Of course, you post this after I correct my own mistake. I made the simple mistake of assuming the executive was the one involved with DoubleClick when they got in trouble with the FTC. No, this former CEO, Kevin O'Connor didn't think anything they were doing was wrong. That's why they got in trouble in the first place. It's nice to know you're so good at correcting others' mistakes, but perhaps you should do a better job of it by being a bit more prompt. I'll make sure I do a better job of reading the articles before I post. As it stands, we've both wasted posts in this discussion.
If you're using Linux, try this. My cable modem has a crappy upload cap of 128kbit/s. Prior to this tweak I was getting 10kB/s downloads and afterwards, I was getting 165kB/s downloads.
su -c '/sbin/tc qdisc add dev eth0 root tbf rate 128kbit latency 50ms burst 1540'
Play with the 128kbit (upload speed) and 1540 (MTU size) depending on your own system.
One less hour of battery life, but the Pentium-M is faster than an equally-clocked Pentium 4. The Crusoe would be a fraction the speed of the Pentium 4 yet that only buys you an extra hour of use. I think Transmeta is in _big_ trouble unless they've got something better up their sleeve.
David Suzuki makes great science-based shows. He's articulate, great at bringing complex ideas to the mainstream without dumbing them down with imprecise analogies, and very much an all-around interesting person.
When I was young, I used to watch a lot of Nature of Things, and 3-2-1 Contact (a great children's science show on PBS). If I'm not mistaken, Bob McDonald also had a kids science show on the CBC on weekends. Watched that too!
I've tried to use GNOME but always go back to KDE
on
Has GNOME Become LAME?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
From a pure user experience, I like GNOME's simplicity. But that simplicity, for whatever reason does not extend to its usability. I keep returning to KDE, though I sometimes find it tries to do too much and spreads its quality thin. GNOME simply does not do enough. There are just some things that bug me too much about GNOME that should be fixed immediately because it's just an embarassment to the project - the default file selector for gtk apps would be a good place to start.
I recently had a corrupt BIOS flash (power went out as I was flashing it). Thinking I would need to shell out money for a new Flash ROM or motherboard I was pretty pissed off. Then I read on my motherboard's website that if I copied the BIOS file to a floppy disk, named it a certain file, and pressed a certain key combo (the details escape me at the moment), the computer would flash the BIOS. I was in luck, it worked! And I was soon back to computing. BIOS manufacturers should now include support for this feature in bootable CD-ROMs or USB pen drives in case of catastrophes like this.
But that's precisely why this whole episode was ridiculous. Tax software is typically used only once or twice by individuals. The one time I went to use the software,I had to jump through hoops to prove I had a legitimate license. Moreover, if I support this type of activation, I might find it cropping up all over the place. What is a nuisance now could become a major hassle if it became popular amongst software publishers.
I realize my case is a special one because I reformatted, but there was no prior warning of this product activation behaviour. I would never have installed it the first time around if I had known it had this. At least MS gives warning and a toll-free, easy method of contacting them for activation.
GNUcash so far. It took me a few tries to get my Quicken data imported but once it was, I found GNUcash far more intuitive from an accounting perspective - I have some high school-level accounting experience under my belt.
I purchased Quicken Deluxe about this time last year. It came with a free downloadable version of QuickTax. I decided to download and install QuickTax around January so I could get a headstart on my taxes. Around this time, I upgraded my computer and had to re-install Windows. I re-installed Quicken Deluxe no problem but when it came time to re-install QuickTax I was notified that I could not do it. A version of the software had already been installed on a different computer! I was told to call their tech support line if this was not the case. So I did. I called their non-toll-free number long distance and was notified that their office was closed and would be until Monday (this was late Friday afternoon). So, I could not do my taxes that weekend. I waited until Monday and phoned their tech support line. I had to answer some questions to verify my identity and was told that if there ever was a next time, I would have to fax them with appropriate documentation verifying my identity! So, 3 days and 2 long-distance charges later I was left with a program that would only last until my next reformat. No thanks. I will never buy another Intuit product because of stories like my own and this one. Moreover, experiences like this helped push me to going 100% Linux/OSS - I've been doing so since late August with much less problems than I expected I would have.
Inter.net represent everything that could have - and did - go wrong with ISP mergers. It's a hodge-podge collection of former "mom & pop" ISPs that were bought out or merged into this new entity Inter.net to attempt to keep up with the competition. But they did so too fast and too haphazardly. A classic case of the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, ensued. I used to be a customer of Interlog which was a great Toronto-area ISP that became part of Inter.net. All the people I know who were with Interlog and are now with Inter.net have had nothing but problems with accounting and such. Either Inter.net doesn't even know they're a customer and they're getting free Internet, or Inter.net doesn't believe they're a customer and refuses service. Moreover, I handle a web site that was provided by Inter.net until this summer. I had to jump through hoops of fire to get them to even realize who the heck we were and that we wanted to cancel our account. To this day I'm not even sure if they think we're a customer but one of the directors of the company's website offered to handle the situation. The last I heard was that he just didn't care what they thought; that he'd given proper notice of our account termination numerous times and that he expected them to send an invoice anyways. To sum it up, I'm more surprised that this woman is the first person trying to sue them rather than the fact she wants to sue them.
