I have found that my school's IT staff are just don't know anything about computers in general.
That's strange. After all, the lucrative income from the fast paced, high stakes world of public education usually attracts only the cream of the crop.
No, but everytime I see THG I keep thinking "The Humble Guys" and am wondering if they've got some new 0-day warez out like Police Quest II or Space Quest.
Heh. I thought I was the only one who had that reaction to the THG acronym.
I have a friend at this moment who is reloading OS-X and all her applications on her Mac for the third time this year (a 2-day to 3-day process).
I wonder what she's doing that's making that necessary. I think I've reloaded OS X on my Mac once -- I installed 10.0 when it came out, upgraded every time there was a new version, and I just wiped the machine to install Panther because I wanted to change some of the partition sizes.
I don't know if I'm an unusual user or what, but OS X hasn't caused any sort of weird issues necessitating a reboot for me.
I thought WWDC was full of nerds, but then Stump the Experts was like concentrated nerd juice...
Yeah, tell me about it. This year was the first time I'd gone, so I didn't know how completely hardcore those guys were. I submitted what I thought, at the time, to be a pretty obscure question about the Pippin.
I'm sort of glad they never drew it, since I'm sure one of the nerds on stage would have known the answer in.00000003 seconds or so.
Appleworks is appalling. It looks like an OS9 app, and I hate OS9 with a passion.
True. It is definitely a throwback to Apple's earlier days.
Then again, it's a comprehensive office suite that's either free with the computer or $99 retail. It opens and saves MS Office file formats with no problem. And it has some neat features that are minor, but still unique (I especially like the clip art web search).
If I didn't have a license for Office X, I'd probably use OpenOffice running under X11. But I bet my wife would use Appleworks, because it's available and its more than enough for her needs.
Any suggestions for an inexpensive laser that is Linux friendly, and does not employ any 'smart chip' technology that would prevent the toner cartridge from being refilled or cause it to 'expire' and stop working at a certain date regardless of the toner level?
I use an old HP Laserjet 4M. Toner refills are cheap and available from any office supply store, the printer is so durable it could probably take a bullet and keep printing, and they're cheap as hell. Just go on eBay and look for one in your area, and ask the guy if you can pick it up. I got mine for $81, with a Jetdirect card installed and a fresh set of rollers.
(And the print quality is great. My wife and I printed all of our wedding invitations on it, and people kept asking which print shop we had them done by.)
Don't American cars have the stupidest names on the planet?
Stupidest promotions, too. If I recall, the last year that the Chrysler Imperial was available you could get it in a "Frank Sinatra" edition. This meant that you got little "FS" monograms on the fenders, a cassette collection of Sinatra music, and a few thousand extra dollars on the price tag.
Can't imagine why American cars couldn't be sold to anyone in the 80s.
I like the smaller keyboards that came with the older iMacs -- the ones with the half size arrow and function keys. They're nice and quiet, and have a far better key action than any of Apple's newer "Pro" keyboards.
Then again, I'm among the only people I know who like the way they feel. And I'm definitely the only one I know with huge, ogrish hands who likes typing on them. Anyway, give it a shot.
(And before anyone asks, they're just regular USB keyboard. They'll work fine on any computer. I have a couple of them stashed away with my NetBSD machines and no troubles.)
Imagine this, is QBASIC dead? Sure, for developers right? But if some company out there is using it, which there are still many using it, and their business depends on it, and it does what it is suppose to do, why should they upgrade?
I don't see anyone trying to port Mozilla to an ancient DOS only system that's running QBASIC, though.
use a P90mhz, 40mb, 2gig laptop.
And I have a P75 sitting on my network, handling most of my serving for local machines. Doesn't mean I'm going to run Moz on that, either.
