I know it sounds strange but be very strict about billing. Many small businesses are too trusting and too nice and allow other businesses to walk all over them.
Make sure you bill promptly and accurately and be sure to charge late charges on accounts. If a customer becomes past due do not perform further work for them. You can't work for free and make a living.
Also, don't charge *too much* below what the MCSEs charge. It's stupid but people will automatically think that you are of lesser quality. You have to have an air of confidence, and charging "high" prices shows that you feel you are worth that much.
I recently bought a Model-M for work. It's brand new (but was built in 1999, as can be seen from the sticker on the back).
www.pckeyboard.com sells them. If they are out of IBM model-Ms you can buy buckling spring keyboards made by unicomp. For an extra 5$ you can get "cap and stem" which is removable keycaps.
When I bought from unicomp it was a pleasure. They keyboard arrived very quickly.
If the codec from Microsoft requires a very fast "PC" then don't expect to see consumer devices that can play this stuff. Can you imagine if your DVD player needed a P4 with fan cooling?
I can't see this being adopted unless there is an innexpensive hardware solution.
I recently got a HP Laserjet 6l for free. It had been in the back of a pickup truck for about 6 months. When I picked it up water poured out of it (and onto my shoes).
I let it dry out and it works perfectly....Oh, I did have to get a free repair kit from HP fix a well known multi-feed problem but other than that it has been great.
Don't knock the idea though! I think it would be cool if most apps had a command line interface *and* a gui. Take GIMP for example. It has libguile so you can script operations *and* it has a GUI. Why compromise?
That's great but some people like skins - I am not one of them. If you want a video player that isn't skinned why not just make a derivitive work? I am sure it wouldn't be very hard to do a facelift of xine?
The problem is that supporting multiple distros is a support nightmare. How many Linux newbies do you know that say "such and such a piece of hardware doesn't work on Redhat 8.0 but works on Suse 7.whatever"? Most newbies don't understand that if the hardware is supported by the kernel it will work with any distro.
So to support multiple distros Dell would have to test *each* distro which would cost a fortune to them.
I'd like to see Dell laptops with hardware that is gauranteed to work with a certain linux kernel. Dell could (in huge bold blinking red letters) alert the customer that it will work but it is up to the customer to configure their own distro.
I wish this were real. Then people wouldn't be so nationalistic. The world would be brought together since the "UFO threat" would affect all of the earth. I'd love to be a citizen of earth, rather than the United States. Then we'd only have to worry about stupid humans trying to start an intergallactic war.
Not a bad troll!...actually not a very good troll either. I suppose you assume that I am a stereotypical geek, well, you'd be wrong.
It's a good thing there are so many operating systems to choose from, otherwise I might have to use the operating system you like. Or at the very least the distro you like.
Somehow I think the Debian you use isn't the Debian I use. Debian has been *by far* the easiest and most logical distro I have ever used (mandrake included). I love Debian and don't understand why people complain about the install. I had no problems, and I have installed debian on at least a dozen different machines....And to say that you couldn't get your video card to work in "Debian" makes no sense. You couldn't configure Xfree86 properly perhaps, but that isn't "Debian". I have more debian installations that don't even have X on them.
When I had to call tech support (bad cable modem) and they made me reinstall my network drivers under windows I just faked it. The tech support guy would say "ok now reboot". I'd then look at my watch and time 30 seconds to a minute and then say "OK, it's booted up now".
I had to go through this in order to talk to someone that knew what they were talking about and not just reading stuff off of a computer monitor.
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I know it sounds strange but be very strict about billing. Many small businesses are too trusting and too nice and allow other businesses to walk all over them.
Make sure you bill promptly and accurately and be sure to charge late charges on accounts. If a customer becomes past due do not perform further work for them. You can't work for free and make a living.
Also, don't charge *too much* below what the MCSEs charge. It's stupid but people will automatically think that you are of lesser quality. You have to have an air of confidence, and charging "high" prices shows that you feel you are worth that much.
Greg
I recently bought a Model-M for work. It's brand new (but was built in 1999, as can be seen from the sticker on the back).
www.pckeyboard.com sells them. If they are out of IBM model-Ms you can buy buckling spring keyboards made by unicomp. For an extra 5$ you can get "cap and stem" which is removable keycaps.
