I was just thinking the same thing... given the nature of stars, the word persist would indicate something a bit more substantial than "millions of years".
I'm going to second that. I really liked the idea of Redbox until I looked at the selection of movies that it carried. Sorry, but no thank you. For less than a dollar a day I can get better quality entertainment from Youtube.
First of all, netbooks are great for accessing the net wherever the net is available, but when you travel, your access to the net becomes patchy, sporadic, restricted, unreliable, limited, and in many cases, it's just not available. What most Linux users don't realize is just how hardwired the majority of them are to the net. Even when they use the WiFi, their access is usually through a wireless router they themselves have administrative access to!
I bought a couple Eee PCs. First there was the 701, and today I use the 1000. Both came with the custom Xandros, and both are currently running XP. I'm not a developer, and I really don't have the time to learn to write my own drivers and software. I just needed a highly portable computer and the netbook fills that niche. Having been a long time Mandriva user, I gave Xandros an honest try on the 701, but I found that it lacked certain tools by default and relied too heavily on 3rd party repositories. When I tried to tinker to get the applications that I wanted, it would cause unpredictable behavior. It's not like I have time to go in and read nonexistent Man pages, so I'd just used F9 (Eee's "reset") and started over. Its over-dependence on the web at that point was painfully obvious when you realized that repositories to recover your preferred basics can't just be stored locally.
So the other distributions of Linux weren't quite ready for prime time on the netbook just yet, and the Linux versions of Eee came with Windows drivers. Slipstream SP3 with nLite, and installing Windows is a snap! All the hardware "just works". The sound, the microphone, the camera, the bluetooth, the true DUAL SCREEN VIDEO, the WiFi, the USB ports, the power management... ALL THIS STUFF JUST WORKS! It's a no fuss system!
Of course you have to add in a few extras to make Windows behave... my short list- Audacity, CCleaner, FoxitReader, Firefox, OnlineArmor, OO.o, Vlc, and don't forget to tweak the registry, toss in the lame_enc.dll, and all of the other install files that can be stored locally on a backup drive. Best of all, these are all non-gratis!
Of course Linux has its place: Use Parted Magic to backup your highly fresh activated install of WinXP to a partition on a USB drive. You have the perfect "system restore"! Suddenly, my netbook isn't so helpless without the net anymore. I can do everything a typical PC user can do. RIP/Burn DVDs? Got it. Organize MP3s? Yup. Log in with my CAC? Done. Play Half Life? Sure! Writer, Calc, Impress? Check, check, check!
Now it doesn't work as nice, but occasionally I'll boot from an SDHC on the 1000 into Mandriva 2008.1 (KDE 3). I have to use the NDIS wrapper to get the WiFi working, never got the camera up and running, and capturing audio... eh... it's still a little dicey. Don't expect the dual screen to work just right, and if you've got Compiz up and running with an external monitor, there's going to be a somewhat funky "screen in a screen" parallax. The USB ports generally work great, but I've never figured out how to get my SCR 331 to work in Linux.
So what's complicated? It's not Linux on the netbook... The complicated part is just Linux and the fact that it generally relies too heavily on access to a network. Period! Linux on a cell phone? No problem! Linux on a router? It's a go! Linux at home? Cool beans! On a server? You bet! A single purpose box like a kiosk or PVR? Great idea!
Two flowering plants, Deschampsia antarctica (Antarctic hair grass) and Colobanthus quitensis (Antarctic pearlwort), are found on the northern and western parts of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Ouch. That just gave me a/0 error.
Reason:
The continent sits on the South pole. Every direction is north, and east/west is arbitrary!
Still, it's interesting info to know. I would never have thought flowering plants would grow down there. What pollinates them?
Not to be too morose, but technically one of the pipe benders did bite someone at that plant. It was a rather chilling site that I unwittingly stumbled upon. The man's fingers and a pool of his blood were on the floor and he looked so helpless with the meat of his hand still clamped in that monster. There were people already on the scene to rescue him, so I quickly did an about-face as soon as I realized what was going on. This was back in '95.
Four years later I found myself at a different facility and ended up getting my own fingers caught in an automated 25 ton thermoset injection molding press. Don't worry, they were able to re-attach them, and I regained full functionality. In both cases, I do not consider these machines to be "robots". Even though I feel that it's a given that a robot is controlled by computer; "computer controlled" does not necessarily equal robotics in my mind.
And since I no longer work in that field, "Bender" can kiss my hairy yellow butt!:-P
This probably isn't the most helpful commentary, but it's a slight rant on semantics.
I used to work with Motoman K6's a few years back. Using these robots, we performed plasma cutting, arc welding, material handling, etc... Just looking at the K6, you knew it was a robot. Watching a robot work in a cell after you've trained it to do it's job is a very rewarding experience. Of course we also had other machines that were also very complex in their tasks, but we didn't consider them robots. CNC mills and lathes, pipe benders, other machines that ran autonomously that also had to be programmed and synchronized with the flow of production. Sometimes the line resembled a kind of demented Rube Goldberg contraption, but we were somewhat strict to define only the articulated manipulators themselves as robots.
So when I saw this pile of servos in a glass cleanroom set to the over-dramatic theme of "Bonanza Reloaded", I thought, "Yeah, that's nice, but... It just doesn't strike me as a 'robot' so much as it does an automated bio lab."
And yes, I realize there were clearly robots within the cell, but calling the unit as a whole a "robot" just irks me a little.
Of course in the spirit of all the other bad jokes I've seen posted, do you think this "robot" will use it's genetic findings with the yeast cells to perfect the most delicious and moist cake recipe ever?
No, no... You're missing the big picture. With both Roddenberry and Barrett passed on, the vacuum energy created by the suction of this next release should set their final remains into a "Hyper-spin". This in turn will induce a casimir effect so we can create the first stable worm hole. Since only parts of their remains are being launched into space, this will allow one end of the wormhole to remain on earth while the other extends deep into outer space allowing us travel to the stars at a fraction of the cost needed to produce nanotube beanstalks.
