Yeah, but we're talking PDAs here. What's the maximum amount of RAM that a Palm Pilot comes with, 8 MB for the Palm Vx? It's not like I'm going to be downloading operating system distributions or scads of MP3s on them. For the quick and easy web browsing, mail transfer, and occasional telnet session that you'll be using a PDA for, 56K is more than plenty. This isn't something you're going to spend all night ogling pr0n with. That's what my laptop's for.;-)
Ahh, gotcha...I'm pretty much a USR loyalist myself, when it comes to modem, just because they've always been great for me. I do still have my Palm III (and my original Palm Pilot), but my usage has gone way down since I got my new PDA (it's one of the Cassiopeia E-105s). I'll be interested in checking out the color Palms when they come out, but for now I'm pretty much hooked on the one I've got.
As far as ISP numbers go, a fair number of them do have toll-free 1-800 numbers that you can use for like 5 hours per month as part of your standard dialup contract (i.e., you don't have to pay extra for it). For me, that's more than plenty, because I don't leave my connection up when I'm on the road like I do with my local computers. I pretty much just need enough time to check my mail or a website and send a batch of email. The Palm Pilot and its modem were (still are, actually) great for that purpose, and I'm still checking my mailbox everyday for the new Xircom 56K modem that I got for my new PDA. (Dang postal service.:/ )
colour screens are coming this year, from all reports [...]
Yo Swami, they've been here for quite a while. I just got one with a color screen in December, and they rock. Plus, since I put the Color GameBoy emulator on it, it's saved me from quite a few hours of boredom at the airports already this year.;)
One other thing:
so, yes, in a few years when wireless net access (or some other form of mobile net access, like say, ethernet plugs abound like public phones) is a reality, then we'll have that.
If you're going to have to plug your PDA into an ethernet port anyway, why not just use a modem, which are very common these days, with your PDA? The speed difference is nice, but neither offer the real-time connectivity that you seem to be referring to.
Cheers, ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Sorry for bad link, here's the correct one.
on
Darwin on Crusoe?
·
· Score: 1
And no, FreeMac didn't want a credit line or anything -- they just wanted to buy the computers, even if that meant buying them from a reseller or from a retailer like CompUSA. Check out the article now that I've finally posted the URL correctly, it's interesting.
Yes, it's such a shame that MSNBC never reports on Linux® anymore. Just today, February 2, I almost clicked on a link at MSNBC called The Linux Gospel According to Linus, but now that you've told me that all the Linux® articles are gone, I figure that it must be about the Commodore 64 or OS/2 or something. Thanks for the warning, pal!
Down with The Man!
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
I doubt I'll stop posting here any time soon, but I don't see how on Earth you could possibly say that Slashdot does good reporting. Journalistically, it's a very shoddy operation, with numerous misleading and flat-out incorrect stories getting posted when a little basic fact-checking would do wonders.
Actually, my first reaction to the "It's sort of funny" comment jibed with some of the other posters -- thinking that the article submitter must find it funny because he relies on Slashdot as his major news source, what with their tendency to overhype petty articles about Microsoft, but sugarcoat and outright withhold stories when it's an ABMer presented in a bad light. I loathe Time's editorial leanings, but their reporting on this story is de rigueur for practically all the major news outlets.
A start-up that I'm involved with was already in the process of meeting with Vulture Capitalists, and I get a panicked call saying that the server had gacked, and asking if I could do anything to save the data. Then I'm told that there are no backups whatsoever. Ouch. So I'm thousands of miles away, trying to recover the entire operation from a roasted hard drive on a computer which would no longer even boot, not even enough to install an OS (this was a RH Linux 6.1 box) on a different partition. Eventually I was able to get almost all the data back, including all the really critical stuff, after I had him put the hard drive on a different computer, but for a few hours there, everyone was sweating bullets. I can only imagine the reaction if investors dropped in on us while this Keystone Kops episode was going on. I have that mental image of one of those cartoons where a bag of money sprouts wings and flies away.
Hardware failure doesn't always happen to "someone else." Make those backups.
China's just a Communist country, associated with the color red -- it has nothing to do with any traits of its people any more. Do you consider the Chinese themselves to be racists for occasionally referring to their own armed forces as "The Red Army"?
