otherwise intelligent people persist in identifing this system of endless, mindless consumption as "their culture"
Thanks for considering me to be at least somewhat inteligent;)
Unfortunaly, I don't think that you our I exist outside of the curent culture - grudgingly, we are products of it. Even our decenting voices are products of this culture - flawed though it it, this culture seem to al least give lip-service to differing thougts. We haven't been locked up, or beaten too much.
Anyways, my general rant on Chomsky is that he is interesting, but ot only inefective, but possibly damaging to his own cause. I gather we're on opposite sides of the political fence - but there are vast terretories of common ground for people like us to discover. People like Raplh Nader and John McCain give me inspiration that we can have a better future - people like Chomsky and Limbaugh, although great entertainemnt, just devide rational people from each other.
All too often, a good idea gets labeled by one side or the other as belonging to "that hippie Chomsky" or "that fat idiot Limbaugh." It's too bad the these lables can destroy a potentionally good idea. Noam and Rush are just to easy of a target, and discourse dies when either one gets mentioned. Anyways - at least neighter of them are taking about stupid subjects like Elisibeth Taylor, or NSYNC so perhaps I'm being a bit harsh on both.
Just as a sugestion: look at Ralph Nader. I find Ralph Nader not only to be more inteligent than Noam, but more effective. That's my problem with Chomsky - he just likes to tear things down, and blame his inefectivness at communicating on conspiricies and the grand spectre of the "Corporate-Boogy-Man."
Raplh, bless his little heart, gets thing done. I don't agree with him a goodly amount of the time, but he has my respect, and I wish more people were like him. Ralph also is a happy soul - he smiles, makes jokes and doesen't take things too seriously, Chomsky is a sour old house-frau by compaison, and people pick up on this. People like joyfull people by nature. Oh well:off to get more cofee. (Ralph whould be proud: Shade grown, fair-trade cofee)
PS: If you like cofee, get some Sahde-Grown, organic, fair-trace cofee even if you don't give a rat's ass about the environment, wages, or living coditions. The stuff just tastes better, and it's only 20% more in price.
He examined different cultures myths and merely showed how they were similar through a series of basic rites of passage that heroes pass through.
Cabpbell did indeed do this. And that is the problem - he made an attempt to stuff noble and self-contained cultural stories into a particularly odd Western idea of the "common Myth." It's stupid. It's like trying to make a big deal of pointing out that all computer languages are Turring complete. It's true - but it rather misses the point.
Cambell selectivly chooses to back his theory - and even in his own culture, he fails to explain away modern poerty - where many a modern poet somtimes tries to convey emotions rather than story.
So on the surface, Cambell is interesting, but its a diservice to other cultures to claim that their stories come from a unthinking group-thought, rahter than being motivated by their own ideas, and their own self-containded thoughts.
Maby if you feel that our live are already pre-ordained, could Cambell make sense, but I hope that we are all have free-will and arn't motivated into following Campbells pet theory of blindly following our ancesters stories over and over.
I firmly beleive, that their can be somthing new under the sun. We just have to be smart.
Yep, too much cofee already make my spelling even worse. Mr. Chomsky has a lot of interesting ideas, if you are only familiar with his linguistics then you are missing out on a lot of good mind material. I have a lot of respect for Noam's honesty in politics - but I wish he would spend more time in proposing solutions rather than just bash my culture. He repetidly make the clasic error of assuming that identification of a problem is the same as fixing it, and unfortuntatly he has collected enough groupies around him that parrot every word of his - so I doubt he'll change, unless he get a mind altering infection of the brain. Oh well.
Campbell is a dead-white-guy (even while living) who saw everything in terms of other dead-white-guy stories. He attempted to shoe-horn other cultures and their stories into Western style myths, and then pointed out how clever he was.