Bribing people to port new, resource hungry software to a decade-old platform is an exercise in frustration. Now, someone else in this thread said that the AmiZilla port is more aimed at the "new and exciting" AmigaOS that everyone's been promising for the last five years. Hey, that would be great. My impression was that some poor bastard was taking on the task of porting Moz to his A500, and that just struck me as futile and impractical.
its so nice to piss down on somone else and forget where your OS of choice were just few years back!
I got started on Commodore gear -- my parents bought a C64 when I was really young, and that what I cut my programmng teeth on.
I read Commodore Magazine for years, typing in the programs in the back and trying to figure out what they do.
I called my first BBSes at 1200 baud on that C64. And I was really jealous of everyone who had an Amiga or an Atari ST.
Hell, I was even excited when Gateway bought up all the rights to the Amiga name. This was, of course, back when a Gateway was still a premium machine. "At last! The Amiga is coming back! I can finally get one!"
But it's over. The Amiga has been gone for so long that there's nothing but a string of hucksters trying to trade on the name. The platform is dead. It's a shame -- I always wanted one -- but it's over.
The diversity in computing is gone. I work for a college, and there are kids in the CS department who don't believe me when I say that there used to be so many different platforms. It's sad, but it's true, and noble efforts like this AmiZilla bribery don't change it.
The Booty is now over $8400 and goes to the first developer(s) to port Mozilla to the Amiga platform.
I'm a BSD and Macintosh fan. And even I think the Amiga is dead.
It's not beleaguered. It's not "dying". It's dead. It's been ten years. For crissake, give up already. They were great back in the day, but so was Lionel Ritchie and skinny ties.
This means, that you can now run your JavaStation with a stock distribution of NetBSD/sparc.
Hey, that's cool. I was actually looking at Javastations a while ago as a candidate to add to my "what the hell is that?" hardware collection.
Unfortunately, they seem to be pretty hard to come by on eBay. Anyone know of a surplus house or anything that's selling off the Javastations at a reasonable price?
All I want is a couple of old PIIs, 32 Meg of memory (min) and processor speed in the hundreds to tinker with Linux on, trash and experiment with. It'll suffice for most needs, why does no hardware company offer them?
Call a local college and ask their IT department if they have any that they are looking to get rid of. The one I work for donates dozens of machines a year to everyone from CS students who need another box for Linux to underfunded parochial schools in the area.
It's gotten to the point that we are replacing P3 700 MHz machines and don't have anywhere to put them.
And part of me immediately wants to ask: if there were many more core developers for the Perl language, do you think Perl would necessarily be the better for it?
You're right. Confusion would reign. The language syntax would become well-nigh unreadable.
Slashdot Mirror
Just curious, who uses the suite instead of Firebird/Thunderbird... and why?
I do.
I use Mozilla Composer for my web page, but since I'm on OS X I use Safari and Mail.app for the appropriate uses.
Has anyone heard about plans to break Composer out into its own component, a la Firebird?
--saint
When that happens, the "Suite" will simply be the full collection of *birds.
I believe that's called a "flock".
--saint
I have found that my school's IT staff are just don't know anything about computers in general.
That's strange. After all, the lucrative income from the fast paced, high stakes world of public education usually attracts only the cream of the crop.
--saint
Looks like there's no books in the home of the future.
That's unfortunate.
--saint
No, but everytime I see THG I keep thinking "The Humble Guys" and am wondering if they've got some new 0-day warez out like Police Quest II or Space Quest.
Heh. I thought I was the only one who had that reaction to the THG acronym.
"Oh, good! A new 64k loader!"
--saint
From the article:
I have a friend at this moment who is reloading OS-X and all her applications on her Mac for the third time this year (a 2-day to 3-day process).
I wonder what she's doing that's making that necessary. I think I've reloaded OS X on my Mac once -- I installed 10.0 when it came out, upgraded every time there was a new version, and I just wiped the machine to install Panther because I wanted to change some of the partition sizes.
I don't know if I'm an unusual user or what, but OS X hasn't caused any sort of weird issues necessitating a reboot for me.
