Thanks symbolset. I've been looking at Debian for some of my boxes where I want to be able to play around with the system and not have it broken by upgrades too often.
The first time I did an install of Karmic, I saw the ads during the install and thought, "what! it's XP!" Well, windows versions seem to be just as buggy when they come out. Ubuntu seems to have one great, smooth version earlier in the year and a bleeding edge but buggier version later in the year. Perhaps that's just how it works out, not sure.
I've been using Ubuntu for about 5 years now, but it's getting a bit polished and smooth for my own machines. I want something I can hack easily and GRUB2, autoconfig on bloody everything and upstart are just making things annoying for me. Great for the average user though!. One of the reasons that Windows often sucks is that everything is graphical and if the options of the frontend are bad, or the execution of the simplified frontend options sucks, well there's not much you can do but wait for the developers to fix it. Good old-fashioned X11 with a nice xorg.conf that you can configure manually and not have it over-write on boot. Good old GRUB menu.lst that you can configure on the fly. GRUB options that you could edit on boot. All disappearing. Soon they'll say you can't edit your fstab file manually or your hosts.allow/deny files. Does everything need to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator?
Is Linux (especially distros like Ubuntu) making the same kind of mistakes that Microsoft did?
>Walters (along with many who grow up speaking Asian languages) cannot even hear the English/r/.
Sorta like many Nepalis who can't tell the difference often between SS and SH and B and V. Interesting. I'm currently in the process of retraining my ears so that I can understand Nepali and spend a lot of time helping Nepali international students with English as well as basic life skills. I already speak or understand various languages to some degree, but some of the sounds in Nepali I have had to, or am in the process of, teaching my ears to even hear them properly.
CSS is used for easy and consistent page formatting across a site...
Well, yes that is ONE use for CSS, but please remember that it is Cascading Style Sheets. Style information can be embedded in the HTML itself, or in an external file. Style information in the page itself will be prioritized over CSS in an external document. This adds flexibility. HTML is about data. CSS is about presenting that data. Flash is doing what HTML and CSS should do and will soon.
Before I start just a disclaimer: I am a person who loves reading to the degree that I have on several occasions missed work and social engagements when I got 'stuck' in a book and could not bring myself to put it down until it was finished.
As much as the price is pretty prohibitive, with the e-ink display and what looks like a nice, unobtrusive interface as well as expandable memory, this is the first e-book reader I've seen that I'd actually consider owning. While e-books have been available for a long time, I've never actually been able to finish reading one. Reading for long periods off any traditional type of screen is a pain in the freckle for a start. To me, screens are generally only good for short articles (up to 10 pages).
The peculiar interaction one has with a book as one turns the pages is missing as well. I guess the main thing is that a physical book has a very finite space. It only has in it what was printed in it or margin notes etc. It has no internet, advanced search or multi-tasking capabilities. It has a world of it's own. To interact with another book-world you have to put it down and pick up another one. On electronic devices it is so easy to jump from one thing to another and scrape for gems, missing a lot on the way. In a book you have to mine for them.
I use SSH to access my file server. Because I use it as a music server as well, I use X forwarding. As I'm accessing the actual server instead of just mounting fileshares (which I do also), I do the file searches directly on the server. Usually good old locate. Haven't really found anything that beats it yet, but then again I like the CLI. If you're running windows... Sorry.
All my student debts are in Australia. The system here is a one off 10% levy on student loans from the government then it gets taken out of your pay with your tax, after you reach a certain thresh-hold. Debts cease on death (a nice comforter if you've done a lot of study and don't want family saddled with debt.)
Just a little disclaimer. I studied music for several years, including at a tertiary level and have performed in several groups ranging from chamber groups to orchestras, both those of academic institutions and professional. Though I specialized in Double Bass, I also studied various other instruments with highly renowned teachers. I left the music arena after severe illness several years ago and now only teach occasionally. When it comes to music, well, I think I've put in enough years of decent study and performance to consider myself at least a learned pupil.
As for the desire for praise. You're right. I don't actually feel like this. I don't really give a shit whether people praise me or not and loath people drooling over me. Trust me. I get enough compliments and generally find them more embarrassing than anything else.
Concerning TV. When I likened that to the issue of Vegetarianism, I wasn't joking. I've been vegetarian for some 14yrs or so because it seems to suit my metabolism, but people praise me about it like it's something akin to high virtue. I do it because it suits me and meat doesn't interest me. What is virtuous about that? I don't own a TV set because as an adolescent I wasted so many hours and days in front of the box to no gain when there are far more interesting things in life. I do on occasion enjoy watching TV with some friends or the next door neighbours. Usually clever live comedy or the like. Things I can't predict. Programs like Law and Order and many documentaries are quite well done also and I will stay to watch them if in the room when they come on. If I can predict what is going to happen in the storyline or in a drama cannot suspend disbelief, I'm not interested.