Anybody why even glibpses a page of Mr. Campbell's PBS-style writings starts seening everything in tems of myth. "The milk being poured into my fruit-loops is like the story of the Hero's of Yore who travel on an Adventure, only to come back to a decimated homeland"
The guy had a cerain nack of getting grants to do his "craft", I'll give him that, but his readers rank up there with readers of and Ayn Rand and Chompsky, they start to see everything in terms of their favorite new book.
Given that GCC is cross-platform to the extreme, I'm verry impressed with GCC ability to hold up well to Intel's finest. Plus GCC has diferent front-ends for other languages, it gets even more impressive.
Aside: Personally, for initial developemnt of cross platform stuff, I actually use Borland's C++ Builder compiler and linker. It produces slow code, but it's amazingly fast at compiling and linking. The debug and compile cycle goes so much faster - that I get more work done faster than with Emacs and GCC. After the code runs well on Windows - I move on to testing with GCC on other platforms.
I have no patience for lousy admins that are so stupid, that they can only figgure out one operating system.
Hell, my fist Mac experience was setting up Dave (a SMB clinet for Mac) and TCP/IP networking on an OS 9 box. Took all of fifteen minuits, and I spent most of that time looking and the inerds of the translucent mouse. Most Important Tip: Hold mouse button down to make menus stay. That's it. It's easy.
If these idiots can't figgure it out for $75,000 a year then recycle their carbon.
He'll the *hardest* computers to figgure out are MS Windows boxes - between all the rebooting and the buggy operating system, it's suprising that they don't migrate *away* from MS Windows.
I'd rather study 'man ifconfig' and be on my way, than play "where did Microsoft hide the network settings on this version of Windows?"
Like puting the SMB/Cifs,Domain and Workgroup name in the "My Computer." Hint for idiots at MS: Networking settings belong in the "My Network Places" or whatever you call it now days.
Jesus, this has turned into My Rant, against My Favorite Criminal Company.
They then decided to select 'HP Photo Paper' in the drivers, and the prints came out far better!
This might not be a conspiricy - most 'Photo' paper is designed to be non-absorbing. It's designed to keep the ink at the surface of the paper so it looks vibrent. The 'Other Photo Paper' is probably set to squirt out a small amount of ink, so that it doesen't run on really non-absorbant paper.
You can't supoenna a video camera. However the rest of your argument may be valid.
Here, in Washington state, trafic court is quite informal - Judges will let you bring in a cam-corder to show them the timing without batting an eye. As always YMMV.
Almst all stated have a document stored at the "Department of Highways/Paths/Roadways" that list recommended yellow-light times vs speed. Usually they are quite conservitive: here in Washington State the WADOT recommends 7 seconds for a 35 MPH zone. Of courss, light arn't set this way. Video tape the light in question, bring document and present in court. You win!
Oh, and supoenna the cop just to make his life miserable. Especially if he's a motorcycle cop. If if the cop is a chick - maby you could strike up a conversation about hand-cuffs afterwards.
This new generaiton of Spooks and Operatives dropped the ball again - people are finding out. The just need to keep it simple - a drowing here, a maiming there - and nobody notices. Just like it should be. By now-a-days, these whipper snappers have to get clever - swords, nudity, pagens and these new-fangeled aero-planes. Lets get back to business, and just do our jobs, and leave the 'flair' for the Operatives in San Francisco.
The GPL is niave and fails miserably in this respect. Don't take my word for it, though.
Don't worry at all, I certainly won't take your word for it.
The GPL was crafted by great counsel - and has been extensivly reviewed. The fact that it *grants* rights to consumers makes any perceived loopholes moot - if the GPL is held to be invalid, normall copyright law will apply and the theoretical plaintif will not have *any* rights to the code.
Jesus, the best test of the GPL is that Microsoft's excelent atourneys won't touch the thing with a ten foot barge pole - Microsoft goes throught great efforts to keep their programers away from any GPL code - it's that strong.
If Microsoft is affraid of the GPL and isen't of the Justice Department itself, doesen't that tell you somthing?
