I switched from Windows to Linspire and it is a good change for me. It works like Windows, but it seems to have a lot more features than Windows did.
I lost a lot though. No more unannounced updates by M$. No more virii attacks. No more trojans that take over my computer and trash my workday.
I am a writer, so I used Office, plus I used Photoshop and ran a website, cut CDs for my music, etc. - all the standard stuff most people use.
Linspire had a matching free app for all that I do, and it came loaded with the distro, which was a painless install. I could even access all my old data files.
I would never go back again, and why should I have to? All my documents are compatible with M$ files and the clients I work with cannot tell the difference. I can. I have a lot more free time since I don't continually have to muck with my computer because of Windows!
Linspire is my first encounter with Linux. I hear it isn't even the best version, but I am completely happy with it.
What I would love to find and buy, if anyone ever made one yet, is a WRITERs PC.
This special computer is reminenscent of the Tandy TRS Model 100 http://osaki.cool.ne.jp/hc/index.html If you remember, it was used by almost everyone in journalism in its day.
The WRITERs PC would be:
a Small Portable Folding CLAMSHELL (not a tablet) with:
a Full Sized Backlit Keyboard, with full sized keys (no chicklets) This feature is very important for a writer.
a Flat Screen B/W Monitor (NO touch screen) to match the keyboard's Size and Shape, but it would need to be bright and readable, say 800 x 480 pixels on a twelve in wide screen.
No need for a Hard Drive, as Word (RTF) Files are small. instead it should have a 1GB Flash Memory Drive for data storage. http://www.zyonsystems.com/usbflashdrive .htm
Also No Need for the fastest CPU or lots of RAM. (It would not need web surfing, but you would want email).
Such a computer should have 100 Hours of Battery Life. http://alphasmart.com/products/dana_overview.html
Obviously such a minimal laptop would not need the bloatware or monstrous OS from Microsoft, but it would be a very useable and useful laptop with the ultra small and stable Linux OS, and running only a text editor and a Mail app from.
No one makes the WRITERs PC yet. (I would be willing to pay any price you name for this one!) Such a portable device would sell very well for the millions of us who write, IMO.
Whoever created this would have the market completely to themselves, I believe.
Thank you for your time.
Regards, Roger Born Writer, Teacher, General Troublemaker http://writing.borngraphics.com/
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but not here on our home planet.
In fact it is locked up in many elements, and to get at it requires a lot of energy.
Guess where that energy will come from to provide everyone with enough hydrogen to run all their appliances and cars? (all the existing powerplants using fossile fuels and/or atomic energy!)
Sorry, until there suddenly appears that breathtaking breakthrough that gives us nearly free hydrogen from water or the air, we will never be able to afford it for everyday use.
As for the storage issues and transportation problems with hydrogen, those are easy to solve, compared to large scale production of that element.
The idea of education is to enable those who wish to enter those fields. But there are hidden rules about this.
For instance, in order to go to a 'real' university, one of the better ones, where a profitable career most certainly awaits those who graduate, the weeding out process starts in 7th grade, where the middle school principal and/or the teacher divide their charges into two groups, consisting of those who will take higher math such as algebra and calculus, and those who will take 'dumbbell math.'
Those who go on to the higher math classes have a 'chance' at going to the best universities. Those who don't will almost never get in to those places, and instead will go to community colleges and/or trade schools, whose graduates will have an earning cap, and who will rarely get into any profitable career such as medicine, dentistry, economics, physics, and many fields of science.
Does anyone tell the parents of their 7th grader what just happened here? No. The educational system has its own peculiar barriers, doesn't it?
What is worse, you would think that after passing those hard exams and being accepted into some upper crust university, you would be guaranteed a comfortable salary during your working years. If you were in the legal, political or medical field, this might be true (although there are poor lawyers, politicians and doctors who just don't cut it.)
If you hope to go into pure research, some scientific field or academia (be a professor) your MA and your PHD will do little to give you a much better salary than that mechanic or technical specialist who went to a community college or trade school.
So, what does a PHD do for the IT professional? Hardly a thing unless he also has some certification or job related track record, or has an MA or PHD in engineering.
Or, unless he gets into some company where they think that having a PHD on staff is somehow prestigious.
I personally spent all my time over the past few years never paying bills on time, but at the very last minute. I especially did not pay any credit debts I had, but kept the merchandise and settled for a small payment with the credit company who loaned me the money for buying the items in the first place.
