So in 8 years of progress Palm has gone from a 1MB Palm Professional with a backlight, a strange input character set, Notes, Calendar, To-Do, Appointments and Expense. To a 2MB Palm Zire with no backlight, same strange input character set, Notes, Calendar, To-Do, Appointments, and Expense.
I argued this very similar point once on comp.sys.palmtops.pilot and got the following response:
In that time a top-of-the-line PalmOS device has gone from 160x160
monochrome with a 16 MHZ CPU, 4M of RAM and a unique internal
expansion slot... to 320x480 16-bit color with a 66 MHz CPU, 16M
of RAM, and an expansion slot that's shared with digital cameras
and MP3 players... the lightweight devices have gone from 160x160
monochrome with 16MHZ and 2M of RAM to 320x320 color with 33MHz
and 16M of RAM.
The operating system has added a new file system, a new network
stack, and a whole new collection of standard libraries... and it's
still backwards compatible and mostly forwards compatible with the
IIIx and V.
Meanwhile, the top-of-the-line Windows Powered device has gone from
240x320 8-bit color with a 70 MHz CPU, 16M of RAM, and a standard
CF expansion slot to 240x320 16-bit color, a 400 MHz CPU that's
not any faster than the previous 200 MHz one, 64M of RAM, and a
less capable expansion slot. The lightweight model has gone from
40 MHz to 200 MHz, 8-bit color to 16-bit color.
The operating system has changed the user interface incompatibly,
and added new drivers and applications.
So my figuring is that in the time it's taken low-end PPCs to cost
as little as top-of-the-line Palms used to, Palm's increased CPU
speed 4 times, display resolution 6 times, color depth 16 times,
and memory 4-8 times. Windows powered devices have increased CPU
speed 3-5 times, desplay resolution not at all, color depth 2 times,
and memory 4 times.
The operating system has had significant UI makeovers and new apps,
but the underlying functionality hasn't changed and some functionality
has actually been removed from the UI.
If you extend the timeline back to the first models, the differences
are even more striking. The first Palm only had 128K of RAM!
So don't tell me the Palm camp has been standing still, and expect
me to believe you have the vaguest idea what you're talking about.
Something to think about. Although having said that, I do think that Palm are dying a slow death. If OS 5 doesn't take off (and there is nothing radically different about the UI which will make most people go "oh, nothings changed") then they're going to be pretty much shafted.
I have a landline, will I pay a fixed per-minute charge for calling any cellphone in the area?
Yes. It also doesn't matter if the mobile phone is next to you or at the far end of the country.
Bit of history... a long while ago, if you called from a landline on BT to a BT Cellnet mobile (now called O2) then you got the call slightly cheaper. I have a feeling that Oftel (our telecoms governing body) told them to stop doing that as it was anti-competitive.
Or will I pay different charges depending on the particular plan/carrier chosen by the person I'm calling?
No. You'd pay the rate defined by your fixed line carrier (normally BT) for calling a mobile. The person you're calling wouldn't be charged a thing and their price plan wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference.
I don't want to make phone calls without having any control over how much I'm being billed for them.
The only control you don't have is that you don't know which service provider they are on. Since every mobile number starts with 07, you can tell instantly if it's going to cost more than usual. You did used to be able to work out which network provider people were on by the first couple of numbers, but since people are now free to port their number to any mobile network - it doesn't work any more. For example, i'm 07957 which is a T-Mobile allocated number but actually I'm on Vodafone.
It does suck a bit.
At 30p/minute, you could run up a substantial bill with a relatively small amount of talking, and that would make me uncomfortable calling anyone with a mobile number-- unless I knew that person and was sure that they had a good cheap plan.
Their plan has nothing to do with it. It's YOUR plan that matters as YOU will be the one paying for the call. Even so, you can pick up tariffs that give you inclusive minutes to other networks (so they become almost free) and calling mobile to mobile on the same network is either free or billed at something like a couple of pence per minute. Calling landlines (local and national) is the same low pence too.
Why should some stranger be concerned with saving me money? A lot of are concerned with their own outlay and will look for good competitive plans if they're the ones shelling out the money. They don't necessarily do the same when other people are paying.
