I'm surprised at the lack of outrage from reading the other people's submissions. IMHO, Life is too short to put up with this kind of bullying. If you are going to be expelled anyway you might as well put the site back up and get a few friends to pass out leaflets on campus of the new URL. If your site was any good in the first place the controversy will get you all sorts of publicity.
Maybe I'm naive, but I always thought the entire purpose of student government was to provide a forum for students to engage the administration. Not a little club sanctioned by the administration to print the "approved news".
I doubt it. I think the rigorous training is merely circumspection/extra precautions on NASA's part. If you can fly an 80 year old U.S. senator (John Glenn) into space, you could fly your average 40 year old flabby millionare without too much difficulty. The most stressful thing is probably the "G" forces and a bit of physical training and "G" training in a simulator would probably acclimatize your average person. I'd guess medically it would probably be about as dangerous as smoking cigarette's. Probably no immediate danger (if you've had simulator training) but possibly a higher correlation in later life with some organ damage.
The parent should be moderated up. Another interesting thing about Gibson's article was his slamming of Black Ice Defender, considering he used to pimp it so shamelessly. What's changed? How could it go from "awesome --(insert Gibson's usual exclamations here)" to beneath contempt and worthy of prayer? Steve's sounds like a reasonably smart cookie (I like assembly coders), but I don't think he's the security guru he not so subtly implies that he is. (Eg. His state of the art invention of micropackets -- as mentioned above.) He seems to be catering to windows users that desperately want to secure their machines, but don't yet realize the futility of their efforts. (Until they get their next Outlook Activex surprise I guess). Time to go buy Acme Email-scan Pro (Consumer Gold edition -- with extra Protectex!!)
I am suprised they are still in business because Iomega has consistently screwed over their customers. I had a ZIP. CoD'ed (Click of Death'ed) all my overpriced zip disks.
Iomega refused to replace it. It's went into the trash around 1998 so no chance of joining the class-action. Not that I want a coupon for more of their shitty products anyway. I also had a Iomega Buz Multimedia Producer (video capture board). About 2 months after I bought it they stopped supporting it. Despite the fact that I had a 1 year of tech support included. Every time I called their support to complain about big chunky black lines it was busy. It then took them 2 years to release driver code. This company is useless...
StarOffice is no substitute for MS Office, unfortunately. I study & work in the IT department of a university and even in this enlightened setting it is quite hard to get by without M$ products. StarOffice tends to be reasonable to read Word files, but it mangles Powerpoint slides unless they are very simple.
As for writing/saving files, well forget about it. Don't expect any Windows user to be able to read your files.
My temporary solution is to print out just about any documents I get and then quickly reboot back into linux. It's a bit of a bummer, linux is so close on the desktop...
The post above should be moderated up. It nicely points out the flaws in the original post.
In a world that is quickly going to hell in a handbasket, I see the GNU GPL/Linux/free software movement as one of the few rays of light. The fact that Ralph Nader (someone completely unqualifed for the job) got as many votes as he did shows that people are generally unhappy (and getting unhappier!) about the prospect of becoming a bunch of camera-watched, genetically-tested, cuecat barcoded sheep. Unfortunately for the rest of us, what washes in America usually ends up *washing* in our country. Despite new anti-thinking laws (eg. DMCA), all is not lost. Things like the GPL, open standards and the free flow of information are what will make our society enlightened. That is if the free software movement continues to grow, and I hope it will.
Short sighted developers come on here and whinge that GPL will make them lose their job, or somehow affect their freedoms. No one is applying screws to their fingernails forcing them to use GPL'ed software.
The fact of the matter is, over the long term, we will need more and more software developers. Most software is developed in house as it is, and this trend will continue to grow. Software can solve all sorts of problems. It is just another branch of applied mathematics. We have nowhere even come close to breaching the possibilities available to us. And if there is a short term recession, who do you think are going to be the people who lose their jobs? The guy who writes a killer open source app in his free time or some guy scratching his head working out how to connect Visual basic to an Access database? He can't concentrate, he wants to go home and study for his MCSE.
There is no shame in being idealistic. It is a sign of intelligence.
