it takes about 3 months before a unpatched Linux machine will be owned
Nope, that's about right. As a newbie I put Slackware on a machine and it took about that long to get X to work with my AGP video card. Until I got a GUI, I didn't feel like I was in control.;-)
This is just my best theory, but I'm pretty sure the "Amazingly Basic" cable you can get to apply for the price break is still a boon to the cable co.
I had basic once. I dropped it when it went from 6.95/month to 12.95/month. It just wasn't worth it. I have no idea how much basic is anymore and I could care less.
I'm old enough to remember when Cable TV was mostly advertisement free. Now basic cable (which you pay for) has more advertisements than free TV. The premium services are now where cable used to be. So what does paying for TV get you then? More garbage.
Verizon does the same thing, last thing they want is you ditching their PSTN,
The differance is I have a phone. I would consider ditching the PSTN so an incentive not to is good business sense.
I don't have cable TV. I don't have Satelite TV. So why are they providing a penalty when I just want Internet? The penalty is what takes the service from maybe to no way.
I have dial-up which keeps up with the fastest I can read Slashdot and e-mail. I have a 100 meg connection at work for driver downloads and such. I raced my work connection and home connection. A 4:50:37 download at home took 4:08 at work. Why pay $60/month for a slower connection? I'd rather buy a larger Jump Drive and save the $720/year for a hot new machine every 2 years. This month my savings are building my Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz system.
I'm hoping the next shot will be against the penalty for not subscribing to the Cable TV service. I could see them taking a proper shot to woo users off Satelite TV by offering a Cable TV discount. But nailing non-subscription TV users with a extra charge (disguised as a internet price break for having cable TV) is why they don't have me online with them yet.
Q. What is the cost of College Publisher? A. College Publisher does not charge its partner newspapers. Q. How does College Publisher make money on this deal? A. As College Publisher provides the technology free-of-charge; we retain the right to place banners, buttons or links on each site
I'm always amazed at how ass-backward conservative Slashdot is when it comes to things like gambling
It's not hard to figure that one out. Most programmers have has some sort of stats class and know some math. Unless you are the house, then you don't win. The longer you play, the more money lost. Programmers know the odds, where the ohh wow, lookey at the bright blinking lights and big $$$ signs are the suckers. They actualy believe that someday it could be all theirs on a a silver platter. The rest of us know the odds are almost as bad as getting to the moon by stacking bricks high enough. The further you go the more it takes to go even higher and it's always ever so just out of reach.
I look at it as a zero sum gain industry. It only re-distributes wealth. It has no wealth creation or real value growth. Many industries such as farming take labor and make a product. Other than entertainment value, gambling has no product. All gambeling money is re-distributed with no net gain. That's the thing I have against the state lottery or state video poker. The state provides no product and just takes the suckers money.
I would rather see the state earn money by providing services such as affordable broadband such as in Washington State. The state is providing $40/month broadband with telephone and 5 Gig bandwidth. It beats video poker.
I don't know anyone that has support for a PBX, but, many phone systems work with POTS lines, so for instance a Meridian system could be connected to VOIP boxes to provide a small office with several outside lines and FAX service.
It might be time to see if any PBX equipment can go from an ISDN line to a broadband VOIP connection instead. That sounds like what you are looking for.
A quick Google search for VOIP PBX came up with this article on just that subject..
http://www.networkcomputing.com/1411/1411ibg12.h tm l
"In the market for a new PBX? Give serious consideration to one with VoIP (voice over IP). We surveyed IP PBX vendors asking for systems that could support 200 or more phones. Not only did we find vendors that could support well beyond that number, we found systems with a great variety of features to choose from.
but probably comparable to the inefficencies involved in millions of homes
You hit the problem right square that time. My house is not effecient. It uses about 30 KWH/day. Cost of storage is not the problem. The problem is affording enough capacity. Try pricing a solar solution that can support a 30 KWH/day power appetite. The trickle I generate is simply used to suppliment the draw with none left over to store.
My 1% generation capacity is about $300. For 100% capacity + double that to cover storage conversion effeciency of 50% (Being optomistic here) would put my generation cost in the $60,000 range, not counting storrage and conversion costs. It's much cheaper over the life of the house to simply connect to the grid. The intial cost and loan service costs would never have a break even point at current rates. (the loan payment over the remainder of my lifetime would be more than my electric bill.)
A better investment is proper witerization of the house to improve effeciency.
Why is it even possible to let it download executables?
Actualy I think that it runs as an executible to make the DRM work in the first place.
What good would it do if you downloaded a file and the key and they worked anywhere they were both put?