Mandriva 2009 really let me down hard with the default to KDE4. While Mandriva worked remarkably well with the hardware on my Eee 1000, KDE 4 was just too bloated to really consider it.
Of course I never could stomach Gnome for some reason. It just bugs me... And don't even get me started with (*)buntu, because that crap just really ticks me off. (I think probably has something to do with their cult-like fan club.)
Eyecandy may be fun, but Linux needs to get back to being more streamline, and nowhere is that more important than on the desktop. KDE 4 Fails hard in this area.
Let's get one thing clear: I am NOT Balmer trying astroturf.
Next: What's wrong with the idea of your Netbook replacing your need for the standard desktop or laptop entirely? Do I really need a full sized desktop these days when an external keyboard, monitor, and mouse can make any netbook just as comfy as the old-school boxen?
Long time back (2001), I patently refused to "upgrade" from Windows ME to XP. That whole "Product Activation" thing left me really cold, and still does. I actively went out and forced myself to start using Linux, and for a while I thought I got pretty good at it. Granted, I was actually just really good at making due with KDE, but it was Linux.
So let's fast forward a bit: Let's just say I took a military job about 3 years ago... Suddenly I've got two very pressing concerns: First I needed ultra-portability. A regular sized laptop would do, but the EEE 701 was simply too wonderful a concept to pass by. Soon after, some serious compatibility concerns reared its ugly head. Linux simply did not deliver like my counterparts' XP machines. As much as I hated to give in, I wiped the SSD and installed Windows for the first time in over half a decade.
I felt dirty... And not in the good way.
Over time I got used to it again... The viruses, the malware, the care and feeding of the OS... Things you never really had to worry about under Linux... Yeah, the old routine is back. It's a minor chore, but it's not that bad. Oddly enough, I noticed something unusual: It felt faster than Linux.
Recently I purchased the EEE 1000. It's a little bigger than the 701, but still much smaller than a regular laptop. I played around with the custom Linux install for about 2 hours to reminisce, then I tore open the XP SP3 OEM disc and stuck that Genuine MS XP sticker on the bottom.
Don't try to tell me that Linux is faster. It's not. Don't try to tell me that Linux can do everything that Windows can do. It can't. I won't tell you that Windows is just as secure, or that Windows can do everything Linux can do, as they are also lies.
What I will tell you is that the software I needed is there.
What I will tell you is that the hardware support I needed is there.
What I will tell you is that the [*]ubuntites are a confusing squirming mass of trustafarians who eat their own, and find spinning cubes to be of more importance than achieving real productivity in a high pressure work environment.
So go ahead and have your coffee shop "luv-in" with Linux, but I needed to have a computer in the field. That meant I needed application compatibility with my netbook. Sadly, that meant I needed to abandon Linux for XP. Perhaps sometime down the road when the various flavors of Linux support Pure-Edge and CAC readers, I will be able to return. Otherwise you'll just have to wait at least three more years before I get out.
And yeah... Sometimes I even miss the CLI and the joys of mpg123, mikmod, vim, and making a simple Perl script to modify 1000+ HTML files in the blink of an eye... But I need the expedience and instant gratification that Windows tends to deliver.
Thankfully, in the future you will be able to screen your world in a way that doesn't require you to argue with me. You and I can both live a digital life where everybody agrees with us!
That sounds great. So from my perspective, there's going to be about 15 people world-wide on the internet, one of them is called Zombo, and none will live within 600 miles of me. Fantastic!
Taking it a step further, just think of the possibilities! Spouses won't even be able send one another an e-mail! Google will have determined that the very act of you sending messages to her is just too risky, as it might start an argument.
Back on the main topic, I find the idea unsettling that different people will receive different search results. Isn't that sort of like the concept of "separate but equal"? In theory, it almost sounds good, but in practice you can only have one or the other. Then you realize that some people consistently get better search results than others, and you probably ain't among them.
Well, I might as well chime in too. Pandora is one of my favorite bookmarks. I even started buying MP3s off Amazon thanks to Pandora, and I also purchased two CDs as well. Previously I had not purchased any music since before Y2K (mostly out of spite), so this has been an effective way to reach an otherwise unreachable customer.
I'm listening to Pandora as I type this, and as usual, the quality of the selections are exceptional. I actually feel the lure to increase my personal collection 99Â at a time. Take note: When Pandora goes away, so does my enticement to purchase music.
Thinking about it now, Pandora is probably one of the few websites to which I would actually pay a subscription fee. I know they tried that model in the past, but no one had even heard of them back then. Even at twice the price, it would be an even better value than the $5 I spent on Slashdot. $10 for 1000 plays? That would be a bargain.
But yeah... Let's say Pandora closes shop. I'll go back to listening to the songs I've ripped from my old CDs and the odd tunes I've downloaded from independent artists who give away their stuff because that's their right. Meanwhile, the music cartel can suck on a smoking pile of "FAIL".
That is pretty pessimistic, but what else can people do about this? Moles have been around longer than the internet. While it may be easier for them to disguise themselves, it doesn't make them any smarter.
I remember back when all you needed was a radio with a cassette player and you could have all the free mix tapes you wanted. Even then they wanted to tax blank tapes because of all the "rampant copying". Yeah... They really had to worry about the collapse of their business model from the Chromium(IV) Oxide threat back then.~
The bottom line is that any commercial method is likely to be introduced by a licensed manufacturer, and non-commercial methods will be achieved through the analog headphone jack and a line-in digital recorder. They gave consent for the former, and I can't really see where they can outlaw the latter.
These days I'm still more concerned with their barratry against every day civilians than their ability to come up with legitimate means to prevent unauthorized duplications.