This is exactly right. I would also like to further add that the Man vs. Machine debate is nowhere near over. The top human players are now routinely beating the best chess engines (Fritz,Junior,Shredder) now that they have a better conception of the machine's weaknesses and strengths. Weaknesses are long term planning, strengths are short term tactical calculations. Another thing that has been discovered in the last 5 or so years is that machines tend to play very poorly in closed positions. (French defense, Caro-kann, etc) In these deeply strategic positions computers tend to move their peices around randomly with no "plan". The search depth is far beyond their computing power. They make no progress beyond maintaining a somewhat stable position while the human player instinctively knows how to slowly manipulate the game to his advantage. I hypothesize this strongly advantages strategic players like Kramnik and disadvatages tactical players like Shirov. I would have loved to see Tigran Petrosian play deep blue. A true tactical chess genius.
If Kasparov were to play Deep Blue again today, I think the general consesus among top chess players is that he would win, and win easily. Same for most of the other top players. Last year Siemens had a big human vs. computer event with most of the top GM's getting draws or wins.
Search for it here: http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic.html
(Anti-goatse,anti-click filter)
Re:Moderators on crack or astroturfers out in forc
on
Mandrake 8.0 Comes Out
·
· Score: 1
Mandrake stands on its own, with its own unique and compelling features, not the least of which are its ease of
installation and ease of use. I can give my aunt a copy of Mandrake 7.2 and she can install and use it with little or no
help, unlike the copy of Windows ME she had.
Red Hat is just as simple to install as Mandrake. This is not a "unique" feature.
Second, the fact that their release is right after Red Hat's is purely coincidental.
Sadly, I wish it was, but I think most slashdot readers here know better...
you are just _WRONG_, maybe you have not heard yet that one of the most awaited feature coming in the next Windows
release (XP) is theme support (never heard about Luna, maybe you should read some IT/geeks website). They are just
kicking Stardock out of the game just like they did with Real and others.
You seem to be very aware of what's in Linux and Windows but now you must admit you slept the 2 last years and have just
woke up;-)
Luna is a new interface, so what. Win 95 was a new one from 3.1, people will learn. My point was they are keeping it consistent. And no, they are not kicking stardock out of the game at all. From:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:win2000mag.ne t/Channels/SQLServer/TopicResults.cfm%3FTopicID%3D 602+windowblinds+windows+xp&hl=en
This is google's cached copy. The original link isn't working for some reason.
Quoting:
Exclusive: Windows XP Testers Get UI Theme Tool
Stardock, makers of WindowBlinds, have created a special version of of the product
that integrates into the Windows XP UI and allows users to choose from a much wider
range of themes. This week, XP beta testers received the product... from Microsoft.
Paul Thurrott's WinInfo / Paul Thurrott's WinInfo / January 2001
Source Date: March 8,2001. So I guess I haven't been asleep for two years.
BTW: I noticed a tiny bug in slashcode. That link I submitted above has no space in it between winmag.ne[here]t. It appears like this on story preview submission though.
Of course, I forgot to mention that next time I type "cat/etc/redhat-release" it might say: Redhat 7.1 Wolverine
But actually it will probably say Debian Unstable:) Unless I can get suspend to disk working with Redhat's new laptop installation class, without having to compile in SysRq to the kernel. Fingers crossed...
I'm currently a Mandrake 7.2 user. I know this because when I type "cat/etc/redhat-release" it says: Linux Mandrake release 7.2 (Odyssey) for i586
In the three years I've been a linux user, I've used Debian, Slackware, Redhat and a few of the lesser "known" distributions. Mandrake is great for the latest toys, especially if you have a 56k modem and can't bother downloading the latest packages. However, it sucks in a technical way for shipping broken things like supermount and reiserfs.
It also annoys me that they are so predatory on Redhat's market share, with their ridiculous version numbering scheme and "trumping" of Red Hat's announcement, always right after a red-hat release.
Redhat contributes all sorts of resources to the free software community, they support gnome, XFree86 and other important projects. All Mandrake does is really "customize" RedHat's release with some more cutting edge tools and give nothing back to the community other then a few buggy GUI configuration tools.
