Before the Internet became interesting to the general public (i.e., before it had pictures), the USA had several "online services", including AOL, Compuserve, now also owned by AOL, and Prodigy. These used proprietary, graphical client software to enable users to reach central servers via dial-up; the users paid $x per month for a certain number of available minutes of usage. In some ways, they provided the same sort of things that the Internet does now, like chat rooms, narrow-topic bulletin boards (the first "online communities,") and opportunities to shop. Since these were proprietary services, they had fairly restrictive terms of service, and were more sanitized than the unrestricted Internet (look at the AOL Safety and Security Center, particularly the "parental controls," for an idea of how they promote this idea. Being a single service, they could also make deals with particular content providers for exclusive goodies.
Eventually, these services started to allow users access to the Internet, first to Usenet, then to the WWW as that became popular. Typically, all Internet access went through the company's servers, since the communication protocol between client and service was usually not TCP-IP.
When Windows 95 shipped, one of the things that had people worried (and AOL suing Microsoft) was that it would include MSN built in, which the competing services contended would give MSN an unfair advantage when users would actually have to make the effort to install their software. This was resolved when Microsoft agreed to include the AOL and Prodigy software in the Win95 install image.
To my mind, the beginning of the end for the online services, and the end of the beginning for the mass-consumption Internet, was the day (in 1996?) that AT&T announced WorldNet, their dialup Internet service available virtually nationwide at $19.95 a month. Before that, standalone ISPs were largely small businesses, like Software Tool & Die; AT&T's announcement was what pushed it out of the early adopter stage. Once the masses became comfortable on the Internet, content providers had a direct pipe to them and didn't need to work with the online services anymore.
Incidentally, does anyone else think it's ironic that AOL is freeing up most of the AOL content, but CompuServe (which always had a technical bent to it) is still behind the locked doors?
Exactly right. Some of the powers were pretty unique, particularly "I can see the future, but only when I shoot up" and "I black out and my reflection comes out of the mirror and disembowels my attackers." But this show will only catch on if the writing is top-notch; it needs to be good enough to make the masses overlook the powers for the stories. Otherwise it'll finish its run leading in to Doctor Who on Sci-Fi (which it is -- another rerun of Genesis -- this Friday).
As far as the nVidia drivers go, you should know about Max Kanat-Alexander's http://www.fedorafaq.org/ site. He's supplied a yum.conf file that will, among other things, hook you up with http://rpm.livna.org/, which supplies prebuilt nVidia and ATi kernel drivers. In most cases, livna will have the nVidia driver rpm out there within a day or so of the Fedora kernel update being available. They also supply other things like codecs that you mention. You can also look to http://www.fedoraforum.org/ as a place to look for help. Note that there are some other sites that also supply prebuilt video drivers and codecs for yum; while I'm not in a position to soundly recommend one over another (livna has "just worked" for me), I have seen warnings that you should only enable one such site, as conflicts can arise if both release the video driver simultaneously.
I would also suggest trying XFCE (yum install xfce, IIRC; it's available in extras, and after it's installed you can choose it from the "Session" dropdown on the Fedora login page), and then go to their site at http://www.xfce.org/ and following instructions to build Thunar, their new file manager. Much lighter and more responsive than Nautilus, and it does have decent context-menu support.
Be glad that, as of FC5, yum cleans up its old kernels after new installs, leaving you with current and previous. I had a run of 7 or 8 of the things sitting around when I was on FC4.
Dude, you work for an organization that can cure acute constipation remotely, just by sending a letter. I would be very surprised if there were a deal you couldn't work out.
If you've read the IT trade press at all, you'll be familiar with interview after interview where CIOs have said "We'd love to move to Firefox, but we've got too much invested in intranet/extranet systems based on ActiveX technology".
A lot of that is consultingware-type stuff, the big ERP and CRM products like SAP and others. They "web-enabled" their fat-client applications by turning them into gigantic ActiveX controls, leveraging the built-in automatic distribution the http platform provides to solve the "How do we get this app to all our desktops" question while retaining all the features of fully-native software, all without having to rewrite the entire GUI system in Java.
I take your point about "What does it matter what people think now, because thinking isn't going to change what happens," but a belief that "...when you die, life really isn't over, and you keep living" doesn't necessarily require a belief in creationism or preclude an understanding and acceptance of evolution, nor does evolution require one to disbelieve in an afterlife.
They are sticking with the Application Lifecycle product line, so essentially they are getting rid of the pesky developers and selling to their managers instead. The relevant line from the press release on the divestiture is:
Borland's IDE business requires a distinct business model and focused investments different from our ALM business, which targets the broader software delivery organization.
