Doesn't matter now because SCO is starting to do real harm to linux and threatening users and adoptors and even directing implicit accusations of theft at linux developers. Until SCO shows/proves that it has a case, it should be forced to restrain from making ANY claims against users. They don't have anything until AFTER the court games are all over yet they are behaving right now as if they have won. Nope. Put up or shut up NOW. Go ahead with the court case but refrain from trying to extort money or damage linux businesses any more.
Doesn't DRI provide a similar problem for linux/XFree86? If not a security problem, then certainly a stability problem. I have had games (in linux) that freeze up X so hard that nothing can be done to recover the system short of a hard reboot. It is not always possible to connect another computer to the system that is locked up so frickin hard and ssh in to fix things (like kill/restart X or terminate the offending program).
I'm not dissing linux here...it is all I use...but this DRI thing (direct access to hardware) has made me wonder on occassion as well as curse in response to a hard lockup.
No, not good but...the enemy of my enemy is (contingent) my friend. For the moment.
I am happy to see some REALLY big screws being put to M$, and the fact that these aren't government screws mean they have real biting threads. Since the outcome/punishment (screwing M$ big time) isn't based on the political winds blowing in the whitehouse, it is very likely going to go to a real conclusion. So long as the conclusion is M$ gets really screwed that is good. AFTER that, AFTER M$ is blown away, I would like to see some reconsideration in the legislatures of the US and world rethink the idea of IP and software patents. AFTER the damage is already done and irreversible for M$, I would like to see the whole IP/software patent thing go away too.
At this moment, however, I see this as something along the lines of Iran fighting a war against some other looney, extremist, fundamentalist religious country. GOOD! Blow the shit out of each other, totally wreck each other, you idiots and loones. Once it is all over and the dust has settled, hopefully, those that remain in both countries would have clearer heads and working critical thinking capabilities and would correct the problems that led up to the dustup.
Let the companies destroy each other using stupid current ideas and laws - after the devestation, the idiocy of the laws/ideas will be apparent and they can be changed. Basically, let some good come out of this ONLY after the devestation eliminates the worst offenders of the current system.
I never implied I was "a world famous bio-mechanist or whatever". I am simply a biochemist doing biochemistry. Nothing earth-shattering (yet, perhaps I luck onto something). I am a basic example of a person in my line of work and this includes: molecular biologists, biochemists, biologists, zoologists, etc. By and large, these people (in my direct experience) use Word and Endnote. No doubt there are a few savvy and masochistic individuals who use latex and bibtex in their raw form, writing with vi or emacs. I do know that some colleagues in the local Comp.Sci department use latex (perhaps via lyx) for writing their papers. This is also true of many in mathematics and physics...but not biology and its subspecialties.
Latex is NOT the answer. It works fine for some but it is not fine for most. Going from Word or Wordperfect to Latex just isn't going to happen. It only happened for ME personally because I am a linux partisan and don't own, nor intend to buy, Office and Endnote. I needed to find a reasonably simple-to-use wordprocessor that would do references AND still permit me to provide my then-thesis advisor with a file copy of my papers and thesis in a form that was accessible to him using word (He used word and endnote on a mac). My references I used in all my papers/thesis also had to be provided to him in a form that was computer accessible to him (refer format or bibtex will work with endnote with the proper filters added).
It was HARD for me to write my papers and thesis using Lyx because it is not intuitive and does not behave like normal wordprocessors. I managed to get by but I would much prefer a more word-like situation. OO/SO COULD be that answer if it had bibliography/reference handling capabilities beyond its current pathetic abortion of a version it has now (and has had for far too long). If Textmaker got to this holy grail first, I would buy textmaker with joy, or Hancom Office, or Gobe...or KOffice or Abiword. I don't enjoy lyx and I would NEVER get colleagues to go to lyx just for the sake of running linux as well. Why go through that pain if you are neutral wrt M$ but use Word and Endnote heavily and with ease? Dump that and switch to something like latex/lyx and bibtex? Get real. Ain't gonna happen. They are great for a relative few and it has served me in lieu of something easier/equivalent (functionally) but I would switch to something else in linux in a fraction of a heartbeat if given the chance.
Are you as dense as you seem? Yes, there was a day when there were only typewriters and everything was done by hand. Before that, it was all done by hand, for real, with pen and paper. Do you really suggest that this is an answer? With windoze and office/endnote, you have a simple, fast means of collecting, organizing, and utilizing references for writing researched documents. Such is the whole point of computers, to make such tasks (and others) EASIER. What planet are you on?