It would be nice if Mandrake simply had a "Mandrake Desktop Plus Pack" for RedHat linux and formed an alliance with RedHat. If their aren't more mergers and acquistions soon between the commercial (note I said commercial!) distributions it will only weaken linux acceptance in the marketplace.
Bill knows the importance of providing a consistent user interface. That is why he is happy to leave themeing outside of windows. It makes life nice and simple for corporate accounts where M$ makes it's big money. What are you to do if you want a desktop with a salvador dali on steroids motif?? No problem. Bill gave MS API access to Stardock so they could build a themeing product. That way everyone is happy and M$ probably gets a kickback for every copy of windowblinds sold.
Ximian has great potential. I hope they do well. If they stay creative, they will. The thing I'd like to see most from them & kde folks, is working towards interoperability regarding a good printing framework, themes, middleware and other "backend-ish" stuff. There is so much innovation possible in the interface and this is where gnome & kde should battle it out. Penguins won't reach the desktop when J.Random Computer User can't work out how to cut and paste between gApp and kApp.
I just went through the same experience. I shopped around for MONTHS looking for the ultimate notebook. My needs were:
-Can run almost any OS (linux/bsd)
-Full hardware support (ethernet,56k,all the goodies)
-Preinstalled linux would have been nice, but no big deal. It'd be nice to know the hardware is supported before you bought it, but after doing some searching on the web that no customer should have to do, I already knew what was supported. Also I didn't want to pay for my 'nth' winblows license.
After an extensive and frustrating! search I came down to basically 2 different options: Dell and IBM. I extensively researched the models I was considering, the IBM Thinkpad A21 and the Dell Inspiron 8000. Both had been certified by Linuxcare labs, and I read generally positive stuff from people who had them on the Linux for laptops webpage. (Someone else quoted it above). Unfortunately both companies had TERRIBLE customer support. I could not get out of a windows license if I wanted to, nobody knew what linux was. I originally wanted to buy from IBM because it seemed like they were doing something positive in the community but it was clear that their salespeople did not know or care about linux. It's not like I didn't try either, I contacted them on several different occassions, even different offices in different countries!
Dell was just about as useless. I had other problems with them, unanswered emails etc. I ended up swallowing my pride and buying my notebook from them (Dell Inspiron 8000) despite their useless customer skills. Apparently now you can get red hat preinstalled but when I bought it (a few month ago - not in the U.S.) You couldn't get this option. Also the modem is a winmodem, but it's the lucent one and works well enough with the linmodem drivers.
The whole experience was a complete turn off and clearly something needs to be done to address this within the community. I consider it unacceptable that linux users should have to go to this much trouble to ensure that their built in ethernet or sound card will work right or whatever. It's not like I bought this system to use Windows with it and changed to linux. Yet I was forced to buy yet another windows license...
Re:So you can't save it.. [OT]
on
CPRM Lecture
·
· Score: 3
Recently I discovered asf recorder.
Very useful for getting around short-comings of certain streaming video applications. Search for it
Actually on the wake of Slashdot's interview with Doug Miller we should interview the author of Virtual Dub and ask him what he thinks about Microsoft's quest for interoperability. Virtual Dub was a free program for among other things conversting asf files into other formats. M$ legal department utilized standard Corporate America bully tactics to get him to remove that functionality from his program which he achieved by good old fashioned reverse engineering.
Oh well in the future we can just release utilities like that anonymously, until the software enforcement bureau comes and raids our homes because we were suspected of sending a controversial file over the internet.
A few years back a reporter (in Florida IIRC) won a judgement against the Fox affiliate that she worked for, for unlawful termination. The reason? They squashed a negative story she had produced about Monsato. Monsato got wind of it somehow and their old boys called up Fox's old boys and it was quashed. She protested and was fired.
I thought that when all this originally blew up that Bezos weighed in with the opinion that it was only a "defensive" patent, to be used by Amazon to prevent someone else from patenting it and suing them.
If he did indeed say that, (I can't recall exactly), then he is a no-integrity spin peddling bum.
