The local thriftstore has a working Mac IIci for $1.98 -- maybe I should put it on eBay as a collectable.
Seeing as eBay already has a shitload of IIci's for $9.99 (with 0 bids!), I wouldn't exactly call a IIci 'collectible'. They made FAR too many of these for them to ever be of any value due to scarcity.
The "personal firewall" industry is a full-of-crap industry created by the media. There is absolutely NO NEED for a person to install a 'personal firewall'. There is a small set of rules he should follow to be safe from email-viruses, trojans and "crack attempts".
I MUST disagree with you. You should see my ZoneAlarm logs of people port-scanning me, trying to make a connection on every port.
I am not a systems administrator, and although I try, I do not neccessarily have the knowledge needed to completely lock down my various systems.
ZoneAlarm fills two important needs:
1. Prompt me when incoming connections have been denied on some port. (Lets me know I have an open port, also, it's nice to know when you're being hit so you can do something about it if it gets really bad)
2. Lets me know when spyware has been installed on one of my systems, because the first time it gets installed, I get a prompt when it tries to 'phone home'. I can then deny the connection and go uninstall it.
I want to KNOW what internet traffic is coming IN and OUT of my system. ZoneAlarm fulfills that need, for $0, and deserves praise.
In the recent article about Ricochet's bankruptcy, there was a comment (can't find it now, sorry) which basically stated that in the newest versions of the modems, Ricochet had done something on their end to disable peer-to-peer.
I'm sure someone can elaborate... but I believe that it basically said it will work with the older 28.8 modems, but not the new 128 capable ones.
Of course not... it did seem overpriced to me, though. I think most of their expenses were in building out the network (think of all the time spent negotiating with City Councils, etc.) rather than the actual cost of delivering bandwidth.
I'm guessing that having 20 users on a node cost them barely more than 5... the cost was to put the transceiver on a pole in the first place.
Too bad they couldn't sign up users fast enough to get some economies of scale going and lower prices. That, and the fact that they seemed to never advertise. (Los Angeles, anyway).
The article notes that the entire network is up for auction in a few weeks - anyone want to team up to place a bid?
Seriously, who would be the kind of company with the capital to afford it, that also has a need for the network? Someone like MCI? One of the cellular providers?
Hey - killer idea - what if PALM bought the network, now that would be HOT. They could replace their current Palm.net offering (slow, expensive) with a high speed, always on offering for the same amount of money, and also tie you into a Palm device at the same time. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it sounds like a damn fine idea! What is a network like Ricochet worth?
I don't know why this article isn't on the front page...
All I can say is this is a damn shame. Ricochet had a fine service, while it lasted.
Were they a victim of their own pricing? I think so. If their service had been $40, it could have easily competed with home DSL and cable, and been very attractive to users with no other broadband choices. Instead, they wanted $74.95 (in my area), which buys some DARN high speed DSL.
Maybe I'm missing something (I'm no business major, for sure), but isn't it better to sell your product to triple the number of users for 1/2 the money?
The other thing that killed them was lack of exposure. They just rolled out Los Angeles/Orange County a few months ago, yet I heard nothing about it - I only knew because I'd been watching for it. Even some geeky friends of mine didn't know they'd arrived, or had even never heard of the technology.
What Aclute doesn't mention is that the article cites a Dell source as saying the problem is that 'the productivity suites aren't there', referring, I assume, to StarOffice, et al.
Linux really needs an Office suite on par with Microsoft.
If a company developed and sold a closed-source office suite that was as good as MS Office, would you buy and use it, if it was better than the open source tools? Or is StarOffice 'it' for you?
But isn't the beauty of Open Source the fact that you can just acquire and compile any needed programs for your favorite platform? Or is that just propaganda bullshit?
Man, ColecoVision was cool. I was so SAD when mine finally broke - by then, Nintendo Entertainment System had already been out for a while, but Coleco still rocked.
They had it all - Donkey Kong, BurgerTime, SubRoc, Zaxxon...
