Sure, it sucks supporting old software, but when January 16 rolls around, the two Microsoft 98 machines I own will switch to one Microsoft XP machine and one Debian GNU/Linux machine.
For my personal use, I'm not willing to pay for updates when F/OSS software does what I need. The only reason why I'm even upgrading one machine to XP is that I'm not the primary user.
Sure, fixing computers for your family isn't what
you want to do with your time. OTOH, you get to visit with your family, have a few carbonated drinks, and perhaps have supper if you run late.
Doesn't sound like a bad deal, especially when you borrow their skills to do some home repairs or borrow their garage and tools to fix a vehicle.
Why do you say you are immune? Ever hear of installing a program as a user, in your home directory?
For that to work, there are two requirements:
That either the current directory or part of your home directory is in your path.
That/home and/tmp (plus any other user writable areas) are not mounted noexec
If unix become popular on the desktop there would be viruses. However, unix browsers and email clients tend to be more secure then Internet Explorer and Outlook. Hopefully, one wouldn't see the rise of programs that sacrifice security for ease of use.
OTOH, most windows users seem to run around as administrator (especially most of the windows "admins" that I know of) and never patch, so...
How often does the average user's email client (read: Outlook Express/Outlook) check for new messages on the server?
In the same light, how often does IM clients check for new messages? Does it reuse the same connection, or initiate a new connection with the server? (I'm assuming its client->server, due to NATs, firewalls, etc).
Just because the client software is constantly requesting data does not make the software more popular. Statistics about *active* use (say, page hits, email messages, etc) would be more informative.
If you really want to get polling information about political stuff, use the internet.
I'm not sure what country you are from, but in the US, the elderly are a large voting block with excellent turnout, yet they seem not to be as active on the internet.
The younger generation, who is more active on the internet, have the voting turnout of a half-dead rock.
While I wouldn't go as far as the article's author has, have you ever noticed the following [may be American culture specific]:
Although our society seems to punish murderers worse then rapists, games about pretending to murder others are considered okay, while a game about raping others is considered indecent. Why the discontinuity?
Good tools help you deal with information, bad tools don't. Your email system should be able to classify email - throwing probable spam in one folder, dividing mailing lists into their own folders, server alerts into another folder, etc. If the email is important enough, it should have the ability to flag you in some manner.
Your IM software should be able to stay quiet in the background unless you want to be interrupted. Again, like your mail handling system, it should be able to classify messages according to sender.
I don't want some unified console with limited abilities that force me to use $APP_XYZ. Give me something like the docks in several unix window managers, where I can select from a variety of apps for the purpose and pick and choose what I want.
Sure, I might need to learn a little scripting or configuration syntax, but if I'm going to be using my computer alot, I'd rather take a day now then waste a week a year.
2) The thermal cycle of daily heating/cooling is less extreme
I doubt that:-) Venus has a very LOOOoooooonnng day. About 243 days:-) That means 121 days "night" and 122 days "sunshine".{
With Venus having a night temperature of... hu hom, I estimate.. 100 degrees centigrade, we have a emperature difference on Venus of 300 degrees. Whereas on Mars the temperature difference is less than 110 degrees.
Sure, perhaps at the top of Venus's cloud layer, there's a different between day and night temperatures. At the bottom of the thick atmosphere, there is probably little, if any temperature change.
If you checked out the grandparent poster's link, you'd see it for the Linux Terminal Server Project.
Thus, its safe to assume that the pentium 75 is acting as a dumb client (or, if you want to use X's terminology, as an X server), booting entirely from the network. Thus, the pentium 75 is displaying Open Office, and presumably some server with globs of ram and a fast cup or two is actually doing the heavy work.
I'm posting this from an older pentium laptop (p166/80MB/2GB drive) and I'm looking at the adapter as I type this.
Output is 15VDC, 3A, which (if I recall physics correctly) is 45W.
Input is 110V @.95A, which translates to 95W, but the effective draw is probably less (since AC current is cycling from -110V to 110V and back to -110V). Of course, that's maximum draw, currently neither the CD drive nor the CPU fan is running in this machine.
Why not grab an old machine? Should work fine for a lot of things.
If you can find a laptop that draws 12V exactly,
perhaps it would be possible to hook up some deep-cycle batteries to some sort of recharging system. If you have a gasoline vehicle and are going to drive it regularly, try adding a spot to hook up a spare battery. Solar, wind, etc may also work, depending on the location.
Disclaimer: I am not an Electrical Engineer (but don't worry, this is/., so if I screwed up horribly, an EE will probably point out any mistakes.
I forgave Quicksilver (for now) since its the
beginning of the trilogy. Oh, and the bits about qw-whatever was spiffy.
OTOH, I looked at the line I thought it would also be appropriate to ask for the best and worst books of 2003. In fiction, Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver is toward the top of my best list. How about everyone else?" and thought: Yep, I can understand classifying it as the best and the worst book of 2003.