Microsoft may produce crappy software, but it's business people are top notch. You don't become a market monopoly without alot of clever people coming up with stuff like MCSE, their notorious channel agreements with computer hardware retailers and and convincing the great unwashed masses that Windows should be the defacto operating system of choice. Microsoft knows that "It's the OS, stupid". Keeping control of this technology will keep them at the top. They will do whatever they can to circumvent linux, including buying Corel for pennies to:
1)Stop Corel sponsored development on WINE.
2)Prevent more applications from running on linux.
3)Stop any other companies from getting any ideas about creating an "OS 4 Dummiez"
Uhh, I don't think so. Windows 95 won't even install on lots of newer hardware (try getting it to support some of the newer AMD motherboards), and it doesn't do USB. Obtroll: Perhaps in the Linux world not having USB support is the norm, but some of us demand better. =P
Uhh, I don't think so. A few clarifications of fact: Late builds (circa 1997) of Windows 95 did support USB. In fact, I have a cd sitting about 2 feet from me that says "M$ Windows 95 with USB support." I agree with the original poster. If you have a user who is too stupid to handle a decent OS and are going to use M$ crap, Windows 95 is much better then Windows 98.
BTW: Linux supports USB just fine. I've had no problems with it.
but they are 100% correct. The entire Australian telecommunications industry is dominated by a single company, Telstra. Until recently Telstra was a government operated monopoly. It has since been sold of in a public float. Telstra's stranglehold monopoly puts Microsoft's to shame. They'd probably be in bed together except Bill is probably getting impatient and wants Australian customers to have decent speed connections to his.NET nonsense.
Your average monthly phone bill in Australia is 4 or 5 times what North Americans pay, because on top of a ridiculous line rental charge, you are also charged per call.
Recently DSL was rolled out in my area. $80/month and a $200 installation fee if you commit to 12 months. The installation fee is much higher if you are not willing to commit.
There is competition in the long distance market but in the short term there is no hope for the average punter who just wants reasonable local calling and high speed internet. A company called Optus does a sort of half arsed job at this but for most Australians it's not even an option. Besides Optus seems to be focussing more on niche areas like reselling bandwidth on their Southern cross cable network to ISP's in Australia, who are also sick of putting up with Telstra's bullshit. Still I'd estimate 95% of traffic in Australia is still over 56K connections over Telstra's PSTN, and this will probably stay like this for awhile.
I have a love/hate relationship with Mandrake 7.2.
Feathers in their cap:
-easy install
-flawlessly imports windows fonts
-good choice of applications in distribution
-very easy to use/be productive in
Black-eyes:
-Half of their GUI apps (all titled Drak something) are crap and don't work, or they break something on your system. (Drakprofile and DrakMenuEdit come to mind, and others).
-they clearly favour KDE.
-more unstable then debian. This is probably due
to the random breaking of config files by the drak utilities.
Clinton, this is a multipart question:
Will president clinton leaving office affect your self-esteem? Do you have a tendancy to wear trench-coats? Have you considered shortening your name to Clint (as in Eastwood)? What's your position on gays in the military? Finally, are you insulted about being compared to geek wannabe Jon Katz?
Next week on ask slashdot: A little girl in Chile who knit up some cute booties with penguins on them.
I am impressed with IBM's commitment to linux. It is a sign that current management is extremely competent. Here are a few comments:
Linux on the desktop: Linux is almost there. All it needs is a bit of a push. I think your HCI people should download Linux-Mandrake 7.2, if they haven't already. This is probably the most cutting edge of the newbie distributions. This is extremely significant and adding a little bit of help here will significantly destabilize rivals like Microsoft.
Linux on the Thinkpad/(insert other IBM hardware here). It'd be nice if IBM stopped shipping Aptiva's with winmodems. Also I have recently been trying to get ahold of a Thinkpad. I don't like that I can't get either a linux distribution pre-installed or a blank HD without M$ 9x/NT. There are a few models at this page but the links lead to intellistations not thinkpads.
Linux & IBM PR: Ibm should keep helping the community and promoting itself as a "smarty pants/deep thinking tech company", and it will reap the rewards of this strategy. Shenanigans like CPRM on hard drives will negate these positive effects.
Wishlist: I need something to locally cache web pages, and keep them orderly on linux. I remember IBM had a product like this for Windows. I wouldn't mind this being OSS if it isn't already.