--saint
I thought WWDC was full of nerds, but then Stump the Experts was like concentrated nerd juice...
.00000003 seconds or so.
Yeah, tell me about it. This year was the first time I'd gone, so I didn't know how completely hardcore those guys were. I submitted what I thought, at the time, to be a pretty obscure question about the Pippin.
I'm sort of glad they never drew it, since I'm sure one of the nerds on stage would have known the answer in
--saint
If not, what's going to happen to the Dell users who have all of these +R drives if it turns out that -R wins out in the long run?
Fuck 'em. My friend never got reimbursed for his choice of a Bernoulli drive, and that was a lot more than 100 bucks down the drain.
Sometimes you bet on the wrong horse. It happens.
--saint
Appleworks is appalling. It looks like an OS9 app, and I hate OS9 with a passion.
True. It is definitely a throwback to Apple's earlier days.
Then again, it's a comprehensive office suite that's either free with the computer or $99 retail. It opens and saves MS Office file formats with no problem. And it has some neat features that are minor, but still unique (I especially like the clip art web search).
If I didn't have a license for Office X, I'd probably use OpenOffice running under X11. But I bet my wife would use Appleworks, because it's available and its more than enough for her needs.
--saint
Anyone have any good data on cost per page for inkjet printers vs. laser?
I don't know about inkjets, but since I'm the guy in charge of the laser printer budget at work, I can give you these numbers:
A 4000 series laserjet, for toner and maintenance, costs about 0.4 cents per page.
A 9000 series costs about 0.8 cents per page.
Neither of these costs include paper, or the initial cost of the printer.
Anyone know how much a deskjet costs, by comparison?
--saint
Any suggestions for an inexpensive laser that is Linux friendly, and does not employ any 'smart chip' technology that would prevent the toner cartridge from being refilled or cause it to 'expire' and stop working at a certain date regardless of the toner level?
I use an old HP Laserjet 4M. Toner refills are cheap and available from any office supply store, the printer is so durable it could probably take a bullet and keep printing, and they're cheap as hell. Just go on eBay and look for one in your area, and ask the guy if you can pick it up. I got mine for $81, with a Jetdirect card installed and a fresh set of rollers.
(And the print quality is great. My wife and I printed all of our wedding invitations on it, and people kept asking which print shop we had them done by.)
--saint
Don't American cars have the stupidest names on the planet?
Stupidest promotions, too. If I recall, the last year that the Chrysler Imperial was available you could get it in a "Frank Sinatra" edition. This meant that you got little "FS" monograms on the fenders, a cassette collection of Sinatra music, and a few thousand extra dollars on the price tag.
Can't imagine why American cars couldn't be sold to anyone in the 80s.
--saint
I'm not so sure of that. At this point the only free Office Suite for OS X requires X11 (openeoffice)
All the consumer-level Macs come with a free (as in beer) copy of Appleworks. More than enough for most home users.
Hell, I was using it as the office suite on the Mac at work and exchanging files with MS Office users with no problems.
--saint
No, it's more like saying that Car A, that uses the same engine as Car B, is Car B in drag.
My AMC Matador uses the same engine as a Jeep Grand Wagoneer.
Sometimes the wrapping around the engine makes a pretty big difference.
--saint
make an IASD setup (irredundant array of shitty disks)
Heh. My friends and I always referred to this is a RASDA (pronounced "Rasta") -- Randomly Accessed Shitty Drive Array.
--saint
I like the smaller keyboards that came with the older iMacs -- the ones with the half size arrow and function keys. They're nice and quiet, and have a far better key action than any of Apple's newer "Pro" keyboards.
Then again, I'm among the only people I know who like the way they feel. And I'm definitely the only one I know with huge, ogrish hands who likes typing on them. Anyway, give it a shot.
(And before anyone asks, they're just regular USB keyboard. They'll work fine on any computer. I have a couple of them stashed away with my NetBSD machines and no troubles.)
