a shelf behind me) and a modem (with lynx at the other end), and yet I still couldn't go to a local computer shop without hearing the reseller telling customers "frankly you can't connect to the internet with anything else than this"... not that it has changed much "you want to send email with a
So, yes, ok, it's not a machine from the dark ages. But it's still fairly old, and it also can fit in my pant side pockets (for a value of pants being something you wouldn't being ashamed of wearing either being enlisted or on a safari). I haven't yet gotten my grubby little hands on an Eee yet but my PictureBook still runs (ok, the battery is deader than a door nail but compatible batteries are still sold and it works fine while plugged in) and I'm working on reviving it with something more up to date than the ederly Mandrake it's currently running (I know, if it isn't broke don't fix it and all that but I'd rather run the current XFCE than that old KDE).
So anyway, now as before, most people believe it takes a (I finally get to say it) beowulf cluster to run anything when a Pentium II actually works for an amazing amount of stuff. The variety of things that get better just by adding RAM is impressive. Especially if you run Unix (Linux/BSD/Whatever).
My gateway (not the brand, on my network) at home, runs an AMD Duron 750 with 256 MiBs of RAM. With that it runs a NAT with semi-dynamic filtering rules, a bunch of webservers and their databases, two domains (as primary, although there are some
Now what *really* was a problem with it was its vertical 480 pixel resolution. When you use it on a daily basis, that's really not a lot (I think the 700 series Asus use the same). Even though the horizontal 1024 helped make up for it.
So anyway, ah, where was I ? Ah yes. Stop overengineering everything. The only large things users need are (and this is important) screens, and mice. Users like me that is. For others, YMMV.
All the computer-illiterate people I've taught found Solitaire an invaluable aid in learning how to use the mouse. When discussing the bundled games with the IBM OS/2 people (back when), the consensus was indeed that the purpose of those little games was to teach mouse usage. I too have found through the years that they work pretty well in this regard.
They have to provide something. I don't remember that one, but assuming it's enforced, they can provide a pseudo-bare bones machine by simply sticking Free DOS on it.
It'll be mostly useless but it will boot. The user will then have an editor (edlin) and, um, presumably some kind of BASIC game to entertain himself, i.e. a complete system. Kind of.
Or of course he can install whatever other system he likes better.
Get Windows users to buy their software and they'll upgrade to 64 bit.
I seem to remember one of the hints in the Microsoft Accessibility Guidelines was that the more ways to do a single operation, the more accessible it is. I don't use windows, so I can't check now, but I'm pretty sure I can think of 4 ways to move a file, 5 ways to change screen resolution and 4 ways to shut down the computer. I don't think this is a bad thing. Not to mention the systems that have only one way to perform a task, which is so cleverly hidden that it takes 10 minutes to figure it out... (happenned to me a lot on Mac OS, I'm probably not intuitive enough for it, and on Windows because it's just weird)
That simply isn't good enough.
This is the sort of vagueness that some would use to declare that the Linux GUI's is "unready". Then so is Apple's much touted OS X line which regularly requires poking at the system from the shell. Many settings are only accessible that way.
Yet oddly enough nobody seems to mind. People just do without changing those settings. And truth be told, most Mac OS users live without making those changes. As do a lot of Linux users...
You can have to resort to a terminal if you want to poke at the system. Or you can just make do with what you've got. Your choice.
Or even something like "please check the objects you see in the animation", followed by, say, 10 radio buttons? Very language specific. And not easy to generalise. You need to write one set of rules per animation, presumably by hand. Captchas can be machine generated from a dictionary or random characters.
Which is the point.
Why control the borders when the danger might already be past them !
Remember, you can never be too careful, your neighbour could be a terrorist, report him now !
Think of the children !
As if the customs in Amsterdam were worried about you smuggling drugs or porn...
I infer it was your first visit...