I've got both a Sony Ericssion T610, and a Nokia 3650.
Both are nice phones. Both have bluetooth.
T-mobile offers unlimited web browsing for $9.99, and unlimited GPRS internet for $19.99.
Web browsing on my phone(s) is impractical. Typing e-mails (or slashdot responses) is difficult at best.
My ipaq h4150, over, does both of these tasks admirably.
I can go to metromix, and find the address of the restaurant I want. I can go to mapquest, and give someone directions.
E-mail, check. AIM, check. Carrying around the odd set of files that I may want to send via bluetooth? Check.
And if I get to an 802.11b hotspot, I can use my pda as a phone to call on FWD.
It's not a laptop, nor does it offer the funcationality of a laptop (thats why I have a powerbook). It's for when I want to do light internet enabled tasks, ANYWHERE in the U.S., (where I get reception, anyways, but thats another story), on a pocket sized unit. Maybe I'm just incompentent, but I can't type fast enough on the phone. I am more than able to use the stylus on my pocket pc, and it has improved my handwriting to boot.
(Anyone know about familiar linux on the ipaq h4150? The info on their site is sketchy, and basically says: don't try this, its hopeless)
Say what you will about the slow speed of GPRS, but 3-6 kbytes/sec is okay for many tasks.
The only thing that may cause me to change my setup is the upcoming released of the iPaq h6000 series, which t-mobile is using to replace their 'pocket pc phone' edition.
Pocket PC phone didn't have bluetooth (so no laptop connectivity (atleast without a cable, which I am unwilling to use)).
I still may not switch, however, because my Sony Ericsson has GREAT battery life, and the Nokia is just kinda cool.
The only thing that T-mobile users do need, IMHO, is an antenna amplifier, because there are just too many regions with spotty service. Around my office, in southern wisconsin, its fine. Around my home, in northwest suburban chicagoland, there are black spots here and there.
But you can't beat the price: 1000 minutes, free nights and weekends, nationwide, $39.99. Unlimited GPRS, $19.99. This includes unlimited Text, E-mail, and Picture messeging, as well.
No other carrier is even close, and I will easily make up for the cost of my $150.00 amp.
I'm talking about the people Mr. Joe Blow works for. There are plenty of linux consulting shops that will develop an end-to-end solution for you.
Their service tends to be outstanding, but of course there are always exceptions.
And, if you read my post, instead of just pounding reply, you would notice that I indicate there is survey evidence among IT professionals and business managers in an IT related field regarding the 'favorability' of MS versus OSS, and these surveys generally paint MS in a poor light.
Not just among slashbots mind you.
Yes, or course, the surveys were biased.
Biased by whom? Microsoft, of course. I was refering to that leaked microsoft memo released as the halloween Document #7.
Microsoft is fighting neck and neck in the image war, and at this moment in time, they are loosing.
That could change, of course, but don't count it on.
CTO are pissed of about the new MS licensing, constant MS patching, and dealing with the hassel when their WHOLE FRIGGIN NETWORK goes down. Not that it was unavoidable...But its still happenning. Even if MS releases the patches in time, networks keep going down.
And then there is the TCO battle.
You are wrong about this being a slashdot only thing. Linux really is getting to be well known in the business world.
Is everyone switching? No. But mindshare, and marketshare, are building.
MS is having serious image problems at the moment.
Their own customer surveys show 'Dislike of MS' to be a top negative factor.
Somewhere in one of the latest halloween memos.
Not a single entity that goes about business with self-confidence---
Big, hairy dude, arrogant in the extreme, and unresponsive to complaints.
On the contrary---the squabbling, temperamental, individuals often strike up passable relationships with entrepnurial minded business people....
Even if there is a fair bit of petty squabling, there is a healthy, competitive open source community, and a GREAT deal more hands on/friendly service out there.
MS sales people do not tend to be as well received as they used to.
Although it is WAY slower, for some reason, you get fewer 'botched' installations if you turn off something things in the BIOS.
Such things include: AGP Fastwrites, Any kind of PCI acceleration features, any Memory performance optimizinations, UltraDMA, ACPI. ..
Turn that stuff off, and your install will go smoothly 99% of the time.
Weird, that stuff can cause intermittent problems, eh?
Generally, however, I just leave it on, and reinstall if necessary--> It's faster to do the install twice, than to do it once with UltraDMA off.
You might be able to get around it if you did the base install first, get your system up and running with UltraDMA off (minimum install, no gui), reboot, turn everything on, login to text-mode ncurses yast, and install all the stuff you wanted.
Maybe. Who knows. I always do it with everything on, and reinstall if needed.