--saint
Imagine this, is QBASIC dead? Sure, for developers right? But if some company out there is using it, which there are still many using it, and their business depends on it, and it does what it is suppose to do, why should they upgrade?
I don't see anyone trying to port Mozilla to an ancient DOS only system that's running QBASIC, though.
use a P90mhz, 40mb, 2gig laptop.
And I have a P75 sitting on my network, handling most of my serving for local machines. Doesn't mean I'm going to run Moz on that, either.
Bribing people to port new, resource hungry software to a decade-old platform is an exercise in frustration. Now, someone else in this thread said that the AmiZilla port is more aimed at the "new and exciting" AmigaOS that everyone's been promising for the last five years. Hey, that would be great. My impression was that some poor bastard was taking on the task of porting Moz to his A500, and that just struck me as futile and impractical.
--saint
its so nice to piss down on somone else and forget where your OS of choice were just few years back!
I got started on Commodore gear -- my parents bought a C64 when I was really young, and that what I cut my programmng teeth on.
I read Commodore Magazine for years, typing in the programs in the back and trying to figure out what they do.
I called my first BBSes at 1200 baud on that C64. And I was really jealous of everyone who had an Amiga or an Atari ST.
Hell, I was even excited when Gateway bought up all the rights to the Amiga name. This was, of course, back when a Gateway was still a premium machine. "At last! The Amiga is coming back! I can finally get one!"
But it's over. The Amiga has been gone for so long that there's nothing but a string of hucksters trying to trade on the name. The platform is dead. It's a shame -- I always wanted one -- but it's over.
The diversity in computing is gone. I work for a college, and there are kids in the CS department who don't believe me when I say that there used to be so many different platforms. It's sad, but it's true, and noble efforts like this AmiZilla bribery don't change it.
--saint
The Booty is now over $8400 and goes to the first developer(s) to port Mozilla to the Amiga platform.
I'm a BSD and Macintosh fan. And even I think the Amiga is dead.
It's not beleaguered. It's not "dying". It's dead. It's been ten years. For crissake, give up already. They were great back in the day, but so was Lionel Ritchie and skinny ties.
--saint
I guess I can put off buying a new TV for another year ...
Yeah, that's what I said when I read that HDTV was "right around the corner." In _Commodore Magazine_. In 1988.
Long fucking corner, that's for sure.
--saint
how are duke's laser tripbombs better than half-life's?
From your description, they're not. But I've never played Half Life, so I can't really compare them, personally.
(I switched to Macs right around the time HL came out. So I never had a computer that could run it.)
--saint
Quake ran like ass compared to Duke3D when they both originally came out (remember all the flame wars?), but it's clear which one was built to last.
Duke 3D of course.
Laser tripbombs. Best. Deathmatch. Weapon. Ever.
--saint
This means, that you can now run your JavaStation with a stock distribution of NetBSD/sparc.
Hey, that's cool. I was actually looking at Javastations a while ago as a candidate to add to my "what the hell is that?" hardware collection.
Unfortunately, they seem to be pretty hard to come by on eBay. Anyone know of a surplus house or anything that's selling off the Javastations at a reasonable price?
--saint
All I want is a couple of old PIIs, 32 Meg of memory (min) and processor speed in the hundreds to tinker with Linux on, trash and experiment with. It'll suffice for most needs, why does no hardware company offer them?
Call a local college and ask their IT department if they have any that they are looking to get rid of. The one I work for donates dozens of machines a year to everyone from CS students who need another box for Linux to underfunded parochial schools in the area.
It's gotten to the point that we are replacing P3 700 MHz machines and don't have anywhere to put them.
Ask around.
--saint
And part of me immediately wants to ask: if there were many more core developers for the Perl language, do you think Perl would necessarily be the better for it?
You're right. Confusion would reign. The language syntax would become well-nigh unreadable.
Oh, right. Heh.
--saint