Write a thesis in a scientific area and do all the references by hand. Your friends will finish their thesis far ahead of you and be enjoying the fruit of their graduate labor while you stupidly wile away your time doing what was once done on a typwriter on a computer. I suggest you get rid of your computer and use the typewriter alone as you obviously do not understand the point of technology, computers, etc.
I had a thesis that was 180 pages in length and had ~800 references. Do that by hand? This is 2003, not 1973. We have COM-PU-TERS now with WORD-PROCESSORS. They make life easier when properly used/designed. That is their point for existence. Fine, you write a joke research paper with 10 references? Do it by hand, no problem. Write a real paper, say, for publication in Nature or the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and your data will be out of date by the time you hand-write and format the whole thing. If you do serious and thorough research-based writing you will have many references that makes it untenable to do it all by hand unless you don't give a rat's ass how long it takes you to get your document out.
It is NOT going to make people jump to linux and OO/SO if you tell them that they "dont really need Office/Endnote, that you can do it all just as well by hand, so just use linux!" Sounds REAL good. You'll need to stand back to avoid being trampled by the stampede of people just dying to give up convenience and accuracy for tedium and error-proneness. Get real.
They are still ignoring a really big, important feature: BIBLIOGRAPHY. The built-in bibliography "manager" SUCKS large rocks through capillary tubes. It is NOT useful in any way, shape, or form.
If you are a high school or college student, or a professional who actually gives proper attribution rather than flat-out plaigerizes, or write scientific papers (biology, for instance - physics and math people use latex/lyx, end of story) you MUST provide references in your papers Research papers for class, papers for submission to professional journals, publications for dissemination online...all require references and a properly formatted reference list.
I am a biochemist. I recently gave an Impress presentation to my colleagues on my research. Afterwards, a few had questions on what I was using...they noted that I was using linux on my laptop. I told them about OO/StarOffice. They were interested but ultimately I had to disabuse them of the idea of using it to replace Office because OO/SO cannot do references properly. These people use Office with EndNote so they can create a properly formatted and REFERENCED document for publication. Without reference management (ala EndNote-like capability) OO/SO is useless to them. A non-starter. I myself never use OO/SO for writing. I use Lyx plus pybliographer because between the two, I can relatively easily create a proper document with properly formatted references with ease. Can OO/SO do this? Not. Even. Close.
OO/SO is nifty for doing "powerpoint-like" presentations and the Calc function is minimally useful (for real work I have to use gnumeric because it has some nice, handy scientifically relevant functions and capabilities that Calc lacks). For writing a letter or some similarly low-power document, OO/SO is fine. For real writing, Lyx/latex...because it is the only thing in the linux world up to the task.
For god's sake! SOMEONE in the wordprocessing world (Textmaker, Gobe, OO/SO, etc) add the ability to manage references! This includes a SIMPLE means of inserting a citation or citations into a doc AND auto-generate configurable reference pages to go with it - not all journals or departments, etc, use the same citation and reference page formatting. Quit with the crap like adding a progress bar during startup (what the fuh?!) and do something worthwhile and actually useful. Add a real functional improvement rather than just more window dressing.
And you appear to make the mistake that ANY amount of communication about ANYTHING and EVERYONE is an appropriate fix. This isn't black-and-white, either for TIA and better CIA-FBI intercommunication or against it. You can have the latter without the evil of the former.
It is not for the government to spy on each and every person in the country, even the world, in order to try to find the one or two out of a million who are crazy bomb-throwers. It isn't effective nor necessary...and the potential for evil more than overwhelms the "good". I will NOT give up basic liberty for security. Ever.
It pisses me off that Slashdot is so obsessed with privacy issues they can't begin to see the amazing positive uses for this technology once combined with wireless Internet access.
Yeah! We need to have the ability to not only track your purchases and what stores you go to, but to also always be able to identify where you are whenever you use the internet or make a phonecall. If you check into a hotel with your lover (not your wife/husband) we need for that information to be plain and simple so it can be used against you when convenient. You are not permitted solitude and privacy, you are to be tracked and collated with your every step, every purchase, every move.
I've looked at the GPL/sourceforge driver for the Atheros chipset and its device support list is extremely short at this time. It lists only 2 802.11g devices (cardbus), the rest are 802.11a devices. Of these 802.11g clients (Netgear and some other gizmo) neither had an external antenna capability. Are there any 802.11g cards with an adaptor for an external antenna?