It's not ENTIRELY intuitive, but in the install process, when SuSE is putting up that list (it goes something like : Packages (All of KDE, etc. ..) [nextline] Partition (summary of the partition structure it choose) [nextline] Boot loader (GRUB) [nextline], near the begining of the install process---
Those titles (like Packages, Partition, Boot loader), are actually links, and they take you into a portion of the installer where you can mess around with that stuff.
Click on Partitions, and you get three choices: let suse handle partitions, based your setup on SuSE's setup, or custom paritioning (for experts).
I find it flexible enough for just about any need I can dream of.
Mandating specifications and requirements for software that open source is simple not capable of doing will be one of the future attacks against open source.
"GPL software is bad, because someone could ALWAYS modify it to allow them to commit 'illegal' activities"
"Trust us, DRM'd super-secure (insert program name) here, because you KNOW where on your side"
Obviously, this is not meant for the public at large. This is meant for policy makers, who like the idea of control.
Quite simply, I don't see a way out of this. If this measure passes, the GIMP, and many other Open-Source image manipulation programs will be ILLEGAL in Europe.
Hell, at some point in the near future, they might even make it a crime to use older versions.
And if the EU makes such a regulation law, you can look to the U.S. to follow suite.
Combine this with palladium, which can put such restrictions on 'illegal' software in hardware, and then ban all legacy hardware.
If they want to use windows, they should pay for it, get the patches, and keep the net clean.
MS has used the tactic of being soft on piracy to increase their marketshare.
Now they want to be hard on piracy, and instead of people bitching about it, or complaining about how that will leave compromised boxes on the net, lets just END the piracy.
Every computer in my household, when they ran Windows, had a legal copy of windows XP associated with them.
They came with it.
The only two that don't are the machines I built myself, and they have been nothing but linux.
Before I switched over the other systems, they ALL ran pirated copies of Windows XP.
Why?
1. Didn't want to activate. 2. Didn't like all the software that came with the 'restore' cd. 3. Couldn't be bothered to hold on to the cd-keys, or the original cds, or the license documentation, etc. ..
I used to be really unhappy that Microsoft would not allow service patches to be used on pirated copies of windows.
It means that compromised machines will remain on the net for a long time, and it also means that eventually, a killer virus WILL shut down a bunch of computers, and really piss a bunch of people off.
Why? I know you can apply hot fixes anyways. But people are too lazy to find the ~200 hotfixes that comprise a service pack.
Anyways, back to why I'm happy about it:
Back in the day (Win95 era) MS basically encouraged piracy. It ensures vendor lock-in, and substantially hurt the revenue of any competitive offerings. Most piracy was petty, anyways-- You bought a new computer, it came with an OEM copy, you bought a laptop, it came with an OEM copy. But that computer you built for your mom, or that older computer you gave to a friend, got upgraded to the latest and greatest windows for free.
Until now. Now, that is no longer really possible.
Hopefully, this will give greater impetus for people to switch to alternatives (like Linux).
Linux looses a lot of its competitive advantage when windows is effectively 'free' too. Windows pirate has typically been rampant.
If even a small portion of those pirates switch, it will be a substantial move of the market.
I know this business (both the absurd patching regime, and the inability to 'soft' pirate) made me switch.
I can't keep track of all those serial numbers. I think all the computers in my home (5? 6?) have valid copies of Windows XP associated with them. I'm sure all the laptops came with them. But it is too much trouble to keep track of all that stuff.
Now everything runs SuSE. I bought one copy, reasonable cost ~$70.00, and I'm in the clear, legally.
Gimme a break. Yes, there is something negative to be said about the true 'black hat' nefarious uber-criminals.
But your common everyday script kiddie?
It's your OWN damn fault.
Secure your system. Barring that, get a better OS. Barring that, run safer software.
Even if Linux/Mac OS X are not impervious, they are far less worm/virus prone than Windows.
Learn what a firewall is. Use one.
Don't use outlook (unless you are absolutely FORCED to). Don't use IE. Ever. Or IIS, for that matter.
Most of this should be pretty easy for home users.
If you are a corporate office drone, I feel sorry for you. It's really too bad that your IT management staff hasn't embraced something more secure (not necessairly switching to Linux, but dumping the Exchange/IIS/Outlook bandwagon).
Yes, yes, I know, the age old argument--- If someone enters your house, even if you did leave the door unlocked, they are the one commiting wrongdoing, not you.
But in the end, since a small amount of effort on your part could have saved you a huge amount of pain, its your OWN damn fault.
It's not like you didn't have the opportunity to avert whatever 'disaster' the worm du jour is causing.
It's coming. Your system will get infected. Wise up.
