Why the HELL would they choose WMCE for this hardware!? Actually going to the trouble of getting past DRM just to encode it to MS proprietary format? How silly can you get?
This may come as a shock to you but not everybody knows nor cares to know just what the hell is a "proprietary format". BTW, you might be delighted to know that there is also free software that uses the.dvr-ms file format produced by XP MCE. Check out mediaportal, some seem to like it and even prefer it over MCE. I used it for a while but got tired of it's general lack of quality.
It certainly doesn't have to be a PC. Problem is, a PC is the only solution if you don't want many boxes and want to a) record tv shows, b) burn dvds, c) listen to net radio stations d) update your system cheaply when something new comes along like HDTV (we don't have HD in Finland yet). I'd love to be able to buy a device off the shelf that does everything but I've never seen such a device on sale. I doubt it exists..
That's the worst excuse I've _EVER_ heard. So this is an effort to provide Internet to lower income households? In the age of a $250US workstation and a $1200-$2000US laptop computer, why are hotspots the answer?
If the people can't affort $5-$10USD/mo dialup Internet access for their desktop, how on earth are they going to affort to buy a modern laptop?
Why do you think Wi-Fi Internet access is limited to laptops only? I'm not sure about the situation in the United States but here in Europe we do have Wi-Fi adapters for USB and PCI available for maybe fifty euros (roughly $60).
As much fun as it is to piss on yahoo as the "old and busted" and google as the "new hotness"... Yahoo has made some interesting forward thinking purchases lately... like flickr and Konfabulator
Yahoo does have advantages. I gave up using gmail out of frustration when I found their mail servers sometimes hold messages in a queue or something for hours. So I went and bought me a 2GB mailbox from Yahoo and have not regretted it for a second.
Maybe it's time to turn in my Geek card, but I fail to see the appeal of this. I'm a sci-fi nut & tried to watch the show when it was on but I thought it was some of the lamest acting and plot I'd ever seen. It was like a really bad western in space. I can't see why people are drooling over this movie coming out. I liked Buffy as much as the next person, but this seemed really weak to me.
Some wise guy once said "opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one" and I have to agree with the smarta*s.. To me, Firefly was a great show that combined all my favourite elements from SciFi, comedy and westerns with a funny plot and a couple foxy chicks into what turned out to be one of my all-time favourite tv shows. I really wanted to murder somebody when I found out there were no more of it coming.
Talking about Buffy, I fail to see it's appeal tho'.. never liked that kind of generic blondes.
"Other than updates to applications that were ported into XP from Me, what exactly does XP SP 2 offer that 2k SP 4 doesn't?"
About a million less reboots, native Wi-Fi support (I just hate all them vendor-specific applications I had to use in order to get my wireless card working in 2k), native Bluetooth support, lots of multimedia-related functionality integrated to Explorer (not IE, explorer.exe, your user interface), takes hours less to patch up than W2k SP4, etc. It all depends on your usage patterns, for a mobile worker like me life is so much easier with XP SP2 that it has ever been.
It's really not just their addiction that excuses them from serving their country.
First of all, they're not excused but their service is postponed.
I think the main reason is their lack of interest and ofcourse they are in a such a bad shape that it's impossible to manage the armyduties.
I mean that if you sit in front of your computer for 12 hours a day and then you suddenly have to wear 30-40 kilos backpack and told to march 10 kilometres.
Second, you don't just pack you'r backpack and march the distance, before that you jog, go to the gym, run everywhere you are going and do marches with battle-gear only. Nobody in the army is so stupid to think that a normal guy could just all of a sudden become fit enough to do that, come on.
There are different physical standards in the finnish army of course, and for example paratroopers have to be in great condition just to get accepted for training but the normal finnish conscript starts physical training gradually and should be in the best condition after ten or so weeks of training.
I got my first PC-type computer in 1988. It was a Bondwell-made PC-XT computer with a 8MHz 8088-compatible processor, 360kB floppy drive and a 20MB hard disk. When I got the beast, I didn't have the guts to open the case so I could install a modem, but I did learn much.. after running my BBS on it for a couple of years and even connecting it to a UUCP network with Waffle, I had stripped it down to a motherboard with all the components and power supply on my table. Don't ask why. Anyway, somehow I managed to break the MB in half.
