But AT&T gives it to you for free. Their view is, charge them the price of basic local plus 75% of the price for all features. It's cheaper than Verizon if you wanted everything, and REALLY cheaper if you need two lines with only one equipped. That way, all the people who don't need the features still pay for them -- more money for AT&T.
The point of this is, we get anonymous blocking for free and it works pretty well. The only blocked calls we get are "Out of Area" calls, and they're always pranks (not telemarketers.)
No, AT&T certainly has my local phone service. Our "normal" provider is Verizon, and AT&T offers us what they call Phone-over-Cable, so I think that they don't need to own copper (they just send the phone signals over your existing cable lines).
The only benefit to getting DSL is [a] higher caps, which don't matter if you can find a capless cable provider, and [b] faster uplink (and only if you get SDSL). The cheapest ADSL connection you can find is about US$50 (same for cable) and is many times slower. Cable (at least mine) goes at 1.5M, sometimes faster, and any ADSL that goes that fast is starting to cost hundreds of dollars a month. And with cable there's no PPPoE problems, so it'll work on any OS even without a router.
In the fourth one, unlike VMware (because this is a BIOS-based solution) there will be no dominant OS. You might have two monitors, one with a full-screen Windows and one with a full-screen Linux. You might have five windows of five different operating systems. More importantly, no OS will be running as a task of another, so if any one goes down the others are fine. With VMware, if Windows crashes so does Linux (or vice versa if Linux is the main OS).
I think they mean they can run at the same time on the two separate monitors, so that you move your mouse and it tells the processor to start working on the other operating system, and suspend the first one. It can probably take care of the hard disk writes by DMA.
I'm pretty sure that they're aiming the "Web Pad" at the audience who owns laptops as status symbols but who don't understand how to use them.:) For you, a laptop is still better because of the keyboard. If eventually a device is created that allows for hand gestures or something to replace keyboards (voice recognition doesn't always work, for example airplanes) than all laptops will start to look like the webpads, but for now you need the keyboard. Try typing on the touchscreen, you'll realize how much harder it is because of the absence of feedback.
I really hope these things have, for ports, 1 usb, 1 ethernet, end. You don't need anything else, and two ports is enough. Heck, most people's TVs have only two ports (coaxial and RCA), don't need to confuse them any more. Maybe give them more USB ports to avoid needing hubs, but no other kinds of ports. Like you were saying, once you can make a device to replace the keyboard you can have full-featured laptops that have the general PC-like features, but not for the current audience.
I hope they're using NatSemi Geodes, because those things rule. Imagine, you've got CPU, RAM, video, northbridge, southbridge, super i/o, all on one chip. That's about as integrated as you get. Think, pretty soon you can start making cases with built-in motherboards because all they need is different sockets and ports. Pop in a new chip, and bam, you've got a complete system upgrade. No more motherboard-processor incompatibility:). And with MB's and cases integrated, you can make the power connectors a lot simpler.
You know what Be's doing right now? They're writing BONE, the new BeOs Networking Environment. That will get rid of the net_server and da_hood programs, and merge them into the kernel. They say that this will eliminate the need to restart networking; changes will happen instantaneously.
Two thoughts on that:
1) Couldn't they merge everything into the kernel and make everything instant (because the features would be right there and when used would just read the settings)?
2) WHY DOESN'T WINDOWS DO THIS??? All it takes is for them to make Windows just stop caching the settings and read them straight from disk. Waaaaay too easy.
Huh. You want the "web-pad" that works like a laptop, and has some decent specs, (say, a good desktop from a year or two ago, not three or four years...) Well, what's wrong with a laptop? Only difference there is that you can run whatever OS you want. The people running these things don't CARE what's inside it, and for what the OS in it can be used for, it doesn't make much of a difference.
Speaking of which, I think that's a typo. They either mean they're using a Cyrix MII, or a National Semi Geode, because the Media GX is out of production.
602pro. Look around, it's like a suite/pc office/something, forget the exact name. Comes with a word-clone, excel-clone, mspaint-clone (???), and faxer (???). No Access here, but FileMaker is better anyway and most database stuff can be done with a spreadsheet or the Label feature. You're also missing Outlook, but use Eudora. Best part, it's free.
I meant after you saved. For some reason, after you save a Word document (I think) it clears the Undo history, and obviously after you quit you can't Undo anymore. I meant with Fast Save you could theoretically send a document to someone and then they use a tool and undo it to see the very first draft of it.
Never worked right for me...
I meant after you saved. For some reason, after you save a Word document (I think) it clears the Undo history, and obviously after you quit you can't Undo anymore. I meant with Fast Save you could theoretically send a document to someone and then they use a tool and undo it to see the very first draft of it.