Please contact me if you'd like some further feedback, I wouldn't mind working for IBM at some future stage.
I'm in the same situation. I've got a project course this semester to write a simple instant messaging client with encryption technology and a key/contact manager being the main feature. I'm fairly confident I shouldn't have too many problems doing this in java (my current plan), but what I'd really like to do is write it in C on/for linux. Unfortunately I am still a linux newbie and am worried I won't be able to finish it. My current plan is to use as much code/libraries from other people as I can and just try and make it dance. My main fear is that there will be some stuff built into java that will make it so much easier, and will take me so much more time on "C". I really don't know if this is the case. Any suggestions/comments appreciated.
Ibm seems to have the same problem endemic of most large organizations, that being the left hand doesn't know what the right one is doing.
I've spoken to IBM sales reps on their online chat applet about a fairly pricey Thinkpad I was interested in. (Pricey for me -- I'm a student). From what their salesperson told me, I can't get a Thinkpad unless it has M$ Win2K or Win9x. According to him, his hands were tied. Although I don't use RedHat I would have bought a copy of it, but no -- Thinkpads only do M$ apparently.
BTW: If anyone knows of a linux friendly notebook vendor with good prices, let me know. From the prices I've seen, it will just be so much simpler to buy it from somewhere with M$ on it and format it when I receive it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm surprised at the lack of outrage from reading the other people's submissions.
IMHO, Life is too short to put up with this kind of bullying. If you are going to be expelled anyway you might as well put the site back up and get a few friends to pass out leaflets on campus of the new URL. If your site was any good in the first place the controversy will get you all sorts of publicity.
Maybe I'm naive, but I always thought the entire purpose of student government was to provide a forum for students to engage the administration. Not a little club sanctioned by the administration to print the "approved news".
I doubt it. I think the rigorous training is merely circumspection/extra precautions on NASA's part. If you can fly an 80 year old U.S. senator (John Glenn) into space, you could fly your average 40 year old flabby millionare without too much difficulty. The most stressful thing is probably the "G" forces and a bit of physical training and "G" training in a simulator would probably acclimatize your average person. I'd guess medically it would probably be about as dangerous as smoking cigarette's. Probably no immediate danger (if you've had simulator training) but possibly a higher correlation in later life with some organ damage.
The parent should be moderated up.
Another interesting thing about Gibson's article was his slamming of Black Ice Defender, considering he used to pimp it so shamelessly. What's changed? How could it go from "awesome --(insert Gibson's usual exclamations here)" to beneath contempt and worthy of prayer?
Steve's sounds like a reasonably smart cookie (I like assembly coders), but I don't think he's the security guru he not so subtly implies that he is. (Eg. His state of the art invention of micropackets -- as mentioned above.) He seems to be catering to windows users that desperately want to secure their machines, but don't yet realize the futility of their efforts. (Until they get their next Outlook Activex surprise I guess). Time to go buy Acme Email-scan Pro (Consumer Gold edition -- with extra Protectex!!)
I am suprised they are still in business because Iomega has consistently screwed over their customers. I had a ZIP. CoD'ed (Click of Death'ed) all my overpriced zip disks.
Iomega refused to replace it. It's went into the trash around 1998 so no chance of joining the class-action. Not that I want a coupon for more of their shitty products anyway. I also had a Iomega Buz Multimedia Producer (video capture board). About 2 months after I bought it they stopped supporting it. Despite the fact that I had a 1 year of tech support included. Every time I called their support to complain about big chunky black lines it was busy. It then took them 2 years to release driver code. This company is useless...
StarOffice is no substitute for MS Office, unfortunately. I study & work in the IT department of a university and even in this enlightened setting it is quite hard to get by without M$ products. StarOffice tends to be reasonable to read Word files, but it mangles Powerpoint slides unless they are very simple.
As for writing/saving files, well forget about it. Don't expect any Windows user to be able to read your files.
My temporary solution is to print out just about any documents I get and then quickly reboot back into linux. It's a bit of a bummer, linux is so close on the desktop...
The post above should be moderated up. It nicely points out the flaws in the original post.
In a world that is quickly going to hell in a handbasket, I see the GNU GPL/Linux/free software movement as one of the few rays of light.