This all gave me an excellent (unusable to anyone) credit rating. In fact it is so good that now no one will loan me money. I cannot even buy a house or a car on credit.
You cannot imagine the peace of mind this gives me as no one will ever steal my credit identity for any reason. On top of all this, my present credit situation has saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit interest over the past few years which I would have been paying had I still had good credit. It has allowed me to buy everything with cash, saving up for those things I really need. A small side effect of this is that impulse purchases, like that new sports car I really want, but which I do not need, are effectively impossible with my current credit standing. What a blessing!
I did not start out to do all this, but having gotten cancer and being unable to work for a few years has helped me tremendously to achieve my current credit status.
I think its great. I sell my stories and novels there for a dime or more. I have been doing it for a week, and already have had an amazing amount of sales.
Seems to work for me, when nothing else I have tried ever worked before.
Forget the honor system or begging for donations. Micropayments just works.
Roger Born Writer, Teacher, General Troublemaker rogerborngraphics.com
I agree with this! I both take upper level classes and teach graduate level classes. I do this in class and on line. My favorite classes are the ones that the professor does very little in. These are the ones I can make my own course of study in, and design the class to be what I think it should be.
Of course this requires Critical Thought, and most college students never had to use CT in any of their classes.
If you want an excellent example of Critical Thought, go here: writing.borngraphics.com/1ctclass.htm
You may or may not enjoy the experience, but the best classes you can ever take are CT classes. Why? Because they teach you to think! That is something very rare in both college and in life, IMO.
All the best, Roger Born Writer, Teacher, General Troublemaker
The articles about this subject, like the one at Salon, really tick me off.
I suppose that the current location of all this nuclear waste in 400 nationwide above ground, open air, storage areas, (with most of it in leaky metal barrels), is somehow preferable to the proposed interment in an underground mine, in the middle of a remote desert?
Even the proposed transportation of this material in reticulated stainless steel containers would be far safer than its current storage conditions.
Yeah, I went the route of two 1 x 12 by 10 foot boards across two heavy black file cabinets, with a hung keyboard and a handy A/B box to switch monitors with. I used Remote Viewing to switch between the different Linux/Mac/Windows computers on my monitors.
The eight foot distance between my file cabinets was plenty of room for my icebox and my woofers, and a large black trashcan with a shredder.
The major difference was that I put this along one wall with a narrow walkway between the wall and my desk, for getting to those pesky spaghetti piles of wires. I even got some of that split plastic corrogated tubing to keep the wiring in, which helps.
I added another thinner shelf behind my computers, standing it upright to hide all the wiring mess from view.
The first time I put it together, it was flush to the wall, and impossible to wire up. Therefore, I moved it out to make the narrow walking space behind it all.
After a while, I tried to cover it with a semidull black formica. It worked! That was easier than I thought it would be, and now it all looks pretty cool.
Once you add some tiny studio post lights for the keyboard and writing spaces, some big speakers hooked to an AV amplifier, nail all your powerstrips and routers to the back of the upright shelf, and add a cable box with a small television, you have a place to work that you would never have to leave.
Oh, and get a comfortable black leather chair to match. Also get a hard flat floor mat under your chair so you can navigate the distance from one end to the other on wheels.
The whole thing was gotten for less than $300, a bit at a time. I got some hot posters framed in narrow black frames on the wall behind, and some indirect lighting for them hung behind that back board, and I am set.
Lets see? Humm? What if I exchanged that leather chair for a portapotty? . . . (grin)
Go to forum.borngraphics.com to read a few published science fiction short stories about nanotechnology and what it is like living with it. Many of the comments are good, and well reasoned, but a few, well, lets leave them in the trash. Hope this link helps clear up some of the craziness about nano machines that has been airing here.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't set your Tivo or tapes to record just Atlantis on SciFi.
Set them two hours early and record the first two episodes of SG-1, season eight.
IMO, season eight is already way better than atlantis may be.
For a scifi junkie, SG-1 is the best there is, and its on everyday.
I switched from Windows to Linspire and it is a good change for me. It works like Windows, but it seems to have a lot more features than Windows did.
I lost a lot though. No more unannounced updates by M$. No more virii attacks. No more trojans that take over my computer and trash my workday.