It's not the official Microsoft versioning feature, which you can enable separately. Technically someone could build a program based on fast save that could delete each layer one by one and "turn back the clock", but the real MS Word versioning feature is more advanced. Not that that's a good thing -]
None. Emacs also doesn't know the difference between a document, app, and OS. The difference is most Un*x advocates manage to overlook this fact...
I use joe, I'm safe.
Speaking of which, does anyone know an alternative to MS Word that uses.doc or.rtf files and supports footnotes? That's the one feature that's missing from all the clones.
Thanks for your support.:) I can certainly understand the pleasure of driving down the Pacific Coast in a 1956 Porsche Speedster, that's just not the kind of thing I'm going to do with money. I also have some reservations about what I buy from (i.e. you're not making me drive a American-made car anytime soon, any more than making me use a large-scale OEM computer). Personally, I love small cars, and I don't care about any numbers that say I shouldn't get one. Given my environmentalist nature (as previously stated:) I'm more concerned about fuel economy, which is why I'm leaning toward the Prius. Seems like a perfect combination, small car, great economy, good styling, reputable company... And it costs $20K MSRP, more than most mid-size cars.
(Note: Don't think I'm attacking you, just the opposite. I'm just very opinionated and I had no idea who to reply to, to say this.)
You seem to be saying that the cheapest system that fits your needs is the system for everybody. Maybe our needs are different? The only games I play are Worms: Armageddon, Starcraft, and AOE/etc. I don't like FPS's, for the sole reasons that there's no point behind them. Luckily, that lets me buy cheaper hardware. Speaking to someone who bought a computer for $550, monitor included, ~$1200 sounds like a lot. It may not be a lot in the scheme of things, but what's not?
Of course, I am a liberal environmentalist, but I don't think that has anything to do with it (how many liberal environmentalists buy computers OR cars to begin with?)
1) I don't have a GeForce, I have a i740 embedded.
2) I use Be.
3) More accurately, today's mediocre is tomorrow's <b>iMac</b> hardware.
4) No, I wouldn't buy a Porsche. I'm leaning towards a Toyota ECHO, or Prius.
5) My ~$400 system works fine, and I doubt for what I do a more expensive one is that much better.
6) I'm a consumer swayed by 4.0 inch by 4.0 inch cases. Think the Apple Square Rooted Cube
7) To fill my needs, my system needs to be Pretty Darn Small, and Pretty Darn Cheap.
Sign language, however, has a set of 26 strokes for letters... Then, it's just acting like a keyboard except no RSI, and after you've learned it it's faster than speaking [letters]!
So your computer won't need to understand you any more than it does now.
You misspelled "a royal pain in the *ss". As the author of Gill makes painfully clear, vector graphics is hard, standards compliance makes it harder, and XML (with all the baggage it entails) makes it a monster. Care to share why you thought XML would make it easy?
Except that with XML, you have two unusual but possible benefits:
1) The graphics could be embedded in page instead of in separate file (useful for line graphics or cases where you can only have one file)
2) Graphics could be itemized by complexity, so that browsers could automatically chop off harder-to-render parts on slower computers or at the user's discretion, or even objectionable parts (have a layer called obscene:)
Both of these might have been possible before, but now we have both.
Do you know anything about OS design ? Or Linux? Of course Linux is a microkernal. All the important services, e.g Mail, news, http, X11 are run in user space which is the definition of a microkernal.
Do you? That's the definition of a kernel, not a microkernel. A microkernel is more like Mach, a truly generic, very very small kernel, upon which one or multiple servers run, either in kernel space or somewhere in between kernel and user, that provide standard services. In fact, Linus himself once stated that he doesn't like microkernels; then his OS probably doesn't use one...
Oh, email. Does that go right along with web browsing (including online trading and online shopping), accounting, taxes, word processing, office productivity, and games? All things that should be done on a computer?
Well, in a way you're right. Right now, the best gaming platform available is a Sony PlayStation 2. So it's not out yet; it's still way better then PCs for gaming. Everything else people want to do is Internet territory. Trading, shopping, office productivity, email, all are available or will soon be on the Internet. Even taxes and accounting are merging into online money sites, and soon there will be no use left for standard desktop applications.
Computers are not even entirely suitable for servers: For a quality and cheap server, there are special-purpose devices for different uses (Snap fileservers, etc.) and there could be computers with optimized processors for, say, Apache's or WU-FTPd's uses. They wouldn't even need a color monitor, or even a grayscale one. And rendering clusters could use special superfast internal networking and processors for rendering, eliminating any use for standard general-purpose [and expensive] PCs.
Oh yeah, and DVDs? Look at the number of DVD players sold. Standalone DVD players. Ones that work perfectly well without a computer. ?