I had no intention of attacking TV itself as a medium, but like most other common forms of expression or entertainment, 99% of content produced is crap. Same as books, cinema, music etc. Only these days we have the curse of easy recording, archiving and reproduction of this crap. Can't wait til it's all just on the internet so we can search it and sieve out what we want at will, leaving the rest to obscurity.
Haha! It's amazing what can be marked as troll here. Ah well. In for a penny in for a pound.
Btw I never said that I hated TV. I just find that there isn't enough content I really want to watch to warrant giving one space in my own home. The rest I can either buy on DVD or watch online. No probs there.
You also seem to completely misunderstood my comment. Leaving class distinction aside as the useless bigotry it usually is, good music is good music. Good drama is good drama. Good graphic art is good graphic art. If 99% of adherents of the culture it is produced in and for do not understand it, then it is crap. On the other hand, many of what you call the 'unwashed masses' could probably benefit from a little learning about the appreciation of different art forms. I strongly suspect that the tastes of most people have been dulled by a bland diet so that they find it difficult to appreciate more flavoursome morsels and often wish that I could share the excellent subtleties I enjoy in different styles of music from Early Baroque through to experimental electronic music and folk ( and modern) music from around the world with more of my friends. Most peoples aural 'taste buds' just aren't developed enough though.
Umm, why is it great that I've never owned a TV? That's like people congratulating others on being a vegetarian. It's personal choice. Nothing more. I do think that limiting passive entertainment like TV is a good idea though.
The divide between high and low culture is in a way, bigotry. The divide between high and low quality ART (eg. all forms or art - writing, music, cinematography, tribal body painting, cooking etc) is present in every field. This being said, I enjoy poetry, films, music and graphical arts from many centuries, cultures and classes.
When tussling with the concept of what 'art' is many years ago, I came to the conclusion that art is known by the elegance of it's expression. Most TV doesn't actually express anything with any eloquence, so I have never actually bothered to have a TV set of my own. Even many ancient cave paintings on the other hand can be high art as the imagery and expression of form or concept is so beautiful.
The thing is that popular TV is not designed to make you think. It is designed to entertain the masses who generally just want a bit of light bubbly stuff with some flesh and a bit of drama/action. That's why a great film like Bladerunner never really made it at the box office. It actually makes you think.
In the book world it's the same. Ask the general public if they've ever heard of Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle or Ray Bradbury. Outside of Sci-Fi, ask them about Rudyard Kipling or even Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Negative again. Dan Brown? Yeah they know him. Badly researched badly written brainless rubbish, but he sells books in the millions. That is the way of the world.
I certainly give slashdot the "most likely to crash firefox" prize, firefox being the only application that I have known to regularly crash ANY OS that I run it on including Linux (Ubuntu). If I leave a slashdot article open in FF when I go to sleep, most of the time I'll have an unresponsive PC in the morning.
This actually means that slashdot has caused me more system freeze/crashes than any malware.
I keep few 'good' PSU's hanging around and just swap them over with the dubious one. Takes less time than testing with a multi-meter or installing software.
The software on the Asus WL-520GU licensed on under the GPL Public license v2 and the source code is included on the CD that comes with the router. Great router all round then?
For crying out load. Woolworths sells fruit. How can Apple go against a pretty unique logo which is not only related to the name and business of the owner, but looks nothing like the Apple logo. It's bright green and hollow. It isn't even reminiscent of the Apple logo...
Instead of bomb making, take a lesson from bomb makers all over the world. Improvisation. Each week teach the students some basic principles, say, how electric motors or toasters or pulleys or whatever work. Then give them a range of materials out of which they can make their own device. As you go, choose items with which you can teach basic but important principles in physics and electronics. Later on in the course, do repairs on household appliances etc (pref low voltage or get an electrician on hand to take care of your public liability). Each lesson tell a short story about a cool but simple invention.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks symbolset. I've been looking at Debian for some of my boxes where I want to be able to play around with the system and not have it broken by upgrades too often.
The first time I did an install of Karmic, I saw the ads during the install and thought, "what! it's XP!" Well, windows versions seem to be just as buggy when they come out. Ubuntu seems to have one great, smooth version earlier in the year and a bleeding edge but buggier version later in the year. Perhaps that's just how it works out, not sure.