I am a writer, so I used Office, plus I used Photoshop and ran a website, cut CDs for my music, etc. - all the standard stuff most people use.
Linspire had a matching free app for all that I do, and it came loaded with the distro, which was a painless install. I could even access all my old data files.
I would never go back again, and why should I have to? All my documents are compatible with M$ files and the clients I work with cannot tell the difference. I can. I have a lot more free time since I don't continually have to muck with my computer because of Windows!
Linspire is my first encounter with Linux. I hear it isn't even the best version, but I am completely happy with it.
Roger Born
writing.borngraphics.com
Don't trust movie producers with Asimov. Ever.
The last movie I saw that was supposed to be an Asimov movie was "Nightfall."
Nobody who did that movie could have ever read the story.
It was such a stinker that they invented 'direct to video' because of it.
Do they have one that shows how to lie with girls?
Anyone ever notice that all the collector's item clocks for Trek in any series are analog?
Somebody please explain to me why they are not all cutting edge DIGITAL?!!
yeah, this Borg Cube collection is great, but give me a futuristic time piece that looks like it came off the bridge or out of engineering.
Collector's Item, indeed!
What I would love to find and buy, if anyone ever made one yet, is a WRITERs PC.
e .htm
This special computer is reminenscent of the Tandy TRS Model 100
http://osaki.cool.ne.jp/hc/index.html If you remember, it was used by almost everyone in journalism in its day.
The WRITERs PC would be:
a Small Portable Folding CLAMSHELL (not a tablet) with:
a Full Sized Backlit Keyboard, with full sized keys (no chicklets) This feature is very important for a writer.
a Flat Screen B/W Monitor (NO touch screen) to match the keyboard's Size and Shape, but it would need to be bright and readable, say 800 x 480 pixels on a twelve in wide screen.
No need for a Hard Drive, as Word (RTF) Files are small. instead it should have a 1GB Flash Memory Drive for data storage.
http://www.zyonsystems.com/usbflashdriv
Also No Need for the fastest CPU or lots of RAM. (It would not need web surfing, but you would want email).
Such a computer should have 100 Hours of Battery Life. http://alphasmart.com/products/dana_overview.html
Obviously such a minimal laptop would not need the bloatware or monstrous OS from Microsoft, but it would be a very useable and useful laptop with the ultra small and stable Linux OS, and running only a text editor and a Mail app from.
No one makes the WRITERs PC yet. (I would be willing to pay any price you name for this one!) Such a portable device would sell very well for the millions of us who write, IMO.
Whoever created this would have the market completely to themselves, I believe.
Thank you for your time.
Regards,
Roger Born
Writer, Teacher, General Troublemaker
http://writing.borngraphics.com/
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but not here on our home planet.
In fact it is locked up in many elements, and to get at it requires a lot of energy.
Guess where that energy will come from to provide everyone with enough hydrogen to run all their appliances and cars? (all the existing powerplants using fossile fuels and/or atomic energy!)
Sorry, until there suddenly appears that breathtaking breakthrough that gives us nearly free hydrogen from water or the air, we will never be able to afford it for everyday use.
As for the storage issues and transportation problems with hydrogen, those are easy to solve, compared to large scale production of that element.
Roger Born
writing.borngraphics.com
The idea of education is to enable those who wish to enter those fields. But there are hidden rules about this.
For instance, in order to go to a 'real' university, one of the better ones, where a profitable career most certainly awaits those who graduate, the weeding out process starts in 7th grade, where the middle school principal and/or the teacher divide their charges into two groups, consisting of those who will take higher math such as algebra and calculus, and those who will take 'dumbbell math.'
Those who go on to the higher math classes have a 'chance' at going to the best universities. Those who don't will almost never get in to those places, and instead will go to community colleges and/or trade schools, whose graduates will have an earning cap, and who will rarely get into any profitable career such as medicine, dentistry, economics, physics, and many fields of science.
Does anyone tell the parents of their 7th grader what just happened here? No. The educational system has its own peculiar barriers, doesn't it?
What is worse, you would think that after passing those hard exams and being accepted into some upper crust university, you would be guaranteed a comfortable salary during your working years. If you were in the legal, political or medical field, this might be true (although there are poor lawyers, politicians and doctors who just don't cut it.)
If you hope to go into pure research, some scientific field or academia (be a professor) your MA and your PHD will do little to give you a much better salary than that mechanic or technical specialist who went to a community college or trade school.