Remember they had that slide-on expansion module so you could still play all your old Atari 2600 games? I got so much use out of that thing.
Does anyone know where I can buy a working ColecoVision? Still got tons of games...
I'll echo the previous poster's comments and say that I've used Apple II, AtariST, Amiga, MacOS, Be, Win95-2000. I acquired the knowledge to use each on at least an intermediate level almost immediately.
At one point I tried 'learning' Linux, and found that it would take 20 times longer compared to the other OS mentioned.
If you can't see that the lack of cohesive interface, user-friendlyness, quality documentation, and a common GUI are holding Linux back, I don't know what to tell you. But they are.
It's funny that most of the stuff in the article is necessary because the OS is unintuitive.
If a little more effort was put into usability and interface, some of that stuff would be obvious even to a beginning user.
This is a big problem in the adoption of Linux. Look at Sourceforge - there are like thousands of projects, 75% of which are in permanent beta. Think what Linux could be if just 1% of the time spent coding was spend writing documentation and refining interface!
In A.D. 2101 War was beginning.
Jobs: What happen ?
Schiller: Somebody set up us the PC clone.
Wozniak: We get signal.
Jobs: What !
Wozniak: Main cinema display turn on.
Jobs: It's You !!
Gates: How are you gentlemen !!
Gates: All your marketshare are belong to us.
Gates: You are on the way to bankruptcy.
Jobs: What you say !!
Gates: Your OS have no chance to survive make your time.
Gates: HA HA HA HA....
Jobs: Take off every 'G4' !!
Jobs: You know what you doing.
Jobs: Move 'G4'.
Jobs: For great overpricing.
Let me preface this by saying, I believe there is no way this guy belongs in jail. I also think the DMCA is a bad law.
That said, why should the government drop the charges? It is the job of the Attorney General to enforce the law, not to make law. If the law is bad, change the law. We should be complaining/protesting/recalling to the Congress that voted for the DMCA instead. Let them tell the Attorney General to back off.
Seems to me that most of the older stuff will probably still continue to work, through some kind of emulation layer, much like the Apple 680x0 to PowerPC transition.
I'm no programmer though, maybe someone else can speculate. But with ARM in the 200-300 mhz range, it seems like you could easily emulate all the old stuff.
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Seeing as eBay already has a shitload of IIci's for $9.99 (with 0 bids!), I wouldn't exactly call a IIci 'collectible'. They made FAR too many of these for them to ever be of any value due to scarcity.
I MUST disagree with you. You should see my ZoneAlarm logs of people port-scanning me, trying to make a connection on every port.
I am not a systems administrator, and although I try, I do not neccessarily have the knowledge needed to completely lock down my various systems.
ZoneAlarm fills two important needs:
1. Prompt me when incoming connections have been denied on some port. (Lets me know I have an open port, also, it's nice to know when you're being hit so you can do something about it if it gets really bad)
2. Lets me know when spyware has been installed on one of my systems, because the first time it gets installed, I get a prompt when it tries to 'phone home'. I can then deny the connection and go uninstall it.
I want to KNOW what internet traffic is coming IN and OUT of my system. ZoneAlarm fulfills that need, for $0, and deserves praise.
Of course, given the extremely small user base of Linux laptops, Ricochet probably doesn't care. But I think you can make it work.
I'm sure someone can elaborate... but I believe that it basically said it will work with the older 28.8 modems, but not the new 128 capable ones.
Where are my 'funny' moderator points when I need them... sigh.
Maybe they were leaving the marketing to their resellers... but none of them did shit, either.
I'm guessing that having 20 users on a node cost them barely more than 5... the cost was to put the transceiver on a pole in the first place.
Too bad they couldn't sign up users fast enough to get some economies of scale going and lower prices. That, and the fact that they seemed to never advertise. (Los Angeles, anyway).
Seriously, who would be the kind of company with the capital to afford it, that also has a need for the network? Someone like MCI? One of the cellular providers?