If the sourceforge driver will work, great, but I would like a card that has an external antenna attachment rather than have to hack the card and add one on, potentially wrecking it in the process.
I'll say "thank you" when they release a driver (binary or source) for their client cards. The AP is all but useless to the vast majority of users, I'm afraid. An AP is a very specialized piece of equipment while the client device is the meat and potatoes. What am I going to do with an AP but no decent client card to connect to it with?
Yeah, there are a few cards out there that use a supported (or weakly/semi-supported) chipset, but they are becoming fewer and fewer. Client devices carry the same name and version but a different chipset depending on the month. You buy what you THOUGHT was going to be a prism-based card only to find it is either a poorly supported/buggy driver atmel chipset or some monstrosity that isn't supported at all (Broadcom and others). Where are the 802.11g drivers? How about drivers for even the 802.11b chips beyond prism/prism2/prism2.5? I've been burned several times in this regard and will not buy any wlan device again until I KNOW that it has a driver available or is supported by OSS drivers/developers.
Under the circumstances, a "thank you" is premature.
Eh? Your laptop is good for what, an hour? Hour-and-a-half max if you are actually doing anything? Big deal. You can do without a puter for at least that long during a power failure and not die. Also...next year NEC is planning to produce a DESKTOP system running on their power cell (same one as they will use in their laptops late this year) that will provide laptop-like time for a desktop. The only thing a laptop will have is portability. It can't hold a candle to a desktop for CPU and video power in the best case, of course.
You forgot that by saving $100 you not only got a slightly faster videocard, but you also got one that is not supported in linux! Yee-haw, can't beat that.
Do you want to see a PICTURE of the Grande Canyon or view it in person? Do you want to see Yellowstone via video clip or in person? Which is richer? Which touches you directly? Which one gives a fuller experience?
Though the science may be fine from robots, and in many cases it is just impractical (at THIS time) to send people, I just can't get jazzed about film and pics compared to someone, a real human, being there. Which is more adaptable, a human or a robot? Human. Which can go in directions not preprogrammed or deal with unforseen situations/data better, a human on the spot or a limited function robot?
My point is that there is a real need for humans in space, even though for specific scientific tasks AT THIS TIME they are not optimal. No one can get overly excited about pictures of the moon from a robot vs those of humans on the moon by humans on the moon. THAT captures the imagination more than tonka trucks roving here and there, missing lots because they are designed for a VERY specific and limited task.
Do most space exploration via robot, but if you really want to explore Mars completely, you will need humans on the spot. The robots can only do so much and only be reprogrammed to a certain extent. Humans get the global view, robots get the view they're programmed to get and limited by the design specs of the engineers.
If you take humans completely out of space you might as well fold it up and do it on a shoestring budget because only a few scientists (not the public) will get excited about it.
Humans ARE wasted with the ISS. It is a loser, and not even a proper space station. It doesn't push any boundaries, does nothing to push the envelope. A station with artificial gravity and some self-sustainability would be worthy. Robots would be better suited in this case to handle what is done on the ISS (and the science on humans in space is repetitious with what the Russkies already figured out in their many years with Mir). Aim higher, go bigger with humans.
As previously mentioned, Sketch may be able to read your Corel files. To drop corel and use something similar that does vector drawing...try Sketch or Sodipodi...or KDraw (part of the KOffice package set). Finally, have you tried to run CorelDraw in linux using Wine? There is a pretty decent chance that it will work given how Corel went linux for a while and was using the winelibs...
Tex/LaTex plus Lyx. Skip the full CLI LaTeX thing and use Lyx...it is certainly easier to teach someone how to use Lyx than how to use the CLI w/LaTeX.
I'd say Tex/LaTeX is pretty damn good considering that a lot of scientific journals use it...they do NOT use Word or some other crapass toy.
Basically, any "word processor" that would generate/use those fielded pdfs (I don't recall what they're called: pdfs with specific editable entry fields, not the whole doc) would work as a replacement for formflow.
I have been in the AF for 14 years, all told. I recall when the Z80s were all fancy-pants. The main thing that ALL/ANY military member uses their computers for is web browsing (mozilla or konqueror, etc, would suffice), word processing (OpenOffice/StarOffice would suffice - there is nothing in word that is used to any extent to make it necessary), and email using that gawd-awful Outlook. Few use the calender crap. Most use sissy fonts and that's it. If you need to use sissy fonts and non-ascii email, then kmail and virtually any other decent GUI type email app in linux is more than enough. NEED the calender crap? There are linux solutions to that too. Finally, there is powerpoint. Big deal. OO/SO does the same thing just fine. There is NOTHING that M$ brings to the PC that the military needs. Not a single app that is provided is critical only in as much as it comes from M$ or with windoze. Given that, linux would be fine (and they would have fewer worries about worms and virtually no worries wrt viruses...unlike now with doze).