Most people's eyes glaze over when they think they have to read a contract/license. Prod them into actaully reading the GPL - it's in real english and is honestly written. It's also a brillient bit of leagal-ese.
Courts have traditionally ruled in favor of the consumer if the contract is un-nesessarly obscure, so making the GPL hard to read in an vain attempt to close a loophole can be counterproductive if done in haste. Also, one must be carefull to not give a poorly thought out explenation of the GPL with the GPL - the court might rule that the explenation grants additional rights if the consumer is confused as to if the explenation is part of the contract/license.
So the short answer is to actually READ the GPL. There are no explenaions nesessary to an inteligent person - and no explenation will do the cosumer any good anyways. It's only us developers that need an explenation - we're the ones that can get caught in a GPL bind, not the average consumer.
The 'Classic" example of a traditional pataentable idea, was the manufacturer of a rifle bore.
One company knew how to make them - and even after studying a rifle, nobody else could figgure it out.
This is where a patent makes sense - the company patented the idea and got a monopoly on the device. They benifited in that they diden't have to take measures to keep the process secret, and the public benifited because they got to see an otherwise hidden manufacturing technique.
What does the public benifit from for Adobe's tabbed palette?
Inovative yes, but worthy of a monopoly of 19 years? No.
See the way patents use to work is that a company would disclose a non-obvious method, in return for a temporary monopoly. A tabbed interface is quite obvious, and it's disclosure of it's inner workings does nothing for the public good.
Just by seeing one (tabbed interface), I can duplicate it's effect. I don't need a patent desclosure to figgure it out - so therefore it's a trivial invention, obvious to one skilled in the arts.
I just hope that an OpenSourse/GPL author get a patent on somting vital to the computing field and brings companies like Adobe too it's knees.
Another "The Shuttle Sucks - But My Hypothetical Saturn-5-Moon-Colony Idea Rules"
See the trouble was that the US Public diden't give a shit about the Saturn 5, only the Military/Airplane companies had the clout to get somthing though a Congress that would rather spend money feeding retards.
So yes, your Saturn 5.1 would have been great - by it never would have been built. I'd rather have the crappy shuttle that is actually running, than somthing that never would have gotten off the crayon drwaing board.
So become Benovelent Dictator of these United States - and eventually the Satrun 5.1 will get built. And we can go meet the moon people.
The sick thing of the whole NASA business, is the I bet that as a public, we spend more money on pretend space exploration though movies, books and video-games , than we do on real exploration.
Every time a NASA is mentioned 'round here - sombody always mentions how screwed up the shuttle is. How it's expensive, and comlicated, and it sucks. I can see their point - if our goal was to launch a bunch of crap into space. But our goal isen't that - it's to learn things. In this endevour (pun intended) the Shuttle has been wonderfull. When we get to colonising the moon, we'll resurect the Saturn 5 - but for advancing the state of the art, the shuttle has been worth it.
As an aside, I'll bet you that the the SR-71 'Blackbird' replacement, the Auroura, was made possible by things learned by making the Shuttle - like the tiles. But as we don't know much about the Auroura, so I'm just pulling crap out of my butt.
Anyways, comerial rocketry is great for launching stupid XM radio satelites - the shuttle is great for learning and doing wacky things like fixing Hubble.
A iridium phone costs (after hidious federal taxes) between $1000 and $1800 depending on model. Their cheapy plan, cost $20 per month for service and $1.50 per min - they have a cradel for $150 that makes the thing behave like a slow serial modem. With a good ISP, it you get 4800 baud. They give you a Windows CD that you can use that will compress the stream and use their ISP. I threw it away - and just use SSH for it's compression on a BSD laptop.
The cool thing - is that most plans charge by ten second increments. Volume plans can get you down to $.60 a min.
Also they work greay in an emergency - I had no trouble getting a line on Sep11, but cell and land line diden't work.