The fact that Ralph Nader (someone completely unqualifed for the job) got as many votes as he did shows that people are generally unhappy (and getting unhappier!) about the prospect of becoming a bunch of camera-watched, genetically-tested, cuecat barcoded sheep.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, what washes in America usually ends up *washing* in our country. Despite new anti-thinking laws (eg. DMCA), all is not lost.
Things like the GPL, open standards and the free flow of information are what will make our society enlightened. That is if the free software movement continues to grow, and I hope it will.
Short sighted developers come on here and whinge that GPL will make them lose their job, or somehow affect their freedoms. No one is applying screws to their fingernails forcing them to use GPL'ed software.
The fact of the matter is, over the long term, we will need more and more software developers. Most software is developed in house as it is, and this trend will continue to grow. Software can solve all sorts of problems. It is just another branch of applied mathematics. We have nowhere even come close to breaching the possibilities available to us. And if there is a short term recession, who do you think are going to be the people who lose their jobs? The guy who writes a killer open source app in his free time or some guy scratching his head working out how to connect Visual basic to an Access database? He can't concentrate, he wants to go home and study for his MCSE.
There is no shame in being idealistic. It is a sign of intelligence.
Complete agreement.
This is exactly right. I would also like to further add that the Man vs. Machine debate is nowhere near over. The top human players are now routinely beating the best chess engines (Fritz,Junior,Shredder) now that they have a better conception of the machine's weaknesses and strengths. Weaknesses are long term planning, strengths are short term tactical calculations.
Another thing that has been discovered in the last 5 or so years is that machines tend to play very poorly in closed positions. (French defense, Caro-kann, etc) In these deeply strategic positions computers tend to move their peices around randomly with no "plan". The search depth is far beyond their computing power. They make no progress beyond maintaining a somewhat stable position while the human player instinctively knows how to slowly manipulate the game to his advantage. I hypothesize this strongly advantages strategic players like Kramnik and disadvatages tactical players like Shirov. I would have loved to see Tigran Petrosian play deep blue. A true tactical chess genius.
If Kasparov were to play Deep Blue again today, I think the general consesus among top chess players is that he would win, and win easily. Same for most of the other top players. Last year Siemens had a big human vs. computer event with most of the top GM's getting draws or wins.
Search for it here:
http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic.html
(Anti-goatse,anti-click filter)
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:win2000mag.n
This is google's cached copy. The original link isn't working for some reason.
Quoting:
Source Date: March 8,2001. So I guess I haven't been asleep for two years.
BTW: I noticed a tiny bug in slashcode. That link I submitted above has no space in it between winmag.ne[here]t. It appears like this on story preview submission though.
Of course, I forgot to mention that next time I type "cat /etc/redhat-release" it might say: :)
Redhat 7.1 Wolverine
But actually it will probably say Debian Unstable
Unless I can get suspend to disk working with Redhat's new laptop installation class, without having to compile in SysRq to the kernel. Fingers crossed...
I'm currently a Mandrake 7.2 user. I know this because when I type "cat /etc/redhat-release" it says:
Linux Mandrake release 7.2 (Odyssey) for i586
In the three years I've been a linux user, I've used Debian, Slackware, Redhat and a few of the lesser "known" distributions. Mandrake is great for the latest toys, especially if you have a 56k modem and can't bother downloading the latest packages. However, it sucks in a technical way for shipping broken things like supermount and reiserfs.
It also annoys me that they are so predatory on Redhat's market share, with their ridiculous version numbering scheme and "trumping" of Red Hat's announcement, always right after a red-hat release.
Redhat contributes all sorts of resources to the free software community, they support gnome, XFree86 and other important projects. All Mandrake does is really "customize" RedHat's release with some more cutting edge tools and give nothing back to the community other then a few buggy GUI configuration tools.
It would be nice if Mandrake simply had a "Mandrake Desktop Plus Pack" for RedHat linux and formed an alliance with RedHat. If their aren't more mergers and acquistions soon between the commercial (note I said commercial!) distributions it will only weaken linux acceptance in the marketplace.