I think the DRM works by the requesting delivery of the DRM file to everyone (distribution unaltered) the the key is requested (license paid for). The file comes as an executible so it can scan the system so it can gather system specific information such as the hard drive serial number. The active key then reports back with a hash of the information. The rights vendor then issues a hashed key for that specific machine. That's how the DRM key is made unique for a specific piece of hardware and the specific DRM content so it won't work together elsewhere.
Remember, many DRM files are shared and passed along as a simple e-mail attachment or website download. To view the content, you gotta buy a hardware specific key. It's the active content of the key handshake that is exploitable.
Generic names most always mean I get free wireless access.
My friend upgraded to.11g. I got the old.11b. I don't have broadband. I think it would be fun jut to power it up (changed password) with the default SSID, but not connected to anything. It might be fun to watch a wardriver stop and try to hack it.
Great, one of my solar panels puts out 4,642mA in the noon sun. How do I effeciently convert the other 4,630 mA? Seriously, most people don't have the space for a huge electrolysis bank. Capturing the power for later storage and later conversion back to electricity is still a problem with solar. If you are on the grid, it's best to simply use all you generate and use it to offset the draw from traditional sources.
For example, for a family of 6 with an electric water heater, electric stove, and most of the modern conviences such as washer/dryer, dishwasher, microwave, lights, TV, videogame, computer, vacuum, etc.... Our typical usage is about 30 KWH/day. My measly $300 solar pannel of 65 watts only puts this out an average of 5 hours/day or 65*5=325 Watts/day. That is about 1/3 of one KWH/day or about 1% of our daily use. Why try to store it? Why bother to pay for something to store it in? It makes more sense to offload the local utility by putting it into the water heater thus drawing less to make hot water. I don't worry about overheating the hot water. An 80 gallon tank takes quite a while to overheat when fed 65 watts.
On a side note following your links, you may have a high effeciency getting hydrogen, but getting it back as electricity may not be as effecient.
From the link to the link on fuel cells.. No moving parts Reliable Efficient (50%-90% presently): This is major long-term advantage - fuel cells are not limited by the thermodynamics constraints that heat-based combustion type processes are subject to. Heat generated can be captured for other uses Operates cleanly (emits only water) Quiet
It sounds like they have a ways to go to get electricity to storage and back to be effecient.
In summary, if possible, use electricity as it's generated to ditch the storage losses.
No county can make excuses when this county with 2600 square miles will soon be fully lit.
Here is what the local cable TV provider does not provide.. Value.. Look at what you get for $40/month..
Grant County residents pay $40 per month (plus a small installation fee) for 5 Mbps of dedicated bandwidth delivering cable TV, telephone, Internet, and automatic meter reading services.
If I could get that level of service for that price, I'd sign up tonight!
Considering I'd drop my POTS in a heartbeat, the price would be free...
In fact I once expressed the idea that people should have a right to the internet
You would be doing good to try to roll back the things knocking many people off basic POTS telephone. There is so many add on fees and such on a telephone line (that was considered a basic requirement) has pushed it into the price range of cell phones. Why should POTS be priced near the same prices as basic cell service? We need to fix POS taxes and fees before we work on broadband.
There just isn't enough population in some areas to seriously consider putting in the wires to bring high speed internet to these areas.
In some areas there are not enough high income families that can or will sign up.
In my case, I'm too far away for DSL. I have cable at the curb. I don't subscribe. They charge an extra $10/month if you don't also subscribe to the TV srvice, which I don't. If I did get cable Internet, then my DL speed would only increase by a factor of 10-20 over dial-up. My 4 hour scanner driver download would go from like 4 hours to a little under a half hour. For that, it would cost about $720/year more than my current ISP. Instead, I downloaded the driver or updates and such at work. The driver download took 4 minutes. I love flash drives. The money saved buys my new PC every 2 years.
Broadband in the US is not priced for the masses yet unless it's leveraged against other services dropped. I may get cable broadband and Vontage VOIP and apply the POTS line cost saved toward the broadband bill. Due to the shrinking number of landline consumers, I think this is the way many are getting broadband. Many are not getting broadband just for the PC. It's not priced right for that.
A prime example of a family in a surburban area that is not a broadband consumer is the TV show "The Simpsons". They have rabbit ears on the TV so it looks like they don't even have cable. It's probably on the street in Springfield but they choose not to subscribe due to budget priorities such as music lessons for Lisa.
Not all low subscription areas are low population desnity areas in the sticks.
Until they make hot water tank dip tubes last forever, then I'm not considering plastic for any hot water use. I'm on my 3rd dip tube. Plastic is not up to par for hot water. I know they have a hot water type PVC, but if it doesn't work in a water heater, then I don't expetct it to be robust in the walls over the long term.