So, what does a PHD do for the IT professional? Hardly a thing unless he also has some certification or job related track record, or has an MA or PHD in engineering.
Or, unless he gets into some company where they think that having a PHD on staff is somehow prestigious.
Regards,
Roger
writing.borngraphics.com
I personally spent all my time over the past few years never paying bills on time, but at the very last minute. I especially did not pay any credit debts I had, but kept the merchandise and settled for a small payment with the credit company who loaned me the money for buying the items in the first place.
This all gave me an excellent (unusable to anyone) credit rating. In fact it is so good that now no one will loan me money. I cannot even buy a house or a car on credit.
You cannot imagine the peace of mind this gives me as no one will ever steal my credit identity for any reason. On top of all this, my present credit situation has saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit interest over the past few years which I would have been paying had I still had good credit. It has allowed me to buy everything with cash, saving up for those things I really need. A small side effect of this is that impulse purchases, like that new sports car I really want, but which I do not need, are effectively impossible with my current credit standing. What a blessing!
I did not start out to do all this, but having gotten cancer and being unable to work for a few years has helped me tremendously to achieve my current credit status.
=)
Roger "Dodger" Born
writing.bonrgraphics.com
I am a seller on BITPASS.
I think its great. I sell my stories and novels there for a dime or more. I have been doing it for a week, and already have had an amazing amount of sales.
Seems to work for me, when nothing else I have tried ever worked before.
Forget the honor system or begging for donations. Micropayments just works.
Roger Born
Writer, Teacher, General Troublemaker
rogerborngraphics.com
I agree with this! I both take upper level classes and teach graduate level classes. I do this in class and on line. My favorite classes are the ones that the professor does very little in. These are the ones I can make my own course of study in, and design the class to be what I think it should be.
Of course this requires Critical Thought, and most college students never had to use CT in any of their classes.
If you want an excellent example of Critical Thought, go here: writing.borngraphics.com/1ctclass.htm
You may or may not enjoy the experience, but the best classes you can ever take are CT classes. Why? Because they teach you to think! That is something very rare in both college and in life, IMO.
All the best,
Roger Born
Writer, Teacher, General Troublemaker
The articles about this subject, like the one at Salon, really tick me off.
I suppose that the current location of all this nuclear waste in 400 nationwide above ground, open air, storage areas, (with most of it in leaky metal barrels), is somehow preferable to the proposed interment in an underground mine, in the middle of a remote desert?
Even the proposed transportation of this material in reticulated stainless steel containers would be far safer than its current storage conditions.
Yeah, I went the route of two 1 x 12 by 10 foot boards across two heavy black file cabinets, with a hung keyboard and a handy A/B box to switch monitors with. I used Remote Viewing to switch between the different Linux/Mac/Windows computers on my monitors.
The eight foot distance between my file cabinets was plenty of room for my icebox and my woofers, and a large black trashcan with a shredder.
The major difference was that I put this along one wall with a narrow walkway between the wall and my desk, for getting to those pesky spaghetti piles of wires. I even got some of that split plastic corrogated tubing to keep the wiring in, which helps.
I added another thinner shelf behind my computers, standing it upright to hide all the wiring mess from view.
The first time I put it together, it was flush to the wall, and impossible to wire up. Therefore, I moved it out to make the narrow walking space behind it all.
After a while, I tried to cover it with a semidull black formica. It worked! That was easier than I thought it would be, and now it all looks pretty cool.
Once you add some tiny studio post lights for the keyboard and writing spaces, some big speakers hooked to an AV amplifier, nail all your powerstrips and routers to the back of the upright shelf, and add a cable box with a small television, you have a place to work that you would never have to leave.
Oh, and get a comfortable black leather chair to match. Also get a hard flat floor mat under your chair so you can navigate the distance from one end to the other on wheels.
The whole thing was gotten for less than $300, a bit at a time. I got some hot posters framed in narrow black frames on the wall behind, and some indirect lighting for them hung behind that back board, and I am set.
Lets see? Humm? What if I exchanged that leather chair for a portapotty? . . . (grin)
Go to forum.borngraphics.com to read a few published science fiction short stories about nanotechnology and what it is like living with it. Many of the comments are good, and well reasoned, but a few, well, lets leave them in the trash. Hope this link helps clear up some of the craziness about nano machines that has been airing here.