Bill knows the importance of providing a consistent user interface. That is why he is happy to leave themeing outside of windows. It makes life nice and simple for corporate accounts where M$ makes it's big money. What are you to do if you want a desktop with a salvador dali on steroids motif?? No problem. Bill gave MS API access to Stardock so they could build a themeing product. That way everyone is happy and M$ probably gets a kickback for every copy of windowblinds sold.
Ximian has great potential.
I hope they do well. If they stay creative, they will. The thing I'd like to see most from them & kde folks, is working towards interoperability regarding a good printing framework, themes, middleware and other "backend-ish" stuff. There is so much innovation possible in the interface and this is where gnome & kde should battle it out. Penguins won't reach the desktop when J.Random Computer User can't work out how to cut and paste between gApp and kApp.
I just went through the same experience. I shopped around for MONTHS looking for the ultimate notebook. My needs were:
-Can run almost any OS (linux/bsd) -Full hardware support (ethernet,56k,all the goodies) -Preinstalled linux would have been nice, but no big deal. It'd be nice to know the hardware is supported before you bought it, but after doing some searching on the web that no customer should have to do, I already knew what was supported. Also I didn't want to pay for my 'nth' winblows license.
After an extensive and frustrating! search I came down to basically 2 different options: Dell and IBM. I extensively researched the models I was considering, the IBM Thinkpad A21 and the Dell Inspiron 8000. Both had been certified by Linuxcare labs, and I read generally positive stuff from people who had them on the Linux for laptops webpage. (Someone else quoted it above). Unfortunately both companies had TERRIBLE customer support. I could not get out of a windows license if I wanted to, nobody knew what linux was. I originally wanted to buy from IBM because it seemed like they were doing something positive in the community but it was clear that their salespeople did not know or care about linux. It's not like I didn't try either, I contacted them on several different occassions, even different offices in different countries!
Dell was just about as useless. I had other problems with them, unanswered emails etc. I ended up swallowing my pride and buying my notebook from them (Dell Inspiron 8000) despite their useless customer skills. Apparently now you can get red hat preinstalled but when I bought it (a few month ago - not in the U.S.) You couldn't get this option. Also the modem is a winmodem, but it's the lucent one and works well enough with the linmodem drivers.
The whole experience was a complete turn off and clearly something needs to be done to address this within the community. I consider it unacceptable that linux users should have to go to this much trouble to ensure that their built in ethernet or sound card will work right or whatever. It's not like I bought this system to use Windows with it and changed to linux. Yet I was forced to buy yet another windows license...
Recently I discovered asf recorder. Very useful for getting around short-comings of certain streaming video applications. Search for it Actually on the wake of Slashdot's interview with Doug Miller we should interview the author of Virtual Dub and ask him what he thinks about Microsoft's quest for interoperability. Virtual Dub was a free program for among other things conversting asf files into other formats. M$ legal department utilized standard Corporate America bully tactics to get him to remove that functionality from his program which he achieved by good old fashioned reverse engineering.
Oh well in the future we can just release utilities like that anonymously, until the software enforcement bureau comes and raids our homes because we were suspected of sending a controversial file over the internet.
A few years back a reporter (in Florida IIRC) won a judgement against the Fox affiliate that she worked for, for unlawful termination. The reason? They squashed a negative story she had produced about Monsato. Monsato got wind of it somehow and their old boys called up Fox's old boys and it was quashed. She protested and was fired.
Good ol unbiased American media...
Hi. I have a cog science background. I will be finishing a CS masters in November. Email me if you are interested...
I thought that when all this originally blew up that Bezos weighed in with the opinion that it was only a "defensive" patent, to be used by Amazon to prevent someone else from patenting it and suing them. If he did indeed say that, (I can't recall exactly), then he is a no-integrity spin peddling bum.
Microsoft may produce crappy software, but it's business people are top notch. You don't become a market monopoly without alot of clever people coming up with stuff like MCSE, their notorious channel agreements with computer hardware retailers and and convincing the great unwashed masses that Windows should be the defacto operating system of choice. Microsoft knows that "It's the OS, stupid". Keeping control of this technology will keep them at the top. They will do whatever they can to circumvent linux, including buying Corel for pennies to: 1)Stop Corel sponsored development on WINE. 2)Prevent more applications from running on linux. 3)Stop any other companies from getting any ideas about creating an "OS 4 Dummiez"
Uhh, I don't think so. A few clarifications of fact: Late builds (circa 1997) of Windows 95 did support USB. In fact, I have a cd sitting about 2 feet from me that says "M$ Windows 95 with USB support." I agree with the original poster. If you have a user who is too stupid to handle a decent OS and are going to use M$ crap, Windows 95 is much better then Windows 98. BTW: Linux supports USB just fine. I've had no problems with it.