I hear you. I know there are significant and challenging facets to designing a well built website, but I'm not so sure that your boss wanting a different color is what would lead people to becoming a prima donna. Tossing in a generally useless non-configurable web-gadget simply for its nift-value in spite of the fact that it consumes bandwidth and hogs system resources from the server and the client, and you knowing that it basically adds nothing to the function, but you have to use because "Oh my God! It's the new cat's meow!"... Now THERE is the makings of a prima donna.
Changing the color shouldn't be any harder than <td bgcolor="#ff00ff">, or even perhaps <img src="magentabar.gif" align=left">. You just type it in and move on. (Please forgive me for using some really bad oversimplifications...);-)
Note, I said "shouldn't".
Somehow the promise of XML and CSS separating form and content hasn't quite lived up to the hype. I know with all the whizbang graphics and the flash based effects that it can greatly complicate matters. If that's the case, the site is probably headed for bloat-city and the cause for many future headaches until a total rewrite is mandated.
And of course... Don't think the irony has totally evaded me. This comment is coming from a guy who's gotten too lazy to bother with maintaining his own website...:-/
I hate to sound like an old fart, but the trend seems to be throwing in more and more features to the point that the "nift" value exceeds the actual "content" being presented. In the end, the site becomes so painfully quixotic that no mere mortal could maintain it. Now when it breaks, you need a complete overhaul, and of course the "vision guy" in marketing wants everything including the kitchen sink installed on the site. For some odd reason, I wouldn't want to work for a jerk like that, and I'm not sure anyone else would either.
Of course the other aspect may be that there are a lot of prima donnas out there who believe their "talents" are being wasted on the boring/mundane, and will refuse to take a job that doesn't have a the springboard potential to stardom. Hence, you have a bunch of people out there who are calling themselves "web developers", but somehow always appear somewhat "under-employed".
There's also the "DIY" crowd that later goes on to discover they lack the technical know how to adequately keep up with their projects, only to be horribly abused by charlatans posing as web developers who toss in a bunch of glitter-gifs and JavaScript, then take off leaving the site owner with a the painfully quixotic nightmare mentioned above.
So where does one look to find a reputable freelance web developer anyway?
How about the market for people who just want their systems to work out of the box?
Now I did just have a couple of unexpected meltdowns recently after some 2008.1 updates, but overall, my Mandr(ake|iva) installs have been exceptionally stable compared with my (*)buntu experiences.
Well, it's like the first buds of spring! I always look forward to the Mandriva releases because it gives me an idea of the tone this release is going to bring to the Mandriva distribution.
Personally, I'm hoping to get better hardware support for my EEE in their *Free edition, faster boot times, a cleaner/more responsive KDE, and less overall bloat.
I'm going out for the weekend, but this news gives me something to check out sometime in the coming week.
Sorry, but you got me wrong. I started using Mandrake as my primary OS in 2001, so it's hardly the first time things have gotten flaky. Now say it with me: "It's an operating system, not a religion." Besides, I can't seem to get my SCR331 USB CAC reader working under Linux.
My home built 3GHz Prescott based desktop system (exclusively Mandriva and has never run XP) also did the update and now it's turned into goo. Booting takes forever, and KDE is not its usual perky self. I even had to shut it down hard because it went non-responsive. (The mouse was moving but nobody home.) I could be wrong, but I suspect that somebody poisoned the well.
My only other computer (a rather generic "Enpower" laptop) is also running Mandriva. It's still using "2007.1 Free" and last checked, seemed to work just fine. Sadly I haven't touched it in weeks because it's no longer the "New Hotness". I purchased it "new" several years ago sans OS. It has never run XP.
Also, the make tools and other stuff aren't actually on the Mandriva One 2008.1 disk! You have to get them off the net if you want that functionality... So I'm NOT "totally wrong".
Please don't paint me with the MS astroturfer brush. I may not be out there seething at the gums over every evil deed carried out by those big, bad, terrible, nasty corporations, but I don't really have the patience to waste time with every two bit revolutionary. I'm just trying to find the solutions that work best for my situation.
I've been using Mandr(ake/iva) for years now, and some of their releases were OK, while others crashed and burned. It was cool though, because it was usually fast and breezy to set up. When Mandriva One 2008.1 came to town, I was impressed! Hardware detection and support was faster and better than ever! It set up so smooth and dreamy, you would have to be crazy to use anything else. Then the updates started happening... Sometimes several every week. Then it got cranky. Web access isn't quite so responsive as it used to be. I had to give it up on my EEE and resort to using XP. My desktop is lumbering through it, but I'd still like to format and re-install with 2007.1. The major trouble with Mandriva One 2008.1 is they don't actually include your make/install, build tools so you have to use their package manager over the net. It's not such a dreamy feeling anymore.
All that, and I'm not so sure Google or Firefox are necessarily my friends anymore either... Did the good guys lose or something? What's happening here?
Wow! Believe it or not, I used to run a Renegade BBS back in the day, so thanks for bringing back a flood of fond memories. It's scary to think all the hours I spent trying to get the configurations just right so I could get an extra node up and running, the amount of effort I put into squashing files down so they'd fit onto floppy disks, the painstaking details I'd put into my ANSI designs using "TheDraw", and so many other fun adventures installing various door games. Nothing seemed more popular than LoRD, but I recall "Barney Splat" and some silly adventure about killing militant cows was also a lot of fun. And don't forget all those hours we spent just waiting to get online to any of the other BBS's out there! I had a list of about 50 different systems and would set the auto-dialer to cycle through them till one would get a connection.
We attended local BBS picnics and get-togethers, and being a sysop was a little like being a rock star. (Yeah, I actually got some back then!) When you connected to a BBS, you connected to people, and you had a pretty good chance of actually getting to meet them in person.
Oh, and it wasn't called registration back then...
The default Xandros works fine and it's fun. It has a lot of nice applications that work well. Unfortunately you can't really add much additional software without seriously messing around with it. Once you mess around with it, the system is less stable. The other available Linux distros aren't really any better.