After a careful examination I decided it was worth a try to solder the board back together, so I went for it.. I'm so glad they hadn't invented multi-layer boards back then because the damn thing worked like nothing had happened! After this it was easy to repair my modem that had been struck by a lightning.
"Now imagine what a phenomenal product GIMP would be in the eyes of graphic artists who now use photoshop if only the people who had complained about it could be bothered to FIX what they see as problems. A few small years worth of effort in total, very little from each person who has seen something wrong, and the free tool would have surpassed the proprietary one years ago. Instead, all we get are more complaints."
Have you EVER wondered why people do not contribute to those marvellous open source products, but instead keep asking the developers to fix them? Not everyone can a) design UIs, b) write any code, c) have time or the will to do either of those to get something working.
Many people, like me, want to buy their OS and USE it, not learn to program just to be able to modify a picture or to write documents. IMHO the biggest problem with open source is the developers that think everybody should contribute something. I think that is just plain stupid if you want to get people to use your precious software. Really, as long as oss is made by geeks for geeks, there is no hope of ever getting rid of microsoft and other "evil" companies.
But, Sun says that hardware will be free. My question is, if they open source Solaris and provide hardware for free, what's left? Pure support? Companies stopped paying big bucks for support years ago. That's why DEC died.
Even if I get modded a flamebait, I'll have to say you're wrong about them. At least if you count consulting as support, do you? They haven't made much money out of hardware sales or software licenses, but a big part of their income comes from an army of consultants that perform installations ranging from a single server os installation to a cluster of E15k's and everything in between. They also make lots of money from support deals for a couple of good reasons: Solaris is simply the best enterprise quality Unix out there and it performs best on Sun hardware. It's very simple for the company to fit together their hardware and software to make an attractive package. And who knows Sun systems better than their own consultants, who are required to do the job if the customer wants any kind of support for their systems. And the bigger the iron, the more work for a consultant to do and the less information is even available to the public about it.
And if you, as an admin, take less than an hour to test your rpm (or whatever) software installation, on a mission-critical server, you're not doing your job.
Are you sure you want to say that people should test software installations on mission critical servers? Personally, I like to test them on non-critical machines and, after a successful test, install them on critical servers.
I wonder what the Gentoo guy would do in six months. That is not a very long time when you have to set up a distribution chain, a working support model, hire and train people to make it all happen. You also need to get your platform certified for enterprise use with application vendors, work with hardware manufacturers to certify hardware for your operating system, you name it. I seriously doubt they would be "up and running" in six months if they started today.
Being a Windows admin, sometimes I wonder about the Windows knowledge of the average/.'er. Being a relatively newbie to Linux, this then makes me wonder about the Linux knowledge of the average/.'er. (Note that this isn't directed at you, but rather at the general discussion.)
Being a windows admin myself, among other things, I have noticed that the average slashdot poster fears Windows like the plague. It's amazing how much people here judge everything made by microsoft without even bothering to check if their assumptions are correct. I do not like MS either, but at least I try to keep an open mind and not automatically label MS products as shit just because they're made by an evil company.
>if you're really serious about wireless you >should get your fcc technition class lisence, >it allows you to run your way at up to 1500 >watts, or something rediclus, way better than >screwing around with fancy antennas for just a >hundred miliwatts or so.
Jesus H. Christ. That amount of power in the WiFi band would fry deep-frosted chicken (and living human flesh) very nicely. Try reading about satellite ground stations that use gigahertz frequencies and you'll find that even they use just a couple of watts transmitting power.
Oh you are so wrong:) Seriously, SCO OpenServer hs nothing to do with linux besides the fact that the both can run on the same Intel hardware (in many cases). SCO OpenServer is a very old Unix that has been developed from the days of Microsoft Xenix (yes, Microsoft used to be a Unix company:)). Linux is something that a guy from finland put together and released to the opensource community and the rest is history..
"If it works, don't fix it." is still true. If they are happy with SCO OpenServer, let them use it. Now the openserver is being updated again, there is no reason to just go and change to linux or anything else. And dude, you should know that OpenServer is not the newest version of SysV but it still is SysV:) If you want V7, get yourself a Minix.
