As for RH 7.0's bugginess, I'm rather apalled. I may switch distributions over this. At least I have a choice.
I'm the maintainer of Eridani Linux (based on Red Hat, but includes all updates and some extras) but looking at this lot and other reviews Eridani Linux 7 will be some distance away and an intermediate release will appear. (Being a one-geek operation it's not going to diverge away like Mandrake did.)
What's the point, you might ask. Eridani Linux's market is primarily the UK, where our phone calls are metered (and the unmetered offerings suck). By rolling the updates into the CDs the end users are spared a lot of downloading getting the security fixes (especially after the release has been out for a while!).
Apologies if this looks like a blatant plug. It isn't meant that way....;)
Here in the UK, most cellphones are sold with a one-year contract. The contract states usually that you will pay x pounds a month for a year for line rental and often get a bundle of free minutes with it. Often these contracts tie you to a specific tariff although Orange make the point that the contract is with Orange and not the tariff (so you can change giving a month's notice if your circumstances change). In return for being signed up for the year you can often get the phone very cheaply, or in some cases, free. However a get-out clause is very rare although it allows you to cancel a contract within 14 days. Customers of Cellnet used a get-out clause (which basically says that if they increase the charges substantially they can cancel the contract and keep the handset) when Cellnet changed the charging structure and made some people's bills skyrocket. Also, it must be noted that since the networks subsidise the cost of the handsets this often leads to very much higher line rental.
One company is trying to change that, Virgin Mobile are selling phones at full price and offer relatively cheap calls for no line rental at all. (The other networks offer no-line-rental prepay options but the phones are subsidised a bit and the calls are hellishly expensive.
That reminds me of something that actually happened while I worked in IT in a UK hospital.
A secretary was asked by the manager to copy a floppy disc. I almost fell off my chair when she returned with a perfectly photocopied image of the disc on paper.
Needless to say I had to 'redo' the copy - and just for a bit of fun pinned the photocopy on the office noticeboard with the message 'System Backup' printed on it.
Chatting is dangerous? Only if you insist on using systems (such as IRC) which give out your IP
to everybody and their left toenail.
I've been involved in the MUSH/MUX
scene for several years now and have not heard of ANYONE who has had their machine hacked as a result. Not one.
Quite simply, these centralised systems (which never get these 'splits' either) treat stuff like your IP address as privileged information and as such only the system admin can see it.
Another niche to be explored is the travellers' one. (Software reconfigurable) phones that work in the US and Europe/Japan will be very nice for people that don't like to own a couple of phones and like to travel light.
That already exists. Motorola Timeport, anyone? The Timeport offers GSM at 900, 1800 and 1900MHz. And it works in the States. My home network is Orange UK, and I had no problem with coverage at all across the pond.
In order to really play safe in Sweden, have it published in print rather than on the Internet, and it will be pretty much impossible for the MPAA to act against you.
Someone with more money than sense could take out a full-page newspaper advertisement in a national (or international) paper and print the entire source code (in small print) in it...:)
I guess that was a nice act of civil disobedience, but it posts a list of 130+ sites the MPAA can write nasty letters to, so get your code NOW, because the ones that aren't busted now sure will be tomorrow.
I wonder what they'd do if I took random lines from a line-numbered uuencoded tarball and used that in my email sig file?:)
MP3s and other "copyrighted" files are just like any other file, a number with a base of 256. You can't copyright a number - to do so, IMO, is more of a crime than copying that number over a network. After all, trying to own a number is like trying to own the universe.
Good point. We already have a precedent for that. Intel tried to "copyright" 586 (or was it 80586?). And failed.
Slashdot Mirror
First you had the high... now you've got the Low-Earth-Orbit high. High enough for you?
Is this the Reverse Slashdot Effect? :)
I'm the maintainer of Eridani Linux (based on Red Hat, but includes all updates and some extras) but looking at this lot and other reviews Eridani Linux 7 will be some distance away and an intermediate release will appear. (Being a one-geek operation it's not going to diverge away like Mandrake did.)
What's the point, you might ask. Eridani Linux's market is primarily the UK, where our phone calls are metered (and the unmetered offerings suck). By rolling the updates into the CDs the end users are spared a lot of downloading getting the security fixes (especially after the release has been out for a while!).
Apologies if this looks like a blatant plug. It isn't meant that way.... ;)
I would have liked to have read it.. but either I'm having routing problems at my ISP or it's been /.ed.
I bloody well hope not. The Post Office would probably break it before it arrives...
One company is trying to change that, Virgin Mobile are selling phones at full price and offer relatively cheap calls for no line rental at all. (The other networks offer no-line-rental prepay options but the phones are subsidised a bit and the calls are hellishly expensive.
F.A.B.
(... thinking one of these would be nice for running Seti@Home...)
And what is wrong with "colour"?? "color" is just some lame-arsed attempt at data compression on the sly.
That reminds me of something that actually happened while I worked in IT in a UK hospital.
A secretary was asked by the manager to copy a floppy disc. I almost fell off my chair when she returned with a perfectly photocopied image of the disc on paper.
Needless to say I had to 'redo' the copy - and just for a bit of fun pinned the photocopy on the office noticeboard with the message 'System Backup' printed on it.
Microsoft sux, bill gates should burn in hell. Linux rulez!
Error: Unable to send message, content is derisory towards Microsoft.
Error: Unable to send message, content is pro-Linux.
Just don't use your mobile phone to play quake using it as a modem. The latency across GSM phones is really quite scary (~1000ms)...
How about the source IN the web page, rather than part of it... Look at my sig.
Here's proof this doesn't work. Oh. Don't be fooled by it.
Does that make every single running copy of Windows illegal? :)
I've been involved in the MUSH/MUX scene for several years now and have not heard of ANYONE who has had their machine hacked as a result. Not one. Quite simply, these centralised systems (which never get these 'splits' either) treat stuff like your IP address as privileged information and as such only the system admin can see it.
One word: SETI@home.
I've put it online at ftp://arcturus.eridani .co.uk/pub/kernel/linux-2.2.17.tar.bz2
You mean to tell me there's a newer kernel out now than 1.2.13?! ;-)
That already exists. Motorola Timeport, anyone?
The Timeport offers GSM at 900, 1800 and 1900MHz. And it works in the States. My home network is Orange UK, and I had no problem with coverage at all across the pond.
then WAP, now GPRS and in a couple of years UMTS.
Erm.. have you actually looked at WAP? It's current implementation runs as a GSM data call.
Guess so, Microsoft have been doing it for years now.
Someone with more money than sense could take out a full-page newspaper advertisement in a national (or international) paper and print the entire source code (in small print) in it... :)
http://212.1.130.85/~soruk/nothinghere. html
I wonder what they'd do if I took random lines from a line-numbered uuencoded tarball and used that in my email sig file? :)
Good point. We already have a precedent for that. Intel tried to "copyright" 586 (or was it 80586?). And failed.