Eh? You've lost me now. In the UK it's all about what you are paying not what other people are paying. It won't cost you anything to receive them irrespective of what network they are on or even whether they are calling from a home phone, mobile or public phone booth. If you phoned my number now from the US, it wouldn't cost me a thing. Nothing, nada, zip. It would cost you, but then you're making the call.
And if you don't want to pay a particular fee (in an amount you'll know, because it's your plan), you have full control-- just don't pick up the call.
I snipped your comments about packages that reduce the cost as we have them too. As for the not picking up the call, maybe so, but I tend to answer every call I get because it might be important - but again, thats because I don't have to screen them first to decide whether or not I want to pay someone to be able to talk to me.
GOOD LORD, MAN! 48p per minute??? I'll take US-style pricing any day over that. You can get $20/month plans that have cheaper roaming rates than that.
Actually I lied. Sorry. It's 30p/minute on Pay as you go at the most. 10p/minute if you spend over £20 a month.
Thats not roaming by the way, thats just calling another network. Roaming is when you go, say, abroad and your phone connects to another companies network. When that happens the pricing gets rather horrible as you have to pay a small portion of the incoming call (which is more in line with the US, and we hate!).
Based on Hitachi SH7727 @ 160MHz, with 64 MB SDRAM, 32 MB Flash, 3.5" Colour TFT (320x240x64k-16 bit) and USB host controller, the device looks cool. The monochrome will be priced at $200.
With a specification and price like that, it makes the new Palm Zire look rather overpriced wouldn't you say?
What happens in England if a land line person calls a cell phone? Do they have to pay for the cell phone charges?
BT generally tends to charge roughly the same sort of price to call each of the mobile networks. This price is higher than the local/national calls. The advantage we have is that all mobile/personal numbers start with 07. So if you give me 07123 456789 I know how much it's going to cost me before I call.
If I am on T-Mobile and I phone Vodafone then it'll cost me about 48 pence per minute (as it's cross network). Vodafone gets nothing as it's the receiving party. If I call my own network then it costs very little.
In the UK, the operators don't charge you for the receiving bandwidth, just the outgoing one. Therefore it is up to them to make it so that their customers call people as much as possible to get their revenue, rather than encouraging other people to call them (it's much easier to incentivise someone to call people on their mobile than it is to say, "hey, get your friends to phone you more!").
Why do you have to pay BT for "metered" local calls? (In the US local calls are basically a flat fee for essentially unlimited local service.)
It's true that with the bog standard BT package local calls are metered. This is pretty good for people who barely use the phone and hence make very few local calls.
However there are various packages which will give you unmetered dial-up, local and/or national calls:
BT Together with unlimited Local calls [£14.50] per month
BT Together with unlimited UK calls [£18.50] per month
BT Together with unlimited surf calls [£15.50] per month plus ISP charges
BT Together with unlimited Local & surf calls [£20.50] per month plus ISP charges
BT Together with unlimited UK & surf calls [£24.50] per month plus ISP charges
It's not perfect and probably by no means near what the US has, but it's a start. I live in a shared house and my calls come to about £5 a month which means that it's not worth me paying the flat rate as I'd end up losing money.
Mind you, BT have always been renown for dragging their heels when it comes to giving the consumer a better deal... just look at our broadband prices and subsequent low adoption:o(
Slight OT I admit but how on earth did you Americans get to the insane pricing structure of your mobile phones?
That is, the fact that you pay to receive calls. How on earth did you get there and why do you accept it? Sure, you could argue that you pay for the privilidge of people being able to connect you - but as far as I'm concerned, if someone calls me, they should foot the bill because they are the one that is doing the contacting. It's worked with fixed line long enough, why should it be the other way around.
So, can someone please enlighten me? In the UK we can give our mobile number out to anyone because it'll cost them to call us. If we adopted the US style of billing, I'd be utterly loath to give my number out to anyone who didn't absolutely need it.