Jesus dude, what the heck are you talking about? If by SMP you mean symmetric multiprocessing then yes, SCO OpenServer has supported that for as long as I can remember, which is about six years. The downside is that every CPU needs a separate license but we're not talking about that, are we?
This has nothing to do with antitrust cases or any other legal action whatsoever. It is simply a case of Microsoft trying their best to improve their customers' web surfing a little bit provided that the server admin runs IIS. Sure they are bending the rules a bit but hey, they are in a position which allows them to do it and IE users are the majority anyway. What I think should be done is to add a similar behavior pattern to Apache and whatever other web servers you might be using. If some RFC disallows this, then another RFC should be written to allow it.
You should know that here in Finland, we pay royalties in every cd-r, dvd-r (and other format medias), video cassette or whatever media we buy. Yes, if your company provides you with a signed certificate saying that you are going to use the media you buy for storing only work-related material, you get a discount but still the system sucks. Teosto, our trustee for supervising the interests of artists, is trying to get this royalty for hard disks also. Also, if you broadcast music legally via radio and stream your broadcast via internet also, you have to pay a "media conversion fee" of some sort.
Hmm, maybe you could just try and live in this day instead of banging away on your good old vt-100? I mean, webpages _do_ look much nicer on a graphical display most of the time.
You people just can't admit that Microsoft might have done something good, can you? Even if it is Microsoft, there are lots of people who actually try their best and every now and then, something good pops out of their factory, and I genuinely think that IE is one of Microsoft's best accomplishments on the Windows platform. It does not matter whether IE is integrated to the OS or not. Idiots..
--
mkv@toosa.net
http://toosa.net
The best way to do this is by installing your own server to a 24h-connected network and doing this all by yourself. Get a working PC - 486, pentium 60, whatever should do if you have enough disk to store your mails (1GB should be more than enough). I have a 512kbps SDSL connection at home, where I also run my own domain on a 166MHz PC with Linux. I have to say that even this machine is overkill for the job.. I can access my mail server with ssh, imap, whatever I can think of. I really recommend this.
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Why the HELL would they choose WMCE for this hardware!? Actually going to the trouble of getting past DRM just to encode it to MS proprietary format? How silly can you get?
.dvr-ms file format produced by XP MCE. Check out mediaportal, some seem to like it and even prefer it over MCE. I used it for a while but got tired of it's general lack of quality.
This may come as a shock to you but not everybody knows nor cares to know just what the hell is a "proprietary format". BTW, you might be delighted to know that there is also free software that uses the
It certainly doesn't have to be a PC. Problem is, a PC is the only solution if you don't want many boxes and want to a) record tv shows, b) burn dvds, c) listen to net radio stations d) update your system cheaply when something new comes along like HDTV (we don't have HD in Finland yet). I'd love to be able to buy a device off the shelf that does everything but I've never seen such a device on sale. I doubt it exists..
That's the worst excuse I've _EVER_ heard. So this is an effort to provide Internet to lower income households? In the age of a $250US workstation and a $1200-$2000US laptop computer, why are hotspots the answer?
If the people can't affort $5-$10USD/mo dialup Internet access for their desktop, how on earth are they going to affort to buy a modern laptop?
Why do you think Wi-Fi Internet access is limited to laptops only? I'm not sure about the situation in the United States but here in Europe we do have Wi-Fi adapters for USB and PCI available for maybe fifty euros (roughly $60).
As much fun as it is to piss on yahoo as the "old and busted" and google as the "new hotness"... Yahoo has made some interesting forward thinking purchases lately... like flickr and Konfabulator
Yahoo does have advantages. I gave up using gmail out of frustration when I found their mail servers sometimes hold messages in a queue or something for hours. So I went and bought me a 2GB mailbox from Yahoo and have not regretted it for a second.
Maybe it's time to turn in my Geek card, but I fail to see the appeal of this. I'm a sci-fi nut & tried to watch the show when it was on but I thought it was some of the lamest acting and plot I'd ever seen. It was like a really bad western in space. I can't see why people are drooling over this movie coming out. I liked Buffy as much as the next person, but this seemed really weak to me.