Plus, AFAIK, Ars Digita didn't start as an "itch" so much as a commercial venture; one of the founders discusses his POV here. My point being, that "scratching an itch," while it may make a passable excuse for poor design in a small (initially) private project, shouldn't apply when you're bringing in over $1 million/month in revenue.
Um, what the hell happened to my UL? Did they change the parser on us?
I don't know what they've done, if it's wrapped up in the CSS change or something else. I always liked using blockquote and italics for quoted bits, but now it will only show what you see above (and that was written with the italics tags included).
...said conservatives never actually trim the government...
The true revelation of the Contract With America was that the American electorate doesn't really care about trimming government, and therefore does not reward politicians who truly do so; they merely want lower taxes. (See also Dick Cheney's attributed comment that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.") Talk about trimming government makes the politician sound like less of a spendthrift, and therefore a responsible choice in the voting booth, but the unspoken implication or inference (depending on whether it comes from the actual speech, or selective hearing) is that it is some other fellow's stuff that will be cut, and the voter will be unaffected.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.
My cousin was even taught at school that Sally Ride was the first woman into space when this is patently untrue.
If the textbook or the teacher's guide actually said that, then I think your cry of "revisionism" is justified. Otherwise, it would seem that it's most likely that either your cousin misheard or misrememebred, or the teacher is a dumbass.
I found a deployment page on the MLTI site that has PDFs of all the materials that were sent out to the school systems. They are, indeed, as you say, G4 iBooks, with 1 GB RAM, OS X 10.4, a 40 GB hard drive and a new "online learning management system," StudyWiz, preinstalled, whatever that is. Note that the StudyWiz website claims the software is being installed in "all schools in the state," which is just plain wrong (it's only the 7th and 8th grades that are getting the MLTI stuff).
I wish I had been around in the 19th century, when politicians campaigned by giving out free booze; most people then voted for whoever handed out the best whiskey. Now, we get to listen to endless ads about nothing, and don't even get to get hammered on their dime!
I had an AOL account at one time, a decade ago. I didn't fit this guy's usage pattern at all (not used much, only had it a few months), and the rep cancelled it for me right away when I gave him the magic passphrase:
"I only had it so I could chat with someone who is now an ex-girlfriend."
Something tells me that I might have had a far different story to tell if the rep had been female.
I realize that the EULAs say "you can't sue us." I also realize that the big operators don't really want those tested in court... so if you have enough of a bank account to fund a lawsuit (remember, in the US, it isn't "loser pays"), then you can, perhaps, squeeze more out of a support contract than someone who doesn't.
IANAL, but so far as MS and viruses go, I think it doubtful that you'd get a jury to hold them liable for the malicious acts of others, and I also doubt that a jury would find them negligent for the overall design of Windows and VBA. Finding Oracle liable for your downtime because "Unbreakable" 9i segfaulted and corrupted a terabyte of your financial data is far more likely.
Personally, I'd like to see them open up CDE, since the xfce 4 series largely abandoned the CDE-alike concept. I realize that it's probably problematic due to the Open Group's licensing, and that those of us who have a distinctly uncool idea of cool are limited in number, but I'd still like to have it on my FC5 machine.
If you RTA, you'll see that the site owner was actually being sued by DirecTV (I have no idea why), and their lawyers and employees were sniffing around looking for legal candy. The article also points out that the statute the man was suing under was essentially one relating to eavesdropping on "secure communications," and the judge's decision was that putting a click-thru disclaimer up front wasn't enough effort on the owner's part to qualify the site as a secure communication.
My first thought is, how many people who posted "Who is CmdrTaco?" actually weren't being intentionally funny? For those who don't know, CmdrTaco is the guy who wrote all the bits of Slash that don't work well.
My second thought is to congratulate both CmdrTaco and Hemos on their alma mater winning the NCAA Basketball Championship!
My third thought is that, given the advancing age of the proprietors of the site, banner ads for Metamucil and Levitra ought to be showing up here any day now.
Eventually, I got around to thinking to say "Happy Birthday!"
Of course, in other technologies such as telephone and physical mail, companies have shown that's its possible to establish international peering agreements where all the parties get paid their share. Amazingly, all the cost shows up in the end-user price, just like what us "Net Neutrality" people are asking for.
You forget that in both of those cases, the "end user" winds up paying more for the use of certain infrastructure, like transoceanic cables, satellite time, or airmail. Users also, with certain exceptions like flat-rate phone service (which still doesn't include overseas calling), pay per actual usage of the service (i.e., per-minute phone rates or postage stamps). And in the case of stamps, you can pay more to get better service (overnight, 1st class v. Parcel Post, etc.)