I speak as one who has been only on the user side and on the network admin side. I have run a Comm Sqd involved in laying the cable (fiber and ethernet) and admining the crappy OS. NO user is allowed to do squat to their computer. No installs without approval, no changes, etc. EVERYONE needs passwords for logging in as a user and for unlocking their screensaver (required). See anything in THAT that isn't linux? Anything there that makes M$ Doze THE answer? Didn't think so. Don't get me started on the gawd-damned mailservers (exchange!). What a crappy way to run email. One postfix install could handle as many email addresses as needed...and you could always expand to more linux mailservers if you wanted for some operational reason. Not so with exchange. You hit it's hard limit on the number of email accounts it can handle (software limited) and you have to buy/install another server. What a racket.
Yeah, THAT'D work. What software that everyone USES would actually run on HURD? No, just the GNU tools, etc, doesn't count. What does count is Staroffice, wine, crossover office, the various other software (including games) that non-GNU developers produce.
Unless HURD can slip right in and use my NVIDIA commercial driver and play my linux games and other software (gasp! some of that is commercial software!) then HURD is DOA. I'll bet I am not unrepresentative of a large part, if not downright majority, of current linux users. It isn't the cloistered linux world it used to be and it wont go back to that (unless HURD is all that is left).
run your own web or mailserver through cellular toys? How about join/play a net game like RTCW, Team Fortress, etc?
There's a bit more to networking than what can be done with even the fanci-schmanciest cellular toybob. Since there won't be any DSL or cable coming in my lifetime into my area, Wifi is about the only other possibility. Cellular network access it WAY pricey even it it would work. No thanks. Cellular may have a place, but that place isn't as a replacement.
a flat screen (finally) to replace my huge-ass CRT, this kinda crap comes up. Are there any decent flats with decent response time (for gaming) that don't cost an arm and a leg AND don't suffer this burn-in crap?
The prices for flats have gotten into the reasonable range but now they suck and aren't worth the price at all?
Perhaps the most likely to get quick desktop realestate on common home user desktops due to its preinstalls, cheap price, etc, but it is also the most likely to ultimately give the impression that linux is not much better than windows wrt viruses and worms. The problem is the default root runlevel that lindows uses. NORMAL and proper linux users will be exactly that, USERS. Lindows users are root all the time. A proper linux user can, at worst, wreck their home directory if they are dumb enough to run an untrusted/untrustable script or application they've downloaded (at worst). A lindows user is quite possibly going to get owned like a windows user in relatively short order - and their entire system is vulnerable. Their system is rooted out of the box with full priviledges. No better, no more secure than windows.
The only thing really saving them is the lack of a macro vulnerability, activeX, and other windows-assorted crap and builtin insecurity. They are marginally safer than a windows user but only just.
Lindows should trust people to be smart enough and capable enough to deal with a separate root account. It can be simple. Have lindows setup a generic, invisable user account that anyone using the system would actually use. During startup/bootup, it would automatically start that account and take you to the GUI. During initial setup, have lindows ask for a password for root. The user never needs to use this until/unless they run a software update or install, at which point a dialog box comes up asking for a password. That's it. It would be at least minimally safe and no virus or trojan would have access to the system, only the generic system-wide user home.
Fine and dandy as written and intended (except it will fail to mention the illegitimate span of copywrite to 100+ yrs and extended ad infitum). This is, of course, the reasonable first measure advocated by Congresscritters in response to Hatch's ill-conceived computer destruction nonsense. When it fails to put much of a dent in music trading, Hatch will jump in and push his computer destruction idea into law and give RIAA and MPAA the keys to your computer.
Whoa there...you mean you can actually download Britney Spears? Not just her so-called music? Hell, I guess I need to give file-sharing a try again. I could go for a download of Britney for an afternoon of slap-n-tickle, so long as she agrees not to sing.