Some wise guy once said "opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one" and I have to agree with the smarta*s.. To me, Firefly was a great show that combined all my favourite elements from SciFi, comedy and westerns with a funny plot and a couple foxy chicks into what turned out to be one of my all-time favourite tv shows. I really wanted to murder somebody when I found out there were no more of it coming.
Talking about Buffy, I fail to see it's appeal tho'.. never liked that kind of generic blondes.
"Other than updates to applications that were ported into XP from Me, what exactly does XP SP 2 offer that 2k SP 4 doesn't?"
About a million less reboots, native Wi-Fi support (I just hate all them vendor-specific applications I had to use in order to get my wireless card working in 2k), native Bluetooth support, lots of multimedia-related functionality integrated to Explorer (not IE, explorer.exe, your user interface), takes hours less to patch up than W2k SP4, etc. It all depends on your usage patterns, for a mobile worker like me life is so much easier with XP SP2 that it has ever been.
It's really not just their addiction that excuses them from serving their country.
First of all, they're not excused but their service is postponed.
I think the main reason is their lack of interest and ofcourse they are in a such a bad shape that it's impossible to manage the armyduties.
I mean that if you sit in front of your computer for 12 hours a day and then you suddenly have to wear 30-40 kilos backpack and told to march 10 kilometres.
Second, you don't just pack you'r backpack and march the distance, before that you jog, go to the gym, run everywhere you are going and do marches with battle-gear only. Nobody in the army is so stupid to think that a normal guy could just all of a sudden become fit enough to do that, come on.
There are different physical standards in the finnish army of course, and for example paratroopers have to be in great condition just to get accepted for training but the normal finnish conscript starts physical training gradually and should be in the best condition after ten or so weeks of training.
I got my first PC-type computer in 1988. It was a Bondwell-made PC-XT computer with a 8MHz 8088-compatible processor, 360kB floppy drive and a 20MB hard disk. When I got the beast, I didn't have the guts to open the case so I could install a modem, but I did learn much.. after running my BBS on it for a couple of years and even connecting it to a UUCP network with Waffle, I had stripped it down to a motherboard with all the components and power supply on my table. Don't ask why. Anyway, somehow I managed to break the MB in half.
After a careful examination I decided it was worth a try to solder the board back together, so I went for it.. I'm so glad they hadn't invented multi-layer boards back then because the damn thing worked like nothing had happened! After this it was easy to repair my modem that had been struck by a lightning.
"Now imagine what a phenomenal product GIMP would be in the eyes of graphic artists who now use photoshop if only the people who had complained about it could be bothered to FIX what they see as problems. A few small years worth of effort in total, very little from each person who has seen something wrong, and the free tool would have surpassed the proprietary one years ago. Instead, all we get are more complaints."
Have you EVER wondered why people do not contribute to those marvellous open source products, but instead keep asking the developers to fix them? Not everyone can a) design UIs, b) write any code, c) have time or the will to do either of those to get something working.
Many people, like me, want to buy their OS and USE it, not learn to program just to be able to modify a picture or to write documents. IMHO the biggest problem with open source is the developers that think everybody should contribute something. I think that is just plain stupid if you want to get people to use your precious software. Really, as long as oss is made by geeks for geeks, there is no hope of ever getting rid of microsoft and other "evil" companies.
But, Sun says that hardware will be free. My question is, if they open source Solaris and provide hardware for free, what's left? Pure support? Companies stopped paying big bucks for support years ago. That's why DEC died.
Even if I get modded a flamebait, I'll have to say you're wrong about them. At least if you count consulting as support, do you? They haven't made much money out of hardware sales or software licenses, but a big part of their income comes from an army of consultants that perform installations ranging from a single server os installation to a cluster of E15k's and everything in between. They also make lots of money from support deals for a couple of good reasons: Solaris is simply the best enterprise quality Unix out there and it performs best on Sun hardware. It's very simple for the company to fit together their hardware and software to make an attractive package. And who knows Sun systems better than their own consultants, who are required to do the job if the customer wants any kind of support for their systems. And the bigger the iron, the more work for a consultant to do and the less information is even available to the public about it.
And if you, as an admin, take less than an hour to test your rpm (or whatever) software installation, on a mission-critical server, you're not doing your job.
