I'm not sure if you didn't realize it or there was a typo; Comdex for example is twice a year, once in Chicago in the spring, and once in Las Vegas in the fall (I may have switched the seasons, but I think it's right).
If NASA isn't willing to fund more trips to the moon, I'm glad some other government agency is. Perhaps it will renew some interest and we'll hear more talk about colonizing the moon (which is quite possible of course, just expensive), and sending more missions to Mars.
Anyway, I'll be interested to see if they can actually pull it off. Perhaps Pakistan and India will have a space race, now that would be something I'd like to see.
It's good to hear that government agencies are against this merger. The idea of a decent company like Sprint merging with a really really bad company like MCI Worldcom (of course, this is personal opinion). That and this sort of merger would create a company almost similar to that of AT&T back in the early 80s. Then we'd be hearing about two major companies with all sorts of anti-competitive practices =).
It's so much more fun to set up a Linux/BSD server of your own (the hardest part is getting an IP and bandwidth to host it for most) and setting up NFS and/or samba. Forget the XML, it doesn't matter what sort of files you put on the server, binary, data, whatever. Then just mount/map the server when you log in from anywhere, Windows or *nix. I trust my own uptime compared to some NT server, thank you.
I was hoping someone would mention this, because one of StarOffice's greatest features is it's cross-platform. StarOffice is available for download in Solaris, Linux, Windows 9x/NT, and OS/2 binaries at Sun's site. I'd also like to point out that StarOffice is not bloatware - it's only 65 megs for a great Office suite.
Given all of these things though, StarOffice is probably not an appropriate choice for a large business network...yet. As of 5.1 (5.2 is supposed to be different), StarOffice only supports Office 97 documents. Also, StarOffice is not available for the Macintosh (which we must think about in order to deploy across a large company). From the testimonies here, the import/export can be shaky in some applications, so it needs a little improvement, but that will come with time. Of course, for those Outlook people, StarOffice doesn't offer functionality with the increasingly popular (yet evil:) Exchange Server. This must be changed, if possible, or create their own server package that's (hopefully) cross-platform so that businesses could be all-StarOffice. I bet they could even sell that software for a fair (less than Exchange) price and it'd still be popular, as long as it runs on more than Solaris.
In short, I think StarOffice is great and would recommend it for individual computers (both home and office) especially if you want to run a different OS. However, this Office-alternative is not yet ready to be a company-wide Office-replacement.
Does anyone know if one can download the software he created? It wouldn't be difficult to reproduce his equipment - a decent video camera, a "$5 lightsabre", and too much time on one's hands.
Loki has been announcing the creation of ports for more and more games, which is awesome. At this rate Loki will need a lot more programmers to handle all of their projects.
However, Linux gaming will never have a chance against Windows until they are released at about the same time. Descent 3, Civ: CTP, and other Loki games are out all well after the Windows version. I think it's unreasonable to expect Linux gamers who really want to get into a game to have to buy the Windows version and then repurchase the game for Linux (this is my understanding of what must be done). According to The Official Descent 3 Page, Descent 3 has been out since June 11, 1999. In other words, I can't imagine the market for this game being very high, considering most of the people who really wanted this game already have it. I know if I did I wouldn't be inclined to buy it again just to keep from rebooting.
Nice article coming only hours after I ordered 32 mb of SmartMedia for my digital camera. I can imagine laughing at myself in 5 years for spending $75 on such small and slow media..
Looks like HP made a mistake. I wonder what if anything the buyers of these PocketPCs will ask for, or if any will want their money back.
I do wonder what one really needs with 16 bit color on a tiny palmtop screen. Ok, I can see the advantage of color and LCD backlighting and all that stuff, but for the applications now used in these things, is it really necessary? The popularity of the Palm series is proof that you do not need colors to make an incredibly useful and easy to read product. Color screens have lots of problems like higher cost, much higher battery consumption, etc. Palm has recently introduced a color model of the Palm, but it has the same price and battery limitations, which means that it probably won't be as popular as the really nifty looking and lightweight Palm V.
I've used and tried a lot of PDAs before (all the way back to a Tandy Zoomer that came out something like 5 or 6 years ago). To me, there's a much smaller niche for PDAs that try to do everything (PocketPC) than those that are really quick, efficient and easy at simple datebook/contactmanager/notes (Palm).
First potatoes, what's next? I'm thinking that a crank-powered web server would be nifty...or maybe windmill powered with a battery charger. I'm seeing a competition for alternative powered web servers.