If someone had made some crack about the Red Planet because American Indians were being sent there, you'd have a more legitimate gripe, but otherwise you're pulling the race card where it's definitely not called for. There are plenty of racist incidents going on in the world. When you cry racism when it's not actually there, it only hurts the efforts to point out when it actually occurs.
I'm sorry, but Stallman's piece isn't going to advance the UCITA debate one iota because of his fringe beliefs. I mean, we're talking about a guy who thinks charging for software is immoral and who tacitly endorses software piracy. It's like, "Newsflash: Commercial Software Opponent Complains About Law Which Benefits Commercial Software Vendors But Hurts Consumers!" Well, duh.
If you go to http://www.badsoftware.com/oppose.htm, you can find tons of sources who aren't anti-commercial-software who still think this is a terrible law. These are objective voices that you want to make heard on this issue.
Otherwise some friendly Brazilian police officer might've murdered you and your young "urchin" friends on the streets some night. I love Brazilian women, culture, and soccer (Hey, just look at my name!;) ), but you guys really do need to clean up some problems which those other countries you mentioned don't have to deal with. I still hope to make it down to Carnival sometime soon.
Can't say I was exactly thrilled with Programming Python. I came into Python already knowing Perl, and just didn't really get anywhere with Programming Python. The continuity just seemed all wrong, out of order, etc. So, I didn't do anything with Python for a couple of years.
On a whim (meaning one of those times when you're walking around a bookstore with a wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket), I decided to pick up Learning Python. Man, am I glad I did. Yeah, there's a lot of really basic programming stuff in there (which makes it an excellent book for complete newbies), but I found it to be a much better introduction to the Python way of doing things, possibly because it was such a fast read. Once I got the basics down, exploring the more advanced stuff just from the online and included docs was a breeze.
Stick with giving Python a try, though. You say you know OOP, but if your knowledge comes from using Perl, I think you'll be happy just how easy OOP is with Python in comparison. I like it enough that it's replaced Perl for me as my favorite quick-n-dirty language -- it just "feels" more correct when I'm using it. And yes, I know the degree to which Perl is a "write-only" language depends on the particular programmer, but it's been my experience every single time that when I've had to work with other people's code, the Python stuff was always easier to jump right into than the Perl stuff.
Anyway, that's just my opinion -- what prompted me to write was that I just purchased "Python and Tkinter Programming" from Manning Publication's website, then came to Slashdot to see a book review featuring a book from the same company. I've never read any of their books before, so am kind of curious.
Of course, if the day ever came that Windows did ship with Perl, we'd hear the usual Slashdot bitching and moaning about those unfair Microsoft bundling tactics.
That's cool, and I have no reason at all to doubt you, but do you see why I might've thought otherwise when the article submission reads, "It's important that people grab this stuff ASAP, too, just in case some people decide to go after it for potential patent violations"?
No offense, but you sound like a warez kiddie trying to justify your thefts, railing against bogeymen like corporate greed and those corrupt politicians.
First, to both you and the original person who replied to me, I never said that ethics and/or morality are the same thing as legality. It would've been redundant of me if I thought that way. They're two separate things, and stealing someone's IP is a breach of both.
At least the article submission does, anyway. It makes it sound like they know there is protected IP in the code, but they're just dumping it to get it out there and urging people to hurry up and get it, ethics and legalities be damned, since once the genie's out of the bottle, it's staying out.
Oh yeah, I also meant to agree about the Schwab retirement home ad. Other than the premise itself, what made the commercial hilarious for me were the freeze-frame shots. That freeze-frame of Ditka eyeing the top bunk was awesome; also, I went back and watched it again, and the freeze-frame of a pissed-off, suspicious Evander Holyfield after he hears that Charles Barkley won yet another Bingo game had me cracking up for minutes.
Something else I noticed when re-watching the Cat Herder ad was one of the cowboys sitting around the campfire, one arm in a sling, and using one of those lint rollers on his vest to pick up the cat hairs. Priceless.
Oh yeah, and I haven't seen this mentioned here yet, but there was a really funny part of that computer.com commercial where they have the nephew. "Computer.com taught Daddy how to download pictures." "Billy!!" Ahhh, good stuff.
Don't know about this year, but only 133 million watched in the United States last year. Worldwide, though, over 800 million people watched it, with the game broadcast to 144 countries and territories, in 17 languages. I'm sure a lot of Europeans watched it, since there is (or was, anyway) an American football league there. American football also always does great business whenever the teams play in Mexico and Japan.