Slashdot Mirror
But AT&T gives it to you for free. Their view is, charge them the price of basic local plus 75% of the price for all features. It's cheaper than Verizon if you wanted everything, and REALLY cheaper if you need two lines with only one equipped. That way, all the people who don't need the features still pay for them -- more money for AT&T.
The point of this is, we get anonymous blocking for free and it works pretty well. The only blocked calls we get are "Out of Area" calls, and they're always pranks (not telemarketers.)
No, AT&T certainly has my local phone service. Our "normal" provider is Verizon, and AT&T offers us what they call Phone-over-Cable, so I think that they don't need to own copper (they just send the phone signals over your existing cable lines).
We actually have AT&T for everything except long distance, and they have a built-in anonymous call rejection feature.
The only benefit to getting DSL is [a] higher caps, which don't matter if you can find a capless cable provider, and [b] faster uplink (and only if you get SDSL). The cheapest ADSL connection you can find is about US$50 (same for cable) and is many times slower. Cable (at least mine) goes at 1.5M, sometimes faster, and any ADSL that goes that fast is starting to cost hundreds of dollars a month. And with cable there's no PPPoE problems, so it'll work on any OS even without a router.
That's actually exactly what I said, just calling the VOS custom BIOS an OS. -]
Wouldn't you want to have everyone pay, themselves, to get the patent, and the winner would have to submit evidence of the patent to get the money?
In the fourth one, unlike VMware (because this is a BIOS-based solution) there will be no dominant OS. You might have two monitors, one with a full-screen Windows and one with a full-screen Linux. You might have five windows of five different operating systems. More importantly, no OS will be running as a task of another, so if any one goes down the others are fine. With VMware, if Windows crashes so does Linux (or vice versa if Linux is the main OS).
I think they mean they can run at the same time on the two separate monitors, so that you move your mouse and it tells the processor to start working on the other operating system, and suspend the first one. It can probably take care of the hard disk writes by DMA.
I'm pretty sure that they're aiming the "Web Pad" at the audience who owns laptops as status symbols but who don't understand how to use them. :) For you, a laptop is still better because of the keyboard. If eventually a device is created that allows for hand gestures or something to replace keyboards (voice recognition doesn't always work, for example airplanes) than all laptops will start to look like the webpads, but for now you need the keyboard. Try typing on the touchscreen, you'll realize how much harder it is because of the absence of feedback.
:). And with MB's and cases integrated, you can make the power connectors a lot simpler.
I really hope these things have, for ports, 1 usb, 1 ethernet, end. You don't need anything else, and two ports is enough. Heck, most people's TVs have only two ports (coaxial and RCA), don't need to confuse them any more. Maybe give them more USB ports to avoid needing hubs, but no other kinds of ports. Like you were saying, once you can make a device to replace the keyboard you can have full-featured laptops that have the general PC-like features, but not for the current audience.
I hope they're using NatSemi Geodes, because those things rule. Imagine, you've got CPU, RAM, video, northbridge, southbridge, super i/o, all on one chip. That's about as integrated as you get. Think, pretty soon you can start making cases with built-in motherboards because all they need is different sockets and ports. Pop in a new chip, and bam, you've got a complete system upgrade. No more motherboard-processor incompatibility
I'm running BeOS, and my current task list (according to Team Monitor) is:
NetPositive
telnetd
ftpd
ksocketd
dhcp_client
(blue)debug_server
(blue)syslog_daemon
(blue)input_server
(blue)Tracker
(blue)Deskbar
(blue)media_server
(blue)media_addon_server
(blue)print_server
(blue)midi_server
(blue)audio_server
(blue)mail_daemon
(blue)da_hood
(blue)net_server
The (blue) means it's in blue writing.
You know what Be's doing right now? They're writing BONE, the new BeOs Networking Environment. That will get rid of the net_server and da_hood programs, and merge them into the kernel. They say that this will eliminate the need to restart networking; changes will happen instantaneously.
Two thoughts on that:
1) Couldn't they merge everything into the kernel and make everything instant (because the features would be right there and when used would just read the settings)?
2) WHY DOESN'T WINDOWS DO THIS??? All it takes is for them to make Windows just stop caching the settings and read them straight from disk. Waaaaay too easy.
Well, that's why I use Be.
Huh. You want the "web-pad" that works like a laptop, and has some decent specs, (say, a good desktop from a year or two ago, not three or four years...) Well, what's wrong with a laptop? Only difference there is that you can run whatever OS you want. The people running these things don't CARE what's inside it, and for what the OS in it can be used for, it doesn't make much of a difference.
Speaking of which, I think that's a typo. They either mean they're using a Cyrix MII, or a National Semi Geode, because the Media GX is out of production.
Use the Handspring Visor. It uses the Palm OS, but not the Palm Hardware.