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Doesn't matter now because SCO is starting to do real harm to linux and threatening users and adoptors and even directing implicit accusations of theft at linux developers. Until SCO shows/proves that it has a case, it should be forced to restrain from making ANY claims against users. They don't have anything until AFTER the court games are all over yet they are behaving right now as if they have won. Nope. Put up or shut up NOW. Go ahead with the court case but refrain from trying to extort money or damage linux businesses any more.
Doesn't DRI provide a similar problem for linux/XFree86? If not a security problem, then certainly a stability problem. I have had games (in linux) that freeze up X so hard that nothing can be done to recover the system short of a hard reboot. It is not always possible to connect another computer to the system that is locked up so frickin hard and ssh in to fix things (like kill/restart X or terminate the offending program).
I'm not dissing linux here...it is all I use...but this DRI thing (direct access to hardware) has made me wonder on occassion as well as curse in response to a hard lockup.
Really, is there no security concern with DRI?
No, not good but...the enemy of my enemy is (contingent) my friend. For the moment.
I am happy to see some REALLY big screws being put to M$, and the fact that these aren't government screws mean they have real biting threads. Since the outcome/punishment (screwing M$ big time) isn't based on the political winds blowing in the whitehouse, it is very likely going to go to a real conclusion. So long as the conclusion is M$ gets really screwed that is good. AFTER that, AFTER M$ is blown away, I would like to see some reconsideration in the legislatures of the US and world rethink the idea of IP and software patents. AFTER the damage is already done and irreversible for M$, I would like to see the whole IP/software patent thing go away too.
At this moment, however, I see this as something along the lines of Iran fighting a war against some other looney, extremist, fundamentalist religious country. GOOD! Blow the shit out of each other, totally wreck each other, you idiots and loones. Once it is all over and the dust has settled, hopefully, those that remain in both countries would have clearer heads and working critical thinking capabilities and would correct the problems that led up to the dustup.
Let the companies destroy each other using stupid current ideas and laws - after the devestation, the idiocy of the laws/ideas will be apparent and they can be changed. Basically, let some good come out of this ONLY after the devestation eliminates the worst offenders of the current system.
I never implied I was "a world famous bio-mechanist or whatever". I am simply a biochemist doing biochemistry. Nothing earth-shattering (yet, perhaps I luck onto something). I am a basic example of a person in my line of work and this includes: molecular biologists, biochemists, biologists, zoologists, etc. By and large, these people (in my direct experience) use Word and Endnote. No doubt there are a few savvy and masochistic individuals who use latex and bibtex in their raw form, writing with vi or emacs. I do know that some colleagues in the local Comp.Sci department use latex (perhaps via lyx) for writing their papers. This is also true of many in mathematics and physics...but not biology and its subspecialties.
Latex is NOT the answer. It works fine for some but it is not fine for most. Going from Word or Wordperfect to Latex just isn't going to happen. It only happened for ME personally because I am a linux partisan and don't own, nor intend to buy, Office and Endnote. I needed to find a reasonably simple-to-use wordprocessor that would do references AND still permit me to provide my then-thesis advisor with a file copy of my papers and thesis in a form that was accessible to him using word (He used word and endnote on a mac). My references I used in all my papers/thesis also had to be provided to him in a form that was computer accessible to him (refer format or bibtex will work with endnote with the proper filters added).
It was HARD for me to write my papers and thesis using Lyx because it is not intuitive and does not behave like normal wordprocessors. I managed to get by but I would much prefer a more word-like situation. OO/SO COULD be that answer if it had bibliography/reference handling capabilities beyond its current pathetic abortion of a version it has now (and has had for far too long). If Textmaker got to this holy grail first, I would buy textmaker with joy, or Hancom Office, or Gobe...or KOffice or Abiword. I don't enjoy lyx and I would NEVER get colleagues to go to lyx just for the sake of running linux as well. Why go through that pain if you are neutral wrt M$ but use Word and Endnote heavily and with ease? Dump that and switch to something like latex/lyx and bibtex? Get real. Ain't gonna happen. They are great for a relative few and it has served me in lieu of something easier/equivalent (functionally) but I would switch to something else in linux in a fraction of a heartbeat if given the chance.
Are you as dense as you seem? Yes, there was a day when there were only typewriters and everything was done by hand. Before that, it was all done by hand, for real, with pen and paper. Do you really suggest that this is an answer? With windoze and office/endnote, you have a simple, fast means of collecting, organizing, and utilizing references for writing researched documents. Such is the whole point of computers, to make such tasks (and others) EASIER. What planet are you on?