I have only recently begun my quest to understand the latest things happening with Apple, about a year I ago I just didn't like anything that I saw (the Imac for instance). Admittedly, Darwin is pretty cool, and I like the idea of non-technical users having some of the benifits of a well-built kernel.
Having a look at these screenshots, I think they look pretty, but I find it hard to understand what's so cool about them. To me, this is nothing but a nice-looking window manager, except this is currently incompatible with X11, which makes it significantly less cool. I'm more interested in how the new kernel actually compares performance-wise and how useful Apple's new OS will be for servers, end-users, etc.
I'm not going to argue that PC hardware architecture is superior to that of the Mac, because I'd be wrong. Though I really like the incredibly powerful G4 processors, I cannot see myself buying a G4 because the hardware is far less supported to upgrade (not as many options). Granted, Macs have come a long way in terms of upgradability. If I were to buy a Mac, I would definately use LinuxPPC, because Mac OS X has failed to impress me. I've personally witness two servers running Mac OS X (whatever the actual production server OS is, I'm not really sure, I don't have admin access to it) bog down a really nice Apple server, and crash. Nothing is more annoying than a really nice computer (G4) be slowed down incredibly by a slow OS (IMO, Mac OS, even this article references "slow scrolling"...maybe it's just me, but computers these days should not have problems scrolling). I'll wait, and eventually I'm sure Apple will turn out an OS that offers better performance even with the pretty GUI. I apologize if anything I said here is wrong (using wrong name to describe Apple product), like I said, I've just recently been reading about Apple again after hearing about Darwin.
Can anyone explain to me the legal issues behind distributing programs compiled using GNU C and G++? Taken literally, the GPL seems to prohibit the sale of programs without including their source code. I am further confused by the use of libraries included with the compiler, must those be included as source if they are used as part of the program? I also have heard about the libraries being switched from a specialized library license to just plain old GPL, which would supposedly encourage developers to release their source if they use GNU.
I apologize if I sound ignorant, as I have not spent too much time studying the licenses, but if someone could explain this, I would appreciate it.
I doubt this is what you're looking for, but I've seen several simple electronic dictionaries that take a word from one language and give you a word back, no sentences or phrases or anything. These are mainly useful if you've taken classes in the language and need a quick reference dictionary, and are available from places like Radio Shack. I think I've even seen a few that are multilingual (sp?), but like I said, they're pretty much useless without basic knowledge of the language.
Personally, I don't see much wrong with NASA benifiting from some pretty pictures. People want pretty pictures, they like them. If that's what it takes to keep interest in an organization that makes some great scientific discoveries for the world, then so be it. NASA needs to make up for it's few recent blunders and prove to Congress, who supplies much needed budget, that the organization is still popular with more than just scientists - hence projects that have scientific purpose but also appeal to the general public.
Proxima
"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition." - Carl Sagan
Ok, that sounds like a really nice computer for Linux with a hard drive that isn't proportional to everything else. However, many a time have I installed Linux on a very small hard drive (even the dreaded "bloated" RedHat manages to get pretty small if you want it to). It basically depends on what you want to do - if you just want to play around and learn Linux you can afford to have 350 megabytes taken up for installation and 100 megabytes for swap. For anything else you'll need some serious free disk space, and then you're talking about bare X Windows without fancy window managers, and knowing exactly what programs you'll know you need, and get rid of everything else - but if you're new to Linux it's hard to know what you want. I agree with a previous responder who said don't go with the latest distribution...my recommendation is RedHat 5.2, which is stable, reliable, and something good to learn with. Best of all, I've been able to fit it on some pretty small hard drives. Another recommendation is to learn how to install and uninstall programs well, because if you use the computer often you'll need to be freeing up space by getting rid of programs you realize you don't need. If you want to set it up as a server, 540 megs is fine for a simple small web pages/e-mail, but forget about X Windows - you can save a lot of room by not installing it. I'd have to say though, from personal experience that installing Linux on a small hard drive is a nice challenge, but like any OS there's so much more you can do with some more space. Hard drives are incredibly cheap - I just bought an 18 gig hard drive for $140 including shipping, and the prices for smaller ones go down from there. Buy something larger than 1.2 gigs and you'll have a much better experience - besides, it fits your other hardware a little more proportionally. Good luck!
I've been looking very closely at purchasing an Olympus 360-L, and until now hardly considered the possibility of being able to connect it to my primary Linux computer without a standard smartmedia reader. I checked gPhoto's website, and they had compatibility listed for almost every other camara by Olympus, including the predecessor of the 360-L the 340, but 360-L was not listed. I'd just like to know if anyone has tried to connect the Olympus 360-L and how did it go?