I've been using Ubuntu for about 5 years now, but it's getting a bit polished and smooth for my own machines. I want something I can hack easily and GRUB2, autoconfig on bloody everything and upstart are just making things annoying for me. Great for the average user though!. One of the reasons that Windows often sucks is that everything is graphical and if the options of the frontend are bad, or the execution of the simplified frontend options sucks, well there's not much you can do but wait for the developers to fix it. Good old-fashioned X11 with a nice xorg.conf that you can configure manually and not have it over-write on boot. Good old GRUB menu.lst that you can configure on the fly. GRUB options that you could edit on boot. All disappearing. Soon they'll say you can't edit your fstab file manually or your hosts.allow/deny files. Does everything need to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator?
Is Linux (especially distros like Ubuntu) making the same kind of mistakes that Microsoft did?
>Walters (along with many who grow up speaking Asian languages) cannot even hear the English /r/.
Sorta like many Nepalis who can't tell the difference often between SS and SH and B and V. Interesting. I'm currently in the process of retraining my ears so that I can understand Nepali and spend a lot of time helping Nepali international students with English as well as basic life skills. I already speak or understand various languages to some degree, but some of the sounds in Nepali I have had to, or am in the process of, teaching my ears to even hear them properly.
Parent makes a lot of sense. Mod up.
I really should have said HTML5 and CSS. CSS drop-down menus, transparency and the like also some great shadow and border features etc and even different developments in CSS animationwill hopefully replace flash and javascript.New HTML tags for embedding content or applications will go a long way to making flash redundant also. I hope.
CSS is used for easy and consistent page formatting across a site...
Well, yes that is ONE use for CSS, but please remember that it is Cascading Style Sheets. Style information can be embedded in the HTML itself, or in an external file. Style information in the page itself will be prioritized over CSS in an external document. This adds flexibility. HTML is about data. CSS is about presenting that data. Flash is doing what HTML and CSS should do and will soon.
With the way CSS is developing, won't flash be redundant soon anyway? I certainly hope so!
Actually McCoy stated once that he'd been dead for all the years since he first entered a transporter. An interesting concept.
I agree with you. Once one person dies, even if a full copy of their mind, will etc is rendered into another body, the continuity of being is broken.
Before I start just a disclaimer: I am a person who loves reading to the degree that I have on several occasions missed work and social engagements when I got 'stuck' in a book and could not bring myself to put it down until it was finished.
As much as the price is pretty prohibitive, with the e-ink display and what looks like a nice, unobtrusive interface as well as expandable memory, this is the first e-book reader I've seen that I'd actually consider owning. While e-books have been available for a long time, I've never actually been able to finish reading one. Reading for long periods off any traditional type of screen is a pain in the freckle for a start. To me, screens are generally only good for short articles (up to 10 pages).
The peculiar interaction one has with a book as one turns the pages is missing as well. I guess the main thing is that a physical book has a very finite space. It only has in it what was printed in it or margin notes etc. It has no internet, advanced search or multi-tasking capabilities. It has a world of it's own. To interact with another book-world you have to put it down and pick up another one. On electronic devices it is so easy to jump from one thing to another and scrape for gems, missing a lot on the way. In a book you have to mine for them.
I use SSH to access my file server. Because I use it as a music server as well, I use X forwarding. As I'm accessing the actual server instead of just mounting fileshares (which I do also), I do the file searches directly on the server. Usually good old locate. Haven't really found anything that beats it yet, but then again I like the CLI. If you're running windows... Sorry.
All my student debts are in Australia. The system here is a one off 10% levy on student loans from the government then it gets taken out of your pay with your tax, after you reach a certain thresh-hold. Debts cease on death (a nice comforter if you've done a lot of study and don't want family saddled with debt.)
If only they could program them to avoid the smell of BBQ meat...
In my day we just ripped their wings off. This new stuff is REALLY sick...
No worries. Debate is good.
Just a little disclaimer. I studied music for several years, including at a tertiary level and have performed in several groups ranging from chamber groups to orchestras, both those of academic institutions and professional. Though I specialized in Double Bass, I also studied various other instruments with highly renowned teachers. I left the music arena after severe illness several years ago and now only teach occasionally. When it comes to music, well, I think I've put in enough years of decent study and performance to consider myself at least a learned pupil.
As for the desire for praise. You're right. I don't actually feel like this. I don't really give a shit whether people praise me or not and loath people drooling over me. Trust me. I get enough compliments and generally find them more embarrassing than anything else.