I would not be surprised, however, if some major company took up this effort.
I would also not be surprised if they were willing to go to the table against Apple. The 'you must own Apple hardware' requirement is almost certainly not legal.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a bad idea....
Not a bad idea at all....
Actually, I feel like I would want to pay for spam both ways.
Pro scientology, anti-scientology.
Would it be illegal for me to do that? Where would I go to start?
Pro-scientology=People get mad at the CoS
Anti-scientology=CoS kills spammers.
While were at it, why not spam out the CoS's secret (but now revealed in court) documents.
That ought to get a reaction out of them....
Anyways, get me some info on how to do it, because this is TOTALLY a project worth starting.
Makes me have a PDA.
I've got both a Sony Ericssion T610, and a Nokia 3650.
Both are nice phones. Both have bluetooth.
T-mobile offers unlimited web browsing for $9.99, and unlimited GPRS internet for $19.99.
Web browsing on my phone(s) is impractical. Typing e-mails (or slashdot responses) is difficult at best.
My ipaq h4150, over, does both of these tasks admirably.
I can go to metromix, and find the address of the restaurant I want. I can go to mapquest, and give someone directions.
E-mail, check. AIM, check. Carrying around the odd set of files that I may want to send via bluetooth? Check.
And if I get to an 802.11b hotspot, I can use my pda as a phone to call on FWD.
It's not a laptop, nor does it offer the funcationality of a laptop (thats why I have a powerbook). It's for when I want to do light internet enabled tasks, ANYWHERE in the U.S., (where I get reception, anyways, but thats another story), on a pocket sized unit. Maybe I'm just incompentent, but I can't type fast enough on the phone. I am more than able to use the stylus on my pocket pc, and it has improved my handwriting to boot.
(Anyone know about familiar linux on the ipaq h4150? The info on their site is sketchy, and basically says: don't try this, its hopeless)
Say what you will about the slow speed of GPRS, but 3-6 kbytes/sec is okay for many tasks.
The only thing that may cause me to change my setup is the upcoming released of the iPaq h6000 series, which t-mobile is using to replace their 'pocket pc phone' edition.
Pocket PC phone didn't have bluetooth (so no laptop connectivity (atleast without a cable, which I am unwilling to use)).
I still may not switch, however, because my Sony Ericsson has GREAT battery life, and the Nokia is just kinda cool.
The only thing that T-mobile users do need, IMHO, is an antenna amplifier, because there are just too many regions with spotty service. Around my office, in southern wisconsin, its fine. Around my home, in northwest suburban chicagoland, there are black spots here and there.
But you can't beat the price: 1000 minutes, free nights and weekends, nationwide, $39.99. Unlimited GPRS, $19.99. This includes unlimited Text, E-mail, and Picture messeging, as well.
No other carrier is even close, and I will easily make up for the cost of my $150.00 amp.
Don't worry....
You suck too
BzzzzT!
Wrong!
This is a common misperception.
Mind you, I'm not talking about Mr. Joe Blow.
I'm talking about the people Mr. Joe Blow works for. There are plenty of linux consulting shops that will develop an end-to-end solution for you.
Their service tends to be outstanding, but of course there are always exceptions.
And, if you read my post, instead of just pounding reply, you would notice that I indicate there is survey evidence among IT professionals and business managers in an IT related field regarding the 'favorability' of MS versus OSS, and these surveys generally paint MS in a poor light.
Not just among slashbots mind you.
Yes, or course, the surveys were biased.
Biased by whom? Microsoft, of course. I was refering to that leaked microsoft memo released as the halloween Document #7.
Link here
Microsoft is fighting neck and neck in the image war, and at this moment in time, they are loosing.
That could change, of course, but don't count it on.
CTO are pissed of about the new MS licensing, constant MS patching, and dealing with the hassel when their WHOLE FRIGGIN NETWORK goes down. Not that it was unavoidable...But its still happenning. Even if MS releases the patches in time, networks keep going down.
And then there is the TCO battle.
You are wrong about this being a slashdot only thing. Linux really is getting to be well known in the business world.
Is everyone switching? No. But mindshare, and marketshare, are building.
I dunno....
MS is having serious image problems at the moment.
Their own customer surveys show 'Dislike of MS' to be a top negative factor.
Somewhere in one of the latest halloween memos.
Not a single entity that goes about business with self-confidence---
Big, hairy dude, arrogant in the extreme, and unresponsive to complaints.
On the contrary---the squabbling, temperamental, individuals often strike up passable relationships with entrepnurial minded business people....
Even if there is a fair bit of petty squabling, there is a healthy, competitive open source community, and a GREAT deal more hands on/friendly service out there.