Write a thesis in a scientific area and do all the references by hand. Your friends will finish their thesis far ahead of you and be enjoying the fruit of their graduate labor while you stupidly wile away your time doing what was once done on a typwriter on a computer. I suggest you get rid of your computer and use the typewriter alone as you obviously do not understand the point of technology, computers, etc.
I had a thesis that was 180 pages in length and had ~800 references. Do that by hand? This is 2003, not 1973. We have COM-PU-TERS now with WORD-PROCESSORS. They make life easier when properly used/designed. That is their point for existence. Fine, you write a joke research paper with 10 references? Do it by hand, no problem. Write a real paper, say, for publication in Nature or the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and your data will be out of date by the time you hand-write and format the whole thing. If you do serious and thorough research-based writing you will have many references that makes it untenable to do it all by hand unless you don't give a rat's ass how long it takes you to get your document out.
It is NOT going to make people jump to linux and OO/SO if you tell them that they "dont really need Office/Endnote, that you can do it all just as well by hand, so just use linux!" Sounds REAL good. You'll need to stand back to avoid being trampled by the stampede of people just dying to give up convenience and accuracy for tedium and error-proneness. Get real.
and the part of Dorothy is being played by Bush Jr?
Err...which part of Dorothy is Shrub? Her arsehole?
They are still ignoring a really big, important feature: BIBLIOGRAPHY. The built-in bibliography "manager" SUCKS large rocks through capillary tubes. It is NOT useful in any way, shape, or form.
If you are a high school or college student, or a professional who actually gives proper attribution rather than flat-out plaigerizes, or write scientific papers (biology, for instance - physics and math people use latex/lyx, end of story) you MUST provide references in your papers Research papers for class, papers for submission to professional journals, publications for dissemination online...all require references and a properly formatted reference list.
I am a biochemist. I recently gave an Impress presentation to my colleagues on my research. Afterwards, a few had questions on what I was using...they noted that I was using linux on my laptop. I told them about OO/StarOffice. They were interested but ultimately I had to disabuse them of the idea of using it to replace Office because OO/SO cannot do references properly. These people use Office with EndNote so they can create a properly formatted and REFERENCED document for publication. Without reference management (ala EndNote-like capability) OO/SO is useless to them. A non-starter. I myself never use OO/SO for writing. I use Lyx plus pybliographer because between the two, I can relatively easily create a proper document with properly formatted references with ease. Can OO/SO do this? Not. Even. Close.
OO/SO is nifty for doing "powerpoint-like" presentations and the Calc function is minimally useful (for real work I have to use gnumeric because it has some nice, handy scientifically relevant functions and capabilities that Calc lacks). For writing a letter or some similarly low-power document, OO/SO is fine. For real writing, Lyx/latex...because it is the only thing in the linux world up to the task.
For god's sake! SOMEONE in the wordprocessing world (Textmaker, Gobe, OO/SO, etc) add the ability to manage references! This includes a SIMPLE means of inserting a citation or citations into a doc AND auto-generate configurable reference pages to go with it - not all journals or departments, etc, use the same citation and reference page formatting. Quit with the crap like adding a progress bar during startup (what the fuh?!) and do something worthwhile and actually useful. Add a real functional improvement rather than just more window dressing.
And you appear to make the mistake that ANY amount of communication about ANYTHING and EVERYONE is an appropriate fix. This isn't black-and-white, either for TIA and better CIA-FBI intercommunication or against it. You can have the latter without the evil of the former.
It is not for the government to spy on each and every person in the country, even the world, in order to try to find the one or two out of a million who are crazy bomb-throwers. It isn't effective nor necessary...and the potential for evil more than overwhelms the "good". I will NOT give up basic liberty for security. Ever.
It pisses me off that Slashdot is so obsessed with privacy issues they can't begin to see the amazing positive uses for this technology once combined with wireless Internet access.
Yeah! We need to have the ability to not only track your purchases and what stores you go to, but to also always be able to identify where you are whenever you use the internet or make a phonecall. If you check into a hotel with your lover (not your wife/husband) we need for that information to be plain and simple so it can be used against you when convenient. You are not permitted solitude and privacy, you are to be tracked and collated with your every step, every purchase, every move.
Sounds great!
I've looked at the GPL/sourceforge driver for the Atheros chipset and its device support list is extremely short at this time. It lists only 2 802.11g devices (cardbus), the rest are 802.11a devices. Of these 802.11g clients (Netgear and some other gizmo) neither had an external antenna capability. Are there any 802.11g cards with an adaptor for an external antenna?