Your average monthly phone bill in Australia is 4 or 5 times what North Americans pay, because on top of a ridiculous line rental charge, you are also charged per call.
Recently DSL was rolled out in my area. $80/month and a $200 installation fee if you commit to 12 months. The installation fee is much higher if you are not willing to commit.
There is competition in the long distance market but in the short term there is no hope for the average punter who just wants reasonable local calling and high speed internet. A company called Optus does a sort of half arsed job at this but for most Australians it's not even an option. Besides Optus seems to be focussing more on niche areas like reselling bandwidth on their Southern cross cable network to ISP's in Australia, who are also sick of putting up with Telstra's bullshit. Still I'd estimate 95% of traffic in Australia is still over 56K connections over Telstra's PSTN, and this will probably stay like this for awhile.
Feathers in their cap:
-easy install
-flawlessly imports windows fonts
-good choice of applications in distribution
-very easy to use/be productive in
Black-eyes:
-Half of their GUI apps (all titled Drak something) are crap and don't work, or they break something on your system. (Drakprofile and DrakMenuEdit come to mind, and others).
-they clearly favour KDE.
-more unstable then debian. This is probably due to the random breaking of config files by the drak utilities.
Next week on ask slashdot: A little girl in Chile who knit up some cute booties with penguins on them.
Linux on the desktop: Linux is almost there. All it needs is a bit of a push. I think your HCI people should download Linux-Mandrake 7.2, if they haven't already. This is probably the most cutting edge of the newbie distributions. This is extremely significant and adding a little bit of help here will significantly destabilize rivals like Microsoft.
Linux on the Thinkpad/(insert other IBM hardware here). It'd be nice if IBM stopped shipping Aptiva's with winmodems. Also I have recently been trying to get ahold of a Thinkpad. I don't like that I can't get either a linux distribution pre-installed or a blank HD without M$ 9x/NT. There are a few models at this page but the links lead to intellistations not thinkpads.
Linux & IBM PR: Ibm should keep helping the community and promoting itself as a "smarty pants/deep thinking tech company", and it will reap the rewards of this strategy. Shenanigans like CPRM on hard drives will negate these positive effects.
Wishlist: I need something to locally cache web pages, and keep them orderly on linux. I remember IBM had a product like this for Windows. I wouldn't mind this being OSS if it isn't already.
Please contact me if you'd like some further feedback, I wouldn't mind working for IBM at some future stage.
Is Katz writing another book (about gaming?). Katz = Pussy
I'm in the same situation. I've got a project course this semester to write a simple instant messaging client with encryption technology and a key/contact manager being the main feature. I'm fairly confident I shouldn't have too many problems doing this in java (my current plan), but what I'd really like to do is write it in C on/for linux. Unfortunately I am still a linux newbie and am worried I won't be able to finish it. My current plan is to use as much code/libraries from other people as I can and just try and make it dance. My main fear is that there will be some stuff built into java that will make it so much easier, and will take me so much more time on "C". I really don't know if this is the case. Any suggestions/comments appreciated.
Ibm seems to have the same problem endemic of most large organizations, that being the left hand doesn't know what the right one is doing. I've spoken to IBM sales reps on their online chat applet about a fairly pricey Thinkpad I was interested in. (Pricey for me -- I'm a student). From what their salesperson told me, I can't get a Thinkpad unless it has M$ Win2K or Win9x. According to him, his hands were tied. Although I don't use RedHat I would have bought a copy of it, but no -- Thinkpads only do M$ apparently. BTW: If anyone knows of a linux friendly notebook vendor with good prices, let me know. From the prices I've seen, it will just be so much simpler to buy it from somewhere with M$ on it and format it when I receive it.