For a housewife, or any lady of the house, the EEE's default fits their needs. They just want to check their e-mail and surf the web. They don't want to worry about anything else, and their life will be good. They can see the pretty pictures, play the catchy tunes, watch the funny videos, and keep in touch with their friends and loved ones. For them the limits are acceptable, and that's all they need.
For "geeks" seeking ultra-portability, it gets a little more complicated. I needed to be able to burn CD/DVD's onto my portable USB drive, I needed to attach an SCR331 CAC reader, I wanted a decent image editor, and I needed it ready before Friday. You couldn't do that with Linux on the EEE.
Look, I really don't like having to use Windows on this thing. I'm a Mandriva fan myself! In spite of that, I've got some specific tasks to accomplish and time is a factor. I can't be trying out every distro that gets mentioned in the forums to see if it's going to work. I need a system that I can reliably set up time and time again in as short a time possible.
A housewife doesn't need this.
She just likes the "dainty cuteness".
For her, the Linux version is perfect!
On a desktop with handpicked hardware: I choose Linux.
I need a compact, highly portable computer.
On an ultra mobile PC with proprietary parts: Windows XP
I hate seeing articles like this...
Municipal corporations versus privately held corporations. It doesn't matter who wins, the taxpayer/consumer loses.
I'm curious when the internet as we know it will essentially vanish. Usenet is already on the endangered species list, P2P is still a logistics nightmare if it goes prime time. Special interest groups want to censor every website. Barratry is rampant over intellectual property claims. Spam, spyware, trojans, worms, viruses, and other malwares are constantly trying to take over or kill the net. Governments want to tap into everybody's business while they're on the net. Telecoms want to repackage it with their own brand name all over it. The list of this degenerating garbage is endless, and yet people are still so desperate to get it!
Why doesn't this stupid thing just implode already?! Once it does, Tim Berners-Lee (with nothing better to do) can come out and design a whole new concept of network computing that no single entity can possibly own or control.
Meanwhile, Priva-corp vs Muni-corp can serve as yet another distraction from creating more practical advances in technology.
It would be nice if the author explained why he thinks that everybody should have a web presence. I don't buy it...
I was wondering the exact same thing. I used to have a vanity myname.com, but I let it go when I realized it was essentially useless. Also, it's not like too many people out there have a completely unique first and last name combo. Just as there's more than one "Jon Smith" out there, even I have to share my name with some other lesser-knowns.
And while I still have a web presence, I do try to keep it somewhat insulated from my legal name. From this post you can find the real me, but the reverse is still more tricky. Generally, what I do outside of the internet stays off the internet.
Besides, it's not like anyone's interested in the daily antics of a bald, 5', 300lb, unemployed, 30yo, "Mama's boy" in the basement anyway...;)
I can see it from your perspective, but I still have to disagree with some of your arguments. Brace yourself, because I'm going to take your "necropost" line by line.
Let's face it, they advertise the internet as an UNLIMITED, CONTENT-NEUTRAL SERVICE.
They advertise a lot of things in a manner that is inconsistent with the reality. They advertise McDonald's as something edible, but don't warn of the health ramifications of such foods in the human diet. It's true that the internet has a large capacity, but no one of sound mind should believe that it is "unlimited"!
Rerouting for congestion is done automatically with algorithms, and that congestion has nothing to do with the protocols used. Every packet contributes to congestion, not just "p2p".
Automatically does not mean magically. Algorithms aren't always perfect. There isn't a single branch of the network out there that has never encountered some kind of error. Protocols do matter. If they didn't, why bother having different protocols at all? Consider TCP for accuracy, and UDP when time is a factor as examples.
Did I mention the whole concept of the internet is based on "anyone-to-anyone" (p2p) communication.
That's the concept, but not the reality! Today, it's more like the head of a dandelion. There aren't any small players out there who contribute to the infrastructure of the actual network itself. In reality, there is no peer to peer connection! It's an illusion! Your connection routes though "hops", and neither you, nor your ISP necessarily owns or controls all of those connections.
I'm so sorry these people have a problem with their customers using the internet for it's primary purpose.
OK, "they" are NOT (let me emphasize a little harder), NOT NOW OR EVER SHOULD BE CONSIDERED "people"". They are corporations, and should not be imbued with such attributes. They are only interested in creating or acquiring wealth for their shareholders, so it's very hard for me to swallow the concept of feeling "sorry" for them. As for customer's using the internet for its primary purpose... Well... That's a whole philosophical debate in and of itself. Suffice to say, the original creators of the internet never envisioned the kinds of trivialities people take it for today.
And it's not just their customers! Other people are using their networks non-gratis as they route through to other destinations! Run a traceroute for cryin' out loud! I'm currently paying AT&T $15 a month for DSL, but my connection to Slashdot is going through no less than 10 hops. Here's a clue: AT&T doesn't OWN or CONTROL them all and neither do I. Meanwhile they have to suffer my computer's request to pass along these packets so I can explain to you the obvious fact that there is simply no actual physical peer to peer connection.
If these companies and certain government agencies were not out to censor the internet, this "over-redundancy" in bit torrent and its ilk wouldn't be necessary.
I feel you. No really, I do. The establishment does its level best to retard the growth of humanity's intellectual inventions in order to prevent anarchy and megalomaniacal behaviors. Unfortunately the balance has gotten wildly out of control of late, and it's likely to get worse before it gets better. Whining that it's "big bad gubmint" is likely to produce no fruitful results, and neither is overloading networks with poorly designed protocols.
Finally, stop spewing this fallacious idea that "light users" are being substantively harmed by "heavy users"
By nature, the light users only use traffic in short bursts. They load their e-mail, go to google once or twice a day, and log off. The idea that these people will see any substantive harm from those brief activities is ludicrous.
Slashdot Mirror
I was just thinking the same thing... given the nature of stars, the word persist would indicate something a bit more substantial than "millions of years".
I'm going to second that. I really liked the idea of Redbox until I looked at the selection of movies that it carried. Sorry, but no thank you. For less than a dollar a day I can get better quality entertainment from Youtube.