I've also got friends who'd phone up and ramble on for hours. If we shifted billing patterns I'd end up saying "listen mate, i know [blah] but this is costing me a bleeding fortune". If they want to talk for hours, let them pay.
Really (and I'm not trolling here) is there any decent benefits to this billing method? The best I can come up with is that it's free to phone your mates and talk for hours because the poor sods foot the bill. But I can't really see any other particular advantages.
I'm not surprised they like it for the main reason:
Everything just works
This is something that seems to often get forgotten within the Linux world. When people complain that something hasn't worked, they tend to get a response like this:
It's easy to fix. All you need to do is edit...
And in that split second it strengthens the reasons why people are hesitant to move from comfy Windows land. Editing text files may be easy for you, but for everyone else it doesn't sound like fun.
Generally whenever I've said something like the above I get bombarded with questions like "why do i need to edit this?", "what happens if i make a mistake?" and invariably "why do I have to edit this in the first place?".
Hopefully these nice UI touches will make it into other distros. I'm looking forward to the day I can plug my USB MP3 player in and the OS automatically detects it, mounts it and allows me to use it... without having to hit the command line.
Or are there distros like that already?
Re:Memories...
on
High Score
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
you may (or may not) enjoy Jon Katz's review of High Score: An Illustrated History of Electronic Games [slashdot.org].
I read both and have to admit I found this review not only more interesting, but it had more substance and didn't use stupid Katz-isms like "e-Games".
Mind you I could be biased because I'm a Brit too...
... or that I think Katz's articles are often full of waffly techno-bollocks:o)
At the risk of some blatent plugging, if you're going to read Slashdot on a PDA or offline web-browser (like AvantGo) then try AvantSlash instead.
Hopefully someone a little less biased than me will post a review in reply to this comment. In fact, any suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.
Perhaps the most interesting section is the part that invalidates 'non-negotiable shrink wrap licenses' (EULAs) that limit rights.
Whilst this sounds nice and all, I wonder if it's been thought out fully.
On the top of it, it sounds good. Get rid of those pesky EULA's that disclaim everything. But there is a snag, what about the software that you don't go out and purchase?
I'm all for removing the legallity of a EULA after you've bought something but that puts freely downloadable programs (that you find on the web) in a rather sticky situation. If I release an application that doesn't come in a box and doesn't have to be purchased first then how on earth can I protect myself from the compensation culture that is springing up around me?
If the EULA was made illegal today, just like that, then (unless my take is wrong) free to download applications that rely on the EULA to burnproof someones backside will all end up having to be pulled. There is no way on earth companies (let alone individuals) who provide products this way are going to accept legal liability for software. They want people to agree to certain restrictions otherwise they could be in a horrible situation.
To be honest, I don't think that EULA's are really inheriantly bad. It's just that companies have been abusing them to an extent that they've become rotten.
If they're talking about banning EULA's that you have to agree to after PURCHASING a product then I'm all for it. But if they're talking about ALL licence agreements then I'm a little wary.
I hope I've got the wrong take on this whole EULA situation. If so, please correct me!
The recording industry says its data show consumers who download music from the Internet are purchasing fewer CDs.
Let be honest here. Getting single tracks off P2P networks works pretty well.
But, I would just love for someone within the RIAA (or BPI - UK version) to actually sit down with a list of 5 albums and try to download entire CD's.
It's barely possible. The chances of finding 10 tracks in the same album which aren't badly encoded, labelled wrongly or sampled at 96kbps is extremely high.
Now that doesn't mean that what is happening is ant the less worse (after all, it's a free for all sharing of copyrighted material than many people do not already own) but personally I think that it's only really single sales which are damaged as much as the RIAA/BPI make out to be.
Getting all the tracks of an album decently encoded is bording on the impossible most of the time.
Slashdot posts approximately 10-15 stories a day. It takes you 25 minutes to reject 30 stories. Lets round that up to a nice easy 1 minute per story.
Now if we assume there are 7 working hours in a day. That means that if you're working on nothing else then you'll have rejected 420 news articles during that time.
So my question is, do you actually get 420+ news articles a day? If not, what on earth do you do with the rest of your time?
(Granted the odd article for NewsForge, but, is that it?)