Read the FAQs. This is horrible. You can't even burn one average-sized album onto a CD. Not to mention the proprietary CD burning component isn't available yet.
I don't think RHN will let you do the same sort of version upgrade a CD upgrade install will do. It'll just maintain your current version. I remember somebody posting in a forum somewhere on the net (I've forgotten where) that they were upgrading from 7.3 to 8.0 with "apt-get dist-upgrade". I've just switched to Red Hat so I've never tried this myself but I believe it is possible. Of course, if a totally new package is introduced in the new version of Red Hat, I'm willing to bet it won't get installed with apt-get dist-upgrade. That probably just upgrades all the packages you have on your system to the newer ones. And as for respositories, I'm using the psyche.freshrpms.net repository. There is a way to choose different repositories but I haven't bothered to look for any other ones.
Red Hat's got their Red Hat Network upgrade service. It's a lot like Windows Update with XP - it'll tell you when updates are available, and you'll have the option to download them. It works well. I have personally intalled apt-get (for RPM) and I've fallen in love with it. But it is not an official Red Hat apt-get. You can grab it from FreshRPMS.
Read Anand's review. The R300's "Cobra" engine provides hardware MPEG-2 encoding assistance. Not completely, but enough to offset 1/5 to 1/4 of the CPU overhead. As I understand, no consumer-level MPEG-2 encoding hardware does all the processing onboard but merely offsets some work from the CPU. Of course, ATI has had MPEG-2 decoding assistance for a LONG time - since 1997. In fact, I have a H+ too and the difference in CPU usage levels between the H+ and my AIW Radeon when watching DVDs is negligible. The Radeon provides superior monitor playback and the H+ provides superior TV playback which is why the two still co-exist. One thing many people overlook is the fact that since the AIW is on the AGP bus, you don't run the risk of overloading the PCI bus when doing video capture and the like. Their PVR software has come a LONG way too. When I first got my AIW Radeon I cursed my decision but since December of last year the software has been excellent. I just wish there was something on Linux to rival it. There isn't. Nothing comes close actually.
Via the "Cobra" engine on the R300 chip itself, the AIW Radeon actually has MPEG-2 encoding hardware. It doesn't do the whole process in hardware, but enough to offset between 1/5 and 1/4 of the processing overhead from the CPU. This is typical ATI - their first DVD decoding hardware assistance in chips (I believe in the Rage Pro line circa 1997) had enough hardware to offset a chunk of the processing overhead from the CPU. In the following generation, the new chip had essentially full hardware decoding. Expect the next generation of AIW to follow suit.
I found that the material was the same, but the method of delivery was far more refined and comprehensive. I think I would have actually done much better at M.I.T. than the institution I studied at, because of this. The quality of the professors is evident in their lecture notes.
...is that the lecture notes were far more comprehensive, and intuitive than those corresponding to the same course I took at a different university. One of the things I was looking forward to about this OpenCourseWare was comparing the teaching styles of professors from different universities. I've only checked out this one course (Laboratory in Software Engineering), but so far the score is 1-0 in favour of MIT. I wish I had these online lecture notes available to me when deciding on my university. Perhaps I would have made a better decision - I've yet to finish my degree (taking at least a year off) in CS in most parts because I just didn't feel I was at the right institution. This would have played an integral role in my decision making process if all universities made this material online and publicized it.
Go to your library and read about IRA terrorist attacks on British soil and the subsequent responses from the super power. And that's only the first example that comes to mind.
It's not surprising at all. When Joe Consumer thinks of word processors, only two come to mind: Word and WordPerfect. It's all about branding. Saying your computer includes WordPerfect is far more valuable to Joe Consumer than saying it includes StarOffice. No matter how good StarOffice is, a lot of non-techies still remember (fondly at that) WordPerfect from the days of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS.
Re:NOT a TV Tuner, a TV *Encoder*
on
nForce2 Preview
·
· Score: 2
The simple reason is that the analog tuners on the market are still superior to the digital tuners as far as quality goes. It's [i]one[/i] of the reasons ATI reverted back to an analog tuner with the AIW Radeon 8500 128MB model after having debuted a digital tuner on the AIW Radeon 8500DV. The digital tuners are supersensitive and many people have to place a variable attenuator on their coax cable to help improve the picture quality.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, you post this after I correct my own mistake. I made the simple mistake of assuming the executive was the one involved with DoubleClick when they got in trouble with the FTC. No, this former CEO, Kevin O'Connor didn't think anything they were doing was wrong. That's why they got in trouble in the first place. It's nice to know you're so good at correcting others' mistakes, but perhaps you should do a better job of it by being a bit more prompt. I'll make sure I do a better job of reading the articles before I post. As it stands, we've both wasted posts in this discussion.