First of all, netbooks are great for accessing the net wherever the net is available, but when you travel, your access to the net becomes patchy, sporadic, restricted, unreliable, limited, and in many cases, it's just not available. What most Linux users don't realize is just how hardwired the majority of them are to the net. Even when they use the WiFi, their access is usually through a wireless router they themselves have administrative access to! I bought a couple Eee PCs. First there was the 701, and today I use the 1000. Both came with the custom Xandros, and both are currently running XP. I'm not a developer, and I really don't have the time to learn to write my own drivers and software. I just needed a highly portable computer and the netbook fills that niche. Having been a long time Mandriva user, I gave Xandros an honest try on the 701, but I found that it lacked certain tools by default and relied too heavily on 3rd party repositories. When I tried to tinker to get the applications that I wanted, it would cause unpredictable behavior. It's not like I have time to go in and read nonexistent Man pages, so I'd just used F9 (Eee's "reset") and started over. Its over-dependence on the web at that point was painfully obvious when you realized that repositories to recover your preferred basics can't just be stored locally.
So the other distributions of Linux weren't quite ready for prime time on the netbook just yet, and the Linux versions of Eee came with Windows drivers. Slipstream SP3 with nLite, and installing Windows is a snap! All the hardware "just works". The sound, the microphone, the camera, the bluetooth, the true DUAL SCREEN VIDEO, the WiFi, the USB ports, the power management... ALL THIS STUFF JUST WORKS! It's a no fuss system!
Of course you have to add in a few extras to make Windows behave... my short list- Audacity, CCleaner, FoxitReader, Firefox, OnlineArmor, OO.o, Vlc, and don't forget to tweak the registry, toss in the lame_enc.dll, and all of the other install files that can be stored locally on a backup drive. Best of all, these are all non-gratis!
Of course Linux has its place: Use Parted Magic to backup your highly fresh activated install of WinXP to a partition on a USB drive. You have the perfect "system restore"! Suddenly, my netbook isn't so helpless without the net anymore. I can do everything a typical PC user can do. RIP/Burn DVDs? Got it. Organize MP3s? Yup. Log in with my CAC? Done. Play Half Life? Sure! Writer, Calc, Impress? Check, check, check!
Now it doesn't work as nice, but occasionally I'll boot from an SDHC on the 1000 into Mandriva 2008.1 (KDE 3). I have to use the NDIS wrapper to get the WiFi working, never got the camera up and running, and capturing audio... eh... it's still a little dicey. Don't expect the dual screen to work just right, and if you've got Compiz up and running with an external monitor, there's going to be a somewhat funky "screen in a screen" parallax. The USB ports generally work great, but I've never figured out how to get my SCR 331 to work in Linux.
So what's complicated? It's not Linux on the netbook... The complicated part is just Linux and the fact that it generally relies too heavily on access to a network. Period! Linux on a cell phone? No problem! Linux on a router? It's a go! Linux at home? Cool beans! On a server? You bet! A single purpose box like a kiosk or PVR? Great idea!
Linux on a traveling netbook? Blows.
How complicated is that?
a broken disk is going to complicate things no matter what.
Two flowering plants, Deschampsia antarctica (Antarctic hair grass) and Colobanthus quitensis (Antarctic pearlwort), are found on the northern and western parts of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Ouch. That just gave me a /0 error.
Reason:
The continent sits on the South pole. Every direction is north, and east/west is arbitrary!
Still, it's interesting info to know. I would never have thought flowering plants would grow down there. What pollinates them?
Not to be too morose, but technically one of the pipe benders did bite someone at that plant. It was a rather chilling site that I unwittingly stumbled upon. The man's fingers and a pool of his blood were on the floor and he looked so helpless with the meat of his hand still clamped in that monster. There were people already on the scene to rescue him, so I quickly did an about-face as soon as I realized what was going on. This was back in '95.
:-P
Four years later I found myself at a different facility and ended up getting my own fingers caught in an automated 25 ton thermoset injection molding press. Don't worry, they were able to re-attach them, and I regained full functionality. In both cases, I do not consider these machines to be "robots". Even though I feel that it's a given that a robot is controlled by computer; "computer controlled" does not necessarily equal robotics in my mind.
And since I no longer work in that field, "Bender" can kiss my hairy yellow butt!
This probably isn't the most helpful commentary, but it's a slight rant on semantics.
I used to work with Motoman K6's a few years back. Using these robots, we performed plasma cutting, arc welding, material handling, etc... Just looking at the K6, you knew it was a robot. Watching a robot work in a cell after you've trained it to do it's job is a very rewarding experience. Of course we also had other machines that were also very complex in their tasks, but we didn't consider them robots. CNC mills and lathes, pipe benders, other machines that ran autonomously that also had to be programmed and synchronized with the flow of production. Sometimes the line resembled a kind of demented Rube Goldberg contraption, but we were somewhat strict to define only the articulated manipulators themselves as robots.
So when I saw this pile of servos in a glass cleanroom set to the over-dramatic theme of "Bonanza Reloaded", I thought, "Yeah, that's nice, but... It just doesn't strike me as a 'robot' so much as it does an automated bio lab."
And yes, I realize there were clearly robots within the cell, but calling the unit as a whole a "robot" just irks me a little.
Of course in the spirit of all the other bad jokes I've seen posted, do you think this "robot" will use it's genetic findings with the yeast cells to perfect the most delicious and moist cake recipe ever?
No, no... You're missing the big picture. With both Roddenberry and Barrett passed on, the vacuum energy created by the suction of this next release should set their final remains into a "Hyper-spin". This in turn will induce a casimir effect so we can create the first stable worm hole. Since only parts of their remains are being launched into space, this will allow one end of the wormhole to remain on earth while the other extends deep into outer space allowing us travel to the stars at a fraction of the cost needed to produce nanotube beanstalks.
See? It's absolutely brilliant!