The Apple "Lemmings" ad was a complete disaster for them. It might've been original, but they shot themselves in the foot with that campaign.
I agree with your other ads, though. The only ones that actually made me laugh out loud were the E-Trade monkey and the Cat Herders. Less good, but still very amusing were the Budweiser crying dog, and the Gap singers running from an Oldsmobile. What made that commercial was that I really thought it was a Gap ad (and that seeing them run over would be funny), although I did remember thinking that they sounded especially off-key.
As far as the game went, that might've been the best 4th quarter of a Super Bowl that I've ever seen -- my God, the biggest game of the year decided by one freakin' yard! Since this seemed to be a down year as far as the overall quality of the commercials, it makes me wonder if there's some inverse relationship between the quality of each Super Bowl and the commercials that air during it.
This is the way of free software. Many windows programmers have not yet made the context switch from proprietary software [...]
Yeah, they still harbor crazy ideas like actually making a decent living by getting paid for their coding efforts. Vee must crush zee capitalist peegs!
That's in the spirit of the GPL, not this "request real nice and we'll think about it" email stuff.
Hey, it could be worse. It could be Slashdot co-founder Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) telling you, as he told the rest of the Slashdot audience about two weeks ago, "I delay the release by 24 hours each time someone asks me when a new Slash tarball will be out."
Your dismissal of it seems to be based on ignorance. Nobody has to sit and watch it all day -- for every aspect of your computer (local or remote) that perfmon monitors, you can define different actions depending on their values. Send yourself an email, write it into the event log, run a program, stop a service, whatever. I haven't seen your scripts, but based on similar ones that I've seen, I'd wager that perfmon is a lot more efficient, more powerful, and less time-consuming.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but we're talking PDAs here. What's the maximum amount of RAM that a Palm Pilot comes with, 8 MB for the Palm Vx? It's not like I'm going to be downloading operating system distributions or scads of MP3s on them. For the quick and easy web browsing, mail transfer, and occasional telnet session that you'll be using a PDA for, 56K is more than plenty. This isn't something you're going to spend all night ogling pr0n with. That's what my laptop's for. ;-)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Ahh, gotcha...I'm pretty much a USR loyalist myself, when it comes to modem, just because they've always been great for me. I do still have my Palm III (and my original Palm Pilot), but my usage has gone way down since I got my new PDA (it's one of the Cassiopeia E-105s). I'll be interested in checking out the color Palms when they come out, but for now I'm pretty much hooked on the one I've got.
As far as ISP numbers go, a fair number of them do have toll-free 1-800 numbers that you can use for like 5 hours per month as part of your standard dialup contract (i.e., you don't have to pay extra for it). For me, that's more than plenty, because I don't leave my connection up when I'm on the road like I do with my local computers. I pretty much just need enough time to check my mail or a website and send a batch of email. The Palm Pilot and its modem were (still are, actually) great for that purpose, and I'm still checking my mailbox everyday for the new Xircom 56K modem that I got for my new PDA. (Dang postal service. :/ )
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
colour screens are coming this year, from all reports [...]
Yo Swami, they've been here for quite a while. I just got one with a color screen in December, and they rock. Plus, since I put the Color GameBoy emulator on it, it's saved me from quite a few hours of boredom at the airports already this year. ;)
One other thing:
so, yes, in a few years when wireless net access (or some other form of mobile net access, like say, ethernet plugs abound like public phones) is a reality, then we'll have that.
If you're going to have to plug your PDA into an ethernet port anyway, why not just use a modem, which are very common these days, with your PDA? The speed difference is nice, but neither offer the real-time connectivity that you seem to be referring to.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Ahh, damn, sorry -- I was rushing out the door to lunch with some folks and didn't doublecheck the link. Here's the C|net story about FreeMac's frustrations with Apple, doublechecked this time: http://news.cnet. com/news/0-1006-200-1540302.html?tag=st.ne.1002.
And no, FreeMac didn't want a credit line or anything -- they just wanted to buy the computers, even if that meant buying them from a reseller or from a retailer like CompUSA. Check out the article now that I've finally posted the URL correctly, it's interesting.
