I worked for my university's IS dept in college. We inherited a laptop that a teacher had abused. She set it on top of her car, forgot it was there, and started driving away. The screen was broken when it fell to the ground and was run over. The rest of the components seemed to work just fine. We made it one of our workstations -- just plugged up an external monitor. It later became the wireless router at my house. We named it roadkill.
I have built a great media pc out of a mini-itx box running Freevo. It runs Slackware and and I use it for any media file mplayer will play. I also use it for a game console using emulators under freevo. Anyway, I'm positive it beats the pants off this Gateway box.
I can attest to the fact that Sprint doesn't like bluetooth because of the internet connection sharing thing. They had Sony Ericson make a bluetooth CDMA phone because so many sprint users wanted one, but only had them make 10,000. (I don't think Sony Ericson really wanted to make CDMA phones, anyway) You had to order them through their telesales dept. I think eBay is the only place to get one now. Anyway, I am a Sprint PCS customer and I use my Sanyo 4900 cellphone periodically to connect my PowerBook to the net. I had to purchase the USB accessory cable from Radio Shack. (Radio Shack guy insisted I need the software, too. I told him I was using a Mac and assured him that I didn't. He just gave me that typical I-know-absolutely-nothing-about-macs blank look.)
Anyway, I talked to a number of people at Sprint before signing up and got very different answers regarding their "unlimited" PCS service. They once promoted the feature of using your phone as a modem, and even sold the kits, but after people started abusing the service, they pulled the kits and that feature became hush-hush. Basically, Sprint is more than happy to provide "unlimited" internet access on the cell phones themselves, because the browsers are too slow and memory too limited to really pull too much bandwidth. I was told by one Sprint representative that they could tell whether I was using my phone as a modem or not, and if so, I would be charged their business per/kb rates. I was also given assurances from another representative that I would be fine. I decided to try it and I haven't had any billing troubles yet. I only use my connection when I travel occasionally and I try to limit my usage even then.
So yes, they are concerned about any technology that would make it even easier for users to suck more bandwidth out of their network.
I went to a private high school. Nearly our entire senior class went out drinking on our senior class trip. This was a school sponsored trip and created a problem for the administration. The "helpful" deans came to our class warning us that the administration would do something horrible to us, so we should draft a letter as a class apologizing for our transgressions and they would go easy on us. (I was not present at this meeting with the deans. Had I been, I wouldn't have let it happen like it did.) Our class officers wrote a letter of apology which was then used as a basis to pursue the issue as fact rather than heresay as it had been up to that point. It created a much more difficult situation for our class as the administration set their sights on expelling a number of my classmates. We had to get creative in order to accept discipline as a class. But, had we not provided proof in writing, I don't think they would have been able to really discipline us like they did. Anyway, maybe slightly OT, but this definitely reminded me of that.
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I would say: "A lot of kids are just as dumb as adults think."
I worked for my university's IS dept in college. We inherited a laptop that a teacher had abused. She set it on top of her car, forgot it was there, and started driving away. The screen was broken when it fell to the ground and was run over. The rest of the components seemed to work just fine. We made it one of our workstations -- just plugged up an external monitor. It later became the wireless router at my house. We named it roadkill.
At the risk of being modded redundant:
I have built a great media pc out of a mini-itx box running Freevo. It runs Slackware and and I use it for any media file mplayer will play. I also use it for a game console using emulators under freevo. Anyway, I'm positive it beats the pants off this Gateway box.
I can attest to the fact that Sprint doesn't like bluetooth because of the internet connection sharing thing. They had Sony Ericson make a bluetooth CDMA phone because so many sprint users wanted one, but only had them make 10,000. (I don't think Sony Ericson really wanted to make CDMA phones, anyway) You had to order them through their telesales dept. I think eBay is the only place to get one now. Anyway, I am a Sprint PCS customer and I use my Sanyo 4900 cellphone periodically to connect my PowerBook to the net. I had to purchase the USB accessory cable from Radio Shack. (Radio Shack guy insisted I need the software, too. I told him I was using a Mac and assured him that I didn't. He just gave me that typical I-know-absolutely-nothing-about-macs blank look.)
Anyway, I talked to a number of people at Sprint
before signing up and got very different answers regarding their "unlimited" PCS service. They once promoted the feature of using your phone as a modem, and even sold the kits, but after people started abusing the service, they pulled the kits and that feature became hush-hush. Basically, Sprint is more than happy to provide "unlimited" internet access on the cell phones themselves, because the browsers are too slow and memory too limited to really pull too much bandwidth. I was told by one Sprint representative that they could tell whether I was using my phone as a modem or not, and if so, I would be charged their business per/kb rates. I was also given assurances from another representative that I would be fine. I decided to try it and I haven't had any billing troubles yet. I only use my connection when I travel occasionally and I try to limit my usage even then.
So yes, they are concerned about any technology that would make it even easier for users to suck more bandwidth out of their network.
I went to a private high school. Nearly our entire senior class went out drinking on our senior class trip. This was a school sponsored trip and created a problem for the administration. The "helpful" deans came to our class warning us that the administration would do something horrible to us, so we should draft a letter as a class apologizing for our transgressions and they would go easy on us. (I was not present at this meeting with the deans. Had I been, I wouldn't have let it happen like it did.) Our class officers wrote a letter of apology which was then used as a basis to pursue the issue as fact rather than heresay as it had been up to that point. It created a much more difficult situation for our class as the administration set their sights on expelling a number of my classmates. We had to get creative in order to accept discipline as a class. But, had we not provided proof in writing, I don't think they would have been able to really discipline us like they did. Anyway, maybe slightly OT, but this definitely reminded me of that.
I found 3.1 ISO's on one of the german ftp mirror... ftp7, I think... check that out...