Mandriva 2009 really let me down hard with the default to KDE4. While Mandriva worked remarkably well with the hardware on my Eee 1000, KDE 4 was just too bloated to really consider it.
Of course I never could stomach Gnome for some reason. It just bugs me... And don't even get me started with (*)buntu, because that crap just really ticks me off. (I think probably has something to do with their cult-like fan club.)
Eyecandy may be fun, but Linux needs to get back to being more streamline, and nowhere is that more important than on the desktop. KDE 4 Fails hard in this area.
Let's get one thing clear: I am NOT Balmer trying astroturf.
Next: What's wrong with the idea of your Netbook replacing your need for the standard desktop or laptop entirely? Do I really need a full sized desktop these days when an external keyboard, monitor, and mouse can make any netbook just as comfy as the old-school boxen?
Long time back (2001), I patently refused to "upgrade" from Windows ME to XP. That whole "Product Activation" thing left me really cold, and still does. I actively went out and forced myself to start using Linux, and for a while I thought I got pretty good at it. Granted, I was actually just really good at making due with KDE, but it was Linux.
So let's fast forward a bit: Let's just say I took a military job about 3 years ago... Suddenly I've got two very pressing concerns: First I needed ultra-portability. A regular sized laptop would do, but the EEE 701 was simply too wonderful a concept to pass by. Soon after, some serious compatibility concerns reared its ugly head. Linux simply did not deliver like my counterparts' XP machines. As much as I hated to give in, I wiped the SSD and installed Windows for the first time in over half a decade.
I felt dirty... And not in the good way.
Over time I got used to it again... The viruses, the malware, the care and feeding of the OS... Things you never really had to worry about under Linux... Yeah, the old routine is back. It's a minor chore, but it's not that bad. Oddly enough, I noticed something unusual: It felt faster than Linux.
Recently I purchased the EEE 1000. It's a little bigger than the 701, but still much smaller than a regular laptop. I played around with the custom Linux install for about 2 hours to reminisce, then I tore open the XP SP3 OEM disc and stuck that Genuine MS XP sticker on the bottom.
Don't try to tell me that Linux is faster. It's not. Don't try to tell me that Linux can do everything that Windows can do. It can't. I won't tell you that Windows is just as secure, or that Windows can do everything Linux can do, as they are also lies.
What I will tell you is that the software I needed is there.
What I will tell you is that the hardware support I needed is there.
What I will tell you is that the [*]ubuntites are a confusing squirming mass of trustafarians who eat their own, and find spinning cubes to be of more importance than achieving real productivity in a high pressure work environment.
So go ahead and have your coffee shop "luv-in" with Linux, but I needed to have a computer in the field. That meant I needed application compatibility with my netbook. Sadly, that meant I needed to abandon Linux for XP. Perhaps sometime down the road when the various flavors of Linux support Pure-Edge and CAC readers, I will be able to return. Otherwise you'll just have to wait at least three more years before I get out.
And yeah... Sometimes I even miss the CLI and the joys of mpg123, mikmod, vim, and making a simple Perl script to modify 1000+ HTML files in the blink of an eye... But I need the expedience and instant gratification that Windows tends to deliver.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
-f2x
Thankfully, in the future you will be able to screen your world in a way that doesn't require you to argue with me. You and I can both live a digital life where everybody agrees with us!
That sounds great. So from my perspective, there's going to be about 15 people world-wide on the internet, one of them is called Zombo, and none will live within 600 miles of me. Fantastic!
Taking it a step further, just think of the possibilities! Spouses won't even be able send one another an e-mail! Google will have determined that the very act of you sending messages to her is just too risky, as it might start an argument.
Back on the main topic, I find the idea unsettling that different people will receive different search results. Isn't that sort of like the concept of "separate but equal"? In theory, it almost sounds good, but in practice you can only have one or the other. Then you realize that some people consistently get better search results than others, and you probably ain't among them.
Well, I might as well chime in too. Pandora is one of my favorite bookmarks. I even started buying MP3s off Amazon thanks to Pandora, and I also purchased two CDs as well. Previously I had not purchased any music since before Y2K (mostly out of spite), so this has been an effective way to reach an otherwise unreachable customer.
I'm listening to Pandora as I type this, and as usual, the quality of the selections are exceptional. I actually feel the lure to increase my personal collection 99Â at a time. Take note: When Pandora goes away, so does my enticement to purchase music.
Thinking about it now, Pandora is probably one of the few websites to which I would actually pay a subscription fee. I know they tried that model in the past, but no one had even heard of them back then. Even at twice the price, it would be an even better value than the $5 I spent on Slashdot. $10 for 1000 plays? That would be a bargain.
But yeah... Let's say Pandora closes shop. I'll go back to listening to the songs I've ripped from my old CDs and the odd tunes I've downloaded from independent artists who give away their stuff because that's their right. Meanwhile, the music cartel can suck on a smoking pile of "FAIL".
I'm going to have to turn in my geek license once and for all...
"operates at 10 milliKelvin"?
"...electromagnetic interference to one nanotesla in three dimensions..."?
Throw in a few universal phase detractors and you've got one heck of a retroencabulator!
That is pretty pessimistic, but what else can people do about this? Moles have been around longer than the internet. While it may be easier for them to disguise themselves, it doesn't make them any smarter.
I remember back when all you needed was a radio with a cassette player and you could have all the free mix tapes you wanted. Even then they wanted to tax blank tapes because of all the "rampant copying". Yeah... They really had to worry about the collapse of their business model from the Chromium(IV) Oxide threat back then.~
The bottom line is that any commercial method is likely to be introduced by a licensed manufacturer, and non-commercial methods will be achieved through the analog headphone jack and a line-in digital recorder. They gave consent for the former, and I can't really see where they can outlaw the latter.
These days I'm still more concerned with their barratry against every day civilians than their ability to come up with legitimate means to prevent unauthorized duplications.