The point I was making, for the benefit of those who couldn't quite grasp it, was that loading into memory a great big executable, with however many shared libraries and other dependent files perl requires, is overkill. A one line shell function in everyone's.profile will do the exact same job.
Except that you didn't say any of that.
So many people, especially here on/. want to show off their leet coding skillz and solve every problem with Perl, when it so often isn't the right solution.
You should try reading Slashdot a little more than once a month.
Actually most people want to show off their 1337 coding skills by reinventing the wheel when something is out there that does the job just fine.
Get that? Or are you equally clueless at understanding follow-up posts as you are the originals?
I understood it just fine, hence my comment about using something else. Which you quite obviously missed.
Good luck with the reading and clear writing course. Looks like you need it.
... is to get your users to use something like "del" instead of "rm". Yes, it's completely non-standard but could just be a simple perl script that moves those files somewhere else (ie. ~/Trashcan).
If you wanted to be really clever about it, you move them outside of their account (so their quota does actually go down) and then clean them up automatically if they've been in there longer than 30 days.
If they want to "restore" something, they just mv it from the Trashcan to their account.
Of course, this is command line only stuff, but if that is all you need then it'll do.
Oh come on - you think that they are really going to put this kind of a barrier down that will potentially exclude the best candidate for the job, maybe the perfect person?
You're totally missing the point.
It's not whether or not that it would happen in real life, it wouldn't.
It's not whether or not the recruitment process is rubbish or not.
It's whether or not you would use OpenOffice and be 110% confident that it would look good on someone elses copy of Word.
I read an interesting comment by Jack Schofield in Computer Weekly about some guy (can't remember his name) who predicted that Apple would switch to using Intel processors. This was because whilst Intel processors are now hitting the 2ghz mark, Apple have been forced to use dual processors to get anywhere near the same sort of speed jumps over time.
It was pointed out that this guy was the same guy that, 5 years ago, predicted the merger of HP and Compaq for all the same reasons that they used today.
Personally I know very little about Mac's, but I can't see why moving to Intel would be a bad thing in any way.
I often found (in the old days, and were talking 8 years ago) that a Mac always appeared to run slower than the same speed PC and was substantially more expensive. I don't know if this is the same these days (having never used OSX - merely looked) but if it's true, anything that can reduce the cost and boost the speed must be good.
Man oh, man, if I hear another person say OpenOffice isn't ready for prime time, I swear I'm gonna yank out their odbc and hit them over the head with it.
The acid test:
You are in the final round for a job at a company you really really really really want to work for. In fact, it is your life dream, the work is what you can do, it is right up your street, it is everything you ever wanted.
They ask you to prepare and send a document to them by Friday. It is your final chance to impress having passed along with 10 other people. This document is make or break. They specifically request it to be submitted in Word 2000 format. If it unopenable or corrupted or badly formatted (consider it a document to go to a client) then they'll reject you on the spot.
Question is: Do you use OpenOffice or not?
If you answer yes - then OpenOffice is ready for prime time.
Ok, enough wasting my time here. I'm just always amazed how out of touch the Linux zealots are with the industry
Actually, I realised a while after I posted it that the wording was wrong. People are choosing Apache over IIS rather than moving to it.
I would tend to assume that once you've picked a server you'll stick with it and patch ad-inifitum as it's something you know and are comfortable with, rather than jump ship and go to something else which you're not au-fait with.
Which would explain why Windows is still massivily prevelant on the desktop.
known ever since the Halloween Documents that they have been running scared, but this looks like a prelude to a whole new round of dirty tricks.
My personal opinion is that if they're running scared, then they will be with regards to servers. Not the desktop.
Disagree with me all you want, but you don't see vast numbers of people jumping the Windows ship to run Linux with Gnome or KDE.
However, you do see them moving off IIS and onto Apache. Which is what I think they'll target with their campaignes.
"slapper" springs to mind. Yes, IIS has plenty of its own, but Microsoft's advertising budget is far higher than that of Linux's and therefore they'll reach more people with their voice.