However it's the first one to hit a big box store (Wal-Mart). I treat it just the same as any first gen offering. I'll wait for the 3rd gen to get the bugs thinned out. Running as root is a step back to Windows 95/98 style of software. Single user only. This is not a family multi-user PC OS.
As much as you knock it, there is a lot to be said about a pre-installed version of Linux of any variety.
I have a home built box that was running Windows 98. It is a Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz system on an Asus motherboard. Needless to say it was buggy.
I tried installing 4 diffrent distros of Linux on it. (Slackware, RH, Caldera, & SUSE) All failed. The Asus motherboard has integrated sound, USB, and Broadcom Ethernet. None of the distro's found any of this hardware.
Neither of my AGP video cards were properly supported. My 64 Meg card was recognised as having 64K of memory so it ran as a 16 color VGA card. It was painful.
To make it fair, Windows 98 didn't find any of the hardware either, but ASUS provided a windows driver disk which fixed the problem. The video card installed as a standard VGA card. I had to delete the adaptor, then install the driver from the CD, so even Windows missed on the video card.
Going online to download the Linux drivers if they are provided is kind of a joke. Linux did not find the network card.
There is a market for an installed Linux distribution. The end user isn't stuck with debugging all the incompatible hardware.
Walmart is starting cheap to try the market. Later when it does well, then expect more upscale distributions and hardware to come on the market in the main retail channel.
Slashdot Mirror
Tell the millions of gamers out there about it.
Certianly as soon as all their Win games run with no issues.. OOPS, they haven't done that with Windows yet!
it takes about 3 months before a unpatched Linux machine will be owned
;-)
Nope, that's about right. As a newbie I put Slackware on a machine and it took about that long to get X to work with my AGP video card. Until I got a GUI, I didn't feel like I was in control.
This is just my best theory, but I'm pretty sure the "Amazingly Basic" cable you can get to apply for the price break is still a boon to the cable co.
I had basic once. I dropped it when it went from 6.95/month to 12.95/month. It just wasn't worth it. I have no idea how much basic is anymore and I could care less.
I'm old enough to remember when Cable TV was mostly advertisement free. Now basic cable (which you pay for) has more advertisements than free TV. The premium services are now where cable used to be. So what does paying for TV get you then? More garbage.
Verizon does the same thing, last thing they want is you ditching their PSTN,
The differance is I have a phone. I would consider ditching the PSTN so an incentive not to is good business sense.
I don't have cable TV. I don't have Satelite TV. So why are they providing a penalty when I just want Internet? The penalty is what takes the service from maybe to no way.
I have dial-up which keeps up with the fastest I can read Slashdot and e-mail. I have a 100 meg connection at work for driver downloads and such. I raced my work connection and home connection. A 4:50:37 download at home took 4:08 at work. Why pay $60/month for a slower connection? I'd rather buy a larger Jump Drive and save the $720/year for a hot new machine every 2 years. This month my savings are building my Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz system.
Grr,
I just went to compare rates (I'm not in the service area) and they want to know your street address before they give price.
How much does the service cost?
Do they charge more for the Internet if you don't also subscribe to Cable TV? (discount not provided for non-TV subscribers)
Is their VOIP package competitive?
Level of Internet speed is one thing.. How about comparing value? I can order an OC48 at 2.488 Gbps, but you don't want to see the bill.
I'm hoping the next shot will be against the penalty for not subscribing to the Cable TV service. I could see them taking a proper shot to woo users off Satelite TV by offering a Cable TV discount. But nailing non-subscription TV users with a extra charge (disguised as a internet price break for having cable TV) is why they don't have me online with them yet.
From their FAQ;
Q. What is the cost of College Publisher?
A. College Publisher does not charge its partner newspapers.
Q. How does College Publisher make money on this deal?
A. As College Publisher provides the technology free-of-charge; we retain the right to place banners, buttons or links on each site
I'm always amazed at how ass-backward conservative Slashdot is when it comes to things like gambling
It's not hard to figure that one out. Most programmers have has some sort of stats class and know some math. Unless you are the house, then you don't win. The longer you play, the more money lost. Programmers know the odds, where the ohh wow, lookey at the bright blinking lights and big $$$ signs are the suckers. They actualy believe that someday it could be all theirs on a a silver platter. The rest of us know the odds are almost as bad as getting to the moon by stacking bricks high enough. The further you go the more it takes to go even higher and it's always ever so just out of reach.
The user can change the batteries. I think they just beat Apple on a very sore point.
Simplicity in changing the battery.
One down and 10 to go..