BSD (OpenBSD at least) doesn't mount SMB/CIFS shares easily. 'shlight' is supposed to be able to do it, in some circumstances, but as a newbie user, I have problems with certain setups.
(OpenBSD + Samba will export SMB/CIFS shares just fine)
I think "Charlie's Angels, Full Throttle" was made from 30-second snippets
of action movies trailers and assembled by an ADD sufferer on speed and crack. *Sigh* [I think that came out in 2003. If not, its still the worst movie.]
Best movies:
Kill Bill - Bloody Gore Fest
Finding Nemo - Cute Kiddy Film
Pirates of the Carribean - I didn't expect it to be that good.
LotR: RotK (no, I never read the books) - Mumakil rock.
That said, 2.6 is extremely stable (probably more so than 2.4 IME) and there's no reason why not to use it either.
I've only had one unexplained crash in 2.4.x, and that's probably hardware. I find Linux (and the BSDs) very, very rock-solid stable.
I do avoid the proprietary binary video card drivers that seem to give a lot of people problems.
I'm sticking with 2.4.22 for awhile here. It works, its in a server that works, and I'm happy. I have one 'sacrificial' system atm, and its already in use as my 'learn-OpenBSD' system.
If I had another spare system I didn't care about, I'd use 2.6.0. But I don't, and I'm not going to learn about a new kernel, and new bugs, in a production system.
Thanks to the rest of you for testing it for me.:)
Memory for laptops isn't too expensive on ebay. (I upped my old p166 laptop from 32M (16 onboard + 16M) to 80M (16 + 64M) for about 30 bucks.
Well worth it. Galeon is pretty quick on OpenBSD now. I remember it being slower under Debian Woody, which is odd, since I was running a pretty stripped down install of it.
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Sure, it sucks supporting old software, but when January 16 rolls around, the two Microsoft 98 machines I own will switch to one Microsoft XP machine and one Debian GNU/Linux machine.
For my personal use, I'm not willing to pay for updates when F/OSS software does what I need. The only reason why I'm even upgrading one machine to XP is that I'm not the primary user.
Sure, fixing computers for your family isn't what you want to do with your time. OTOH, you get to visit with your family, have a few carbonated drinks, and perhaps have supper if you run late.
Doesn't sound like a bad deal, especially when you borrow their skills to do some home repairs or borrow their garage and tools to fix a vehicle.
Family should help out family.
Why do you say you are immune? Ever hear of installing a program as a user, in your home directory?
For that to work, there are two requirements:
If unix become popular on the desktop there would be viruses. However, unix browsers and email clients tend to be more secure then Internet Explorer and Outlook. Hopefully, one wouldn't see the rise of programs that sacrifice security for ease of use.
OTOH, most windows users seem to run around as administrator (especially most of the windows "admins" that I know of) and never patch, so...
I was all set for a short John Carter fiction peice about the disappearance of Stardust.
So, of course, this is one probe that's successful!
Damnit! Sure, Stardust is worth the millions NASA spent, but I lost a few +1 Funny mod points!
How often does the average user's email client (read: Outlook Express/Outlook) check for new messages on the server?
In the same light, how often does IM clients check for new messages? Does it reuse the same connection, or initiate a new connection with the server? (I'm assuming its client->server, due to NATs, firewalls, etc).
Just because the client software is constantly requesting data does not make the software more popular. Statistics about *active* use (say, page hits, email messages, etc) would be more informative.
If you really want to get polling information about political stuff, use the internet.
I'm not sure what country you are from, but in the US, the elderly are a large voting block with excellent turnout, yet they seem not to be as active on the internet.
The younger generation, who is more active on the internet, have the voting turnout of a half-dead rock.
How long before it gets added to debian or gentoo as a package?
"apt-get install freebsd" or "emerge freebsd".
Debian is already flirting with demonic possession in different ways
Ne'ermind the hopefully optimistic other project
While I wouldn't go as far as the article's author has, have you ever noticed the following [may be American culture specific]:
Good tools help you deal with information, bad tools don't. Your email system should be able to classify email - throwing probable spam in one folder, dividing mailing lists into their own folders, server alerts into another folder, etc. If the email is important enough, it should have the ability to flag you in some manner.
Your IM software should be able to stay quiet in the background unless you want to be interrupted. Again, like your mail handling system, it should be able to classify messages according to sender.
I don't want some unified console with limited abilities that force me to use $APP_XYZ. Give me something like the docks in several unix window managers, where I can select from a variety of apps for the purpose and pick and choose what I want.
Sure, I might need to learn a little scripting or configuration syntax, but if I'm going to be using my computer alot, I'd rather take a day now then waste a week a year.
Just my $.02
2) The thermal cycle of daily heating/cooling is less extreme
I doubt that :-) Venus has a very LOOOoooooonnng day. About 243 days :-) That means 121 days "night" and 122 days "sunshine".{
With Venus having a night temperature of ... hu hom, I estimate .. 100 degrees centigrade, we have a emperature difference on Venus of 300 degrees. Whereas on Mars the temperature difference is less than 110 degrees.