Wait until Kazaa Lite is released before you go downloading it. Unfortunately www.kazaalite.com doesn't work any more but doa2.host.sk (which is where www.k-lite.tk points to) does.
At the moment they only have 1.7.2 up there, but give them a chance and check back next week.
Slashdot Mirror
I argued this very similar point once on comp.sys.palmtops.pilot and got the following response:
Something to think about. Although having said that, I do think that Palm are dying a slow death. If OS 5 doesn't take off (and there is nothing radically different about the UI which will make most people go "oh, nothings changed") then they're going to be pretty much shafted.
Yes. It also doesn't matter if the mobile phone is next to you or at the far end of the country.
Bit of history ... a long while ago, if you called from a landline on BT to a BT Cellnet mobile (now called O2) then you got the call slightly cheaper. I have a feeling that Oftel (our telecoms governing body) told them to stop doing that as it was anti-competitive.
Or will I pay different charges depending on the particular plan/carrier chosen by the person I'm calling?
No. You'd pay the rate defined by your fixed line carrier (normally BT) for calling a mobile. The person you're calling wouldn't be charged a thing and their price plan wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference.
Hope that clears things up!
The only control you don't have is that you don't know which service provider they are on. Since every mobile number starts with 07, you can tell instantly if it's going to cost more than usual. You did used to be able to work out which network provider people were on by the first couple of numbers, but since people are now free to port their number to any mobile network - it doesn't work any more. For example, i'm 07957 which is a T-Mobile allocated number but actually I'm on Vodafone.
It does suck a bit.
At 30p/minute, you could run up a substantial bill with a relatively small amount of talking, and that would make me uncomfortable calling anyone with a mobile number-- unless I knew that person and was sure that they had a good cheap plan.
Their plan has nothing to do with it. It's YOUR plan that matters as YOU will be the one paying for the call. Even so, you can pick up tariffs that give you inclusive minutes to other networks (so they become almost free) and calling mobile to mobile on the same network is either free or billed at something like a couple of pence per minute. Calling landlines (local and national) is the same low pence too.
Why should some stranger be concerned with saving me money? A lot of are concerned with their own outlay and will look for good competitive plans if they're the ones shelling out the money. They don't necessarily do the same when other people are paying.
Eh? You've lost me now. In the UK it's all about what you are paying not what other people are paying. It won't cost you anything to receive them irrespective of what network they are on or even whether they are calling from a home phone, mobile or public phone booth. If you phoned my number now from the US, it wouldn't cost me a thing. Nothing, nada, zip. It would cost you, but then you're making the call.
And if you don't want to pay a particular fee (in an amount you'll know, because it's your plan), you have full control-- just don't pick up the call.
I snipped your comments about packages that reduce the cost as we have them too. As for the not picking up the call, maybe so, but I tend to answer every call I get because it might be important - but again, thats because I don't have to screen them first to decide whether or not I want to pay someone to be able to talk to me.
Actually I lied. Sorry. It's 30p/minute on Pay as you go at the most. 10p/minute if you spend over £20 a month.
Thats not roaming by the way, thats just calling another network. Roaming is when you go, say, abroad and your phone connects to another companies network. When that happens the pricing gets rather horrible as you have to pay a small portion of the incoming call (which is more in line with the US, and we hate!).
With a specification and price like that, it makes the new Palm Zire look rather overpriced wouldn't you say?
BT generally tends to charge roughly the same sort of price to call each of the mobile networks. This price is higher than the local/national calls. The advantage we have is that all mobile/personal numbers start with 07. So if you give me 07123 456789 I know how much it's going to cost me before I call.
If I am on T-Mobile and I phone Vodafone then it'll cost me about 48 pence per minute (as it's cross network). Vodafone gets nothing as it's the receiving party. If I call my own network then it costs very little.
In the UK, the operators don't charge you for the receiving bandwidth, just the outgoing one. Therefore it is up to them to make it so that their customers call people as much as possible to get their revenue, rather than encouraging other people to call them (it's much easier to incentivise someone to call people on their mobile than it is to say, "hey, get your friends to phone you more!").