I look at it as a zero sum gain industry. It only re-distributes wealth. It has no wealth creation or real value growth. Many industries such as farming take labor and make a product. Other than entertainment value, gambling has no product. All gambeling money is re-distributed with no net gain. That's the thing I have against the state lottery or state video poker. The state provides no product and just takes the suckers money.
I would rather see the state earn money by providing services such as affordable broadband such as in Washington State. The state is providing $40/month broadband with telephone and 5 Gig bandwidth. It beats video poker.
I don't know anyone that has support for a PBX, but, many phone systems work with POTS lines, so for instance a Meridian system could be connected to VOIP boxes to provide a small office with several outside lines and FAX service.
h tm l
It might be time to see if any PBX equipment can go from an ISDN line to a broadband VOIP connection instead. That sounds like what you are looking for.
A quick Google search for VOIP PBX came up with this article on just that subject..
http://www.networkcomputing.com/1411/1411ibg12.
"In the market for a new PBX? Give serious consideration to one with VoIP (voice over IP). We surveyed IP PBX vendors asking for systems that could support 200 or more phones. Not only did we find vendors that could support well beyond that number, we found systems with a great variety of features to choose from.
but probably comparable to the inefficencies involved in millions of homes
You hit the problem right square that time. My house is not effecient. It uses about 30 KWH/day. Cost of storage is not the problem. The problem is affording enough capacity. Try pricing a solar solution that can support a 30 KWH/day power appetite. The trickle I generate is simply used to suppliment the draw with none left over to store.
My 1% generation capacity is about $300. For 100% capacity + double that to cover storage conversion effeciency of 50% (Being optomistic here) would put my generation cost in the $60,000 range, not counting storrage and conversion costs. It's much cheaper over the life of the house to simply connect to the grid. The intial cost and loan service costs would never have a break even point at current rates. (the loan payment over the remainder of my lifetime would be more than my electric bill.)
A better investment is proper witerization of the house to improve effeciency.
The Microsoft Optical Wheel Mouse is a great product. You can't fuck up a mouse, though.
Wanna bet?
In the first release of the MS optical mouse, I bought one. I was fed up with skipping mice.
Things went fine on my new computer install until I installed the mouse driver software..
It was a new homebuilt computer still on the coffee table in the living room..
EULA??? for a mouse.. yea right!!
My mouse can't find my modem or Internet connection? WTF???
I gave the mouse away and bought a Logitech optical instead.
I quit buying any hardware that MS made unless it didn't require software drivers.
Why is it even possible to let it download executables?
Actualy I think that it runs as an executible to make the DRM work in the first place.
What good would it do if you downloaded a file and the key and they worked anywhere they were both put?
I think the DRM works by the requesting delivery of the DRM file to everyone (distribution unaltered) the the key is requested (license paid for). The file comes as an executible so it can scan the system so it can gather system specific information such as the hard drive serial number. The active key then reports back with a hash of the information. The rights vendor then issues a hashed key for that specific machine. That's how the DRM key is made unique for a specific piece of hardware and the specific DRM content so it won't work together elsewhere.
Remember, many DRM files are shared and passed along as a simple e-mail attachment or website download. To view the content, you gotta buy a hardware specific key. It's the active content of the key handshake that is exploitable.
it was connected directly to a proxy server that rerouted every web request
What? with a story like that and no link to the proxy? I was looking to test your proxy.
Generic names most always mean I get free wireless access.
.11g. I got the old .11b. I don't have broadband. I think it would be fun jut to power it up (changed password) with the default SSID, but not connected to anything. It might be fun to watch a wardriver stop and try to hack it.
My friend upgraded to
12 milliamps at 14 volt.
Great, one of my solar panels puts out 4,642mA in the noon sun. How do I effeciently convert the other 4,630 mA? Seriously, most people don't have the space for a huge electrolysis bank. Capturing the power for later storage and later conversion back to electricity is still a problem with solar. If you are on the grid, it's best to simply use all you generate and use it to offset the draw from traditional sources.
For example, for a family of 6 with an electric water heater, electric stove, and most of the modern conviences such as washer/dryer, dishwasher, microwave, lights, TV, videogame, computer, vacuum, etc.... Our typical usage is about 30 KWH/day. My measly $300 solar pannel of 65 watts only puts this out an average of 5 hours/day or 65*5=325 Watts/day. That is about 1/3 of one KWH/day or about 1% of our daily use. Why try to store it? Why bother to pay for something to store it in? It makes more sense to offload the local utility by putting it into the water heater thus drawing less to make hot water. I don't worry about overheating the hot water. An 80 gallon tank takes quite a while to overheat when fed 65 watts.