When I bought from unicomp it was a pleasure. They keyboard arrived very quickly.
Flamebait?! You've got to be kidding!
"The problems with UNIX were too deep to fix, but some of its ideas could be brought along."
From: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html
Try running it and then tell me if it's UNIX.
Greg
Plan9 is not UNIX. Seriously. It takes the good stuff about UNIX and abandons the bad stuff.
Greg
The Via Eden processor is *designed* to use little power. It doesn't even need a fan. You can buy mini-itx boards with an eden processor.
i have used system V code too, here's some:
for (i=0; iblah; i++){
blah;
}
Hmm, what about things like mosix? MS Windows is clearly a poor choice for a distributed system. I could be wrong but isn't mosix pretty innovative?
If the codec from Microsoft requires a very fast "PC" then don't expect to see consumer devices that can play this stuff. Can you imagine if your DVD player needed a P4 with fan cooling?
I can't see this being adopted unless there is an innexpensive hardware solution.
I recently got a HP Laserjet 6l for free. It had been in the back of a pickup truck for about 6 months. When I picked it up water poured out of it (and onto my shoes).
...Oh, I did have to get a free repair kit from HP fix a well known multi-feed problem but other than that it has been great.
I let it dry out and it works perfectly.
I'd like to see helmets with fricken LASER beams on them. I'd also like to see the troops be trained to be ill tempered.
great, as soon as Lars Ulrich gets word of this they'll re-release their black album for more profits.
haha! If I had mod points you'd get +1 funny.
Don't knock the idea though! I think it would be cool if most apps had a command line interface *and* a gui. Take GIMP for example. It has libguile so you can script operations *and* it has a GUI. Why compromise?
Greg
That's great but some people like skins - I am not one of them. If you want a video player that isn't skinned why not just make a derivitive work? I am sure it wouldn't be very hard to do a facelift of xine?
Greg
The problem is that supporting multiple distros is a support nightmare. How many Linux newbies do you know that say "such and such a piece of hardware doesn't work on Redhat 8.0 but works on Suse 7.whatever"? Most newbies don't understand that if the hardware is supported by the kernel it will work with any distro.
So to support multiple distros Dell would have to test *each* distro which would cost a fortune to them.
I'd like to see Dell laptops with hardware that is gauranteed to work with a certain linux kernel. Dell could (in huge bold blinking red letters) alert the customer that it will work but it is up to the customer to configure their own distro.
Greg
I wish this were real. Then people wouldn't be so nationalistic. The world would be brought together since the "UFO threat" would affect all of the earth. I'd love to be a citizen of earth, rather than the United States. Then we'd only have to worry about stupid humans trying to start an intergallactic war.
Greg
Finding a security hole in this would be great. It'd be like having a voodoo doll that actually worked.
Not a bad troll! ...actually not a very good troll either. I suppose you assume that I am a stereotypical geek, well, you'd be wrong.
It's a good thing there are so many operating systems to choose from, otherwise I might have to use the operating system you like. Or at the very least the distro you like.
What's the point in bashing me for my opinions?
Somehow I think the Debian you use isn't the Debian I use. Debian has been *by far* the easiest and most logical distro I have ever used (mandrake included). I love Debian and don't understand why people complain about the install. I had no problems, and I have installed debian on at least a dozen different machines. ...And to say that you couldn't get your video card to work in "Debian" makes no sense. You couldn't configure Xfree86 properly perhaps, but that isn't "Debian". I have more debian installations that don't even have X on them.
Greg
...Hmm I might try making a whole suit out of tinfoil since they can read my clothing now (and not just my thoughts)!
I am not a Mac fan (though I could possibly be converted) but to use a perfectly good computer as a speed bump seems crazy to me ;)
When I had to call tech support (bad cable modem) and they made me reinstall my network drivers under windows I just faked it. The tech support guy would say "ok now reboot". I'd then look at my watch and time 30 seconds to a minute and then say "OK, it's booted up now".
I had to go through this in order to talk to someone that knew what they were talking about and not just reading stuff off of a computer monitor.
No, it was someone washing 3 months worth of dirty clothes. :)
THey should ask SR Hadden for money.
GAIM and the port of Gkrellm, WKrellm.
Greg
Will you write a book about your life in drink or die and the subsequent bust? If you did, would you be able to profit from it (IANAL)?
Greg