Curious thing though - after Sep11 (around the 25th or so) - Iridium calls took an extra five seconds to connect. I think shady people were being monitered by our frinds at the NSA. Or I could just need to re-adjust my foil hat.
Sorry 'bout the rambeling. I need coffee.
Oh - the best thing about Iridium VS Garmond: You family can use it in an emergency, when communiction is a life saver and not just a novilty for email.
Good luck - sounds like a cool project and I admire you for trying to keep in touch with family.
However only making it public by allowing it to run on lame machines also makes a bad reputation.
I uderstand your sentiments, but I'm starting not to care about what the Lexus-crowd thinks about Linux and free software.
Here's an amusing story: We do competitive bids on services/projects, and one of our prospects decided to do some due diligence on one of our bids that contained OpenBSD. We'll he wasen't amused with the funny-looking pufferfish. Microsoft doesen't have pufferfish.
With a little education, I was able to show him that the funny little pufferfish, doesen't BSOD, and doesen't have hardly any security holes.
He now has the set of OpenBSD 2.9 stickers that you get when you order CDs from Theo et al.
Just give a little bit of education and thinks will work out fine. If not, then screw them. Laugh when they get rooted, send their money to bill, and put up with BSOD's.
Slashdot Mirror
otherwise intelligent people persist in identifing this system of endless, mindless consumption as "their culture"
;)
Thanks for considering me to be at least somewhat inteligent
Unfortunaly, I don't think that you our I exist outside of the curent culture - grudgingly, we are products of it. Even our decenting voices are products of this culture - flawed though it it, this culture seem to al least give lip-service to differing thougts. We haven't been locked up, or beaten too much.
Anyways, my general rant on Chomsky is that he is interesting, but ot only inefective, but possibly damaging to his own cause. I gather we're on opposite sides of the political fence - but there are vast terretories of common ground for people like us to discover. People like Raplh Nader and John McCain give me inspiration that we can have a better future - people like Chomsky and Limbaugh, although great entertainemnt, just devide rational people from each other.
All too often, a good idea gets labeled by one side or the other as belonging to "that hippie Chomsky" or "that fat idiot Limbaugh." It's too bad the these lables can destroy a potentionally good idea. Noam and Rush are just to easy of a target, and discourse dies when either one gets mentioned. Anyways - at least neighter of them are taking about stupid subjects like Elisibeth Taylor, or NSYNC so perhaps I'm being a bit harsh on both.
Cheers.
Just as a sugestion: look at Ralph Nader. I find Ralph Nader not only to be more inteligent than Noam, but more effective. That's my problem with Chomsky - he just likes to tear things down, and blame his inefectivness at communicating on conspiricies and the grand spectre of the "Corporate-Boogy-Man."
Raplh, bless his little heart, gets thing done. I don't agree with him a goodly amount of the time, but he has my respect, and I wish more people were like him. Ralph also is a happy soul - he smiles, makes jokes and doesen't take things too seriously, Chomsky is a sour old house-frau by compaison, and people pick up on this. People like joyfull people by nature. Oh well:off to get more cofee. (Ralph whould be proud: Shade grown, fair-trade cofee)
PS: If you like cofee, get some Sahde-Grown, organic, fair-trace cofee even if you don't give a rat's ass about the environment, wages, or living coditions. The stuff just tastes better, and it's only 20% more in price.
He examined different cultures myths and merely showed how they were similar through a series of basic rites of passage that heroes pass through.
Cabpbell did indeed do this. And that is the problem - he made an attempt to stuff noble and self-contained cultural stories into a particularly odd Western idea of the "common Myth." It's stupid. It's like trying to make a big deal of pointing out that all computer languages are Turring complete. It's true - but it rather misses the point.
Cambell selectivly chooses to back his theory - and even in his own culture, he fails to explain away modern poerty - where many a modern poet somtimes tries to convey emotions rather than story.