A custom-built distribution for a corporation could be incredibly useful. They might have some custom applications they developed, or they might have their own version of a "standard desktop installation". If you knew what a particular type of corporate desktop needs, you can trim down a distribution from several hundreds of megabytes to maybe a few hundred megabytes. If all the hardware is the same, perhaps a precompiled kernel for that computer. If they're really cool, they'll just put their custom distribution on a server and just pop in a boot disk in order to install Linux. Just set it up once and use it as a template.
It's close to impossible to make Microsoft "hurt" badly. Look at the tobacco litigations for example, they were fined billions of dollars, but since the industry is still producing well, they absorbed the fines and move on. The objective in my opinion should not be to punish Microsoft solely, and not necessarily to restrict it, but rather to give competitors a more fair chance at competing with Microsoft at an even level. For instance, requiring that users be given a choice what browser to use, what media player to use, etc..(even if they aren't distributed with the Win2k CD, at least put up internet links for them) during installation or setup..or let OEMs decide.
Viruses, like attempted cracks, are inevitable in computing, no matter what the operating system. Like cracks, the best protection against viruses in Linux is knowledge of your system and the software you put on it. I myself paid little attention to security and log files on a very small Linux server until it was cracked, and now I know far more about Linux security than I did before. The same applies to viruses, we will be most vulnerable if we aren't looking for them, especially new Linux users who enjoy doing everything as root. To say that there won't be Linux viruses is foolish, because crackers will do whatever they percieve as challenging or worthwhile. Because it can be done, it will be done, it's inevitable.
While these new Linux appliances say something about the scalability of Linux/other unices (Microsoft had to completely recreate Windows in order to have their crappy WinCE), these computers don't use Linux for what it's best at. It's not exactly rocket science to create an internet PC, with basic browsing functions and so forth. When trying to create an internet appliance, which is supposed to run very few functions very reliably, the flexibility of the OS (what Linux is great at) is not important. It's nice that some companies are helping to promote Linux by using it for appliances. However, I'd rather see more high end PCs coming pre-shipped with Linux or at least hardware supported by Linux from major OEMs.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure if you didn't realize it or there was a typo; Comdex for example is twice a year, once in Chicago in the spring, and once in Las Vegas in the fall (I may have switched the seasons, but I think it's right).
If NASA isn't willing to fund more trips to the moon, I'm glad some other government agency is. Perhaps it will renew some interest and we'll hear more talk about colonizing the moon (which is quite possible of course, just expensive), and sending more missions to Mars.
Anyway, I'll be interested to see if they can actually pull it off. Perhaps Pakistan and India will have a space race, now that would be something I'd like to see.
It's good to hear that government agencies are against this merger. The idea of a decent company like Sprint merging with a really really bad company like MCI Worldcom (of course, this is personal opinion). That and this sort of merger would create a company almost similar to that of AT&T back in the early 80s. Then we'd be hearing about two major companies with all sorts of anti-competitive practices =).
It's so much more fun to set up a Linux/BSD server of your own (the hardest part is getting an IP and bandwidth to host it for most) and setting up NFS and/or samba. Forget the XML, it doesn't matter what sort of files you put on the server, binary, data, whatever. Then just mount/map the server when you log in from anywhere, Windows or *nix. I trust my own uptime compared to some NT server, thank you.
I was hoping someone would mention this, because one of StarOffice's greatest features is it's cross-platform. StarOffice is available for download in Solaris, Linux, Windows 9x/NT, and OS/2 binaries at Sun's site. I'd also like to point out that StarOffice is not bloatware - it's only 65 megs for a great Office suite.
:) Exchange Server. This must be changed, if possible, or create their own server package that's (hopefully) cross-platform so that businesses could be all-StarOffice. I bet they could even sell that software for a fair (less than Exchange) price and it'd still be popular, as long as it runs on more than Solaris.
Given all of these things though, StarOffice is probably not an appropriate choice for a large business network...yet. As of 5.1 (5.2 is supposed to be different), StarOffice only supports Office 97 documents. Also, StarOffice is not available for the Macintosh (which we must think about in order to deploy across a large company). From the testimonies here, the import/export can be shaky in some applications, so it needs a little improvement, but that will come with time. Of course, for those Outlook people, StarOffice doesn't offer functionality with the increasingly popular (yet evil
In short, I think StarOffice is great and would recommend it for individual computers (both home and office) especially if you want to run a different OS. However, this Office-alternative is not yet ready to be a company-wide Office-replacement.