It's true that with the bog standard BT package local calls are metered. This is pretty good for people who barely use the phone and hence make very few local calls.
However there are various packages which will give you unmetered dial-up, local and/or national calls:
From their site:
It's not perfect and probably by no means near what the US has, but it's a start. I live in a shared house and my calls come to about £5 a month which means that it's not worth me paying the flat rate as I'd end up losing money.
Mind you, BT have always been renown for dragging their heels when it comes to giving the consumer a better deal ... just look at our broadband prices and subsequent low adoption :o(
That is, the fact that you pay to receive calls. How on earth did you get there and why do you accept it? Sure, you could argue that you pay for the privilidge of people being able to connect you - but as far as I'm concerned, if someone calls me, they should foot the bill because they are the one that is doing the contacting. It's worked with fixed line long enough, why should it be the other way around.
So, can someone please enlighten me? In the UK we can give our mobile number out to anyone because it'll cost them to call us. If we adopted the US style of billing, I'd be utterly loath to give my number out to anyone who didn't absolutely need it.
I've also got friends who'd phone up and ramble on for hours. If we shifted billing patterns I'd end up saying "listen mate, i know [blah] but this is costing me a bleeding fortune". If they want to talk for hours, let them pay.
Really (and I'm not trolling here) is there any decent benefits to this billing method? The best I can come up with is that it's free to phone your mates and talk for hours because the poor sods foot the bill. But I can't really see any other particular advantages.
Everything just works
This is something that seems to often get forgotten within the Linux world. When people complain that something hasn't worked, they tend to get a response like this:
It's easy to fix. All you need to do is edit...
And in that split second it strengthens the reasons why people are hesitant to move from comfy Windows land. Editing text files may be easy for you, but for everyone else it doesn't sound like fun.
Generally whenever I've said something like the above I get bombarded with questions like "why do i need to edit this?", "what happens if i make a mistake?" and invariably "why do I have to edit this in the first place?".
Hopefully these nice UI touches will make it into other distros. I'm looking forward to the day I can plug my USB MP3 player in and the OS automatically detects it, mounts it and allows me to use it ... without having to hit the command line.
Or are there distros like that already?
I read both and have to admit I found this review not only more interesting, but it had more substance and didn't use stupid Katz-isms like "e-Games".
Mind you I could be biased because I'm a Brit too ...
Oh god, please no.
At the risk of some blatent plugging, if you're going to read Slashdot on a PDA or offline web-browser (like AvantGo) then try AvantSlash instead.
Hopefully someone a little less biased than me will post a review in reply to this comment. In fact, any suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.
Whilst this sounds nice and all, I wonder if it's been thought out fully.
On the top of it, it sounds good. Get rid of those pesky EULA's that disclaim everything. But there is a snag, what about the software that you don't go out and purchase?
I'm all for removing the legallity of a EULA after you've bought something but that puts freely downloadable programs (that you find on the web) in a rather sticky situation. If I release an application that doesn't come in a box and doesn't have to be purchased first then how on earth can I protect myself from the compensation culture that is springing up around me?
If the EULA was made illegal today, just like that, then (unless my take is wrong) free to download applications that rely on the EULA to burnproof someones backside will all end up having to be pulled. There is no way on earth companies (let alone individuals) who provide products this way are going to accept legal liability for software. They want people to agree to certain restrictions otherwise they could be in a horrible situation.
To be honest, I don't think that EULA's are really inheriantly bad. It's just that companies have been abusing them to an extent that they've become rotten.
If they're talking about banning EULA's that you have to agree to after PURCHASING a product then I'm all for it. But if they're talking about ALL licence agreements then I'm a little wary.
I hope I've got the wrong take on this whole EULA situation. If so, please correct me!
Let be honest here. Getting single tracks off P2P networks works pretty well.
But, I would just love for someone within the RIAA (or BPI - UK version) to actually sit down with a list of 5 albums and try to download entire CD's.
It's barely possible. The chances of finding 10 tracks in the same album which aren't badly encoded, labelled wrongly or sampled at 96kbps is extremely high.