Whoops...the exec is O'Connor Kelly. She may not be so bad after all then as she came to "clean" things up at DoubleClick.
Mitnick admits his wrongdoing. This DoubleClick exec doesn't think the things his company did were wrong. That's the difference.
If you're using Linux, try this. My cable modem has a crappy upload cap of 128kbit/s. Prior to this tweak I was getting 10kB/s downloads and afterwards, I was getting 165kB/s downloads.
su -c '/sbin/tc qdisc add dev eth0 root tbf rate 128kbit latency 50ms burst 1540'
Play with the 128kbit (upload speed) and 1540 (MTU size) depending on your own system.
One less hour of battery life, but the Pentium-M is faster than an equally-clocked Pentium 4. The Crusoe would be a fraction the speed of the Pentium 4 yet that only buys you an extra hour of use. I think Transmeta is in _big_ trouble unless they've got something better up their sleeve.
David Suzuki makes great science-based shows. He's articulate, great at bringing complex ideas to the mainstream without dumbing them down with imprecise analogies, and very much an all-around interesting person.
When I was young, I used to watch a lot of Nature of Things, and 3-2-1 Contact (a great children's science show on PBS). If I'm not mistaken, Bob McDonald also had a kids science show on the CBC on weekends. Watched that too!
From a pure user experience, I like GNOME's simplicity. But that simplicity, for whatever reason does not extend to its usability. I keep returning to KDE, though I sometimes find it tries to do too much and spreads its quality thin. GNOME simply does not do enough. There are just some things that bug me too much about GNOME that should be fixed immediately because it's just an embarassment to the project - the default file selector for gtk apps would be a good place to start.
I recently had a corrupt BIOS flash (power went out as I was flashing it). Thinking I would need to shell out money for a new Flash ROM or motherboard I was pretty pissed off. Then I read on my motherboard's website that if I copied the BIOS file to a floppy disk, named it a certain file, and pressed a certain key combo (the details escape me at the moment), the computer would flash the BIOS. I was in luck, it worked! And I was soon back to computing. BIOS manufacturers should now include support for this feature in bootable CD-ROMs or USB pen drives in case of catastrophes like this.
You just have to install apt4rpm on the Red Hat machine.
But that's precisely why this whole episode was ridiculous. Tax software is typically used only once or twice by individuals. The one time I went to use the software,I had to jump through hoops to prove I had a legitimate license. Moreover, if I support this type of activation, I might find it cropping up all over the place. What is a nuisance now could become a major hassle if it became popular amongst software publishers.
I realize my case is a special one because I reformatted, but there was no prior warning of this product activation behaviour. I would never have installed it the first time around if I had known it had this. At least MS gives warning and a toll-free, easy method of contacting them for activation.
GNUcash so far. It took me a few tries to get my Quicken data imported but once it was, I found GNUcash far more intuitive from an accounting perspective - I have some high school-level accounting experience under my belt.
I purchased Quicken Deluxe about this time last year. It came with a free downloadable version of QuickTax. I decided to download and install QuickTax around January so I could get a headstart on my taxes. Around this time, I upgraded my computer and had to re-install Windows. I re-installed Quicken Deluxe no problem but when it came time to re-install QuickTax I was notified that I could not do it. A version of the software had already been installed on a different computer! I was told to call their tech support line if this was not the case. So I did. I called their non-toll-free number long distance and was notified that their office was closed and would be until Monday (this was late Friday afternoon). So, I could not do my taxes that weekend. I waited until Monday and phoned their tech support line. I had to answer some questions to verify my identity and was told that if there ever was a next time, I would have to fax them with appropriate documentation verifying my identity! So, 3 days and 2 long-distance charges later I was left with a program that would only last until my next reformat. No thanks. I will never buy another Intuit product because of stories like my own and this one. Moreover, experiences like this helped push me to going 100% Linux/OSS - I've been doing so since late August with much less problems than I expected I would have.
It's quite obvious actually!
Since it's Java, if I'm using Mozilla, do I have to worry about this Red Sherrif spyware?