Does anyone know if one can download the software he created? It wouldn't be difficult to reproduce his equipment - a decent video camera, a "$5 lightsabre", and too much time on one's hands.
Loki has been announcing the creation of ports for more and more games, which is awesome. At this rate Loki will need a lot more programmers to handle all of their projects.
However, Linux gaming will never have a chance against Windows until they are released at about the same time. Descent 3, Civ: CTP, and other Loki games are out all well after the Windows version. I think it's unreasonable to expect Linux gamers who really want to get into a game to have to buy the Windows version and then repurchase the game for Linux (this is my understanding of what must be done). According to The Official Descent 3 Page, Descent 3 has been out since June 11, 1999. In other words, I can't imagine the market for this game being very high, considering most of the people who really wanted this game already have it. I know if I did I wouldn't be inclined to buy it again just to keep from rebooting.
Nice article coming only hours after I ordered 32 mb of SmartMedia for my digital camera. I can imagine laughing at myself in 5 years for spending $75 on such small and slow media..
Looks like HP made a mistake. I wonder what if anything the buyers of these PocketPCs will ask for, or if any will want their money back.
I do wonder what one really needs with 16 bit color on a tiny palmtop screen. Ok, I can see the advantage of color and LCD backlighting and all that stuff, but for the applications now used in these things, is it really necessary? The popularity of the Palm series is proof that you do not need colors to make an incredibly useful and easy to read product. Color screens have lots of problems like higher cost, much higher battery consumption, etc. Palm has recently introduced a color model of the Palm, but it has the same price and battery limitations, which means that it probably won't be as popular as the really nifty looking and lightweight Palm V.
I've used and tried a lot of PDAs before (all the way back to a Tandy Zoomer that came out something like 5 or 6 years ago). To me, there's a much smaller niche for PDAs that try to do everything (PocketPC) than those that are really quick, efficient and easy at simple datebook/contactmanager/notes (Palm).
First potatoes, what's next? I'm thinking that a crank-powered web server would be nifty...or maybe windmill powered with a battery charger. I'm seeing a competition for alternative powered web servers.
I have only recently begun my quest to understand the latest things happening with Apple, about a year I ago I just didn't like anything that I saw (the Imac for instance). Admittedly, Darwin is pretty cool, and I like the idea of non-technical users having some of the benifits of a well-built kernel.
Having a look at these screenshots, I think they look pretty, but I find it hard to understand what's so cool about them. To me, this is nothing but a nice-looking window manager, except this is currently incompatible with X11, which makes it significantly less cool. I'm more interested in how the new kernel actually compares performance-wise and how useful Apple's new OS will be for servers, end-users, etc.
I'm not going to argue that PC hardware architecture is superior to that of the Mac, because I'd be wrong. Though I really like the incredibly powerful G4 processors, I cannot see myself buying a G4 because the hardware is far less supported to upgrade (not as many options). Granted, Macs have come a long way in terms of upgradability. If I were to buy a Mac, I would definately use LinuxPPC, because Mac OS X has failed to impress me. I've personally witness two servers running Mac OS X (whatever the actual production server OS is, I'm not really sure, I don't have admin access to it) bog down a really nice Apple server, and crash. Nothing is more annoying than a really nice computer (G4) be slowed down incredibly by a slow OS (IMO, Mac OS, even this article references "slow scrolling"...maybe it's just me, but computers these days should not have problems scrolling). I'll wait, and eventually I'm sure Apple will turn out an OS that offers better performance even with the pretty GUI. I apologize if anything I said here is wrong (using wrong name to describe Apple product), like I said, I've just recently been reading about Apple again after hearing about Darwin.
Just my $0.02
Can anyone explain to me the legal issues behind distributing programs compiled using GNU C and G++? Taken literally, the GPL seems to prohibit the sale of programs without including their source code. I am further confused by the use of libraries included with the compiler, must those be included as source if they are used as part of the program? I also have heard about the libraries being switched from a specialized library license to just plain old GPL, which would supposedly encourage developers to release their source if they use GNU.
I apologize if I sound ignorant, as I have not spent too much time studying the licenses, but if someone could explain this, I would appreciate it.
I doubt this is what you're looking for, but I've seen several simple electronic dictionaries that take a word from one language and give you a word back, no sentences or phrases or anything. These are mainly useful if you've taken classes in the language and need a quick reference dictionary, and are available from places like Radio Shack. I think I've even seen a few that are multilingual (sp?), but like I said, they're pretty much useless without basic knowledge of the language.