Yes, it's such a shame that MSNBC never reports on Linux® anymore. Just today, February 2, I almost clicked on a link at MSNBC called The Linux Gospel According to Linus, but now that you've told me that all the Linux® articles are gone, I figure that it must be about the Commodore 64 or OS/2 or something. Thanks for the warning, pal!
Down with The Man!
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I doubt I'll stop posting here any time soon, but I don't see how on Earth you could possibly say that Slashdot does good reporting. Journalistically, it's a very shoddy operation, with numerous misleading and flat-out incorrect stories getting posted when a little basic fact-checking would do wonders.
Actually, my first reaction to the "It's sort of funny" comment jibed with some of the other posters -- thinking that the article submitter must find it funny because he relies on Slashdot as his major news source, what with their tendency to overhype petty articles about Microsoft, but sugarcoat and outright withhold stories when it's an ABMer presented in a bad light. I loathe Time's editorial leanings, but their reporting on this story is de rigueur for practically all the major news outlets.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
To wit:
Anyone remember what happened last time there was a class-action suit against any company?
For some reason, few ever seem to catch on to this.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
A start-up that I'm involved with was already in the process of meeting with Vulture Capitalists, and I get a panicked call saying that the server had gacked, and asking if I could do anything to save the data. Then I'm told that there are no backups whatsoever. Ouch. So I'm thousands of miles away, trying to recover the entire operation from a roasted hard drive on a computer which would no longer even boot, not even enough to install an OS (this was a RH Linux 6.1 box) on a different partition. Eventually I was able to get almost all the data back, including all the really critical stuff, after I had him put the hard drive on a different computer, but for a few hours there, everyone was sweating bullets. I can only imagine the reaction if investors dropped in on us while this Keystone Kops episode was going on. I have that mental image of one of those cartoons where a bag of money sprouts wings and flies away.
Hardware failure doesn't always happen to "someone else." Make those backups.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
China's just a Communist country, associated with the color red -- it has nothing to do with any traits of its people any more. Do you consider the Chinese themselves to be racists for occasionally referring to their own armed forces as "The Red Army"?
If someone had made some crack about the Red Planet because American Indians were being sent there, you'd have a more legitimate gripe, but otherwise you're pulling the race card where it's definitely not called for. There are plenty of racist incidents going on in the world. When you cry racism when it's not actually there, it only hurts the efforts to point out when it actually occurs.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
It'll probably be the leader of the Falun Gong, and instead of a space craft, they'll just launch his screaming body from a really, really big cannon.
China: Advancing the Space Race by Crushing Religious Freedom!
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I'm sorry, but Stallman's piece isn't going to advance the UCITA debate one iota because of his fringe beliefs. I mean, we're talking about a guy who thinks charging for software is immoral and who tacitly endorses software piracy. It's like, "Newsflash: Commercial Software Opponent Complains About Law Which Benefits Commercial Software Vendors But Hurts Consumers!" Well, duh.
If you go to http://www.badsoftware.com/oppose.htm, you can find tons of sources who aren't anti-commercial-software who still think this is a terrible law. These are objective voices that you want to make heard on this issue.Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Otherwise some friendly Brazilian police officer might've murdered you and your young "urchin" friends on the streets some night. I love Brazilian women, culture, and soccer (Hey, just look at my name! ;) ), but you guys really do need to clean up some problems which those other countries you mentioned don't have to deal with. I still hope to make it down to Carnival sometime soon.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Can't say I was exactly thrilled with Programming Python. I came into Python already knowing Perl, and just didn't really get anywhere with Programming Python. The continuity just seemed all wrong, out of order, etc. So, I didn't do anything with Python for a couple of years.
On a whim (meaning one of those times when you're walking around a bookstore with a wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket), I decided to pick up Learning Python. Man, am I glad I did. Yeah, there's a lot of really basic programming stuff in there (which makes it an excellent book for complete newbies), but I found it to be a much better introduction to the Python way of doing things, possibly because it was such a fast read. Once I got the basics down, exploring the more advanced stuff just from the online and included docs was a breeze.
Stick with giving Python a try, though. You say you know OOP, but if your knowledge comes from using Perl, I think you'll be happy just how easy OOP is with Python in comparison. I like it enough that it's replaced Perl for me as my favorite quick-n-dirty language -- it just "feels" more correct when I'm using it. And yes, I know the degree to which Perl is a "write-only" language depends on the particular programmer, but it's been my experience every single time that when I've had to work with other people's code, the Python stuff was always easier to jump right into than the Perl stuff.