MS sales people do not tend to be as well received as they used to.
I think the SuSE people did it too---
/media/dvd or /media/cdrom (depending upon the drive media).
In KDE, that is.
Also, (supermount? automount?) whatever they call their automagic mounting daemon got a whole lot better.
Stuff like USB dvd-burners get found, hotplugged, and show up in My Computer (and
The burner ever worked for burning stuff too (I was wowed).
Cool Stuff (TM)
My experience---
.
Although it is WAY slower, for some reason, you get fewer 'botched' installations if you turn off something things in the BIOS.
Such things include: AGP Fastwrites, Any kind of PCI acceleration features, any Memory performance optimizinations, UltraDMA, ACPI. .
Turn that stuff off, and your install will go smoothly 99% of the time.
Weird, that stuff can cause intermittent problems, eh?
Generally, however, I just leave it on, and reinstall if necessary--> It's faster to do the install twice, than to do it once with UltraDMA off.
You might be able to get around it if you did the base install first, get your system up and running with UltraDMA off (minimum install, no gui), reboot, turn everything on, login to text-mode ncurses yast, and install all the stuff you wanted.
Maybe. Who knows. I always do it with everything on, and reinstall if needed.
About the partitioning.....
.) [nextline] Partition (summary of the partition structure it choose) [nextline] Boot loader (GRUB) [nextline], near the begining of the install process---
It's not ENTIRELY intuitive, but in the install process, when SuSE is putting up that list (it goes something like : Packages (All of KDE, etc. .
Those titles (like Packages, Partition, Boot loader), are actually links, and they take you into a portion of the installer where you can mess around with that stuff.
Click on Partitions, and you get three choices: let suse handle partitions, based your setup on SuSE's setup, or custom paritioning (for experts).
I find it flexible enough for just about any need I can dream of.
Odd...
I don't have those problems.
YaST admin modules works great for me. Which install media did you use?
I installed from the boxed set DVD, worked great.
No error messages, at all.
infact, I found SuSE 9.1 to be much less buggy than SuSE 9.0, which tended to piss me off sometimes (Network browsing in KDE not setup correctly).
Everything I've tried now works flawlessly, on slightly annoying hardware (nforce2, radeon 9800 pro)
Did you do an upgrade install? Unfortunately, the upgrade installs are really buggy---you are better off starting from scratch, unfortunately.
This is exactly what I was thinking.
If you are dependant on Windows for your gaming needs, your are already a shill for MS.
No.No.No.
The unmodified software will be illegal too....
How that will be enforced, I have no idea.
The idea here, is to BAN open source graphics software.
Mandating specifications and requirements for software that open source is simple not capable of doing will be one of the future attacks against open source.
"GPL software is bad, because someone could ALWAYS modify it to allow them to commit 'illegal' activities"
"Trust us, DRM'd super-secure (insert program name) here, because you KNOW where on your side"
Obviously, this is not meant for the public at large. This is meant for policy makers, who like the idea of control.
Quite simply, I don't see a way out of this. If this measure passes, the GIMP, and many other Open-Source image manipulation programs will be ILLEGAL in Europe.
Hell, at some point in the near future, they might even make it a crime to use older versions.
And if the EU makes such a regulation law, you can look to the U.S. to follow suite.
Combine this with palladium, which can put such restrictions on 'illegal' software in hardware, and then ban all legacy hardware.
Voila, death of open source.
Libertarian, actually.
:(
I'm disgusted by Ashcroft+Co.
I'm disgusted by Rumsfeld+Co.
Disgusted by most Republicans, anyways
No, crime-one is the piracy, actually.
If they want to use windows, they should pay for it, get the patches, and keep the net clean.
MS has used the tactic of being soft on piracy to increase their marketshare.
Now they want to be hard on piracy, and instead of people bitching about it, or complaining about how that will leave compromised boxes on the net, lets just END the piracy.
Every computer in my household, when they ran Windows, had a legal copy of windows XP associated with them.
.
They came with it.
The only two that don't are the machines I built myself, and they have been nothing but linux.
Before I switched over the other systems, they ALL ran pirated copies of Windows XP.
Why?
1. Didn't want to activate.
2. Didn't like all the software that came with the 'restore' cd.
3. Couldn't be bothered to hold on to the cd-keys, or the original cds, or the license documentation, etc. .
Just to much of a PITA.
The pirated versions are much more user friendly.
I used to be really unhappy that Microsoft would not allow service patches to be used on pirated copies of windows.
It means that compromised machines will remain on the net for a long time, and it also means that eventually, a killer virus WILL shut down a bunch of computers, and really piss a bunch of people off.