Inter.net represent everything that could have - and did - go wrong with ISP mergers. It's a hodge-podge collection of former "mom & pop" ISPs that were bought out or merged into this new entity Inter.net to attempt to keep up with the competition. But they did so too fast and too haphazardly. A classic case of the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, ensued. I used to be a customer of Interlog which was a great Toronto-area ISP that became part of Inter.net. All the people I know who were with Interlog and are now with Inter.net have had nothing but problems with accounting and such. Either Inter.net doesn't even know they're a customer and they're getting free Internet, or Inter.net doesn't believe they're a customer and refuses service. Moreover, I handle a web site that was provided by Inter.net until this summer. I had to jump through hoops of fire to get them to even realize who the heck we were and that we wanted to cancel our account. To this day I'm not even sure if they think we're a customer but one of the directors of the company's website offered to handle the situation. The last I heard was that he just didn't care what they thought; that he'd given proper notice of our account termination numerous times and that he expected them to send an invoice anyways. To sum it up, I'm more surprised that this woman is the first person trying to sue them rather than the fact she wants to sue them.
Read the FAQs. This is horrible. You can't even burn one average-sized album onto a CD. Not to mention the proprietary CD burning component isn't available yet.
I don't think RHN will let you do the same sort of version upgrade a CD upgrade install will do. It'll just maintain your current version. I remember somebody posting in a forum somewhere on the net (I've forgotten where) that they were upgrading from 7.3 to 8.0 with "apt-get dist-upgrade". I've just switched to Red Hat so I've never tried this myself but I believe it is possible. Of course, if a totally new package is introduced in the new version of Red Hat, I'm willing to bet it won't get installed with apt-get dist-upgrade. That probably just upgrades all the packages you have on your system to the newer ones. And as for respositories, I'm using the psyche.freshrpms.net repository. There is a way to choose different repositories but I haven't bothered to look for any other ones.
Red Hat's got their Red Hat Network upgrade service. It's a lot like Windows Update with XP - it'll tell you when updates are available, and you'll have the option to download them. It works well. I have personally intalled apt-get (for RPM) and I've fallen in love with it. But it is not an official Red Hat apt-get. You can grab it from FreshRPMS.
Read Anand's review. The R300's "Cobra" engine provides hardware MPEG-2 encoding assistance. Not completely, but enough to offset 1/5 to 1/4 of the CPU overhead. As I understand, no consumer-level MPEG-2 encoding hardware does all the processing onboard but merely offsets some work from the CPU. Of course, ATI has had MPEG-2 decoding assistance for a LONG time - since 1997. In fact, I have a H+ too and the difference in CPU usage levels between the H+ and my AIW Radeon when watching DVDs is negligible. The Radeon provides superior monitor playback and the H+ provides superior TV playback which is why the two still co-exist. One thing many people overlook is the fact that since the AIW is on the AGP bus, you don't run the risk of overloading the PCI bus when doing video capture and the like. Their PVR software has come a LONG way too. When I first got my AIW Radeon I cursed my decision but since December of last year the software has been excellent. I just wish there was something on Linux to rival it. There isn't. Nothing comes close actually.
Via the "Cobra" engine on the R300 chip itself, the AIW Radeon actually has MPEG-2 encoding hardware. It doesn't do the whole process in hardware, but enough to offset between 1/5 and 1/4 of the processing overhead from the CPU. This is typical ATI - their first DVD decoding hardware assistance in chips (I believe in the Rage Pro line circa 1997) had enough hardware to offset a chunk of the processing overhead from the CPU. In the following generation, the new chip had essentially full hardware decoding. Expect the next generation of AIW to follow suit.
I found that the material was the same, but the method of delivery was far more refined and comprehensive. I think I would have actually done much better at M.I.T. than the institution I studied at, because of this. The quality of the professors is evident in their lecture notes.
...is that the lecture notes were far more comprehensive, and intuitive than those corresponding to the same course I took at a different university. One of the things I was looking forward to about this OpenCourseWare was comparing the teaching styles of professors from different universities. I've only checked out this one course (Laboratory in Software Engineering), but so far the score is 1-0 in favour of MIT. I wish I had these online lecture notes available to me when deciding on my university. Perhaps I would have made a better decision - I've yet to finish my degree (taking at least a year off) in CS in most parts because I just didn't feel I was at the right institution. This would have played an integral role in my decision making process if all universities made this material online and publicized it.
Go to your library and read about IRA terrorist attacks on British soil and the subsequent responses from the super power. And that's only the first example that comes to mind.
It's not surprising at all. When Joe Consumer thinks of word processors, only two come to mind: Word and WordPerfect. It's all about branding. Saying your computer includes WordPerfect is far more valuable to Joe Consumer than saying it includes StarOffice. No matter how good StarOffice is, a lot of non-techies still remember (fondly at that) WordPerfect from the days of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS.
The simple reason is that the analog tuners on the market are still superior to the digital tuners as far as quality goes. It's [i]one[/i] of the reasons ATI reverted back to an analog tuner with the AIW Radeon 8500 128MB model after having debuted a digital tuner on the AIW Radeon 8500DV. The digital tuners are supersensitive and many people have to place a variable attenuator on their coax cable to help improve the picture quality.