Remember that Venus has a thick atmosphere that holds heat. Googling, I find that Probing beneath the clouds, researchers are also studying surface emissions at other microwave frequencies. The results indicate that the surface temperature stays the same, night and day.
Sure, perhaps at the top of Venus's cloud layer, there's a different between day and night temperatures. At the bottom of the thick atmosphere, there is probably little, if any temperature change.
OTOH, its hot enough to melt lead. Venus is hell.
A pentium 75 runs OpenOffice "perfectly"?
If you checked out the grandparent poster's link, you'd see it for the Linux Terminal Server Project.
Thus, its safe to assume that the pentium 75 is acting as a dumb client (or, if you want to use X's terminology, as an X server), booting entirely from the network. Thus, the pentium 75 is displaying Open Office, and presumably some server with globs of ram and a fast cup or two is actually doing the heavy work.
A mechanical typewriter takes zero volts, zero amps, and thus zero watts.
(Its a joke, laugh!)
Well, y'see, it pleases me to run games like Dungeon Siege, Postal 2, Warcraft 3, and a whole host of others that don't have native Linux versions
At least someone liked that game...
I'm posting this from an older pentium laptop (p166/80MB/2GB drive) and I'm looking at the adapter as I type this.
Output is 15VDC, 3A, which (if I recall physics correctly) is 45W.
Input is 110V @ .95A, which translates to 95W, but the effective draw is probably less (since AC current is cycling from -110V to 110V and back to -110V). Of course, that's maximum draw, currently neither the CD drive nor the CPU fan is running in this machine.
Why not grab an old machine? Should work fine for a lot of things.
If you can find a laptop that draws 12V exactly, perhaps it would be possible to hook up some deep-cycle batteries to some sort of recharging system. If you have a gasoline vehicle and are going to drive it regularly, try adding a spot to hook up a spare battery. Solar, wind, etc may also work, depending on the location.
Disclaimer: I am not an Electrical Engineer (but don't worry, this is /., so if I screwed up horribly, an EE will probably point out any mistakes.
I forgave Quicksilver (for now) since its the beginning of the trilogy. Oh, and the bits about qw-whatever was spiffy.
OTOH, I looked at the line I thought it would also be appropriate to ask for the best and worst books of 2003. In fiction, Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver is toward the top of my best list. How about everyone else?" and thought: Yep, I can understand classifying it as the best and the worst book of 2003.
In Galeon 1.2.11 under OpenBSD 3.4 I got the nice white page of nothing after trying to submit the survey.
Incidentally, one of the critiques of Microsoft I mentioned with the failure of interoperability with other software and platforms.
*Sigh*
BSD (OpenBSD at least) doesn't mount SMB/CIFS shares easily. 'shlight' is supposed to be able to do it, in some circumstances, but as a newbie user, I have problems with certain setups.
(OpenBSD + Samba will export SMB/CIFS shares just fine)
Why can't you test 2.6 on the same system as OpenBSD?
Its a laptop with a 2 gig HDD.
I think "Charlie's Angels, Full Throttle" was made from 30-second snippets of action movies trailers and assembled by an ADD sufferer on speed and crack. *Sigh* [I think that came out in 2003. If not, its still the worst movie.]
Best movies:
That said, 2.6 is extremely stable (probably more so than 2.4 IME) and there's no reason why not to use it either.
I've only had one unexplained crash in 2.4.x, and that's probably hardware. I find Linux (and the BSDs) very, very rock-solid stable.
I do avoid the proprietary binary video card drivers that seem to give a lot of people problems.
I'm sticking with 2.4.22 for awhile here. It works, its in a server that works, and I'm happy. I have one 'sacrificial' system atm, and its already in use as my 'learn-OpenBSD' system.
If I had another spare system I didn't care about, I'd use 2.6.0. But I don't, and I'm not going to learn about a new kernel, and new bugs, in a production system.
Thanks to the rest of you for testing it for me. :)
FYI:
Linux tends to want memory over processor speed.
Memory for laptops isn't too expensive on ebay. (I upped my old p166 laptop from 32M (16 onboard + 16M) to 80M (16 + 64M) for about 30 bucks.
Well worth it. Galeon is pretty quick on OpenBSD now. I remember it being slower under Debian Woody, which is odd, since I was running a pretty stripped down install of it.
Don't forget to tunnel it through SSH or the encryption-scheme-of-your-choice.
Or do you want everyone to be able to snarf all your files out of the ether?
[Karma Whore]
DemiForce Final Fantasy (and other) translations, or, for other games/parties, why not try Zophar's collection of translations?
[/Karma Whore]
Lets give the RIAA what they want.
Don't download commercial music that you are not allowed to possess.
Instead, try iRATE and get free, legal mp3s.
You don't have to pirate music, and you can still kick the RIAA where it hurts (mindshare).