Anyway, that's just my opinion -- what prompted me to write was that I just purchased "Python and Tkinter Programming" from Manning Publication's website, then came to Slashdot to see a book review featuring a book from the same company. I've never read any of their books before, so am kind of curious.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Of course, if the day ever came that Windows did ship with Perl, we'd hear the usual Slashdot bitching and moaning about those unfair Microsoft bundling tactics.
You know it's true.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
That's cool, and I have no reason at all to doubt you, but do you see why I might've thought otherwise when the article submission reads, "It's important that people grab this stuff ASAP, too, just in case some people decide to go after it for potential patent violations"?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
No offense, but you sound like a warez kiddie trying to justify your thefts, railing against bogeymen like corporate greed and those corrupt politicians.
First, to both you and the original person who replied to me, I never said that ethics and/or morality are the same thing as legality. It would've been redundant of me if I thought that way. They're two separate things, and stealing someone's IP is a breach of both.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
At least the article submission does, anyway. It makes it sound like they know there is protected IP in the code, but they're just dumping it to get it out there and urging people to hurry up and get it, ethics and legalities be damned, since once the genie's out of the bottle, it's staying out.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Oh yeah, I also meant to agree about the Schwab retirement home ad. Other than the premise itself, what made the commercial hilarious for me were the freeze-frame shots. That freeze-frame of Ditka eyeing the top bunk was awesome; also, I went back and watched it again, and the freeze-frame of a pissed-off, suspicious Evander Holyfield after he hears that Charles Barkley won yet another Bingo game had me cracking up for minutes.
Something else I noticed when re-watching the Cat Herder ad was one of the cowboys sitting around the campfire, one arm in a sling, and using one of those lint rollers on his vest to pick up the cat hairs. Priceless.
Oh yeah, and I haven't seen this mentioned here yet, but there was a really funny part of that computer.com commercial where they have the nephew. "Computer.com taught Daddy how to download pictures." "Billy!!" Ahhh, good stuff.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Don't know about this year, but only 133 million watched in the United States last year. Worldwide, though, over 800 million people watched it, with the game broadcast to 144 countries and territories, in 17 languages. I'm sure a lot of Europeans watched it, since there is (or was, anyway) an American football league there. American football also always does great business whenever the teams play in Mexico and Japan.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Since the i-Opener uses QNX, what does this have to do with Linux®?
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
The Apple "Lemmings" ad was a complete disaster for them. It might've been original, but they shot themselves in the foot with that campaign.
I agree with your other ads, though. The only ones that actually made me laugh out loud were the E-Trade monkey and the Cat Herders. Less good, but still very amusing were the Budweiser crying dog, and the Gap singers running from an Oldsmobile. What made that commercial was that I really thought it was a Gap ad (and that seeing them run over would be funny), although I did remember thinking that they sounded especially off-key.
As far as the game went, that might've been the best 4th quarter of a Super Bowl that I've ever seen -- my God, the biggest game of the year decided by one freakin' yard! Since this seemed to be a down year as far as the overall quality of the commercials, it makes me wonder if there's some inverse relationship between the quality of each Super Bowl and the commercials that air during it.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
This is the way of free software. Many windows programmers have not yet made the context switch from proprietary software [...]
Yeah, they still harbor crazy ideas like actually making a decent living by getting paid for their coding efforts. Vee must crush zee capitalist peegs!
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
That's in the spirit of the GPL, not this "request real nice and we'll think about it" email stuff.
Hey, it could be worse. It could be Slashdot co-founder Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) telling you, as he told the rest of the Slashdot audience about two weeks ago, "I delay the release by 24 hours each time someone asks me when a new Slash tarball will be out."
Sorry, but it had to be said. :-)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Your dismissal of it seems to be based on ignorance. Nobody has to sit and watch it all day -- for every aspect of your computer (local or remote) that perfmon monitors, you can define different actions depending on their values. Send yourself an email, write it into the event log, run a program, stop a service, whatever. I haven't seen your scripts, but based on similar ones that I've seen, I'd wager that perfmon is a lot more efficient, more powerful, and less time-consuming.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Which 3 year old products does Microsoft support with patches of any sort at all, leaving out y2k fixes?
Like, say, Windows 3.x or NT 3.5.1? Yes. Are those two old enough for you?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com