Personally, I don't see much wrong with NASA benifiting from some pretty pictures. People want pretty pictures, they like them. If that's what it takes to keep interest in an organization that makes some great scientific discoveries for the world, then so be it. NASA needs to make up for it's few recent blunders and prove to Congress, who supplies much needed budget, that the organization is still popular with more than just scientists - hence projects that have scientific purpose but also appeal to the general public.
Proxima
"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition." - Carl Sagan
Ok, that sounds like a really nice computer for Linux with a hard drive that isn't proportional to everything else. However, many a time have I installed Linux on a very small hard drive (even the dreaded "bloated" RedHat manages to get pretty small if you want it to). It basically depends on what you want to do - if you just want to play around and learn Linux you can afford to have 350 megabytes taken up for installation and 100 megabytes for swap. For anything else you'll need some serious free disk space, and then you're talking about bare X Windows without fancy window managers, and knowing exactly what programs you'll know you need, and get rid of everything else - but if you're new to Linux it's hard to know what you want. I agree with a previous responder who said don't go with the latest distribution...my recommendation is RedHat 5.2, which is stable, reliable, and something good to learn with. Best of all, I've been able to fit it on some pretty small hard drives. Another recommendation is to learn how to install and uninstall programs well, because if you use the computer often you'll need to be freeing up space by getting rid of programs you realize you don't need. If you want to set it up as a server, 540 megs is fine for a simple small web pages/e-mail, but forget about X Windows - you can save a lot of room by not installing it. I'd have to say though, from personal experience that installing Linux on a small hard drive is a nice challenge, but like any OS there's so much more you can do with some more space. Hard drives are incredibly cheap - I just bought an 18 gig hard drive for $140 including shipping, and the prices for smaller ones go down from there. Buy something larger than 1.2 gigs and you'll have a much better experience - besides, it fits your other hardware a little more proportionally. Good luck!
I've been looking very closely at purchasing an Olympus 360-L, and until now hardly considered the possibility of being able to connect it to my primary Linux computer without a standard smartmedia reader. I checked gPhoto's website, and they had compatibility listed for almost every other camara by Olympus, including the predecessor of the 360-L the 340, but 360-L was not listed. I'd just like to know if anyone has tried to connect the Olympus 360-L and how did it go?
A custom-built distribution for a corporation could be incredibly useful. They might have some custom applications they developed, or they might have their own version of a "standard desktop installation". If you knew what a particular type of corporate desktop needs, you can trim down a distribution from several hundreds of megabytes to maybe a few hundred megabytes. If all the hardware is the same, perhaps a precompiled kernel for that computer. If they're really cool, they'll just put their custom distribution on a server and just pop in a boot disk in order to install Linux. Just set it up once and use it as a template.
It's close to impossible to make Microsoft "hurt" badly. Look at the tobacco litigations for example, they were fined billions of dollars, but since the industry is still producing well, they absorbed the fines and move on. The objective in my opinion should not be to punish Microsoft solely, and not necessarily to restrict it, but rather to give competitors a more fair chance at competing with Microsoft at an even level. For instance, requiring that users be given a choice what browser to use, what media player to use, etc..(even if they aren't distributed with the Win2k CD, at least put up internet links for them) during installation or setup..or let OEMs decide.
Viruses, like attempted cracks, are inevitable in computing, no matter what the operating system. Like cracks, the best protection against viruses in Linux is knowledge of your system and the software you put on it. I myself paid little attention to security and log files on a very small Linux server until it was cracked, and now I know far more about Linux security than I did before. The same applies to viruses, we will be most vulnerable if we aren't looking for them, especially new Linux users who enjoy doing everything as root. To say that there won't be Linux viruses is foolish, because crackers will do whatever they percieve as challenging or worthwhile. Because it can be done, it will be done, it's inevitable.
While these new Linux appliances say something about the scalability of Linux/other unices (Microsoft had to completely recreate Windows in order to have their crappy WinCE), these computers don't use Linux for what it's best at. It's not exactly rocket science to create an internet PC, with basic browsing functions and so forth. When trying to create an internet appliance, which is supposed to run very few functions very reliably, the flexibility of the OS (what Linux is great at) is not important. It's nice that some companies are helping to promote Linux by using it for appliances. However, I'd rather see more high end PCs coming pre-shipped with Linux or at least hardware supported by Linux from major OEMs.