The THX "Find a cinema" search function told me my ZIP Code didn't appear to be valid! I appear to live over 100 miles from the nearest theater that plays this supposedly "famous" sound.
When the original AT&T / Lucent / NCR splitup happened, I spoke to my company's AT&T sales rep, asking why they didn't just use the Western Electric name for what was becoming Lucent. She said it was because, essentially, the existing associations of the name made it impossible. I am not sure now whether she meant it would violate some FTC rule, or if the bosses at AT&T wanted a very clean break with the past.
Slashdot Mirror
Start here.
Before the Internet became interesting to the general public (i.e., before it had pictures), the USA had several "online services", including AOL, Compuserve, now also owned by AOL, and Prodigy. These used proprietary, graphical client software to enable users to reach central servers via dial-up; the users paid $x per month for a certain number of available minutes of usage. In some ways, they provided the same sort of things that the Internet does now, like chat rooms, narrow-topic bulletin boards (the first "online communities,") and opportunities to shop. Since these were proprietary services, they had fairly restrictive terms of service, and were more sanitized than the unrestricted Internet (look at the AOL Safety and Security Center, particularly the "parental controls," for an idea of how they promote this idea. Being a single service, they could also make deals with particular content providers for exclusive goodies.
Eventually, these services started to allow users access to the Internet, first to Usenet, then to the WWW as that became popular. Typically, all Internet access went through the company's servers, since the communication protocol between client and service was usually not TCP-IP.
When Windows 95 shipped, one of the things that had people worried (and AOL suing Microsoft) was that it would include MSN built in, which the competing services contended would give MSN an unfair advantage when users would actually have to make the effort to install their software. This was resolved when Microsoft agreed to include the AOL and Prodigy software in the Win95 install image.
To my mind, the beginning of the end for the online services, and the end of the beginning for the mass-consumption Internet, was the day (in 1996?) that AT&T announced WorldNet, their dialup Internet service available virtually nationwide at $19.95 a month. Before that, standalone ISPs were largely small businesses, like Software Tool & Die; AT&T's announcement was what pushed it out of the early adopter stage. Once the masses became comfortable on the Internet, content providers had a direct pipe to them and didn't need to work with the online services anymore.
Incidentally, does anyone else think it's ironic that AOL is freeing up most of the AOL content, but CompuServe (which always had a technical bent to it) is still behind the locked doors?
Exactly right. Some of the powers were pretty unique, particularly "I can see the future, but only when I shoot up" and "I black out and my reflection comes out of the mirror and disembowels my attackers." But this show will only catch on if the writing is top-notch; it needs to be good enough to make the masses overlook the powers for the stories. Otherwise it'll finish its run leading in to Doctor Who on Sci-Fi (which it is -- another rerun of Genesis -- this Friday).
As far as the nVidia drivers go, you should know about Max Kanat-Alexander's http://www.fedorafaq.org/ site. He's supplied a yum.conf file that will, among other things, hook you up with http://rpm.livna.org/, which supplies prebuilt nVidia and ATi kernel drivers. In most cases, livna will have the nVidia driver rpm out there within a day or so of the Fedora kernel update being available. They also supply other things like codecs that you mention. You can also look to http://www.fedoraforum.org/ as a place to look for help. Note that there are some other sites that also supply prebuilt video drivers and codecs for yum; while I'm not in a position to soundly recommend one over another (livna has "just worked" for me), I have seen warnings that you should only enable one such site, as conflicts can arise if both release the video driver simultaneously.
I would also suggest trying XFCE (yum install xfce, IIRC; it's available in extras, and after it's installed you can choose it from the "Session" dropdown on the Fedora login page), and then go to their site at http://www.xfce.org/ and following instructions to build Thunar, their new file manager. Much lighter and more responsive than Nautilus, and it does have decent context-menu support.
Be glad that, as of FC5, yum cleans up its old kernels after new installs, leaving you with current and previous. I had a run of 7 or 8 of the things sitting around when I was on FC4.
Good luck to you!
Dude, you work for an organization that can cure acute constipation remotely, just by sending a letter. I would be very surprised if there were a deal you couldn't work out.
A lot of that is consultingware-type stuff, the big ERP and CRM products like SAP and others. They "web-enabled" their fat-client applications by turning them into gigantic ActiveX controls, leveraging the built-in automatic distribution the http platform provides to solve the "How do we get this app to all our desktops" question while retaining all the features of fully-native software, all without having to rewrite the entire GUI system in Java.
I take your point about "What does it matter what people think now, because thinking isn't going to change what happens," but a belief that "...when you die, life really isn't over, and you keep living" doesn't necessarily require a belief in creationism or preclude an understanding and acceptance of evolution, nor does evolution require one to disbelieve in an afterlife.