602pro. Look around, it's like a suite/pc office/something, forget the exact name. Comes with a word-clone, excel-clone, mspaint-clone (???), and faxer (???). No Access here, but FileMaker is better anyway and most database stuff can be done with a spreadsheet or the Label feature. You're also missing Outlook, but use Eudora. Best part, it's free.
Never worked right for me...
I meant after you saved. For some reason, after you save a Word document (I think) it clears the Undo history, and obviously after you quit you can't Undo anymore. I meant with Fast Save you could theoretically send a document to someone and then they use a tool and undo it to see the very first draft of it.
Never worked right for me... I meant after you saved. For some reason, after you save a Word document (I think) it clears the Undo history, and obviously after you quit you can't Undo anymore. I meant with Fast Save you could theoretically send a document to someone and then they use a tool and undo it to see the very first draft of it.
Actually, it wasn't. First, he didn't write the program; second, he's not your friend.
It's not the official Microsoft versioning feature, which you can enable separately. Technically someone could build a program based on fast save that could delete each layer one by one and "turn back the clock", but the real MS Word versioning feature is more advanced. Not that that's a good thing -]
None. Emacs also doesn't know the difference between a document, app, and OS. The difference is most Un*x advocates manage to overlook this fact...
.doc or .rtf files and supports footnotes? That's the one feature that's missing from all the clones.
I use joe, I'm safe.
Speaking of which, does anyone know an alternative to MS Word that uses
Thanks for your support. :) I can certainly understand the pleasure of driving down the Pacific Coast in a 1956 Porsche Speedster, that's just not the kind of thing I'm going to do with money. I also have some reservations about what I buy from (i.e. you're not making me drive a American-made car anytime soon, any more than making me use a large-scale OEM computer). Personally, I love small cars, and I don't care about any numbers that say I shouldn't get one. Given my environmentalist nature (as previously stated :) I'm more concerned about fuel economy, which is why I'm leaning toward the Prius. Seems like a perfect combination, small car, great economy, good styling, reputable company... And it costs $20K MSRP, more than most mid-size cars.
(Note: Don't think I'm attacking you, just the opposite. I'm just very opinionated and I had no idea who to reply to, to say this.)
Of course, I am a liberal environmentalist, but I don't think that has anything to do with it (how many liberal environmentalists buy computers OR cars to begin with?)
Vote Nader
1) I don't have a GeForce, I have a i740 embedded.
2) I use Be.
3) More accurately, today's mediocre is tomorrow's <b>iMac</b> hardware.
4) No, I wouldn't buy a Porsche. I'm leaning towards a Toyota ECHO, or Prius.
5) My ~$400 system works fine, and I doubt for what I do a more expensive one is that much better.
6) I'm a consumer swayed by 4.0 inch by 4.0 inch cases. Think the Apple Square Rooted Cube
7) To fill my needs, my system needs to be Pretty Darn Small, and Pretty Darn Cheap.
Sign language, however, has a set of 26 strokes for letters... Then, it's just acting like a keyboard except no RSI, and after you've learned it it's faster than speaking [letters]!
So your computer won't need to understand you any more than it does now.
You misspelled "a royal pain in the *ss". As the author of Gill makes painfully clear, vector graphics is hard, standards compliance makes it harder, and XML (with all the baggage it entails) makes it a monster. Care to share why you thought XML would make it easy?
:)
Except that with XML, you have two unusual but possible benefits:
1) The graphics could be embedded in page instead of in separate file (useful for line graphics or cases where you can only have one file)
2) Graphics could be itemized by complexity, so that browsers could automatically chop off harder-to-render parts on slower computers or at the user's discretion, or even objectionable parts (have a layer called obscene
Both of these might have been possible before, but now we have both.
Do you? That's the definition of a kernel, not a microkernel. A microkernel is more like Mach, a truly generic, very very small kernel, upon which one or multiple servers run, either in kernel space or somewhere in between kernel and user, that provide standard services. In fact, Linus himself once stated that he doesn't like microkernels; then his OS probably doesn't use one...
Well, in a way you're right. Right now, the best gaming platform available is a Sony PlayStation 2. So it's not out yet; it's still way better then PCs for gaming. Everything else people want to do is Internet territory. Trading, shopping, office productivity, email, all are available or will soon be on the Internet. Even taxes and accounting are merging into online money sites, and soon there will be no use left for standard desktop applications.
Computers are not even entirely suitable for servers: For a quality and cheap server, there are special-purpose devices for different uses (Snap fileservers, etc.) and there could be computers with optimized processors for, say, Apache's or WU-FTPd's uses. They wouldn't even need a color monitor, or even a grayscale one. And rendering clusters could use special superfast internal networking and processors for rendering, eliminating any use for standard general-purpose [and expensive] PCs.
Oh yeah, and DVDs? Look at the number of DVD players sold. Standalone DVD players. Ones that work perfectly well without a computer. ?