Why? I know you can apply hot fixes anyways. But people are too lazy to find the ~200 hotfixes that comprise a service pack.
Anyways, back to why I'm happy about it:
Back in the day (Win95 era) MS basically encouraged piracy. It ensures vendor lock-in, and substantially hurt the revenue of any competitive offerings. Most piracy was petty, anyways-- You bought a new computer, it came with an OEM copy, you bought a laptop, it came with an OEM copy. But that computer you built for your mom, or that older computer you gave to a friend, got upgraded to the latest and greatest windows for free.
Until now. Now, that is no longer really possible.
Hopefully, this will give greater impetus for people to switch to alternatives (like Linux).
Linux looses a lot of its competitive advantage when windows is effectively 'free' too. Windows pirate has typically been rampant.
If even a small portion of those pirates switch, it will be a substantial move of the market.
I know this business (both the absurd patching regime, and the inability to 'soft' pirate) made me switch.
I can't keep track of all those serial numbers. I think all the computers in my home (5? 6?) have valid copies of Windows XP associated with them. I'm sure all the laptops came with them. But it is too much trouble to keep track of all that stuff.
Now everything runs SuSE. I bought one copy, reasonable cost ~$70.00, and I'm in the clear, legally.
Nope.
See my post above.
SCOX is not possible to short (not enough float), and there are no option chains on SCOX.
Can't make any money here, unfortunately.
I did....
Well, I tried, anyways.
I spent nearly 4-5 days, every twenty minutes or so, trying to short SCOX. At $20, $22, even $18.
Go look at my post history, I talk about it at the time SCOX was up there.
I would have shorted 5,000, even 10,000 shares.
I don't know exactly why, but there wasn't enough of a 'float' on SCOX for the mainstream brokerages to allow individuals to 'short' it.
I was pissed off. I've spent the last few months bitching about it to my co-workers.
In 'short' (no-pun intended), you didn't miss out on anything. It simply wasn't possible to begin with.
I tried, and got nothing. Oh well *sigh*
So now 'we' are mad at script kiddies?
Gimme a break. Yes, there is something negative to be said about the true 'black hat' nefarious uber-criminals.
But your common everyday script kiddie?
It's your OWN damn fault.
Secure your system. Barring that, get a better OS. Barring that, run safer software.
Even if Linux/Mac OS X are not impervious, they are far less worm/virus prone than Windows.
Learn what a firewall is. Use one.
Don't use outlook (unless you are absolutely FORCED to). Don't use IE. Ever. Or IIS, for that matter.
Most of this should be pretty easy for home users.
If you are a corporate office drone, I feel sorry for you. It's really too bad that your IT management staff hasn't embraced something more secure (not necessairly switching to Linux, but dumping the Exchange/IIS/Outlook bandwagon).
Yes, yes, I know, the age old argument--- If someone enters your house, even if you did leave the door unlocked, they are the one commiting wrongdoing, not you.
But in the end, since a small amount of effort on your part could have saved you a huge amount of pain, its your OWN damn fault.
It's not like you didn't have the opportunity to avert whatever 'disaster' the worm du jour is causing.
It's coming. Your system will get infected. Wise up.
Don't blame the script kiddies.
Nonsense!
Actually, that is a pretty good idea, if you want a cheap OS X box.
I don't want that.
I want Linux, OS X, and Wined W32 apps running side by side!!!!
On your own, personal, home built machine.
Computing nirvana, my friends.
Hmm.....
They may try this at first.
I would not be surprised, however, if some major company took up this effort.
I would also not be surprised if they were willing to go to the table against Apple. The 'you must own Apple hardware' requirement is almost certainly not legal.
Really?
I'm going go install it my gaming machine.
Athlonx XP 3200+, nforce 2 Ultra, 1024 meg DDR400.
Perhaps it will scream?
I wonder if the emulator translates OpenGL? Because that would explain a lot of the slowdown. Remeber Quartz Extreme uses OpenGL a lot.
But....
Significant slowdown.
What does that mean?
1/3 of native? 1/10 ?
In my mind that would be okay.
1/50? Too slow.
1/10 speed of native code executed, on the latest Athlon FX-52?
That would be just dandy.
They might now.
If there is a slew of people running OS X on the emulator, I could see them porting it.
Of course, that is dependent upon the emulator picking up quite a bit of speed.
1/2, 1/4, maybe even 1/10 speed would be bearble.
1/50? Too slow.
Hm...
I'm pretty sure that they applied the patch to their 2.4 kernel and a simple recompile will get it for you.
Don't remember perfectly though, perhaps I'll go get the RPM and check.