Concerning TV. When I likened that to the issue of Vegetarianism, I wasn't joking. I've been vegetarian for some 14yrs or so because it seems to suit my metabolism, but people praise me about it like it's something akin to high virtue. I do it because it suits me and meat doesn't interest me. What is virtuous about that? I don't own a TV set because as an adolescent I wasted so many hours and days in front of the box to no gain when there are far more interesting things in life. I do on occasion enjoy watching TV with some friends or the next door neighbours. Usually clever live comedy or the like. Things I can't predict. Programs like Law and Order and many documentaries are quite well done also and I will stay to watch them if in the room when they come on. If I can predict what is going to happen in the storyline or in a drama cannot suspend disbelief, I'm not interested.
I had no intention of attacking TV itself as a medium, but like most other common forms of expression or entertainment, 99% of content produced is crap. Same as books, cinema, music etc. Only these days we have the curse of easy recording, archiving and reproduction of this crap. Can't wait til it's all just on the internet so we can search it and sieve out what we want at will, leaving the rest to obscurity.
Haha! It's amazing what can be marked as troll here. Ah well. In for a penny in for a pound.
Btw I never said that I hated TV. I just find that there isn't enough content I really want to watch to warrant giving one space in my own home. The rest I can either buy on DVD or watch online. No probs there.
You also seem to completely misunderstood my comment. Leaving class distinction aside as the useless bigotry it usually is, good music is good music. Good drama is good drama. Good graphic art is good graphic art. If 99% of adherents of the culture it is produced in and for do not understand it, then it is crap. On the other hand, many of what you call the 'unwashed masses' could probably benefit from a little learning about the appreciation of different art forms. I strongly suspect that the tastes of most people have been dulled by a bland diet so that they find it difficult to appreciate more flavoursome morsels and often wish that I could share the excellent subtleties I enjoy in different styles of music from Early Baroque through to experimental electronic music and folk ( and modern) music from around the world with more of my friends. Most peoples aural 'taste buds' just aren't developed enough though.
Umm, why is it great that I've never owned a TV? That's like people congratulating others on being a vegetarian. It's personal choice. Nothing more. I do think that limiting passive entertainment like TV is a good idea though.
The divide between high and low culture is in a way, bigotry. The divide between high and low quality ART (eg. all forms or art - writing, music, cinematography, tribal body painting, cooking etc) is present in every field. This being said, I enjoy poetry, films, music and graphical arts from many centuries, cultures and classes.
When tussling with the concept of what 'art' is many years ago, I came to the conclusion that art is known by the elegance of it's expression. Most TV doesn't actually express anything with any eloquence, so I have never actually bothered to have a TV set of my own. Even many ancient cave paintings on the other hand can be high art as the imagery and expression of form or concept is so beautiful.
The thing is that popular TV is not designed to make you think. It is designed to entertain the masses who generally just want a bit of light bubbly stuff with some flesh and a bit of drama/action. That's why a great film like Bladerunner never really made it at the box office. It actually makes you think.
In the book world it's the same. Ask the general public if they've ever heard of Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle or Ray Bradbury. Outside of Sci-Fi, ask them about Rudyard Kipling or even Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Negative again. Dan Brown? Yeah they know him. Badly researched badly written brainless rubbish, but he sells books in the millions. That is the way of the world.
I certainly give slashdot the "most likely to crash firefox" prize, firefox being the only application that I have known to regularly crash ANY OS that I run it on including Linux (Ubuntu). If I leave a slashdot article open in FF when I go to sleep, most of the time I'll have an unresponsive PC in the morning.
This actually means that slashdot has caused me more system freeze/crashes than any malware.
I keep few 'good' PSU's hanging around and just swap them over with the dubious one. Takes less time than testing with a multi-meter or installing software.
The software on the Asus WL-520GU licensed on under the GPL Public license v2 and the source code is included on the CD that comes with the router. Great router all round then?
Thanks for the nice review. I bought one this morning!
For crying out load. Woolworths sells fruit. How can Apple go against a pretty unique logo which is not only related to the name and business of the owner, but looks nothing like the Apple logo. It's bright green and hollow. It isn't even reminiscent of the Apple logo...
I really like the idea about cars fractoid. If they could learn the basics of how cars work... now that would be useful for them in later life.
I hope never to win one of these awards, but we could be surprised one day. Some of this research may end up useful in a way we never foresaw.
Instead of bomb making, take a lesson from bomb makers all over the world. Improvisation. Each week teach the students some basic principles, say, how electric motors or toasters or pulleys or whatever work. Then give them a range of materials out of which they can make their own device. As you go, choose items with which you can teach basic but important principles in physics and electronics. Later on in the course, do repairs on household appliances etc (pref low voltage or get an electrician on hand to take care of your public liability). Each lesson tell a short story about a cool but simple invention.
Man I would love to teach that course.