If the sourceforge driver will work, great, but I would like a card that has an external antenna attachment rather than have to hack the card and add one on, potentially wrecking it in the process.
I'll say "thank you" when they release a driver (binary or source) for their client cards. The AP is all but useless to the vast majority of users, I'm afraid. An AP is a very specialized piece of equipment while the client device is the meat and potatoes. What am I going to do with an AP but no decent client card to connect to it with?
Yeah, there are a few cards out there that use a supported (or weakly/semi-supported) chipset, but they are becoming fewer and fewer. Client devices carry the same name and version but a different chipset depending on the month. You buy what you THOUGHT was going to be a prism-based card only to find it is either a poorly supported/buggy driver atmel chipset or some monstrosity that isn't supported at all (Broadcom and others). Where are the 802.11g drivers? How about drivers for even the 802.11b chips beyond prism/prism2/prism2.5? I've been burned several times in this regard and will not buy any wlan device again until I KNOW that it has a driver available or is supported by OSS drivers/developers.
Under the circumstances, a "thank you" is premature.
Eh? Your laptop is good for what, an hour? Hour-and-a-half max if you are actually doing anything? Big deal. You can do without a puter for at least that long during a power failure and not die. Also...next year NEC is planning to produce a DESKTOP system running on their power cell (same one as they will use in their laptops late this year) that will provide laptop-like time for a desktop. The only thing a laptop will have is portability. It can't hold a candle to a desktop for CPU and video power in the best case, of course.
You forgot that by saving $100 you not only got a slightly faster videocard, but you also got one that is not supported in linux! Yee-haw, can't beat that.
Do you want to see a PICTURE of the Grande Canyon or view it in person? Do you want to see Yellowstone via video clip or in person? Which is richer? Which touches you directly? Which one gives a fuller experience?
Though the science may be fine from robots, and in many cases it is just impractical (at THIS time) to send people, I just can't get jazzed about film and pics compared to someone, a real human, being there. Which is more adaptable, a human or a robot? Human. Which can go in directions not preprogrammed or deal with unforseen situations/data better, a human on the spot or a limited function robot?
My point is that there is a real need for humans in space, even though for specific scientific tasks AT THIS TIME they are not optimal. No one can get overly excited about pictures of the moon from a robot vs those of humans on the moon by humans on the moon. THAT captures the imagination more than tonka trucks roving here and there, missing lots because they are designed for a VERY specific and limited task.
Do most space exploration via robot, but if you really want to explore Mars completely, you will need humans on the spot. The robots can only do so much and only be reprogrammed to a certain extent. Humans get the global view, robots get the view they're programmed to get and limited by the design specs of the engineers.
If you take humans completely out of space you might as well fold it up and do it on a shoestring budget because only a few scientists (not the public) will get excited about it.
Humans ARE wasted with the ISS. It is a loser, and not even a proper space station. It doesn't push any boundaries, does nothing to push the envelope. A station with artificial gravity and some self-sustainability would be worthy. Robots would be better suited in this case to handle what is done on the ISS (and the science on humans in space is repetitious with what the Russkies already figured out in their many years with Mir). Aim higher, go bigger with humans.
As previously mentioned, Sketch may be able to read your Corel files. To drop corel and use something similar that does vector drawing...try Sketch or Sodipodi...or KDraw (part of the KOffice package set). Finally, have you tried to run CorelDraw in linux using Wine? There is a pretty decent chance that it will work given how Corel went linux for a while and was using the winelibs...
Tex/LaTex plus Lyx. Skip the full CLI LaTeX thing and use Lyx...it is certainly easier to teach someone how to use Lyx than how to use the CLI w/LaTeX.
I'd say Tex/LaTeX is pretty damn good considering that a lot of scientific journals use it...they do NOT use Word or some other crapass toy.
Basically, any "word processor" that would generate/use those fielded pdfs (I don't recall what they're called: pdfs with specific editable entry fields, not the whole doc) would work as a replacement for formflow.
I have been in the AF for 14 years, all told. I recall when the Z80s were all fancy-pants. The main thing that ALL/ANY military member uses their computers for is web browsing (mozilla or konqueror, etc, would suffice), word processing (OpenOffice/StarOffice would suffice - there is nothing in word that is used to any extent to make it necessary), and email using that gawd-awful Outlook. Few use the calender crap. Most use sissy fonts and that's it. If you need to use sissy fonts and non-ascii email, then kmail and virtually any other decent GUI type email app in linux is more than enough. NEED the calender crap? There are linux solutions to that too. Finally, there is powerpoint. Big deal. OO/SO does the same thing just fine. There is NOTHING that M$ brings to the PC that the military needs. Not a single app that is provided is critical only in as much as it comes from M$ or with windoze. Given that, linux would be fine (and they would have fewer worries about worms and virtually no worries wrt viruses...unlike now with doze).