So on the surface, Cambell is interesting, but its a diservice to other cultures to claim that their stories come from a unthinking group-thought, rahter than being motivated by their own ideas, and their own self-containded thoughts.
Maby if you feel that our live are already pre-ordained, could Cambell make sense, but I hope that we are all have free-will and arn't motivated into following Campbells pet theory of blindly following our ancesters stories over and over.
I firmly beleive, that their can be somthing new under the sun. We just have to be smart.
do you mean Noam Chomsky, the linguist?
Yep, too much cofee already make my spelling even worse. Mr. Chomsky has a lot of interesting ideas, if you are only familiar with his linguistics then you are missing out on a lot of good mind material. I have a lot of respect for Noam's honesty in politics - but I wish he would spend more time in proposing solutions rather than just bash my culture. He repetidly make the clasic error of assuming that identification of a problem is the same as fixing it, and unfortuntatly he has collected enough groupies around him that parrot every word of his - so I doubt he'll change, unless he get a mind altering infection of the brain. Oh well.
(run-on sentance ballanced with a terse one)
Campbell is a dead-white-guy (even while living) who saw everything in terms of other dead-white-guy stories. He attempted to shoe-horn other cultures and their stories into Western style myths, and then pointed out how clever he was.
Anybody why even glibpses a page of Mr. Campbell's PBS-style writings starts seening everything in tems of myth. "The milk being poured into my fruit-loops is like the story of the Hero's of Yore who travel on an Adventure, only to come back to a decimated homeland"
The guy had a cerain nack of getting grants to do his "craft", I'll give him that, but his readers rank up there with readers of and Ayn Rand and Chompsky, they start to see everything in terms of their favorite new book.
If you just have a windows computer for games, just run the games in full screen mode and you won't have to look at windows at all.
Hell, just make a desktop full of shortcuts and st the 'taskbar' to auto-hide, and you'll won't have to look at microsofts crappy GUI wigets again.
Given that GCC is cross-platform to the extreme, I'm verry impressed with GCC ability to hold up well to Intel's finest. Plus GCC has diferent front-ends for other languages, it gets even more impressive.
Aside:
Personally, for initial developemnt of cross platform stuff, I actually use Borland's C++ Builder compiler and linker. It produces slow code, but it's amazingly fast at compiling and linking. The debug and compile cycle goes so much faster - that I get more work done faster than with Emacs and GCC. After the code runs well on Windows - I move on to testing with GCC on other platforms.
That's it? Jesus, what are you, a 12 year old girl?
Girl? On Slashdot?
Woah!
Ipconfig is a windows program and therefore would not have a Unix terminal manual file.
I normally don't respond to AC, but retarded AC's are fair game.
Ipconfig is MS Windows bastard version of Unix ifconfig. Note the correct spelling as I had it. Now go flip the burgers, trash.
PS $75,000 is low for a decent admin - keep flipping the burgers and studying and maby even you'll get there.
I'll loose karma for responding - let it burn.
I have no patience for lousy admins that are so stupid, that they can only figgure out one operating system.
Hell, my fist Mac experience was setting up Dave (a SMB clinet for Mac) and TCP/IP networking on an OS 9 box. Took all of fifteen minuits, and I spent most of that time looking and the inerds of the translucent mouse. Most Important Tip: Hold mouse button down to make menus stay. That's it. It's easy.
If these idiots can't figgure it out for $75,000 a year then recycle their carbon.
He'll the *hardest* computers to figgure out are MS Windows boxes - between all the rebooting and the buggy operating system, it's suprising that they don't migrate *away* from MS Windows.
I'd rather study 'man ifconfig' and be on my way, than play "where did Microsoft hide the network settings on this version of Windows?"
Like puting the SMB/Cifs,Domain and Workgroup name in the "My Computer." Hint for idiots at MS: Networking settings belong in the "My Network Places" or whatever you call it now days.