On a side note following your links, you may have a high effeciency getting hydrogen, but getting it back as electricity may not be as effecient.
From the link to the link on fuel cells..
No moving parts
Reliable
Efficient (50%-90% presently): This is major long-term advantage - fuel cells are not limited by the thermodynamics constraints that heat-based combustion type processes are subject to.
Heat generated can be captured for other uses
Operates cleanly (emits only water)
Quiet
It sounds like they have a ways to go to get electricity to storage and back to be effecient.
In summary, if possible, use electricity as it's generated to ditch the storage losses.
No county can make excuses when this county with 2600 square miles will soon be fully lit.
Here is what the local cable TV provider does not provide.. Value.. Look at what you get for $40/month..
Grant County residents pay $40 per month (plus a small installation fee) for 5 Mbps of dedicated bandwidth delivering cable TV, telephone, Internet, and automatic meter reading services.
If I could get that level of service for that price, I'd sign up tonight!
Considering I'd drop my POTS in a heartbeat, the price would be free...
In fact I once expressed the idea that people should have a right to the internet
You would be doing good to try to roll back the things knocking many people off basic POTS telephone. There is so many add on fees and such on a telephone line (that was considered a basic requirement) has pushed it into the price range of cell phones. Why should POTS be priced near the same prices as basic cell service? We need to fix POS taxes and fees before we work on broadband.
There just isn't enough population in some areas to seriously consider putting in the wires to bring high speed internet to these areas.
In some areas there are not enough high income families that can or will sign up.
In my case, I'm too far away for DSL. I have cable at the curb. I don't subscribe. They charge an extra $10/month if you don't also subscribe to the TV srvice, which I don't. If I did get cable Internet, then my DL speed would only increase by a factor of 10-20 over dial-up. My 4 hour scanner driver download would go from like 4 hours to a little under a half hour. For that, it would cost about $720/year more than my current ISP. Instead, I downloaded the driver or updates and such at work. The driver download took 4 minutes. I love flash drives. The money saved buys my new PC every 2 years.
Broadband in the US is not priced for the masses yet unless it's leveraged against other services dropped. I may get cable broadband and Vontage VOIP and apply the POTS line cost saved toward the broadband bill. Due to the shrinking number of landline consumers, I think this is the way many are getting broadband. Many are not getting broadband just for the PC. It's not priced right for that.
A prime example of a family in a surburban area that is not a broadband consumer is the TV show "The Simpsons". They have rabbit ears on the TV so it looks like they don't even have cable. It's probably on the street in Springfield but they choose not to subscribe due to budget priorities such as music lessons for Lisa.
Not all low subscription areas are low population desnity areas in the sticks.
I ended up using plastic plumbing.
Until they make hot water tank dip tubes last forever, then I'm not considering plastic for any hot water use. I'm on my 3rd dip tube. Plastic is not up to par for hot water. I know they have a hot water type PVC, but if it doesn't work in a water heater, then I don't expetct it to be robust in the walls over the long term.
I just have complaints with Linspire.
So do I, especialy running as Root.
However it's the first one to hit a big box store (Wal-Mart). I treat it just the same as any first gen offering. I'll wait for the 3rd gen to get the bugs thinned out. Running as root is a step back to Windows 95/98 style of software. Single user only. This is not a family multi-user PC OS.
As much as you knock it, there is a lot to be said about a pre-installed version of Linux of any variety.
I have a home built box that was running Windows 98. It is a Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz system on an Asus motherboard. Needless to say it was buggy.
I tried installing 4 diffrent distros of Linux on it. (Slackware, RH, Caldera, & SUSE) All failed. The Asus motherboard has integrated sound, USB, and Broadcom Ethernet. None of the distro's found any of this hardware.
Neither of my AGP video cards were properly supported. My 64 Meg card was recognised as having 64K of memory so it ran as a 16 color VGA card. It was painful.
To make it fair, Windows 98 didn't find any of the hardware either, but ASUS provided a windows driver disk which fixed the problem. The video card installed as a standard VGA card. I had to delete the adaptor, then install the driver from the CD, so even Windows missed on the video card.
Going online to download the Linux drivers if they are provided is kind of a joke. Linux did not find the network card.
There is a market for an installed Linux distribution. The end user isn't stuck with debugging all the incompatible hardware.
Walmart is starting cheap to try the market. Later when it does well, then expect more upscale distributions and hardware to come on the market in the main retail channel.
Don't count the Intel Centrino in the losers list. The mobile connected products rock!
Naturally IE is the prefered browser, and what most things are written for
Which is why I use Norton AV at work and use Firefox at home. There is way too many little things written for IE.