Hey - killer idea - what if PALM bought the network, now that would be HOT. They could replace their current Palm.net offering (slow, expensive) with a high speed, always on offering for the same amount of money, and also tie you into a Palm device at the same time. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it sounds like a damn fine idea! What is a network like Ricochet worth?
All I can say is this is a damn shame. Ricochet had a fine service, while it lasted.
Were they a victim of their own pricing? I think so. If their service had been $40, it could have easily competed with home DSL and cable, and been very attractive to users with no other broadband choices. Instead, they wanted $74.95 (in my area), which buys some DARN high speed DSL.
Maybe I'm missing something (I'm no business major, for sure), but isn't it better to sell your product to triple the number of users for 1/2 the money?
The other thing that killed them was lack of exposure. They just rolled out Los Angeles/Orange County a few months ago, yet I heard nothing about it - I only knew because I'd been watching for it. Even some geeky friends of mine didn't know they'd arrived, or had even never heard of the technology.
At least everyone I've ever met that called themself "pinoy" was Filipino.
Linux really needs an Office suite on par with Microsoft.
If a company developed and sold a closed-source office suite that was as good as MS Office, would you buy and use it, if it was better than the open source tools? Or is StarOffice 'it' for you?
And you aren't, posting anonymous coward? Fuck right off.
You would have succeeded in porting a useless OS to another platform. Whee.
But isn't the beauty of Open Source the fact that you can just acquire and compile any needed programs for your favorite platform? Or is that just propaganda bullshit?
They had it all - Donkey Kong, BurgerTime, SubRoc, Zaxxon...
Remember they had that slide-on expansion module so you could still play all your old Atari 2600 games? I got so much use out of that thing.
Does anyone know where I can buy a working ColecoVision? Still got tons of games...
Someone with moderator points, please mod parent back up. It might sting, but it's true.
At one point I tried 'learning' Linux, and found that it would take 20 times longer compared to the other OS mentioned.
If you can't see that the lack of cohesive interface, user-friendlyness, quality documentation, and a common GUI are holding Linux back, I don't know what to tell you. But they are.
1: This guy is a beginner, and you think it's funny he's having trouble with the interface;
2: Linux is so-user unfriendly that you have to have a buy a book to get going.
If a little more effort was put into usability and interface, some of that stuff would be obvious even to a beginning user.
This is a big problem in the adoption of Linux. Look at Sourceforge - there are like thousands of projects, 75% of which are in permanent beta. Think what Linux could be if just 1% of the time spent coding was spend writing documentation and refining interface!
Like I said, I agree that it's stupid. But those are the facts.
In A.D. 2101 War was beginning. Jobs: What happen ? Schiller: Somebody set up us the PC clone. Wozniak: We get signal. Jobs: What ! Wozniak: Main cinema display turn on. Jobs: It's You !! Gates: How are you gentlemen !! Gates: All your marketshare are belong to us. Gates: You are on the way to bankruptcy. Jobs: What you say !! Gates: Your OS have no chance to survive make your time. Gates: HA HA HA HA ....
Jobs: Take off every 'G4' !!
Jobs: You know what you doing.
Jobs: Move 'G4'.
Jobs: For great overpricing.
That said, why should the government drop the charges? It is the job of the Attorney General to enforce the law, not to make law. If the law is bad, change the law. We should be complaining/protesting/recalling to the Congress that voted for the DMCA instead. Let them tell the Attorney General to back off.
Apparently there's no Word Processor for Linux with a built in grammar checker. Maybe Taco can scrounge the net for source and compile his own?
I'm no programmer though, maybe someone else can speculate. But with ARM in the 200-300 mhz range, it seems like you could easily emulate all the old stuff.
In the past, the stability, battery life, and simplicity have been hallmarks of their device, and brought them success.
If there is now enough "oomph" to decode MP3, play video, etc, will Palm stray from their ease of use?