Jesus, this has turned into My Rant, against My Favorite Criminal Company.
My New Sig: Winodws-only admins suck.
If Apple continues to name their releases after failed video game consoles, then by the time they get to 3DO, we're screwed.
I'm an engineer, and after 5 years of school, and 5 more being a professional i can't even apply for a .pro domain
.pro domain.
No, the $300 fee is for the stupid people. The rest of us will just hack ourselves a
They then decided to select 'HP Photo Paper' in the drivers, and the prints came out far better!
This might not be a conspiricy - most 'Photo' paper is designed to be non-absorbing. It's designed to keep the ink at the surface of the paper so it looks vibrent. The 'Other Photo Paper' is probably set to squirt out a small amount of ink, so that it doesen't run on really non-absorbant paper.
You can't supoenna a video camera. However the rest of your argument may be valid.
Here, in Washington state, trafic court is quite informal - Judges will let you bring in a cam-corder to show them the timing without batting an eye. As always YMMV.
Almst all stated have a document stored at the "Department of Highways/Paths/Roadways" that list recommended yellow-light times vs speed. Usually they are quite conservitive: here in Washington State the WADOT recommends 7 seconds for a 35 MPH zone. Of courss, light arn't set this way. Video tape the light in question, bring document and present in court. You win!
Oh, and supoenna the cop just to make his life miserable. Especially if he's a motorcycle cop. If if the cop is a chick - maby you could strike up a conversation about hand-cuffs afterwards.
This new generaiton of Spooks and Operatives dropped the ball again - people are finding out. The just need to keep it simple - a drowing here, a maiming there - and nobody notices. Just like it should be. By now-a-days, these whipper snappers have to get clever - swords, nudity, pagens and these new-fangeled aero-planes. Lets get back to business, and just do our jobs, and leave the 'flair' for the Operatives in San Francisco.
The GPL is niave and fails miserably in this respect. Don't take my word for it, though.
Don't worry at all, I certainly won't take your word for it.
The GPL was crafted by great counsel - and has been extensivly reviewed. The fact that it *grants* rights to consumers makes any perceived loopholes moot - if the GPL is held to be invalid, normall copyright law will apply and the theoretical plaintif will not have *any* rights to the code.
Jesus, the best test of the GPL is that Microsoft's excelent atourneys won't touch the thing with a ten foot barge pole - Microsoft goes throught great efforts to keep their programers away from any GPL code - it's that strong.
If Microsoft is affraid of the GPL and isen't of the Justice Department itself, doesen't that tell you somthing?
Most people's eyes glaze over when they think they have to read a contract/license. Prod them into actaully reading the GPL - it's in real english and is honestly written. It's also a brillient bit of leagal-ese.
Courts have traditionally ruled in favor of the consumer if the contract is un-nesessarly obscure, so making the GPL hard to read in an vain attempt to close a loophole can be counterproductive if done in haste. Also, one must be carefull to not give a poorly thought out explenation of the GPL with the GPL - the court might rule that the explenation grants additional rights if the consumer is confused as to if the explenation is part of the contract/license.
So the short answer is to actually READ the GPL. There are no explenaions nesessary to an inteligent person - and no explenation will do the cosumer any good anyways. It's only us developers that need an explenation - we're the ones that can get caught in a GPL bind, not the average consumer.
The 'Classic" example of a traditional pataentable idea, was the manufacturer of a rifle bore.
One company knew how to make them - and even after studying a rifle, nobody else could figgure it out.
This is where a patent makes sense - the company patented the idea and got a monopoly on the device. They benifited in that they diden't have to take measures to keep the process secret, and the public benifited because they got to see an otherwise hidden manufacturing technique.
What does the public benifit from for Adobe's tabbed palette?
Nothing. Just a lawsuit.
but were they innovative at the time
Inovative yes, but worthy of a monopoly of 19 years? No.