I hear you. I know there are significant and challenging facets to designing a well built website, but I'm not so sure that your boss wanting a different color is what would lead people to becoming a prima donna. Tossing in a generally useless non-configurable web-gadget simply for its nift-value in spite of the fact that it consumes bandwidth and hogs system resources from the server and the client, and you knowing that it basically adds nothing to the function, but you have to use because "Oh my God! It's the new cat's meow!"... Now THERE is the makings of a prima donna.
:-/
Changing the color shouldn't be any harder than <td bgcolor="#ff00ff">, or even perhaps <img src="magentabar.gif" align=left">. You just type it in and move on. (Please forgive me for using some really bad oversimplifications...);-)
Note, I said "shouldn't". Somehow the promise of XML and CSS separating form and content hasn't quite lived up to the hype. I know with all the whizbang graphics and the flash based effects that it can greatly complicate matters. If that's the case, the site is probably headed for bloat-city and the cause for many future headaches until a total rewrite is mandated.
And of course... Don't think the irony has totally evaded me. This comment is coming from a guy who's gotten too lazy to bother with maintaining his own website...
I hate to sound like an old fart, but the trend seems to be throwing in more and more features to the point that the "nift" value exceeds the actual "content" being presented. In the end, the site becomes so painfully quixotic that no mere mortal could maintain it. Now when it breaks, you need a complete overhaul, and of course the "vision guy" in marketing wants everything including the kitchen sink installed on the site. For some odd reason, I wouldn't want to work for a jerk like that, and I'm not sure anyone else would either.
Of course the other aspect may be that there are a lot of prima donnas out there who believe their "talents" are being wasted on the boring/mundane, and will refuse to take a job that doesn't have a the springboard potential to stardom. Hence, you have a bunch of people out there who are calling themselves "web developers", but somehow always appear somewhat "under-employed".
There's also the "DIY" crowd that later goes on to discover they lack the technical know how to adequately keep up with their projects, only to be horribly abused by charlatans posing as web developers who toss in a bunch of glitter-gifs and JavaScript, then take off leaving the site owner with a the painfully quixotic nightmare mentioned above.
So where does one look to find a reputable freelance web developer anyway?
How about the market for people who just want their systems to work out of the box?
Now I did just have a couple of unexpected meltdowns recently after some 2008.1 updates, but overall, my Mandr(ake|iva) installs have been exceptionally stable compared with my (*)buntu experiences.
Well, it's like the first buds of spring! I always look forward to the Mandriva releases because it gives me an idea of the tone this release is going to bring to the Mandriva distribution.
Personally, I'm hoping to get better hardware support for my EEE in their *Free edition, faster boot times, a cleaner/more responsive KDE, and less overall bloat.
I'm going out for the weekend, but this news gives me something to check out sometime in the coming week.
Me? A troll? No.
Sorry, but you got me wrong. I started using Mandrake as my primary OS in 2001, so it's hardly the first time things have gotten flaky. Now say it with me: "It's an operating system, not a religion." Besides, I can't seem to get my SCR331 USB CAC reader working under Linux.
My home built 3GHz Prescott based desktop system (exclusively Mandriva and has never run XP) also did the update and now it's turned into goo. Booting takes forever, and KDE is not its usual perky self. I even had to shut it down hard because it went non-responsive. (The mouse was moving but nobody home.) I could be wrong, but I suspect that somebody poisoned the well.
My only other computer (a rather generic "Enpower" laptop) is also running Mandriva. It's still using "2007.1 Free" and last checked, seemed to work just fine. Sadly I haven't touched it in weeks because it's no longer the "New Hotness". I purchased it "new" several years ago sans OS. It has never run XP.
Also, the make tools and other stuff aren't actually on the Mandriva One 2008.1 disk! You have to get them off the net if you want that functionality... So I'm NOT "totally wrong".
Please don't paint me with the MS astroturfer brush. I may not be out there seething at the gums over every evil deed carried out by those big, bad, terrible, nasty corporations, but I don't really have the patience to waste time with every two bit revolutionary. I'm just trying to find the solutions that work best for my situation.
I've been using Mandr(ake/iva) for years now, and some of their releases were OK, while others crashed and burned. It was cool though, because it was usually fast and breezy to set up. When Mandriva One 2008.1 came to town, I was impressed! Hardware detection and support was faster and better than ever! It set up so smooth and dreamy, you would have to be crazy to use anything else. Then the updates started happening... Sometimes several every week. Then it got cranky. Web access isn't quite so responsive as it used to be. I had to give it up on my EEE and resort to using XP. My desktop is lumbering through it, but I'd still like to format and re-install with 2007.1. The major trouble with Mandriva One 2008.1 is they don't actually include your make/install, build tools so you have to use their package manager over the net. It's not such a dreamy feeling anymore.
All that, and I'm not so sure Google or Firefox are necessarily my friends anymore either... Did the good guys lose or something? What's happening here?
Wow! Believe it or not, I used to run a Renegade BBS back in the day, so thanks for bringing back a flood of fond memories. It's scary to think all the hours I spent trying to get the configurations just right so I could get an extra node up and running, the amount of effort I put into squashing files down so they'd fit onto floppy disks, the painstaking details I'd put into my ANSI designs using "TheDraw", and so many other fun adventures installing various door games. Nothing seemed more popular than LoRD, but I recall "Barney Splat" and some silly adventure about killing militant cows was also a lot of fun. And don't forget all those hours we spent just waiting to get online to any of the other BBS's out there! I had a list of about 50 different systems and would set the auto-dialer to cycle through them till one would get a connection.
We attended local BBS picnics and get-togethers, and being a sysop was a little like being a rock star. (Yeah, I actually got some back then!) When you connected to a BBS, you connected to people, and you had a pretty good chance of actually getting to meet them in person.
Oh, and it wasn't called registration back then...
It was validation!