Now that doesn't mean that what is happening is ant the less worse (after all, it's a free for all sharing of copyrighted material than many people do not already own) but personally I think that it's only really single sales which are damaged as much as the RIAA/BPI make out to be.
Getting all the tracks of an album decently encoded is bording on the impossible most of the time.
Now if we assume there are 7 working hours in a day. That means that if you're working on nothing else then you'll have rejected 420 news articles during that time.
So my question is, do you actually get 420+ news articles a day? If not, what on earth do you do with the rest of your time?
(Granted the odd article for NewsForge, but, is that it?)
Can't say fairer than that :o)
Except that you didn't say any of that.
So many people, especially here on /. want to show off their leet coding skillz and solve every problem with Perl, when it so often isn't the right solution.
You should try reading Slashdot a little more than once a month.
Actually most people want to show off their 1337 coding skills by reinventing the wheel when something is out there that does the job just fine.
Get that? Or are you equally clueless at understanding follow-up posts as you are the originals?
I understood it just fine, hence my comment about using something else. Which you quite obviously missed.
Good luck with the reading and clear writing course. Looks like you need it.
Oh god, that sound is the average IQ of this place dropping by another 10 points.
If Perl is already installed and being used, then the fact it's 1194 files is immaterial.
You could always use sh you know. Or bash, or PHP or even C. Or you as equally clueless which those as you are with your comments?
If you wanted to be really clever about it, you move them outside of their account (so their quota does actually go down) and then clean them up automatically if they've been in there longer than 30 days.
If they want to "restore" something, they just mv it from the Trashcan to their account.
Of course, this is command line only stuff, but if that is all you need then it'll do.
Damn. I thought I'd typed "months". Sorry, my mistake.
Thanks for the name. It was bugging me.
You're totally missing the point.
It's not whether or not that it would happen in real life, it wouldn't.
It's not whether or not the recruitment process is rubbish or not.
It's whether or not you would use OpenOffice and be 110% confident that it would look good on someone elses copy of Word.
Now go back and try the question again ...
It was pointed out that this guy was the same guy that, 5 years ago, predicted the merger of HP and Compaq for all the same reasons that they used today.
Personally I know very little about Mac's, but I can't see why moving to Intel would be a bad thing in any way.
I often found (in the old days, and were talking 8 years ago) that a Mac always appeared to run slower than the same speed PC and was substantially more expensive. I don't know if this is the same these days (having never used OSX - merely looked) but if it's true, anything that can reduce the cost and boost the speed must be good.
The acid test:
You are in the final round for a job at a company you really really really really want to work for. In fact, it is your life dream, the work is what you can do, it is right up your street, it is everything you ever wanted.
They ask you to prepare and send a document to them by Friday. It is your final chance to impress having passed along with 10 other people. This document is make or break. They specifically request it to be submitted in Word 2000 format. If it unopenable or corrupted or badly formatted (consider it a document to go to a client) then they'll reject you on the spot.
Question is: Do you use OpenOffice or not?
If you answer yes - then OpenOffice is ready for prime time.
If you answer no - then it is not.
Actually, I realised a while after I posted it that the wording was wrong. People are choosing Apache over IIS rather than moving to it.
I would tend to assume that once you've picked a server you'll stick with it and patch ad-inifitum as it's something you know and are comfortable with, rather than jump ship and go to something else which you're not au-fait with.
Which would explain why Windows is still massivily prevelant on the desktop.
My personal opinion is that if they're running scared, then they will be with regards to servers. Not the desktop.
Disagree with me all you want, but you don't see vast numbers of people jumping the Windows ship to run Linux with Gnome or KDE.
However, you do see them moving off IIS and onto Apache. Which is what I think they'll target with their campaignes.
"slapper" springs to mind. Yes, IIS has plenty of its own, but Microsoft's advertising budget is far higher than that of Linux's and therefore they'll reach more people with their voice.
Wait until Kazaa Lite is released before you go downloading it. Unfortunately www.kazaalite.com doesn't work any more but doa2.host.sk (which is where www.k-lite.tk points to) does.
At the moment they only have 1.7.2 up there, but give them a chance and check back next week.