Plus, AFAIK, Ars Digita didn't start as an "itch" so much as a commercial venture; one of the founders discusses his POV here. My point being, that "scratching an itch," while it may make a passable excuse for poor design in a small (initially) private project, shouldn't apply when you're bringing in over $1 million/month in revenue.
This is the arrival of Tytler's observation that:
If the textbook or the teacher's guide actually said that, then I think your cry of "revisionism" is justified. Otherwise, it would seem that it's most likely that either your cousin misheard or misrememebred, or the teacher is a dumbass.
I found a deployment page on the MLTI site that has PDFs of all the materials that were sent out to the school systems. They are, indeed, as you say, G4 iBooks, with 1 GB RAM, OS X 10.4, a 40 GB hard drive and a new "online learning management system," StudyWiz, preinstalled, whatever that is. Note that the StudyWiz website claims the software is being installed in "all schools in the state," which is just plain wrong (it's only the 7th and 8th grades that are getting the MLTI stuff).
I wish I had been around in the 19th century, when politicians campaigned by giving out free booze; most people then voted for whoever handed out the best whiskey. Now, we get to listen to endless ads about nothing, and don't even get to get hammered on their dime!
I had an AOL account at one time, a decade ago. I didn't fit this guy's usage pattern at all (not used much, only had it a few months), and the rep cancelled it for me right away when I gave him the magic passphrase:
"I only had it so I could chat with someone who is now an ex-girlfriend."
Something tells me that I might have had a far different story to tell if the rep had been female.
I realize that the EULAs say "you can't sue us." I also realize that the big operators don't really want those tested in court... so if you have enough of a bank account to fund a lawsuit (remember, in the US, it isn't "loser pays"), then you can, perhaps, squeeze more out of a support contract than someone who doesn't.
IANAL, but so far as MS and viruses go, I think it doubtful that you'd get a jury to hold them liable for the malicious acts of others, and I also doubt that a jury would find them negligent for the overall design of Windows and VBA. Finding Oracle liable for your downtime because "Unbreakable" 9i segfaulted and corrupted a terabyte of your financial data is far more likely.
They also like the fact that there is a legal entity to sue if things go pear-shaped.
Personally, I'd like to see them open up CDE, since the xfce 4 series largely abandoned the CDE-alike concept. I realize that it's probably problematic due to the Open Group's licensing, and that those of us who have a distinctly uncool idea of cool are limited in number, but I'd still like to have it on my FC5 machine.
I'd never heard of it before, either, and I'm still trying to figure out what the "terrible misprint on the box" was supposed to be.
If you RTA, you'll see that the site owner was actually being sued by DirecTV (I have no idea why), and their lawyers and employees were sniffing around looking for legal candy. The article also points out that the statute the man was suing under was essentially one relating to eavesdropping on "secure communications," and the judge's decision was that putting a click-thru disclaimer up front wasn't enough effort on the owner's part to qualify the site as a secure communication.
My first thought is, how many people who posted "Who is CmdrTaco?" actually weren't being intentionally funny? For those who don't know, CmdrTaco is the guy who wrote all the bits of Slash that don't work well.
My second thought is to congratulate both CmdrTaco and Hemos on their alma mater winning the NCAA Basketball Championship!
My third thought is that, given the advancing age of the proprietors of the site, banner ads for Metamucil and Levitra ought to be showing up here any day now.
Eventually, I got around to thinking to say "Happy Birthday!"
You forget that in both of those cases, the "end user" winds up paying more for the use of certain infrastructure, like transoceanic cables, satellite time, or airmail. Users also, with certain exceptions like flat-rate phone service (which still doesn't include overseas calling), pay per actual usage of the service (i.e., per-minute phone rates or postage stamps). And in the case of stamps, you can pay more to get better service (overnight, 1st class v. Parcel Post, etc.)
Northern New England, actually... the digital cinemas I referred to are all around Boston.
The THX "Find a cinema" search function told me my ZIP Code didn't appear to be valid! I appear to live over 100 miles from the nearest theater that plays this supposedly "famous" sound.
Another vote for Pegasus Mail! Note: don't miss the Email Etiquette and 10 Years of Pegasus Mail (I think that's what it's called) in the Help menu.
Gee... then who are these guys?
When the original AT&T / Lucent / NCR splitup happened, I spoke to my company's AT&T sales rep, asking why they didn't just use the Western Electric name for what was becoming Lucent. She said it was because, essentially, the existing associations of the name made it impossible. I am not sure now whether she meant it would violate some FTC rule, or if the bosses at AT&T wanted a very clean break with the past.