Here's my personal take:
The default Xandros works fine and it's fun. It has a lot of nice applications that work well. Unfortunately you can't really add much additional software without seriously messing around with it. Once you mess around with it, the system is less stable. The other available Linux distros aren't really any better.
For a housewife, or any lady of the house, the EEE's default fits their needs. They just want to check their e-mail and surf the web. They don't want to worry about anything else, and their life will be good. They can see the pretty pictures, play the catchy tunes, watch the funny videos, and keep in touch with their friends and loved ones. For them the limits are acceptable, and that's all they need.
For "geeks" seeking ultra-portability, it gets a little more complicated. I needed to be able to burn CD/DVD's onto my portable USB drive, I needed to attach an SCR331 CAC reader, I wanted a decent image editor, and I needed it ready before Friday. You couldn't do that with Linux on the EEE.
Look, I really don't like having to use Windows on this thing. I'm a Mandriva fan myself! In spite of that, I've got some specific tasks to accomplish and time is a factor. I can't be trying out every distro that gets mentioned in the forums to see if it's going to work. I need a system that I can reliably set up time and time again in as short a time possible.
A housewife doesn't need this.
She just likes the "dainty cuteness".
For her, the Linux version is perfect!
On a desktop with handpicked hardware: I choose Linux.
I need a compact, highly portable computer.
On an ultra mobile PC with proprietary parts: Windows XP
I hate seeing articles like this...
Municipal corporations versus privately held corporations. It doesn't matter who wins, the taxpayer/consumer loses.
I'm curious when the internet as we know it will essentially vanish. Usenet is already on the endangered species list, P2P is still a logistics nightmare if it goes prime time. Special interest groups want to censor every website. Barratry is rampant over intellectual property claims. Spam, spyware, trojans, worms, viruses, and other malwares are constantly trying to take over or kill the net. Governments want to tap into everybody's business while they're on the net. Telecoms want to repackage it with their own brand name all over it. The list of this degenerating garbage is endless, and yet people are still so desperate to get it!
Why doesn't this stupid thing just implode already?! Once it does, Tim Berners-Lee (with nothing better to do) can come out and design a whole new concept of network computing that no single entity can possibly own or control.
Meanwhile, Priva-corp vs Muni-corp can serve as yet another distraction from creating more practical advances in technology.
It would be nice if the author explained why he thinks that everybody should have a web presence. I don't buy it...
I was wondering the exact same thing. I used to have a vanity myname.com, but I let it go when I realized it was essentially useless. Also, it's not like too many people out there have a completely unique first and last name combo. Just as there's more than one "Jon Smith" out there, even I have to share my name with some other lesser-knowns.
;)
And while I still have a web presence, I do try to keep it somewhat insulated from my legal name. From this post you can find the real me, but the reverse is still more tricky. Generally, what I do outside of the internet stays off the internet.
Besides, it's not like anyone's interested in the daily antics of a bald, 5', 300lb, unemployed, 30yo, "Mama's boy" in the basement anyway...
I can see it from your perspective, but I still have to disagree with some of your arguments. Brace yourself, because I'm going to take your "necropost" line by line.
Let's face it, they advertise the internet as an UNLIMITED, CONTENT-NEUTRAL SERVICE.
They advertise a lot of things in a manner that is inconsistent with the reality. They advertise McDonald's as something edible, but don't warn of the health ramifications of such foods in the human diet. It's true that the internet has a large capacity, but no one of sound mind should believe that it is "unlimited"!
Rerouting for congestion is done automatically with algorithms, and that congestion has nothing to do with the protocols used. Every packet contributes to congestion, not just "p2p".
Automatically does not mean magically. Algorithms aren't always perfect. There isn't a single branch of the network out there that has never encountered some kind of error. Protocols do matter. If they didn't, why bother having different protocols at all? Consider TCP for accuracy, and UDP when time is a factor as examples.
Did I mention the whole concept of the internet is based on "anyone-to-anyone" (p2p) communication.
That's the concept, but not the reality ! Today, it's more like the head of a dandelion. There aren't any small players out there who contribute to the infrastructure of the actual network itself. In reality, there is no peer to peer connection! It's an illusion! Your connection routes though "hops", and neither you, nor your ISP necessarily owns or controls all of those connections.
I'm so sorry these people have a problem with their customers using the internet for it's primary purpose.
OK, "they" are NOT (let me emphasize a little harder), NOT NOW OR EVER SHOULD BE CONSIDERED "people"". They are corporations, and should not be imbued with such attributes. They are only interested in creating or acquiring wealth for their shareholders, so it's very hard for me to swallow the concept of feeling "sorry" for them. As for customer's using the internet for its primary purpose... Well... That's a whole philosophical debate in and of itself. Suffice to say, the original creators of the internet never envisioned the kinds of trivialities people take it for today.
And it's not just their customers! Other people are using their networks non-gratis as they route through to other destinations! Run a traceroute for cryin' out loud! I'm currently paying AT&T $15 a month for DSL, but my connection to Slashdot is going through no less than 10 hops. Here's a clue: AT&T doesn't OWN or CONTROL them all and neither do I. Meanwhile they have to suffer my computer's request to pass along these packets so I can explain to you the obvious fact that there is simply no actual physical peer to peer connection.
If these companies and certain government agencies were not out to censor the internet, this "over-redundancy" in bit torrent and its ilk wouldn't be necessary.
I feel you. No really, I do. The establishment does its level best to retard the growth of humanity's intellectual inventions in order to prevent anarchy and megalomaniacal behaviors. Unfortunately the balance has gotten wildly out of control of late, and it's likely to get worse before it gets better. Whining that it's "big bad gubmint" is likely to produce no fruitful results, and neither is overloading networks with poorly designed protocols.
Finally, stop spewing this fallacious idea that "light users" are being substantively harmed by "heavy users"
By nature, the light users only use traffic in short bursts. They load their e-mail, go to google once or twice a day, and log off. The idea that these people will see any substantive harm from those brief activities is ludicrous.
I'm not sure where you thought I wa