See the way patents use to work is that a company would disclose a non-obvious method, in return for a temporary monopoly. A tabbed interface is quite obvious, and it's disclosure of it's inner workings does nothing for the public good.
Just by seeing one (tabbed interface), I can duplicate it's effect. I don't need a patent desclosure to figgure it out - so therefore it's a trivial invention, obvious to one skilled in the arts.
I just hope that an OpenSourse/GPL author get a patent on somting vital to the computing field and brings companies like Adobe too it's knees.
Yep!
Another "The Shuttle Sucks - But My Hypothetical Saturn-5-Moon-Colony Idea Rules"
See the trouble was that the US Public diden't give a shit about the Saturn 5, only the Military/Airplane companies had the clout to get somthing though a Congress that would rather spend money feeding retards.
So yes, your Saturn 5.1 would have been great - by it never would have been built. I'd rather have the crappy shuttle that is actually running, than somthing that never would have gotten off the crayon drwaing board.
So become Benovelent Dictator of these United States - and eventually the Satrun 5.1 will get built. And we can go meet the moon people.
The sick thing of the whole NASA business, is the I bet that as a public, we spend more money on pretend space exploration though movies, books and video-games , than we do on real exploration.
Oh well, time to adjust the foil hat.
Every time a NASA is mentioned 'round here - sombody always mentions how screwed up the shuttle is. How it's expensive, and comlicated, and it sucks. I can see their point - if our goal was to launch a bunch of crap into space. But our goal isen't that - it's to learn things. In this endevour (pun intended) the Shuttle has been wonderfull. When we get to colonising the moon, we'll resurect the Saturn 5 - but for advancing the state of the art, the shuttle has been worth it.
As an aside, I'll bet you that the the SR-71 'Blackbird' replacement, the Auroura, was made possible by things learned by making the Shuttle - like the tiles. But as we don't know much about the Auroura, so I'm just pulling crap out of my butt.
Anyways, comerial rocketry is great for launching stupid XM radio satelites - the shuttle is great for learning and doing wacky things like fixing Hubble.
A iridium phone costs (after hidious federal taxes) between $1000 and $1800 depending on model. Their cheapy plan, cost $20 per month for service and $1.50 per min - they have a cradel for $150 that makes the thing behave like a slow serial modem. With a good ISP, it you get 4800 baud. They give you a Windows CD that you can use that will compress the stream and use their ISP. I threw it away - and just use SSH for it's compression on a BSD laptop.
The cool thing - is that most plans charge by ten second increments. Volume plans can get you down to $.60 a min.
Also they work greay in an emergency - I had no trouble getting a line on Sep11, but cell and land line diden't work.
Curious thing though - after Sep11 (around the 25th or so) - Iridium calls took an extra five seconds to connect. I think shady people were being monitered by our frinds at the NSA. Or I could just need to re-adjust my foil hat.
Sorry 'bout the rambeling. I need coffee.
Oh - the best thing about Iridium VS Garmond: You family can use it in an emergency, when communiction is a life saver and not just a novilty for email.
Good luck - sounds like a cool project and I admire you for trying to keep in touch with family.
Why would anyone name all 6 of their children Frieda?
They all have diferent last names.
However only making it public by allowing it to run on lame machines also makes a bad reputation.
I uderstand your sentiments, but I'm starting not to care about what the Lexus-crowd thinks about Linux and free software.
Here's an amusing story:
We do competitive bids on services/projects, and one of our prospects decided to do some due diligence on one of our bids that contained OpenBSD. We'll he wasen't amused with the funny-looking pufferfish. Microsoft doesen't have pufferfish.
With a little education, I was able to show him that the funny little pufferfish, doesen't BSOD, and doesen't have hardly any security holes.
He now has the set of OpenBSD 2.9 stickers that you get when you order CDs from Theo et al.
Just give a little bit of education and thinks will work out fine. If not, then screw them. Laugh when they get rooted, send their money to bill, and put up with BSOD's.