I speak as one who has been only on the user side and on the network admin side. I have run a Comm Sqd involved in laying the cable (fiber and ethernet) and admining the crappy OS. NO user is allowed to do squat to their computer. No installs without approval, no changes, etc. EVERYONE needs passwords for logging in as a user and for unlocking their screensaver (required). See anything in THAT that isn't linux? Anything there that makes M$ Doze THE answer? Didn't think so. Don't get me started on the gawd-damned mailservers (exchange!). What a crappy way to run email. One postfix install could handle as many email addresses as needed...and you could always expand to more linux mailservers if you wanted for some operational reason. Not so with exchange. You hit it's hard limit on the number of email accounts it can handle (software limited) and you have to buy/install another server. What a racket.
Well...I think I would like to see Britney Spears in some good porn. Surely she is talented enough to at least put on a passable performance there?
Yeah, THAT'D work. What software that everyone USES would actually run on HURD? No, just the GNU tools, etc, doesn't count. What does count is Staroffice, wine, crossover office, the various other software (including games) that non-GNU developers produce.
Unless HURD can slip right in and use my NVIDIA commercial driver and play my linux games and other software (gasp! some of that is commercial software!) then HURD is DOA. I'll bet I am not unrepresentative of a large part, if not downright majority, of current linux users. It isn't the cloistered linux world it used to be and it wont go back to that (unless HURD is all that is left).
run your own web or mailserver through cellular toys? How about join/play a net game like RTCW, Team Fortress, etc?
There's a bit more to networking than what can be done with even the fanci-schmanciest cellular toybob. Since there won't be any DSL or cable coming in my lifetime into my area, Wifi is about the only other possibility. Cellular network access it WAY pricey even it it would work. No thanks. Cellular may have a place, but that place isn't as a replacement.
a flat screen (finally) to replace my huge-ass CRT, this kinda crap comes up. Are there any decent flats with decent response time (for gaming) that don't cost an arm and a leg AND don't suffer this burn-in crap?
The prices for flats have gotten into the reasonable range but now they suck and aren't worth the price at all?
She found me hard. She also found me easy - she asked me to do her and I did her. That's as easy as it cums.
Perhaps the most likely to get quick desktop realestate on common home user desktops due to its preinstalls, cheap price, etc, but it is also the most likely to ultimately give the impression that linux is not much better than windows wrt viruses and worms. The problem is the default root runlevel that lindows uses. NORMAL and proper linux users will be exactly that, USERS. Lindows users are root all the time. A proper linux user can, at worst, wreck their home directory if they are dumb enough to run an untrusted/untrustable script or application they've downloaded (at worst). A lindows user is quite possibly going to get owned like a windows user in relatively short order - and their entire system is vulnerable. Their system is rooted out of the box with full priviledges. No better, no more secure than windows.
The only thing really saving them is the lack of a macro vulnerability, activeX, and other windows-assorted crap and builtin insecurity. They are marginally safer than a windows user but only just.
Lindows should trust people to be smart enough and capable enough to deal with a separate root account. It can be simple. Have lindows setup a generic, invisable user account that anyone using the system would actually use. During startup/bootup, it would automatically start that account and take you to the GUI. During initial setup, have lindows ask for a password for root. The user never needs to use this until/unless they run a software update or install, at which point a dialog box comes up asking for a password. That's it. It would be at least minimally safe and no virus or trojan would have access to the system, only the generic system-wide user home.
Fine and dandy as written and intended (except it will fail to mention the illegitimate span of copywrite to 100+ yrs and extended ad infitum). This is, of course, the reasonable first measure advocated by Congresscritters in response to Hatch's ill-conceived computer destruction nonsense. When it fails to put much of a dent in music trading, Hatch will jump in and push his computer destruction idea into law and give RIAA and MPAA the keys to your computer.
Whoa there...you mean you can actually download Britney Spears? Not just her so-called music? Hell, I guess I need to give file-sharing a try again. I could go for a download of Britney for an afternoon of slap-n-tickle, so long as she agrees not to sing.