Are you sure you want to say that people should test software installations on mission critical servers? Personally, I like to test them on non-critical machines and, after a successful test, install them on critical servers.
I wonder what the Gentoo guy would do in six months. That is not a very long time when you have to set up a distribution chain, a working support model, hire and train people to make it all happen. You also need to get your platform certified for enterprise use with application vendors, work with hardware manufacturers to certify hardware for your operating system, you name it. I seriously doubt they would be "up and running" in six months if they started today.
Being a Windows admin, sometimes I wonder about the Windows knowledge of the average /.'er. Being a relatively newbie to Linux, this then makes me wonder about the Linux knowledge of the average /.'er. (Note that this isn't directed at you, but rather at the general discussion.)
Being a windows admin myself, among other things, I have noticed that the average slashdot poster fears Windows like the plague. It's amazing how much people here judge everything made by microsoft without even bothering to check if their assumptions are correct. I do not like MS either, but at least I try to keep an open mind and not automatically label MS products as shit just because they're made by an evil company.
>if you're really serious about wireless you
>should get your fcc technition class lisence,
>it allows you to run your way at up to 1500
>watts, or something rediclus, way better than
>screwing around with fancy antennas for just a
>hundred miliwatts or so.
Jesus H. Christ. That amount of power in the WiFi band would fry deep-frosted chicken (and living human flesh) very nicely. Try reading about satellite ground stations that use gigahertz frequencies and you'll find that even they use just a couple of watts transmitting power.
Oh you are so wrong :) Seriously, SCO OpenServer hs nothing to do with linux besides the fact that the both can run on the same Intel hardware (in many cases). SCO OpenServer is a very old Unix that has been developed from the days of Microsoft Xenix (yes, Microsoft used to be a Unix company :)). Linux is something that a guy from finland put together and released to the opensource community and the rest is history..
"If it works, don't fix it." is still true. If they are happy with SCO OpenServer, let them use it. Now the openserver is being updated again, there is no reason to just go and change to linux or anything else. And dude, you should know that OpenServer is not the newest version of SysV but it still is SysV :) If you want V7, get yourself a Minix.
Jesus dude, what the heck are you talking about? If by SMP you mean symmetric multiprocessing then yes, SCO OpenServer has supported that for as long as I can remember, which is about six years. The downside is that every CPU needs a separate license but we're not talking about that, are we?
This has nothing to do with antitrust cases or any other legal action whatsoever. It is simply a case of Microsoft trying their best to improve their customers' web surfing a little bit provided that the server admin runs IIS. Sure they are bending the rules a bit but hey, they are in a position which allows them to do it and IE users are the majority anyway. What I think should be done is to add a similar behavior pattern to Apache and whatever other web servers you might be using. If some RFC disallows this, then another RFC should be written to allow it.
You should know that here in Finland, we pay royalties in every cd-r, dvd-r (and other format medias), video cassette or whatever media we buy. Yes, if your company provides you with a signed certificate saying that you are going to use the media you buy for storing only work-related material, you get a discount but still the system sucks. Teosto, our trustee for supervising the interests of artists, is trying to get this royalty for hard disks also. Also, if you broadcast music legally via radio and stream your broadcast via internet also, you have to pay a "media conversion fee" of some sort.
Hmm, maybe you could just try and live in this day instead of banging away on your good old vt-100? I mean, webpages _do_ look much nicer on a graphical display most of the time.
You people just can't admit that Microsoft might have done something good, can you? Even if it is Microsoft, there are lots of people who actually try their best and every now and then, something good pops out of their factory, and I genuinely think that IE is one of Microsoft's best accomplishments on the Windows platform. It does not matter whether IE is integrated to the OS or not. Idiots.. -- mkv@toosa.net http://toosa.net
The best way to do this is by installing your own server to a 24h-connected network and doing this all by yourself. Get a working PC - 486, pentium 60, whatever should do if you have enough disk to store your mails (1GB should be more than enough). I have a 512kbps SDSL connection at home, where I also run my own domain on a 166MHz PC with Linux. I have to say that even this machine is overkill for the job.. I can access my mail server with ssh, imap, whatever I can think of. I really recommend this.